Essay 2

Assignment 2 - Advocating Professional Interventions

Summary

1000 word piece of writing. Strict limit, not including bibliography

Split into two sections, 250 and 750 words respectively

Draft submission by midday Monday 18th November

Peer review through TurnItIn by midday Monday 25th November

Final submission by midday Monday 2nd December

40% of your mark for this course

PDF version attached, but this page is the final authority.

Introduction

This task requires you to first describe a real-world case (part 1) and then identify and explain ethical implications, and suggest interventions to help mitigate (part 2).

Part 1: The Case Study (250 words)

Research and summarise an interesting case study for tech ethics. If you want some ideas, a list can be found here. Generally, the case should be about an organisation either researching, producing, or deploying some technological artifact with one or more interesting ethical dimensions to it.

Search for and review multiple sources (three is a safe minimum) in order to write your summary, referencing these and putting them in your bibliography as usual. You should also pick out one or two sources that you think are most comprehensive and highlight them as "Core Readings" at the end of the case study. These won't count towards the word limit.

Summaries should be factual, conveying the core information about the case (which may be in dispute). Examples can be found in each of the tutorial case studies (although these don’t have citations in-line, and you should). A good way of thinking about this task is to try and choose a case study that would make for a good tutorial discussion. In fact, if I receive any particularly good ones, I may well use them for tutorials in the future!

Part 2: The Essay (750 words)

Imagine you are working for the company involved in the case study and are writing a report for the senior management. In many cases it will be best to be doing this before any major fallout from an actual incident, which might make any argument you try to make seem unnecessary.

Write an essay that answers the following question:

“What should we do to reduce the negative impacts of this technology?”

This task will probably involve:

Highlighting one or more key potential harms of the technological artifact in question.

Proposing measures the company could put in place to try and reduce harms.

Explaining and arguing for the importance of both of the above to a reader who doesn’t necessarily have the same understanding as you. Assume they have not taken the equivalent of Professional Issues, and that while not actively hostile they might have other priorities.

As always, I don’t expect you to be comprehensive in covering every potential problem or fix, but you should focus on a small number of things in more detail (and therefore make a stronger argument for them).

Peer Review and Deadline

Drafts should be submitted using the Essay 2 Draft link on Learn. This link is also where you should go to receive a peer's draft to review.

You will have a week to review this other essay and provide feedback (filling out the questions provided), then another week to finish your essay using that feedback before you finally submit it on Learn to be marked.

Advice

Good essays will:

Clearly choose a main position

Clarify important details with reference to other sources

Consider the terms used and define them where necessary

Justify arguments with reference to course materials

Anticipate and address counterarguments

How well you do these things will be the core criteria for marking your essays.

Marking

Here are some of the main things markers will be looking for:

Answers the question

Clarity

Appropriate structure

Supported by other sources

Quality of argument

Recognition of counterarguments / alternate views

Knowledge and understanding

Style. and presentation

You will receive a mark according to the following scale (in line with the University’s Extended Common Marking Scheme):

Pass (40+): Essay attempts to address the provided question but is hard to understand and/or makes few clear points.

Good (50+): Essay is understandable, clarifies key terms, and comes to one or more obvious conclusions. Some course materials and external sources are referenced.

Very good (60+): Essay has a good structure, flowing between and building upon subsequent points. It identifies possible counter arguments or alternative views and integrates a variety of external sources.

Excellent (70+): Essay reads well and contains well-made arguments which pull together a variety of views and sources.

Excellent (80+): Marks in this range are uncommon. This essay draws the reader in and makes points beyond what would be expected of undergraduate students in Informatics.