Assignments

Assignments

You are responsible for three short written assignments (blog posts), due BEFORE class begins on each assigned day (e.g. our first blogging assignment is due 9/18; assignments must be posted to the class blog before our class meeting on 9/18). Blogging assignments will posted to the class blog(www.kanethics.com/etmf2017). Each student is responsible for responding to one blog post BEFORE the following class meets (e.g. the first response assignment is due 9/20; responses must be posted to the class blog before class meets on 9/20).

Each blogging assignment must satisfy the following criteria:

  1. The focus of the assignment must relate one newspaper article to at least one scholarly article that we will read in class. Students are expected to highlight an ethical issue within the newspaper article that relates to our course material and discuss the issue using ethical frameworks that have been covered in class.
  2. Students must include at least one question for discussion within their blogging assignment.
  3. The assignment should be roughly 700-800 words in length.

Each written response must satisfy the following criteria:

  1. The focus of the response must relate either (a) to the discussion question posed by a student in their blogging assignment, or (b) it must respond directly to the content of a student’s blogging assignment.
  2. Responses should be thought of as a follow-up to the topic at hand, as we will have had time to discuss the assigned newspaper article and ethical issue(s) before the response is due. As such, they may incorporate a different perspective on the same ethical issue(s), or they may reflect a deeper understanding of the issue.
  3. Responses should be roughly 200-300 words in length.

Blogging assignments will be graded on a scale of 0-100%. Written responses will be graded on a scale of 0-2 (0 = no response posted; 1 = posted response does not adequately follow the required criteria; 2 = posted response receives satisfies the required criteria).

Each written assignment and response pairing count together as 10% (for a total of 30%) of your final grade.  If you fail to complete either portion of the assignment (the initial written assignment or the response), you will lose half of all eligible points.

Advice for composing your blog posts: Type your assignment in Word (or whichever word processor you prefer) and save a copy there before you post the text to WordPress (you can copy and paste the text to this editor). That way, if for some reason you cannot access the site, or you are logged out before completing the post, or if any other technical issue arises, you will have a backup of your post. In such an event, you can email the assignment directly to me and/or you can try to post it again when the technical issue is resolved.

Assignment #1

Please reference the following article in your blogging assignment:

Kathryn Haun & Eric J. Topol, “The Health Data Conundrum”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/opinion/the-health-data-conundrum.html

This assignment is due by 3:59pm on September 18 2017.

Assignment #2

Please reference either of the following articles in your blogging assignment:

“Should Your Driverless Car Hit a Pedestrian to Save Your Life?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/technology/should-your-driverless-car-hit-a-pedestrian-to-save-your-life.html

Annalee Newitz, “The Secret Lives of Google Raters”
https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of-google-raters

This assignment is due by 3:59pm on October 2 2017.

Assignment #3:

Please reference either of the following articles in your blogging assignment:

Safiya U. Noble, “Google and the Misinformed Public”
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Googlethe-Misinformed/238868

Henry Farrell, “Facebook and Falsehood”
http://www.chronicle.com/article/FacebookFalsehood/238867

This assignment is due by 3:59pm on November 6 2017.

 

Responses

For your response, please read through some of your classmates’ blog posts and choose one post to respond to (you may certainly respond to more than one if you feel so inclined!).

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