Practicalities Online Teaching Prerequisites Essays and Peer Review Booklet Examination Expectations Integrity Contact Textbooks Outline

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This document is maintained by the Privacy and Security in Information Systems Group (PSI) at University of Bamberg. For printing, use the PDF version of this document.

Ethics for the Digital Society (PSI-EDS-B)

Syllabus for Winter Semester 2020/21

Dominik Herrman (v1.0 / 20201030)

This course introduces students to fundamental concepts of ethics and their application to techniques that shape the digital society. We will discuss the influence of current and upcoming technologies and their implications from an ethical perspective. The lecture is accompanied by a series of case studies, which focus on a concrete problem that is to be analyzed by the participants. Topics include decision making in autonomous systems and systems that employ so-called artificial intelligence, the reliability and dependability of computer systems, and privacy aspects of information systems.

This syllabus is an attempt to provide all relevant pieces of information about PSI-EDS-B in one place. The syllabus helps managing expectations, and it gives reasons for the course design. Please read it carefully and inform us if anything is unclear or missing.

1. Practicalities

This course is worth 3 ECTS, consists of a lecture (2?hours per week), and is taught in English. All materials will be made available via its corresponding VC course. You do not need an enrollment key during the first two weeks, afterwards, the enrollment key will be set to m9dxaszMt47x.

We will record all lectures. Recordings will be available via VC and Panopto (access limited to the course, i. e., a closed group).

We will publish all lecture slides in VC. We also provide readings in VC.

A word of warning.  This module has the reputation of requiring a significant amount of work. The weekly cases and the Booklet will keep you quite busy. Working on the cases, in particular, may not feel rewarding at first. Remember to play the long game! Writing the essays will improve your writing skills significantly. You will only learn to write by practicing a lot. You will reap the benefits when you have to write your next seminar report and your thesis.

2. Online Teaching

The lecture runs synchronously and asynchronously. We produce pre-recorded videos, which are live-streamed via Panopto during the lecture timeslot announced in UnivIS. We offer a live stream because it helps to establish a sense of community.

Recordings will be available for download after the lecture so that everyone has access to the same content.

2.1 Interaction

We will use Rocket.Chat as well as the Questions and Answers Forum in VC for interactive communication. For contact and support options, see the section Contact and Support.

Rocket.Chat is useful for asking shorter questions, e. g., during the lecture, or for solving technical problems.

The Forum is more suitable for more extended questions, e. g., when you seek help for one of the cases. Please describe what you have assumed or attempted and what you would have expected. Please follow the advice on asking questions in the Teaching Philosophy.

Some of you may prefer to ask questions anonymously. You can use our anonymous user account psi-student to ask questions in the forum. The password and further login instructions are available in VC. Note that this account only works in VC but not in Rocket.Chat.

2.2 Keeping Up

It is paramount that you keep up during the semester. We provide an incentive to help you with that, the Booklet, which we will explain in the section Booklet.

3. Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course.

4. Essays and Peer Review

During the semester multiple case studies will be published. Participants will be asked to submit essays or solutions (small programs) discussing ethical aspects of those case studies. The essays will be peer-reviewed by other participants.

The essays are awarded bonus points (“studienbegleitende Leistung”) that are added to the points achieved in the exam if the exam itself has been passed. Up to 10 % of the maximum number of points that can be achieved in the exam can be achieved via bonus points.

4.1 Procedure

There will be a new case roughly every week. The essays are due seven days after release. Essays consist of plain text submitted via our web application Peery (https://peery.psi.uni-bamberg.de).

Essays are reviewed anonymously, i. e., they should not contain the name of the author. After the deadline, every essay is reviewed by three randomly chosen students, i. e., every student receives three other essays. Reviewers stay anonymous and rank the three essays according to their quality and provide a short justification within five days. This allows the authors to incorporate feedback into their next essay. Authors receive the results after the reviewing deadline.

Optionally, authors can anonymously respond to the reviewers to challenge their justification. Reviewers will receive the authors' responses but cannot change the ranks any more at that point in time. This feedback channel may help improve the quality of the reviews over the course of time.

4.2 Grading

The submission of an essay scores 1 point with the exception of obvious dummy submissions, which will score 0 points and not participate in the reviewing process.