General Notes to Future Instructors

• The workload this semester was a reasonable load for the class but not within the alotted time frame.  The schedule of deliverables and return dates was a bit hard on the TAs and marginally difficult for the students.
• Getting up to speed - If a TA or Instructor is new to the class or topic,  We suggest that they get a copy of the Dec. '95 issue of  "COMMUNICATIONS for the ACM"  and review the whole issue.  It covers the topic -- Ethics and Computer Use--with a series of articles that were co-edited by Karen Loch from GSU.  Additionally, the report in the issue describes the Project ImpactCS--specifically part one of a three phase effort to provide provide the  ramework for teaching Ethical Computing.  This is supported today by a website: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~impactcs/ Having this general background  as a minimum, the teaching team will be able to put this important, required class in a better perspective.
• Teaching Tips - The mix of reading, article summary, topic paper, and debate is the best approach.  Limit the number of topic papers and expand the effort to readings and student lead class discussion.  Selecting the topics for the papers is difficult.  The objectives were to get the students to tackle a difficult issue in a thoughtful manner, to think outside of their box (the purpose of the counterargument assignments), and to construct thoughtful positions on ethical issues facing computer scientists today.  The constraints were the topics covered by the syllabus and the discussions.  The TA who designed the assignments attempted to find the most controversial topics facing us today.  It is interesting to note, however, that students tended to gravitate towards the easiest and least contentious of the issues in their assignments.
• We needed to spend more time discussing the technical, social and ethical frameworks of analysis for the students before we begin analyzing issues.  The students didn't grasp what we were doing and/or the concept wasn't clear before we proceeded.  May take two periods to build that foundation of understanding.
• Have the TA define the writing expectations before students write anything. Deidre did this after the first paper, and that is too late. Develop stricter guidelines on what is an acceptable article for review.  The submission guidelines should be modified.
• Discuss good and bad supporting material for making arguments.  Many students went to the emotional level to often in the discussions.
• Teaching Resources
• Electronic Privacy Information Center - http://www.epic.org/
• Berkman Center for Internet & Society - http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/
• at Harvard Law School Conference--Internet and Society 2000 - http://www.is2k.harvard.edu/home.htm

General Notes to Future TAs

• There may be cross class cheating in the case of shared assignments.  We were a little busy this semester to check this but it was a definite possibility.  Oops.
• Make sure you check their research quality.  I can't stress this enough.  Make sure they're not just trying to get by with things from the Des Moines Tribune as a good article summary or some thing off of Rolling Stone as a technical source.
• Allow a lot of time for grading topic papers.  The topic papers at 4-5 pages require some significant time to read and grade.  Even at a fast clip, say 10 minutes per paper, you'll need roughly 300 minutes for a 30 person class.  You may want more.
• Grade strictly and with great detail on the first assignments.  Apply the letter of the law as strictly as possible.  Hammer grammar, spelling, poor argumentation, and so on.  Make sure you make your expectations clear.  If you don't, they will produce poor work that will double your grading time for the rest of the term.  See the Deliverables section for things to look for in the assignments.
• Don't backslide.  It is essential that you stick to the above resolution for the entire term.  You may choose to put fewer comments on their later papers and go by feel but be sure you can trace the points you assign back to the grading scale.
• Write In-depth comments on student papers.  Articulate what the student did wrong and what they need to do to improve on later papers.   Without this feedback, they will not be able to change their behavior.
• Do not accept poor work!!!  I made an error.  I did automatically deduct 20% from a paper and handed it back to a student.   I forgot to give them a deadline for resubmitting the work. and ended up with a bunch of regrades at the end of the term   If you see a paper that has not been reasonably edited or that does not match the submission guidelines within tolerances, return it.  Chances are, it's not worth grading.
• Weight later assignments heavier than earlier assignments.  This is absolutely essential for the mental happiness of the students.  Don't tell them this until after the first assignment is returned.  We used 15%, 25%, 30%,30% as a reasonable scale.  You may have a different distribution of assignments.
• Reward good work and extra effort with extra credit.  This is partly for the student's benefit but also for yours.  Coming across very good work (clear writing, a good argument, good research, early submission) and rewarding it will make you feel better after slogging through a lot of mediocre stuff.  Trust me.  About 1-5 extra credit points are sufficient.

Textbook

• The textbook might be a little too narrow to fully address the important ethical issues facing computer science today.
• Selecting future texts - Face it.....the topic is huge!!  Although our text was narrowly focused on the Internet related ethics issues, for the short summer semester I thought it was adequate as a basis to expand.  I will have to see what the longer fall semester does with the text.  The other option is a huge text with reading that will address a broader focus. However, you will have to limit the topic from a larger text , the material will be out of date, and you will have to be supplemented with the more current readings or progress on the issues that you don't have time to stay abreast of.  During the semester, the supporting website (  http://www.jbpub.com/cyberethics/ )  was not working.  The website supporting the book is now working, but I don't know what the quality of that supplemental material is at this point.  If done properly,  it could be very helpful in keeping the book current.

Deliverables

• Article Summaries -  Some problems with depth and quality of the selections as well as with lip service being paid to article quality and balance.  I suggest the criteria for another iteration should be written with more clarity.  For example, a four paragraph format might be appropriate - abstract, balance, quality, student opinion.  Problems with the article summaries were as follows:
• Poor articles - We told the students that if they chose articles that were shorter than the final write-up then they chose poorly.  Nevertheless, this did not stop students from pulling short clips from the Associated Press.  The other major poor article category were those composed of rambling monologues by someone pretending to be a journalist.   A little more forgiving but equally suspect are humorous pieces that have no real substance.
• Failure to follow directions -  Many students lost points on the first couple summaries because they didn't bother to follow directions.   Generally, the students, when they follow directions, follow them to the letter of the law.
• Topic Papers - Possibly too long as an assignment in a 10 week time format.  The design intent was to frame the questions in as difficult a light as possible to encourage student investigation into the problem.  The later two topic papers also provided options for counter -arguments to extend this reasoning.  Problems with the topic papers were as follows:
• Insufficient Research - Far and away, the biggest problem we had was getting students to do good research.  We made the mistake of posting guidelines for the second paper that said "At least four sources".  As such, students took this to mean that only four sources were needed and were penalized for it in later papers.  It was very clear which students knew and understood the global implications of the topics and which weren't.  It's not clear that the grading scale we applied.
• Poor argumentation - I am not sure of the kind of training the Tech students receive or are required to undertake in terms of technical writing.  Whatever they receive is insufficient, for the most part.   Examples of poor argumentation include disconnected arguments that fail to prove the major proposition of the paper, paragraphs that offer examples of the situation as journalistic narrative without providing supporting argument or explanation, rambling opinion that is unsupported by research, well argued opinion that is unsupported by research, and lastly, an argument that is simply wrong because it wasn't thought out.
• Poor effort - Metrics that indicated a poor effort include length, short bibliography, a poor introduction, lack of in-line citations, and a lot of use of "I" (generally indicates the student was debating themselves and mentally writing it down).
• Poor writing - Please, for future generations and so the British will have less grist for their case that Americans don't know their native language, mark and take off style points for the following.
• using "their" for "there", "it's" for "its", and so on.
• poor subject-verb agreements
• poor word choice - If the writer's trying to sound smart, chances are they'll choose the wrong words.
• use of the academic voice - You'll know it when you read it.  It wanders, uses too many prepositions, and uses lots of big words.  Encourage students to write for clarity and brevity.
• Here are examples of good papers:
• Jeff Collins - paper, references
• James Mickens - paper

Debates

• Debate teams should be formed close to drop day.  If time permits, they should be formed after drop day.  This will minimize your phantom team problem.
• The procedure for running the debates should be as follows

1. You should have some sort of timing device to help you keep track of each team's elapsed time.  You can get a relatively cheap one ($10) at Radio Shack.
2. Print out two sheets.  One should say 2 Minutes.  The other says 1 Minute.  120 point font is an appropriate size.  These are for warning the students about the time remaining.
3. Before class begins, set up desks for each team on each side of the room, make sure the podium is set up in the middle of the classroom.
4. Make sure each instructor and TA involved in the debate has a grading form.  Make sure each student has a student evaluation form.
5. Decide which team should have the affirmative by binary random number generator.
6. Change of procedure - If you are fortunate enough to get the dual timer that keeps track of two times, the best thing to do is to allow each side to have 5 minutes in the Q&A section.  So if one side, say the affirmative, uses up 5 minutes answering the first question, the remaining time and questions should go to the negative side.
7. After the debate, check the scores on both sides and post the results to the web.

General Comments on Students

• This class has the slight handicap of not having perceivable utility in industry.  As such, most student treat this with a rather half-hearted attitude with sheer indifference in some cases.  The strict late policy and the grading scales used were designed to encourage students to keep up with the class work.  It's not clear that this difficulty can be overcome until an inherent change in social attitudes at the Institute occur.
• I had one discussion with a student about why we were grading their English and writing skills.  The argument was that in a technical writing class these standards would be appropriate but not for a computer science course.  I asked where the scale of English quality should stop in a technical field.  For example, do we stop looking at subject-verb agreements or run-on sentences?  Can we go so far as to ignore spelling as long as the implied meaning is carried across?  My feeling is that this debate will resurface.  Hold the line.  Good communication requires proper structure, no matter the context.

Grading Documents Used

• Debate Evaluation Form
• Student Debate Evaluation Form