Task
Proceed according to the following instructions.
1. Identify a recent (within the last six (6) months) ethical dilemma or ethically questionable situation relating to ICT that you are familiar with. This situation can be either in the media (for example one you have sourced from a newspaper, or online through social media) or through your workplace.
a. If using a workplace example, to maintain confidentiality, do not use real names.
b. If you use a media article you must include the link to the media article in the references list of your assignment.
2. Undertake further research about your chosen case to assist you in analysing and discussing it in your essay.
3. You are required to analyse the ethical dilemma you have identified above using the Doing Ethics Technique (DET). The word limit should be between 900-1000 words. Note: Headings, citations, references and any appendices do not count towards your word limit, but quotations do. At the start of the assignment indicates in brackets the word count of your assignment excluding those items mentioned above.
4. Include a Reference list at the end of your work, in the correct APA referencing style, corresponding to in-text citations. You must include at least TWO (2) quality academic references from different sources. Please note that these references are in addition to those provided to you through this subject (for example, you still must reference, the DET, Tavani, the Interact subject lecture notes etc BUT these references cannot be used as one of your two quality academic references from different sources). Only include references that have been cited in the body of your assignment and ones that support what you have presented in your assignment.
NOTE: Please use the template provided in resources section of subject site.
Rationale
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 in your workplace or in a contemporary media article;
- using the Doing Ethics Technique (DET), analyse the situation and the arguments it presents, to:
- identify the ethical issues involved;
- assess the implications of those issues; and
- develop solutions to the issues apply proper academic referencing.
The Doing Ethics Technique
The Doing Ethics Technique is nothing but a series of 8 to 10 questions that can be applied to a case study, scenario or an ethically questionable situation related to ICT with the hope that answering the ten questions will at the end of the analysis facilitate the recommendation that can solve the problem in question. As can be seen below these questions can be divided into two groups; the first four and the last four. While the first four questions help you state the facts and the issues, the last four questions focus more on the ethical behavior of the ICT professional. An explanation of the Doing Ethics Technique questions is discussed below.
Q1. What's going on?
For this question you need to explain what the case is all about. That is, you are meant to tell the story in a very few words i.e. in a much summarized way
Q2. What are the facts?
Here you describe the facts of the case as they are and known to you from all sources and perspectives that you have to access.
Q3. What are the issues?
This is a list of the issues that are involved in the case or situation but these are not the ethical issues. In your response to question Q5 you will discuss the ethical issue. For this question you just need to discuss the issues that are of relevance to the case. For example, what are the issues that led to the wrong doing taking place?
Q4. Who is affected?
Here you list all of the stakeholders involved in the case and describe how each stakeholder is affected and if possible comment on the degree of the effect on a particular stakeholder.
Q5. What are the ethical issues and their implications?
For this question, you need to focus on the main the ethical issue. To identify the ethical issue you need to ask the following questions: Who is the ICT professional in question? What is the action that ICT professional has taken? What is wrong with the action (from an ethical point of view)? Also you need to discuss implications of the ethical issue on the stakeholders and/or on the society as a whole.
Q6. What could have been done about it?
For this question you discuss in general what could have been done to prevent it from happening i.e. in hindsight. It does not matter at this stage if those approaches are doable or impractical or not.
Q7. What are the options?
For this question you need to list and describe in detail the possible options that are available to the ICT professional to sort out the problem. It is quite possible that not all options will produce a favorable outcome for all stakeholders but that is ok because here you are just considering them.
Q8. Which option is the best and why?
For this question you are to choose one of the options you listed above as the best option. And discuss it in detail and explain the reason for your selection. Of course your decision should be based on ethical grounds.
Attachment:- Sample Assignment.pdf