Week 6

Project Ideas

Slides for Project Ideas [PDF]

Projects/Papers

Students will work on a semester-long project that can take the form of a paper, video, or computing artifact. The project should have some connection to the goals of the class, but these are interpreted broadly. The project can be done individually or in a team, but team projects must have ambition commensurate with the team size. My hope is the students to do projects that will be valuable and worthwhile to them personally as experience, but that will result in something of value beyond just as a course project.

Some ideas for potential projects include:

  • Select a software system deployed at UVA (e.g., SIS or anything used by this course) and evaluate it from an ethical viewpoint and considering how it could be designed to better serve some ethical goal.
  • Select a research paper in a recent conference, and evaluate its ethical aspects.
  • Write a paper that explores some ethical issue in computing.
  • Develop a web or mobile application that illustrates something relevant to this class (e.g., White Collar Early Warning System).
  • Consider a professional code of ethics (e.g., ACM Code of Ethics and Processional Conduct) and evaluate how useful it is in guiding difficult decisions as well as the ethical framework it assumes; evaluate how well the ACM (or other organization) actually follows its own ethics code.

There will be several intermediate project milestones during the semester, listed on the course schedule, and students will present their projects during the final week of class (May 4 and May 6).

Deliverables and Deadlines

  • Project Idea Proposal due Friday, 19 March (4:59pm):
  1. List of your team members
  2. Purpose of your project
  3. What you plan to do
  4. What you hope the outcome will be

This doesn’t need to be a detailed proposal, but should be enough to know you have a team formed and to get some feedback on what you plan to do.

  • Project Progress Report due Wednesday, 7 April (4:59pm):

Update on your project and what you have done so far, and what you plan to do for the remainder. This should be sent as an email to me (evans@virginia.edu) with all of your teammates cc’d. It can be plain text in the email, or an attached PDF, containing at least this information:

  1. Title for your project
  2. How your purpose, plan, and hoped outcome have changed from the original proposal. For most projects, this should at least be refining your idea from the proposal; for some, you may have changed direction, and then should explain the reason for this and how things have changed.
  3. What you have done so far
  4. Your plan for completing the project - what you will do over the final weeks of the semester, and where you hope to get by the final deadline.