CSC 300 Professional Responsibilities
Assignment 1: Personal Interest
Write a short essay (roughly 500 - 1000 words) about a topic that relates to your
professional interest (e.g. computers for Computer Science students) and has
social or ethical implications.
Structure
I suggest the following structure for this essay:
Title, author, affiliation (e.g. institution, class), date
introduction and background (what is the problem or controversy)
social or ethical issues (what are the core aspects)
perspectives (identify and describe the different viewpoints
in a balanced way)
evaluation (express your personal opinion or preferences)
conclusions (review the most important aspects)
bibliography (list the sources you've used)
The main focus of the paper should be a fair and balanced presentation
of the relevant issues, followed by an evaluation and conclusions that
reflect your own personal view of the issues. It should not be a
manifest for one particular viewpoint, or an attack of a viewpoint
you may not like or disagree with. This does not mean that you're
personal opinions are of no interest; however, they should be given
within a context that provides a reasonably impartial overview
of the critical issues.
Grading Guidelines
This paper contributes 20 points to the overall assignments score.
I will grade your essay based on the following criteria;
they are similar to the
evaluation criteria
for the term paper and the accompanying presentation.
knowledge of subject matter
(does the author demonstrate a good grasp of the topic)
relevance of the topic
(is the topic of interest within this course)
evidence
(does the author present facts, examples, or other material
that supports the arguments, and are the sources cited)
accuracy
(is the material presented correct, consistent, and complete)
organization
(is the paper well organized and easy to follow)
presentation
(is the appearence of the paper of professional quality,
e.g. without spelling or grammatical errors)
You should not worry about what you think my personal opinion
about the respective topics might be. I will judge the papers
on the aspects above, and not on their agreement with my
particular views.
Submission
The deadline for this assignment is 11:59 pm on Wednesday, January 15, 2003.
It should be submitted via the Blackboard "Discussion Forum"
feature; I will set up a discussion forum for it. You should format
your document as an HTML file so that it can be viewed easily from
within BlackBoard. If you use MS Word or a similar program, please
convert it to HTML.
Please note that submissions to the discussion forum are accessible
to all participants in the class. I am doing this on purpose
so that students can find out what topics other students find interesting.
This may also present an ethical problem: Some may be tempted
to get inspiration or more from material already submitted. You can minimize
potential problems by submitting your assignment only a short time
before the deadline. And of course I am assuming that all the participants
in this class behave in an ethical and professional manner.