CSC 300 Professional Responsibilities
Group Project
One activity in this course is a project conducted in a team
of about five participants.
Project Topic
The task is to do a technology impact assessment
on a topic selected by the team. In order to make this
more realistic, you could assume that your company is
considering a product utilizing that technology,
and is conducting the assessment in order to decide whether
to go ahead and actually bring the product to market.
(A good example that is now history is Napster.)
The topic should satisfy the following criteria:
the use of computers or computer-related technology
is an important aspect;
the technology has the potential of significant impact
on the professional or private activities of individuals,
groups, or organizations;
computer professionals are involved in technical aspects,
and possibly also in policies, procedures, or regulations
that deal with the impact of the technology.
Project Milestones and Deliverables
The project will be conducted in several stages. Each stage
is supposed to achieve a milestone, accompanied by a presentation
and a deliverable.
The following milestones are imposed on your team by higher powers:
Week 2: Topic Selection
In a more realistic scenario, you probably won't have the
opportunity to select your topic. However, there might be
variations or different prototypes to be investigated.
Here you should show why your topic is of interest,
what the technology under consideration is capable of,
and what possible implications its use may have.
Week 4: Background
Describe the technology you're investigating, and identify
products that already use it. If no such products are available,
try to find situations that are similar. The emphasis here
should be on the establishments of facts and context.
This needs to be supported by evidence such as citations
from books, journals, Web pages, brochures, or other material.
Week 6: Issues and Points of View
Identify the issues that you believe are relevant for
assessing the potential impact of the technology.
You should be careful to look at it from various perspectives,
not only from your own. Engineers or computer scientists
often tend to concentrate on technical issues such as
functionality, performance, or hardware requirements,
which may or may not be relevant. For such an assessment,
other factors always play a role, and you should try to
determine the most important ones.
It might be helpful to explore possible scenarios
(e.g. worst case, best case, most likely).
Week 8: Preliminary Evaluation
Based on your exploration of the relevant issues so far,
you need to formulate your tentative evaluation of
the potential impact.
Week 10: Final Presentation and Report
In the final presentation and report, you review the
most important aspects of the assessment, and present
your overall evaluation. This should include potential benefits
and risks, and may conclude with a recommendation.
In many cases, you will have to make subjective judgements
based on your opinions as individuals, and as a team.
If you can not come to an agreement as a team, you can also
present the diverging points of view separately.
Except for the final report, the deliverables can consist of
handouts based on your presentation, or a document that describes
the contents in more detail. The final report should follow
the guidelines for the term paper.
Grading Criteria
The main emphasis for the project will be on the final presentation and report,
which will contribute 30% each to the project score, while each intermediate
presentation will contribute 10%.
Since the project is done in teams, the performance of the team
as a whole will be graded unless there is a clear disparity
in the contribution of the individual team members.
Should this be the case, I might ask for additional
documentation like work sheets, email messages,
or draft copies of documentation to evaluate
individual contributions.