CSU Long Beach
ENGR 350
 Computers, Ethics, and Society

Syllabus
Schedule
Grading
Portfolio
Homework:
  Guidelines
  Standards
  1 - Images
  2 - Risks
    -- example
  3 - Infobahn
    -- example
  4 - Dataveillance
    -- example
  5 - Worklife
    -- example
  6 - Killer Robot
Term project

Term Project

Social design of an electronic university

    This might sound really complicated when you first read it. It's not. Look through the whole assignment to get the general idea, then review it carefully as you work. Try to "get into" the spirit of the project, which is intended to be a realistic preparation for the type of team activities that you will do on the job. And enjoy.

    Latest Update: Sat 23 Jan 99

Assignment:

  • All teams will use the same topic: you are to develop the social design for an electronic university. You might think of this as being for our own university, although some of your design will involve issues that are much broader than what we might be able to resolve on a single campus.

Team structure and activities:

  • I will assign members to the teams. Within each team, you should divide the work so that each person takes on an equal portion of the overall project, and so that each person has one or more specific issues to address -- we will "brainstorm" to develop a list of issues in class.
  • The team will produce an integrated design that includes the work of each member (see below). To do this, you will have to meet as a full group at least during the scheduled class meetings. Appoint a team secretary, who will write short minutes of each meeting -- to include who was present and absent, what was discussed, and what was decided. If you have additional "meetings" by email (a good idea), attach copies of the messages to the package that you turn in.

Deliverables:

  • Each team member will write a report which describes his/her own portion of the design (approximately "homework-sized"). You will turn this in on paper (instead of on disk). Each report must be individual writing. In the report, you should identify which issue(s) you are covering; describe what the problems are, what alternatives are possible, who the stakeholders are and how they are affected by the alternatives, and most importantly, what is your recommended solution. Solutions must be feasible for implementation within the next five years. Justify your conclusions in terms of the ideas that we have discussed throughout the course.

  • In the scheduled presentation period, each team will present their design to the class. The presentation will be in the form of a "poster session." In addition to the individual reports, each team member will prepare a one-page summary of his/her issue(s), with just "bullets" to identify the main points and recommendation. We will display these on the board or on tables, so that everyone can see what everyone else has done. Be prepared to discuss and defend your own solutions.

  • Turn in a single package for each team -- which contains the written reports, the one-page summaries, and the team meeting documentation.

Source materials:

  • All of the homework guidelines about proper use of source material apply to this project. In addtion, I expect serious outside reading and research to find information that will help you to address the issues in this project. (I won't bother to grade papers that don't show evidence of this.) Although the writing must be individual work, you should share your research sources with your team members.
  • You should look for quality sources -- for example the Communications of the ACM, which regularly publishes articles on this and related topics. There are also many education-oriented journals that could contain relevant articles -- look for them.
  • If you find material on the Web, you should be sure of its reliability -- look for established sources such as those listed on my Computers and Society resource page.