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CSC 300 Professional Responsibilities Winter 2003

CSC 300 Professional ResponsibilitiesTerm Paper

This course requires a written term paper on some topic related to computer science professional responsibilities. The term paper is accompanied by a presentation on the same topic.

Topic

The topic for the term paper and the formal presentation must be pre-approved by the instructor. A formal topic proposal must be submitted via Blackboard two weeks before your presentation takes place (except for those students giving their presentation in the first or second week). You topic proposal must include

Deadlines and Due Date

Topic Proposal
two weeks before your presentation
Presentation Material (Slides)
one week before your presentation
Term Paper
one week after your presentation
Late submission is subject to a penalty of 10% per business day.

Format

The paper should follow the requirements for submissions to the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) essay writing contest, or the ACM Crossroads student magazine.

Structure

You paper should contain the information listed below.

The Role of Peer Reviewers

In addition to giving a presentation and writing a term paper, you are required to act as peer reviewer or commentator on two papers written by other students, and on their presentations. In this capacity, your task is to make sure that the material is presented in such a way that it is as easy as possible for readers to benefit from the paper. This includes, but is not restricted to the following: The issues above are typically addressed when professionals review articles submitted to academic journals, and are usually followed by a recommendation to publish the article, reject it, or to ask the author for modifications. To this end, the evaluators fill out a review form, and return it to the editor of the journal, who then makes the final decision about publication, rejection, or a request for modification of the paper.

The identity of the reviewers is usually only known to the editor; otherwise, authors who are unhappy with the evaluation of their paper may be tempted to retribute against the reviewers.

Specifically for this class, you need to complete the peer review form, and submit it to the respective BlackBoard discussion forum (as a reply to the posting of the paper). In order to keep the administrative overhead low, we will conduct open reviews, where the authors know the identity of the reviewer.

You also need to formulate at least two follow-up questions that can serve as a starting point for further discussion.

Term Paper Writing Tips

Grading Guidelines

20 % Facts: Facts should be clear, simple, and relevant to the issue.

10 % Issue Statement: A concise statement (one line is best) that presents the story you want to tell.

20 % Alternative Arguments: Cover other thinkers' thoughts. Make sure to cover major "sides" to the issue in a neutral and balanced way.

50% Your Analysis: This is your own analysis, preferably built upon the Software Engineering Code of Ethics. Original analysis is the major grade contributor. A long, detailed report just explaining the situation, without analysis or evaluation, will result in a low score.

You can find examples of papers at the CPSR and ACM Crossroads Web pages, in particular Eric Rall's paper on Shrinkwrap licenses, and Rom Yatziv's paper on Spyware: Do You Know Who's Watching You? and a number of articles in Crossroads on Social Issues.

Acknowledgement: I believe this was originally put together by John Dalbey, with modifications by Clark Turner and Lori Fisher. Adopted with further modifications by Franz J. Kurfess in Winter 2003.
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