Tag Archives: group project

Section 103: Group 4 Peer Review of Group 3

Posted on by
Reply

Group 3 presented an argument that involved the storing of data done by technology data giants such as Google and Microsoft, and how it is unethical for these data companies to collect its users information without users knowing what information is being kept. Group 3 proposed that the university must be transparent about the information that the university stores  and protect the personal information of students and their collected data from being misused. This solution does not seem very clear in requesting protection from misuse when misuse is not defined. The university may not share the same definition of misuse, so I would advise Group 3 to be more specific in defining what they want their data protected from. Do you want your data protected from the police to use against you in court? Be specific.

Group 3 also proposed for the university to delete any storage collected from students that is not being used. What can the university do with the data other than get you in trouble with it? If the university is selling data to businesses to attract students through advertisements, then will the university be allowed to keep the data since they are using it? Or would you consider this as being misused? Again, misuse needs to be defined clearly.

The action of Group 3 to submit a proposal letter to the ASUC student body is a very logical and suitable choice to carry out their proposal. They understand that the ASUC will be able to access the policies of the university and are most fit to track the actions of the university abiding to the proposals requests. Based on the above, our group would like to give Group 3 a B.

Group 5 Ethical Project – Edited on December 15

Posted on by
3

Camron Baradar, Ryan Hartnett, Neha Kumar, Samuel Razzell

To ensure engineers are raising ethical concerns in open and collaborative ways, it’s important to train them to discuss issues regarding their work without fear of being penalized for their views or opinions. Such training is especially effective in the engineer’s formative years, such as their first year of undergraduate education; it also gives students an introduction to the communicative culture here at UC Berkeley by offering them practice with public speaking. We, Group 5, believe that ethics cannot solely be taught in a classroom, as individuals have usually acquired a set of ethical and moral standpoints by the time they reach college. However, their training can be augmented by encouraging them to share their views and to become more cognizant of the implications their future careers will have on society and the environment. We believe encouraging open ethical debate and discussion among incoming students will lead to more provocative, insightful and widespread debate around campus – over the long-term, and among as well as between engineering disciplines.

To achieve such studious introduction, we plan to arrange an “Ethical Debate Tournament” for Freshman and Junior transfers during Welcome Week at Cal. This event will be mandatory for all declared engineers but optional for any other majors, as long as there are open spots in the roster. The tournament will be run as follows: There will be a total of four hundred students competing. During the first round, the four hundred students will be split into twenty groups of twenty, and each student will be paired with an opponent to debate from a different group. So there will then be ten pairs of opponents per preliminary round. After each pair debates, the nine non-active pairs will spectate and rank each actively debating pair on the effectiveness of their arguments – on a scale from one to ten. Scores will not be based on who is arguing the side each scorer agrees with but, rather, the quality with which a speaker debates.

Based on the feedback from our peers in our class presentation, some students may feel anxious about speaking in front of people, especially if English is not their first language. Since the purpose of the debates is to involve as many people as possible and maintain a low-stress, fun environment, there can be rooms where people debate with a partner. In other words, there will be two-on-two debates, instead of one-on-one, if the students feel like they would be more comfortable this way. Another concern was if the judging would be based only on speaking ability, instead of how ethical arguments are presented and analyzed. To solve this, we plan to use ballots that have separate categories for speaking ability and ethical analysis. By averaging these scores for an overall score, we can ensure that speakers are judged on both communication as well as the ethics involved.

The top sixty-four debaters with the highest averaged scores will proceed onto elimination rounds. Here, a panel of three volunteer judges (either faculty or current students in engineering clubs) will decide which debater from a pair of opponents will proceed onto the next elimination round. Students cut from preliminary rounds will be adamantly encouraged to watch and support their counterparts as they advance into higher rounds. Students will be rewarded with a nominal scholarship, based on how far they made it in the debate tournament (perhaps a gift card to a local restaurant or money to buy textbooks). The debates will take place over the course of one day, with lunch provided from a local restaurant.

Each round will be organized as follows: Students will be randomly assigned one of six engineering-related ethical topics, and randomly assigned the side of the debate they will defend. The topics will be determined by the organizers of the event (ideally students in engineering related clubs; since they have been exposed to engineering curriculum for a longer time and are capable of identifying ethical issues.) They will have half-an-hour block to look through an online database of related articles and sources in which to formulate their arguments, because they are not expected to have a significant body of background information on these issues as incoming Freshman or Junior transfers. We will demonstrate how this database works for the “kickstart” of our presentation. The full database, when complete, will range from news resources, movie clips, photographs, blueprints of engineering projects, interviews, and popular opinion forums. We aim for a diversity of resources, as being able to quickly and aptly process these resources is a key element to analytical thinking – an invaluable skill for prospective engineers. After a half-hour  evaluation and studying of these resources, each speaker will have five minutes to present their end of the argument. Each speaker will then get a two-minute rebuttal period where they can respond to their opponent. The speeches will be kept short in order to keep the debates concise and focused.

Overall, the tournament will comprise the better part of one day and the overhead cost will be the rewards for students who make it through successive elimination rounds. We feel that by creating this tournament, students will be able to discuss important issues in a fun and welcoming environment where they can also meet and mingle with their new classmates. A concern was that the debaters would not be identifying new ethical issues; however we feel like the debaters first need to understand how to argue and analyze ethical issues before they can identify them. Once they further explore the engineering curriculum, they can be the organizers for the event the following year and identify new ethical issues for the new incoming class.

Because engineers are essentially creators, hosting this tournament before they start their technical education is critical; they must consider the potential hazards of developing certain technologies and create safeguards to minimize these hazards. This tournament is also fairly low-cost, so the university will be prompted, and should be ready to, sponsor such an activity. The debate tournament can even be hosted by local engineering student groups such as Tau Beta Pi. Additionally, the tournament will encourage engineers to communicate their ideas to a larger audience. There is often a stereotype that engineers are strong in technical skills but lacking in communication skills, and this activity will help to remedy such a stigma and perhaps break through that stereotype.

To judge the effectiveness of the debates, we plan to develop an online post-tournament survey, which will be sent to all participants. The survey will ask the students for suggestions on how they can improve the debates, what they learned from them, what they liked about them, and what they disliked about them. By maintaining an open feedback system, the online survey will ensure that the debates serve their desired function – to increase awareness, learning, and open communication of ethical issues in timing with the commencement of Cal Engineering students’ technical educations.