Instructor: Tom Atchison Phone: 651-793-1493
Office
320 St. John’s Hall (
Office
Hours: M 5-7, T 10-2, W 1-3
E-mail: Thomas.Atchison@metrostate.edu
Class website: I maintain my own website (not part of D2L)
where I post course handouts and information at: http://www.woldww.net/classes/
Course Objectives:
1. To learn the basic concepts and methods of
several approaches to ethics and to see how these may be used to think about moral
problems connected to information technology.
2. To get better at analyzing and evaluating
decisions, institutions, policies and issues from an ethical point of view by:
a. Learning something about the history of
laws, policies, and practices
b. Becoming more familiar with the positions
people have developed to address these issues and the arguments for and against
those positions
c. Practicing defending and criticizing your
own and others ideas about what practices, policies, decisions, etc. would be
best.
Topics: Privacy,
surveillance, and the control of information; intellectual property, copyright
and the open-source ethic; ethical obligations of IT professionals with respect
to security, reliability, safety, usability, etc; spam, porn, and the ethics of
mass communication; political and social significance (if any) of ‘the internet
revolution’.
Texts:
Ethics
for the Information Age, third edition, by Michael J.
Quinn
(If you buy this book
online or anywhere besides the
Other
readings will be photocopied and handed out in class or will be available on
the Internet. Many assignments for this
class will require access to the Internet and the ability to read significant
amounts of online materials.
Please make sure your
Please bring the
assigned readings to class each week
Please keep copies of
all the work you hand in.
Coursework
I expect you to find time (several hours) to
do the reading for each class and to come prepared to discuss it. Come to class ready to say what you found
interesting, what you found confusing, silly, or just plain wrong, what seemed
to you to be the most important claims made, and what arguments or
justifications were offered for those claims.
20 % of your grade will be earned by submitting brief (1/2 to 11/2 pages, typed, double-spaced) responses to the readings for each class. These must be turned in at the beginning of the class period to be counted. (If you must miss class, send in your response paper by e-mail.) They can contain questions, objections, observations and/or reactions to the reading for that class. I will not grade these (or even return them consistently), but I will reject any that do not seem to be based on a reasonably conscientious reading of the assignment for that week. You can miss one of these and still earn an ‘A’ for this part of the course work, but missing more will be penalized on the following schedule: 85% completed = A; 70% = B; 60% = C; 50% = D; less than 50% = F. I will also notice and reward particularly perceptive or thoughtful response papers.
Class discussion
Most weeks we
will have guided small group discussion projects. The purpose of these projects is to open
discussion and to focus it on particular issues. They are also intended to be
"mini-labs" in which to practice the skills of careful reading and
evaluation of reasoning. The projects
are done in class in groups of 3-5 and take roughly 20-45 minutes to
complete. Each group should keep notes
on its discussion, sign the notes and hand them in at the end of each class
session. Often groups will also report
orally on their discussions.
If you miss a
discussion project, you should get hold of the instructions, write out
responses to the questions on your own, and hand them in as soon as you
can. 10% of your grade will be
determined by the number of discussion projects you complete satisfactorily (on
the same schedule as the response papers above.)
10% of your grade will also be determined
by my evaluation of the quality of your participation in class
discussions. Just showing up and paying
attention earns a C for this component; occasionally making helpful contributions
earns a B; regularly making helpful contributions earns an A. Helpful contributions include: asking
pertinent questions, answering questions asked by the instructor or by other
students, expressing your views about the texts or topics we are discussing,
responding (relevantly and respectfully) to the views expressed by others.
Take-home essay exams
Twice during the course (at the 5th
and 12th meetings) you will be given a take-home essay exam, due two weeks
later (March 2 and April 27). The exams
will focus on the themes and readings discussed during the preceding segment of
the course. Each exam will involve
writing 6-8 pages. These exams must be
word-processed or typewritten. Each will
count for 20% of your grade.
Position
paper
A 6-8 page position paper will be due at the end
of the semester. A draft will be due on April 6. This assignment will ask you to develop and
defend your own position on some issue studied in this course. Detailed instructions will be handed out
later. (Also 20% of your grade)
Grading
criteria
I try hard to base my evaluation of
your work on your understanding of the reading, the quality of your reasoning
and questioning, and the clarity and effectiveness of your expression of your
thoughts, not on whether I agree with your ethical ideas and positions.
Time commitment outside of class
In
accordance with
Needed reading and writing skills
Although
there are no prerequisites for this course, it is an upper-division
course. This means I assume you have the
following reading and writing skills, and assignments are made with this
expectation in mind:
Attendance
I
do not require attendance per se, but part of your grade is
determined by discussion projects and general class discussion. So, when you are in class, contribute to the
discussion and please be sure your name is on your small group's discussion
report and that the report gets turned in.
When you miss a class, get the instructions for the discussion project,
write out answers on your own and turn them in.
I strongly advise regular attendance (and prompt completion of missed
discussion projects), because the material in this course is relatively
difficult and confusing, and few students are able to do well on the exams and
papers without the explanations and practice provided in class.
All
work submitted for this course must be your own. Plagiarism is the academic ‘sin’ of
presenting someone else’s work as your own.
It is plagiarism if you copy something verbatim (word for word) from a
published source, from the Internet, or from another student. It is still plagiarism if you rearrange,
paraphrase, condense, or summarize someone else’s work without making clear to
your reader what is your contribution and what is taken from your source. If
the exact wording comes from your source, then use quotation marks. If the idea comes from someone else, give him
or her credit for it. The way to do this is to cite your sources. There is a clear and detailed explanation of
various forms of plagiarism and of proper citation practices at: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/02-1/plagiarism.html. I
will give a grade of ‘F’ to any student who submits plagiarized work for this
course.