ECS 188 – Ethics in an Age of Technology

ECS 188 – Ethics in an Age of Technology – Project Information

Your project is to be based on either on a book or a topic. Here is a list of suggested books. I will refrain from giving a list of suggested topics so that you can better let your mind wander. Topics only need to have nonvoid intersection with ethics-and-technology. Don't make a topic overly broad. I suggest to discuss your topic with me early on.

There are two aspects to the project: a paper and a presentation.

1. Paper

The paper should be no less than 2000 words (about 8-pages). Please indicate the word count on the paper, at the beginning or at the end. The paper should be written with an intended audience of me and your classmates. Write something that you yourself would want to be given to read. And, in fact, you will be reading one another's papers, which must be sent to so that I can drop them to the web. If you don't want your last name on this (publicly available) document, for reasons of personal privacy, please omit it from the paper.

Your paper should be carefully written, and will be graded for writing quality. Give full references in the bibliography (eg., author, title, journal, publisher, pages, date; a URL alone does not a reference make). Include all necessary citations and footnotes. Please number all pages and include the project number on the first page. Follow standard stylistic conventions. If you don't know these, check with a source like Strunk (The Elements of Style). Use justified text (no ragged-right margins). Use a pleasant-to-read font (not Arial and not some other sans serif font). Do not write stuff off the top of your head, so to speak—you need to do some genuine research here. Think, organize, think, and organize. Write and rewrite.

The papers should be sent to be as a .pdf file. Please give your paper a file name of p followed by the number assigned to you on the list of student projects followed by .pdf; for example, p106.pdf. If you write the paper in Word and just can't figure out how to convert it to a pdf, you may send me the Word (.doc) file I will convert it for you. I always recommend serious students to use LaTeX, not Word.

Paper due dates are as follows:

If your presentation is on a Thursday then your paper is due at 10 am on the preceding Tuesday.
If your presentation is on a Tuesday then your paper is due at 10 am on the preceding Friday.
But: If your presentation is during finals week then, instead of the above, your paper is due 10 am on the last day that our class meets, during the week before finals.

The deadlines above are the minimum needed to ensure that your classmates and I have adequate time to read your paper. As such, late papers will be severely penalized.

2. Presentation

The presentation should be 20 minutes. It should be well-rehearsed and all team members must participate. You should use prepared slides for your presentation. Most students use PowerPoint, but any other tool will do. Either bring in your own laptop to class or use mine (for ppt, pptx, or pdf based presentations). Either way, mail me your presentation at least four hours before class. (If you are presenting from an Apple, mail me a pdf version.) Please include the presentation number on your title page. Name the file as in t106.pptx (or t106.ppt or t106.pdf). Note that an effective presentation does not look like a sequence of bulleted lists. I will spend a bit of time in class talking to you about giving talks.

Presentation will occur during week 10, during the scheduled final-exam slot (assuming there are students who want to use that slot). Sometimes we must use part of week 9 as well.

3. Further Information

You will work in a team of two on your project. Larger teams won't be permitted unless you make a good case for it or unless we have an unpaired student. Each team will do one writeup and one presentation. All team members get one grade.

They'll be two milestones preceding giving your presentation and paper:

Milestone 1 is the project proposal. In it you'll identify the book or topic you want, and whom you'll work with. Explain the scope and conception in about a paragraph. If I don't like your project proposal, you'll have to find something else.
Milestone 2 has two parts: a paper summary and a presentation summary. These get turned in at the same time. Outline what you'll say in your paper, and give me at least two well-written pages to read of it. (A complete rough draft is best of all.) Outline what you'll say in your presentation and work out rough slides. Important: bring three copies of your milestone-2 writeups on the day that it is due (actually, one more than there are people in your group: if you're a group of three, then please bring four copies).

The most important thing in choosing a project is to find something that you're genuinely interested in. The scope of what I'll approve—almost anything that legitimately has to do with both ethics and technology—is vast enough that you really ought to be able to find something that you're actually interested in.

4. Academic Honesty

As a course in ethics, it would be particularly ironic if people are dishonest. But the temptations are there. Any suspected problems will be reported to Judicial Affairs.

No-double-use policy: Your project should be something "new" for you. In particular, you may not select a project topic that largely intersects with a project you already used for another course in the past, or that you will use for another course this term. Both partners are considered to be in violation of the policy if either is.

Plagiarism: You may not use, modify, or refer to any related presentation or paper from a former student or professional service. Any material used that is not your own work should be properly credited to its source.

Good luck and have fun.