Overview
Computer Science 607: Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues in Information Technology aims to equip you with the intellectual tools to make effective, reasoned, and justifiable moral decisions relating to the IT domain within appropriate legal and social frameworks. With strong requirements for reading, research, reflection, and debate, the course is structured around formal discussions within the subject area and makes extensive use of social technologies to enable sharing and interaction.
Outline
Though the general timing and format of this course are fixed, the subject of the activities and questions may vary significantly from the following plan. COMP 607 makes extensive use of current news and events, so if major or interesting stories are breaking, you will be asked to make use of those as objects of discussion for the public activities.
Outline | Week | Personal activity | Public activity |
| 1 | Background reading: Ethics | Forum and profile: Update profiles, introductions. |
| 2 | Background reading: Privacy | Open forum: Statement and discussion of personal interests and beliefs. |
| 3 | Background reading: Privacy | Team debate: “Privacy is dead, and it’s a good thing.” |
| 4 | Background reading: Intellectual property | Oxford debate: “The house proposes that strong encryption should be illegal.” |
| 5 | Background reading: Intellectual property | Pyramid discussion: Under what circumstances would it be right to violate a software licence agreement? |
| 6 | Background reading: Computer crime | Wiki co-creation: Pros and cons of software patents. |
| 7 | Background reading: Computer crime | Wiki brainstorm: How should we deal with crimes committed in other countries that are not considered crimes in those countries? |
| 8 | Background reading: Computing in the workplace | Bookmark sharing: Current news stories relating to computer crime and its effects, policing, and prevention. |
| 9 | Background reading: Globalization | Fishbowl: “Employers should be allowed to use social network sites to vet or discipline employees.” |
| 10 | Background reading: Social systems | Team debate: “Online courses should be tailored to ethnic or national audiences.” |
| 11 | Personal research | Small group debate with plenary summaries: Is a person who has an “affair” in Second Life being unfaithful to their partner? |
| 12 | Personal research | Action learning: Discuss personal research and process in small groups, seek and offer advice. |
| 13 | Collation and commentary | Presentations: Research results and comments. |
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to
- demonstrate an elevated consciousness of the nature and principles of ethics, including personal, professional, and corporate ethics.
- explain and analyze the interplay between ethics on the one hand and law, society, politics, economy, justice, responsibility, and honesty on the other.
- explore specific ethical issues raised by the ubiquity of computer and information technology in today’s society.
- research, discuss, reflect on, and debate the above themes.
Evaluation
To receive credit for COMP 607, you must achieve a course composite grade of at least B– (70 percent) and a grade of at least 60 percent on both the portfolio and the research essay.
The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:
| Activity | Weight |
| Portfolio | 50% |
| Research essay and presentation | 50% |
| Total | 100% |
The portfolio is a collection of your reflections and contributions, with associated mind map / concept map, presented as headings of objectives with supporting evidence included or linked to.
The research essay is 2,000 words in length, and you will create and submit a video presentation on it.
Materials
All course materials are found online.
Special Instructional Features
Knowledge is socially constructed through dialogue with others in a wide variety of different formal forms of debate and sharing. While there is a great deal of reading and research required in this course, it uses two key approaches to learning: conversation and reflection.
You will be required to share your work with other students in this course, in later iterations of this course, and potentially in other courses derived from it. In some cases, such as the cooperative generation of wiki pages or discussion postings, you must leave your work posted online for the benefit of the other students in your cohort and in later cohorts.
Platforms
This course also uses the Landing.