Reading Responses

CSC105 - The Digital Age - Professor Weinman

To help you prepare for our discussions on the social, legal, and ethical impacts of computing technology, each day we have a discussion you will write a few thoughtful paragraphs in which you reflect on and respond to the reading(s). These are due at the beginning of class (typically on Mondays).

Your reflections might

outline ways you might apply what you've learned,
how and why you agree or disagree with some assumptions or conclusions of the author(s),
compare or contrast what you read with your own experiences,
pose new questions or concerns beyond those raised by the author(s),
briefly analyze the ethics of a question posed in the articles (e.g., by identifying stakeholders and their interests as well as relevant duties, rights, and/or consequences, etc.),
argue for a particular prioritization of the issues presented in the articles,
etc.

While you must read all the articles for discussion, your reflection should integrate material from at least two articles.

Grading Considerations

The following guidelines will be used to assess each reading response.

Needing improvement (one to three) or unsatisfactory (more than three)
- Frequent spelling or grammatical errors
- Several citations do not conform to APA guidelines
- Only integrates material from one article
- Mostly repeats or summarizes article(s)
- Misrepresents or mischaracterizes source article(s)
- Repeatedly makes uncited, unsupported, and/or unreasoned assertions
- Multiple paragraphs lack
  - unity, a single controlling idea with a clear topic sentence, and/or
  - coherence, a logical progression of sentences that clearly link to one another
Satisfactory
- Paragraphs are mostly unified and coherent
- Minimal spelling or grammatical errors
- Accurately integrates ideas from at least two articles
- Offers something beyond recapitulation (see above*)
- Supports claims in a well-reasoned fashion
Very good
- No spelling or grammatical errors
- Paragraphs are unified and coherent
- Prefers active over passive and "to be" verbs
- Pronouns (e.g., "it", "this") have clear referents
- Accurately integrates ideas from several articles
- Concisely represents several original reflections (see above*)
Outstanding
In addition to being very good, an outstanding response might incorporate concrete additional references/citations and is otherwise gripping, creative, convincing, substantive, eloquent, and so forth. They might be worthy of considering for publication as a letter to the editor of Communications.

As an example, an analysis of one such letter to the editor is given in this reading response exemplar.

Formatting

Please type your responses using a serif, double-spaced 12 point font with 1 inch margins. It should be 300-500 words long (more than one page, less than two pages). Include, your name, date, box number (materials will be returned via campus mail), and the subject of the readings (e.g., "Intellectual Property") in the header.

Please print your response double-sided to conserve paper.

Citations and References

You may note that the references to the readings are given in APA format. Likewise, all citations and references in your responses must use APA style. If you are unfamiliar with APA style, you can learn more about the basics at the Purdue Online Writing lab.

In-text Citations

All in-text citations, whether toan article or chapter from the reading or some other material, must be given in APA style. For specific details and directions, see

For example,

Hoffman (2009) reports that Hollywood may be more interested in leveraging DRM controls than preventing piracy.
While the Google Books settlement could establish a clear fair use precedent (Hoffman, 2009), this may not be the most important aspect of the case.
Clarifying the return of orphan works to the public domain is the most important aspect of Samuelson's (2007) argument for copyright reform.
Guidelines for statutory damages, which are currently lacking (Samuelson, 2007), ought to set a high threshold in an age where many are one click from a violation.

Note that if you use a brief direct quote, snippet, or anything else that should be more specifically referenced, include the page number in your citation, e.g., (Samuelson, 2007, p. 23).

Reference List

You do not need to include a reference list for articles from the assigned reading for the day. However, any other external material should be properly cited in APA style and included in the reference list. For specific details and directions, see

For example

Barger, N. (2008). The ethical decision-making process. In Computer ethics: A case-based approach (pp. 70-79). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Samuelson, P. (2013, November). Is software patentable? Communications of the ACM, 56(11), 23-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2527186
McMillan, R. (2014, June 23). What everyone gets wrong in the debate over net neutrality. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/2014/06/net_neutrality_missing

Submitting

Bring your printed response to submit at the beginning of class; please print double-sided to conserve paper.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Janet Davis for the "new questions or concerns" point*.