The focus of this paper is on the 20-year attempt to integrate social issues into the computing curriculum. Based on an international survey of computing instructors, the authors show that most of the institutions studied include courses on the societal impact of information and communications technology (ICT) in their programs. This is in line with the desire to come up with graduates who, beyond possessing technical skills and knowledge, should also be able to understand the impact of their work on society.

The results of the international survey seem to indicate that, thus far, the field has been successful in incorporating topics that concentrate on the history of computing; on codes of ethics, computer crime, and security; and on intellectual property. A neglect of the broader topic of the societal impact of computing still exists.

The big issue is how we can incorporate such topics into courses, and how we should teach them. Case studies of small and large departments, in small and large colleges and universities in the US and in other countries of the world, provide us with illustrations of the variety of approaches that have been tried.

The authors admit that we are far from having succeeded in the effort to incorporate social computing into the curriculum.