About Us
The Embedded Ethics Education Initiative (E3I) is a high-impact teaching and learning venture that embeds paired ethics-technology education modules into computer science courses across all four years of the Department of Computer Science undergraduate curriculum. Transformative advances in technology have provoked global concern over AI safety, data privacy, algorithmic discrimination, and the future of work. E3I aims to endow computer science students with the awareness, skills, and incentive to incorporate such ethical considerations in the design and deployment of technology. The program’s high impact is reflected in the thousands of students it engages annually, the effectiveness of that engagement, and in the broader perspective and skills it provides to our students as they enter the workforce.
E3I was launched as a two-year pilot in 2020 reaching 400 computer science students in its first year of operation. It has now expanded to a mature initiative in computer science. In the 2023-24 academic year, student enrollment in computer science courses with E3I modules reached just shy of 5000, with an additional 3200 enrollments in other computer science E3I programming. By 2025, a typical undergraduate student in computer science will experience a minimum of one E3I module per year across their four-year undergraduate program. The initiative is also being piloted in other disciplines: five modules were delivered to more than 1500 students in disciplines outside computer science, ranging from statistics to ecology and evolutionary biology. The team’s internationally recognized scholarly assessment confirms the effectiveness and impact of E3I, both within and beyond the classroom.
E3I is a collaborative venture at the University of Toronto between the Department of Computer Science and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, in association with the Department of Philosophy.
Contact us at: embedded-ethics@cs.toronto.edu
Meet the Team
Faculty Leads
Diane Horton
Professor, Teaching Stream
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto
David Liu
Associate Professor, Teaching Stream
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto
Sheila Mcllraith
Professor
Department of Computer Science &
Schwartz Reisman Institute for
Technology and Society
University of Toronto
Current Teaching Team
Steven Coyne
Assistant Professor (CLTA)
Department of Philosophy and
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto
Alexandra Gustafson
PhD Candidate
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
Bowen Chan
PhD Candidate
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
Eric Shoemaker
PhD Candidate
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
Former Teaching Team
Benjamin Wald
Former Postdoctoral Fellow
Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
University of Toronto
Maryam Majedi
Former Postdoctoral Fellow, Teaching Stream
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto
Alice Huang
PhD Candidate
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
Julia Lei
PhD Candidate
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
Study Design and Analysis Support
Web Development
Hamid Yuksel
Master of Information Student
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto
Acknowledgements
The Embedded Ethics Education Initiative has received generous funding from the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
We also thank Barbara Grosz and Jeff Behrends at Harvard University for sharing their inspiration and wisdom from the Embedded EthiCS @ Harvard program.