Choose one of the media articles or case studies listed by the lecturer in your Interact 2 subject site.

Task

Your lecturer will place several links in Interact to a number of relevant articles and/or case studies. These will be available to you just after your second assignment has been submitted.

1. Choose one of the media articles or case studies listed by the lecturer in your Interact 2 subject site.

2. Use the title of the article/case study provided in interact 2 as the title of your essay, so that the lecturer knows which article you are analysing.

3. Undertake further research about your chosen case, to assist you in analysing and discussing it in your essay.

Write an essay:

The word limit for the essay is 1200-1300 words. Headings, citations and references do not count towards the word limit, but quotations do.

Analyse the article/case study from the perspective of four classical ethical theories including utilitarianism, deontology, virtue and contract. Present well reasoned arguments for your assessments and recommendations.

Write an overall conclusion that justifies your recommendations made in your essay. Include a Reference list at the end of your work, in the correct APA referencing style, corresponding to in-text citations.

Rationale

This assessment extends the skills practiced in Assessment item 1 and 2, to help you to achieve all the learning objectives.

In addition to identifying a contentious situation in ICT and dissecting the argument(s) about it, you must also now demonstrate the ability to evaluate the elements of the argument by introducing classical ethical principles where appropriate.

Since Assessment item 1 and 2, your knowledge will have grown, and you will now realise that almost all ICT ethical dilemmas can be classified under one of the main ICT ethical issues that are discussed in this subject; for instance, surveillance is a sub-issue of privacy, harmful software is a sub-issue of ICT professionalism, and piracy is a sub-issue of intellectual property.

In ICT, the main ethical issues are taken to be:

ICT professionalism

Privacy

Security

Cyber-crime

Intellectual property

Regulation on the internet

Social inclusion

Community and identity

Pervasive and convergent computing.

The assessment item is designed to help you to build skills towards achieving the learning objectives, by requiring you to:

identify an ICT-related ethical issue from a media article or case study;

apply classical ethical theory to the analysis of an ethically questionable situation to determine the rightness or wrongness of actions/decisions made therein;

derive logical and justifiable conclusions to resolve the ethical issue(s);and, apply proper academic referencing.

 

Marking criteria

The following marking sheet will be used to assess students` submissions.

Please check that you have met all the criteria before you submit your assignment.

			Standards
Criteria	High Distinction	Distinction	Credit (CR)	Pass (PS)	Fail (FL)
	(HD)	(DI)
Classical	Demonstrates an	Demonstrates  Makes a		The ethical theories do not link	The ethical

 

			Standards
Criteria	High Distinction	Distinction	Credit (CR)	Pass (PS)	Fail (FL)
	(HD)	(DI)
Ethical	excellent ability at	a good ability	genuine	well with the ethical issues.	theories are
Theory	applying ethical	at applying	attempt at		not properly
(Value	theories to the ethical	ethical	applying the		applied to
60%)	issues.	theories to the	ethical		the ethical
		ethical issues.  theories to the			issues.
			ethical issues.
Writing &	Language features	Well	Good skills in	The text contains frequent	Rudimentary
structure	and structures are	developed	expression &	errors in spelling, grammar,	skills in
(Value	used to convey	skills in	clear	word choice, and structure,	expression
20%)	meaning effectively,	expression &	presentation	lacks clarity, and is not concise,	&
	concisely,	presentation	of ideas.	but the meaning is apparent to	presentation
	unambiguously, and	of ideas.		the reader with some effort.	of ideas.
	in a tone appropriate		Mostly fluent		Not all
	to the audience and	Fluent writing	writing style		material is
	purpose with no	style	appropriate to		relevant
	spelling,	appropriate to	assessment		&/or is
	grammatical, or	assessment	task/document		presented in
	punctuation errors.	task/document type.			a
		type.			disorganised
			Grammar &		manner.
		Grammar &	spelling		Meaning
		spelling	contains a few		apparent, but
		accurate.	minor errors.		writing style
					not fluent or
					well
					organised.
					Grammar &
					spelling
					contains
					many errors.
Conclusion	Superior conclusion	Very high	High standard Rudimentary conclusion that		Sub-standard
(Value	that ties the results of	standard	conclusion	provides a convincing	(or no)
10%)	the analysis together	conclusion	that ties the	argument.	conclusion.
	into a coherent,	that ties the	results of the
	logically valid &	results of the	analysis
	convincing argument. analysis		together into a
		together into a coherent,
		coherent,	logically valid
		logically valid & convincing
		& convincing	argument.
		argument.
Referencing Referencing is		Very good	Good	Referencing is comprehensive,	Sub-standard
(Value	comprehensive,	referencing,	referencing,	mostly accurate according to	(or no)
10%)	demonstrates	including	including	APA style conventions, and	referencing.
	academic integrity,	reference list	reference list	demonstrates academic	Poor quality
	and conforms exactly	and citations.	and citations.	integrity. Some minor errors or	(or no)
	to APA style			omissions in style and	references.
	conventions.	Evidence of	Evidence of	formatting choices (e.g. italics,
		high quality	good quality	punctuation, etc) don’t impact
		references.	references.	on the transparency and
				traceability of the source, or
				demonstration of academic
				integrity.