Instructor

Prof. L. Felipe Perrone
Office: Dana 321B
Phone: 570-577-1687
E-mail: perrone@bucknell.edu
Office hours: open door or by appointment (see my BMail calendar)
Web: http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~perrone

Meeting Times

Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 1:00pm-1:50pm in Dana 227.

Office Hours

You are welcome to drop by my office any time. I work with an “open door policy” even though my door may be closed to save me from distractions. You are always welcome to drop by and to knock – if I am available at the time, I’ll be happy to talk to you. If you want to make sure that I am there and available at the time of your need, you can either check my online BMail calendar and/or call, message, or email to make an appointment. Remember that you have my cell phone number and that you can communicate by voice or text, either directly (SMS) or through messaging apps like iMessage, Telegram, Signal, or WhatsApp.

Course Outcomes

After completing this course students will be able to:

1. Collect and analyze information from a variety of sources about societal issues related to computers and computing, and present informed opinions based on the information and analysis; (EAC h, j; CAC e, g)
2. Analyze ethical issues concerning both computer technologies and the exercise of their professional responsibilities. (EAC 4; CAC 4)

Additionally, students will develop their skills in writing, literature research, and public speaking.

— This course covers Criterion 3 – Student Outcomes for ABET accreditation listed as follows:

• 4. Recognize professional responsibilities and make informed judgments in computing practice based on legal and ethical principles. (Computing Accreditation Comission)

• 4. An ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts. (Engineering Accreditation Comission)

Structure of the Course

The course meets three times a week – some class periods will be led by the instructor and, periodically, it will be led by students. The instructor will use some combination of activities, which may include but are not limited to the following:

• Short presentation
  
• Video or audio presentation(s)
  
• Organized discussion
  
• Formal debate
  
• Group activities 

Students are expected to visit the online schedule frequently in order to find the assigned readings, which must be completed before class. The online schedule will also indicate the presenters for each class period.

There will be writing activities for this class including reflection journals, two short papers (due when students serve as discussion leaders), and a term project which comprises a poster and a term paper. Additional details are presented below.

In-Class Activities

Throughout the semester, we will have simple, quick activities to be completed during a class period. Whenever they take place, the activities will be posted on Google Classroom and will be graded according to the following rubric below. In order to earn 100% of the points allocated to in-class activities, a student needs an average of 1.0 across their submissions.

• 0 – either not submitted, off topic, not on time, and/or doesn’t show earnest effort.
• 1 – submitted, on topic, on time, and shows earnest effort to explore the given prompt leveraging information from class materials.
• 2 – submitted, on topic, on time, and shows outstanding effort (uses sources discovered on your own, shows deeper exploration of the topic, or goes above and beyond expectations in any other way).

Academic Engagement

Courses at Bucknell that receive one unit of academic credit have a minimum expectation of 12 hours per week of student academic engagement. Student academic engagement includes both the hours of direct faculty instruction (or its equivalent) and the hours spent on “out of class work.”

When you join a professional community, you inherit certain expectations. These are not just about whether you can generate solutions–they are also about how you come up with those solutions. To put it crudely, you need to learn how to function as citizen: a co-equal member of a society, wherein you understand and respect that your actions have an impact, however small, on other citizens. At any given time in your career, you will be acting as a “citizen” of your team, of your company, of your country, or your world. Our job at Bucknell is to prepare you to be a good citizen. This involves many things.

1. Attendance. Since this is a discussion-heavy class, in normal times, we would have said that attendance is mandatory. If you must miss a class period, please make an effort to reach out and let the instructor know you cannot be there: all it takes is a quick message. Each unexcused or unjustified absence beyond two will lose you 1% of the final grade.
2. Being Prepared. Discussions on topics like ethics are much more about process than they are about content. As such, most of your learning comes through spontaneous interactions in the classroom. If you are not actively preparing for your own learning before class, not only will you be unprepared for these interactions, you will reduce the quality of interactions your classmates can have even if they have adequately prepared. We will discuss in class how your preparedness will be assessed.
3. Participation and professionalism. We are going to discuss some difficult topics, and we may disagree about their importance or how to solve them. But we must be civil. Some tips:
   • Don’t Interrupt. Let others finish making their point before you jump in. If we are online at any point, this also means don’t let your devices interrupt.
   • Pay Attention and Listen. Paying attention means considering the needs and expectations of others. For instance, consider: is now the right time for you to share your own view? Listening means both hearing what the other person is saying and waiting for them to say it. That means listening with the intention to understand the other person, but also avoiding guessing about what they are trying to say or why they are saying it. Aren’t sure how someone wants to be heard? Ask! Really paying attention and listening to another person is hard work; if you don’t feel exhausted when you’re done, you may not be doing as good a job as you think.
   • Speak Kindly and Don’t Speak Ill. Acknowledge that both what you say and how you say it have the power to hurt and consider this before you speak. Also, don’t speak ill of others, especially your classmates.
   • Respect Others’ Opinions. Good people can disagree. Respecting others’ opinions does not mean you have to give up your own. However, it does mean recognizing that others may look at the same world differently and that, in general, those different ways of looking at it deserve a fair hearing (in the appropriate setting).
   • Accept and Give Constructive Criticism. My background is in philosophy. One thing I think people don’t appreciate is just how well we get along even though we disagree on just about everything. This is in large part because they criticize each other constructively. Giving constructive criticism means identifying what someone has done well while providing specific feedback on what can be improved and why it is currently a problem. Accepting constructive criticism means listening (see above) to criticism and asking questions when you don’t understand. It also means respecting one another’s goals and, so far as possible, having a conversation that meets everyone’s goals.
   • Make Room for Everyone. Just because someone isn’t contributing to a discussion doesn’t mean they have nothing to contribute. Check in with your classmates. Do they feel like they won’t be taken seriously? Are they having trouble understanding something? Did they want to talk about something else? Ask if there’s anything you can do to help them contribute.
4. Reading assignments. There is no textbook for this course. Instead, a collection of reading materials will be made available to you through the course’s Moodle site. Note that in order to make the most of the learning experience you must complete reading assignments before coming to class. We will be using the Perusall app for reading our materials together. This app lets you annotate readings with comments that help you learn, that help other students learn with you, and that let the instructor see that you are indeed grappling with the material. Your reading and commenting in Perusall will count toward the Academic Engagement component of the course grade.
5. Bringing new, relevant material to class. This is a student-driven class and everything you do to make the class richer will be seen as evidence of academic engagement. For instance, finding an article or film to discuss in class, contributing to a community discussion in an electronic forum, attending an event and reporting to our group. If you are learning and sharing with us, it counts!

Use of Artificial Intelligence

At this point, AI is still an unreliable source of information for the topics we will cover. More to the point, AI is nowhere near capable of autonomously executing the ethical decision-making skills you are expected to demonstrate (see above) in this course. I therefore expect you to be responsible for any work you turn in meant to establish your mastery of these skills, and I will grade accordingly. For this reason, I would strongly discourage you from using AI in your journals, presentations, or paper. If you feel that AI-generated content would improve your journal response without compromising your ability to demonstrate that you have mastered the skills being assessed, then I expect you to cite the content appropriately and include the full transcript in an appendix (see this guide for more information on how to reference generative AI).

If you are not sure whether the way you are using AI-generated content will count as academic misconduct or will compromise your demonstration of course skills, come talk to me beforehand.

Student Led Class Periods

Students will organize activities for when they are scheduled to lead the discussion of a pre-determined topic. The schedule of topics for the semester is posted here (see the “Schedule” tab above). Students will be fully in charge of the class period as a well-coordinated team of discussion leaders. The following expectations must be met:

1. The student(s) will have done research in their topic to find at least 2 scholarly articles and as many journalistic articles as they want on their topic.
2. Students will meet with the instructor at the latest two class periods before the one they will lead. Together, the team and the instructor will evaluate whether any adjustments need to be made to their plan. By the time of this meeting, the majority of the content should be well defined.
3. One class period before they are discussion leaders, students will distribute to the instructor and to the rest of the class one electronically the articles they have selected for their activity.
4. Student led activities will be graded according to a rubric available here and will count toward the final class grade.

Journals

The course page on Moodle includes a resource for students to submit journals on a given prompt. Although the nature of the journal entries is that of a personal reflection, it must be well-informed and based on reliable sources of information which must be cited. The rules of academic responsibility must be respected in student blogs. The due date for each journal entry will be posted on Moodle. Journal entries are graded using the simple rubric below. In order to earn 100% of the points allocated to journals, a student needs an average of 1.0 across their journal entries.

• 0 – either not submitted, off topic, not on time, and/or doesn’t show earnest effort.
• 1 – submitted, on topic, on time, and shows earnest effort to explore the given prompt leveraging information from class materials.
• 2 – submitted, on topic, on time, and shows outstanding effort (uses sources discovered on your own, shows deeper exploration of the topic, or goes above and beyond expectations in any other way).

Although the nature of the journal entries is that of a personal reflection, it must be well-informed and based on reliable sources of information which must be cited. The rules of academic responsibility must be respected (including the use of AI).

Term Paper

Students will choose a topic related to the learning objectives of this class and will write a proposal for their term paper. The proposal is due February 5th on Moodle and will count for 1/10 of the paper grade. It must present a tentative skeleton of the term paper and list the initial bibliography that will support the work. It is not essential that the term paper be constrained to what is presented in the proposal, but it is essential that the proposal shows that the student has already explored the topics and done some research in the literature for the work in progress.

The topic chosen must be related to the topics discussed in the class and the paper must address contemporary issues within the chosen theme. Formatting guidelines and rubric for the term paper will be available here.

Course Grade Distribution

Course grades will be assigned only at the end of the semester. Throughout the semester, you can monitor the Moodle grade book to track your progress.

• 25% In-Class Activities and Journals
• 15% Engagement
• 30% Student Lead Classes
• 30% Term Paper (3% proposal, 7% draft, 20% final paper)

Policies

1. Late assignments will be accepted at the discretion of the instructor. If you need an extension, be sure to request it as early as you possibly can.
2. The principles of academic responsibility will be taken very seriously. Proper credit must be given to any sources uses in papers and presentations whether the sources are on-line or in-print. Unsolicited reading or copying of other student or faculty files is as wrong as looking at or removing papers from a student or faculty member’s desk. It is the faculty’s role to report acts of academic misconduct the Board of Review on Academic Responsibility.
3. Letter grade assignments will be given at the end of the semester. Conversion from the 100 point-scale to letters will follow the typical scale: 93-100 A, 90-92 A-, 87-89 B+, 83-86 B, 80-82 B-, 77-79 C+, 73-76 C, 70-72 C-, 60-69 D, 0-59 F.

Academic Responsibility

The principles of Academic Responsibility will be taken very seriously. Proper credit must be given to any sources uses in papers and presentations whether the sources are on-line or in-print. Unsolicited reading or copying of other student or faculty files is as wrong as looking at or removing papers from a student or faculty member’s desk. It is the faculty’s role to report acts of academic misconduct the Board of Review on Academic Responsibility. Students are expected to read and abide by the principles explained in the Student Handbook.

Mental Health

In this classroom and on Bucknell’s campus we support mental health efforts. Any student who is struggling and believes this may impact their performance in the course is encouraged to contact their Advisor, Associate Academic Dean, or the Dean of Students for support. Furthermore, please approach me if you are comfortable in doing so. This will enable me to provide resources and support. If immediate mental health assistance is needed, call the Counseling & Student Development Center at 570-577-1604 (24/7).

Student-Athletes

If you are a student-athlete, remember that you are a student first and an athlete second. This means that academic work is your first priority. As per University rules, you will not be penalized for being away to take part in athletic events. It is your responsibility, however, to manage your time wisely so that you can do well in this and in your other classes. Please make sure to notify the instructors well in advance of your travel schedule and plan ahead to meet the deadlines for your assignments.

Access Statement

Any student who needs an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact the Office of Accessibility Resources, who will coordinate reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities. The university will make reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities.