The Assignment:

One research paper will be due this semester. The paper must be a minimum of five pages long (double-spaced; references, footnotes, figures, etc. not included in the page count). This handout provides the details of the assignment and describes the expectations of the instructor. It is your responsibility to read and understand this handout—your grade will be based on how well your paper meets the requirements set out below. If anything is unclear or you have any questions, please ask!

Topic Selection:

The exact topic of the paper is your choice (subject to approval of the instructor). It should focus on the interface between technology and society—the moral, ethical, legal, social, commercial, environmental, etc. issues surrounding computers and computer networks. You can get ideas from issues discussed in our class or other classes, from the textbook (especially the “Ethical Issues” sections at the end of each chapter), from the list of example topics given below, or from any other source. Be creative!

Topic Suggestions:

Some examples of possible topics include:

• Security of data on WiFi, Bluetooth, and/or other wireless connections
• Security of data on the Internet and/or wired LANs
• The economic impact of computer viruses and other malware
• E-waste: Computer equipment contains significant quantities of heavy metals and toxic materials. What happens to them when obsolete equipment is discarded? Is recycling an effective alternative?
• Environmental issues of high-tech manufacturing
• Data communications and information exchange in the post-9/11 world; data encryption, the expectation of privacy, free speech vs. national security
• Clandestine surveillance of electronic communications—the Foregin Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the PATRIOT Act, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), etc.
• The clash of free thinking, free expression and the rise of the Internet with governmental control of the population under totalitarian regimes
• The effects of digital image, sound, and video editing on self image
• Censorship and filtering of Web pages (e.g. the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA))
• Copyright issues (e.g. the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA))
• The use of copy protection techniques, such as digital rights management (DRM) software, on downloaded music or video files
• Do intellectual property laws inhibit the free sharing of ideas? How is society affected by the expansion of copyright protections?
• Pros and cons of sharing of copyrighted materials such as music files via peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks
• Sharing of commercial software via peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks
• Should the world’s libraries be digitized and given universal accessibility (e.g. Google Print)?
• How permanent is digital information?
• The difficulty of defining and protecting intellectual property in the digital age
• Copyright, honor and privacy issues raised by the use of plaigarism-detection systems such as Turnitin
• Patenting of software and/or algorithms
• Free and open-source software (Linux, the Gnu Project, OpenOffice.org, the Free Software Foundation, etc.)
• The rise of “cloud computing”—the shift away from packaged, installed applications towards Web-based tools
• Employee and employer rights with respect to privacy of email, Web browsing histories, etc.
• The “New Media”—blogs, wikis, cell phone cameras, and the evolution of information sources away from professional media outlets towards individual producers
• The evolution toward “Web 2.0”—the transformation of the Web from a publication medium to a platform for distribution of user-generated content
• Is blogging a form of journalism? Should bloggers have the same rights and responsibilities as traditional journalists? Should shield laws apply to bloggers?
• Security, privacy, trust and/or freedom-of-speech issues with blogs, wikis, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
• Anonymity on the Internet—who bears responsibility for material posted online? Should Internet Service Providers be liable for their customers’ online actions? What about Web sites?
• Credibility of online information sources
• The “internationalization” of commerce facilitated by the World Wide Web
• Offshore outsourcing of information technologies
• International differences in law and custom (for example, some countries censor incoming Internet traffic that they consider subversive or objectionable, although it may be perfectly acceptable in its source country; standards vary widely around the world for the acceptance of ‘free speech’ and political expression, nudity and pornography, on-line gambling, the purchase of prescription drugs, etc.)
• The Digital Divide—how does access to technology differ among various parts of society, and to what effects do these differences lead?
• The One Laptop per Child initiative—is it meeting its goals, and are those goals realistic?
• City-wide municipal wireless networking—should this be a ‘utility’ provided by municipal governments or a product of for-profit corporations, or is it even a good idea?
• The US Air Traffic Control System—1960’s technology for a 21^st-century transporation system
• Taxation of the Internet: sales taxes, use taxes, access taxes, etc., and the federal Internet tax moritorium
• “Net neutrality”—proposals to replace the current open Internet by ‘pay-per-use’ private networks that restrict certain types of Internet usage by those who do not pay premium access fees
• The roles played by women in the history of the development of digital technologies
• The advantages/risks of electronic voting (e.g. the Help America Vote Act of 2002)
• The risks and dangers of increasing dependence on complex technologies
• Safety and other implications of “fly-by-wire” and “drive-by-wire” technologies
• Increasing automation and dehumanization in work and commerce
• Computer-assisted teaching and learning techniques
• The effects of digital media, video games, and/or other forms of technological entertainment on child development
• Addictive or compulsive use of the Internet, video games, etc.
• Is ‘spam’ a protected form of free speech? Who gets to decide?
• Privacy and identity theft issues on the Internet
• The “Real ID Act” and the use of biometrics (fingerprints, facial feature recognition, iris scans, etc.) as a form of personal identification or as a screening method to find suspected criminals/terrorists
• The Next Big Breakthrough in software or hardware (this should be something radically new)
• Or, your own idea of an interesting subject

Remember that these topics are just suggestions, and many of them overlap. You are encouraged to choose a topic of interest to you, whether or not it is on this list. Check with the instructor if you have any question about the acceptability of your choice of topic.

Style:

In writing your paper, use good style such as you would for a paper in any university-level course. Proper grammar, spelling and punctuation are not optional. Give your paper a title and number your pages. Avoid hyperbole: words like “vast,” “plethora”, “innumerable” and “exponential” are probably overkill. And, remember to capitalize the words “Internet” and “Web” when using them as proper nouns. The Writing Center can be a valuable resource for helping you to clarify and polish your paper. Double-sided printing is a great way to save paper and, if convenient, is encouraged.

Do not just copy from your sources—instead, summarize, analyze and synthesize the information using your own words. Do not depend on quotations or paraphrases to take the place of your own ideas and expressions. Reserve direct quotations for those few occasions when a direct quotation provides a valuable supplement to your argument. Some helpful pointers on the use of direct quotes can be found here.

Remember that the assignment is to produce a research paper, not an opinion piece. While many potential topics have significant emotional, political or philosophical aspects to them, your paper should present a balanced, dispassionate analysis of the available sources concerning the topic. You certainly may form your own opinion about your chosen topic, and your paper may reach conclusions that match your opinion; however, being in the context of a research paper, you must present such an opinion as the logical conclusion resulting from the facts, with all sides of the issue fairly analyzed. Your grade does not depend on what conclusions you reach, as long as your paper presents conclusions that are supported by valid research and credible sources.

Sources:

Use at least five substantive sources for your paper. Be sure to evaluate carefully your references before you use them to support your arguments; your paper grade will take into account the quality, credibility and timeliness of the sources you use. Look for primary sources: if a reference you are using quotes something else, track down the original material whenever possible. While an in-depth, investigatory article from a news outlet may be considered to be a credible, primary source, do not depend on brief news reports that just summarize information available elsewhere—find the original and draw your own conclusions instead of just repeating the news reporter’s summarization. When researching a current topic, event or trend, use timely sources that provide current information. (The course textbook and lecture notes, as well as general references such as encyclopedias, dictionaries and the like, may be used; however, they will not be counted towards the five-reference minimum requirement. Note also that commentaries, blogs, editorials, wikis, opinion pieces and the like are not generally considered to be authoritative, credible information sources.)

Don’t just use Web search engines—you can get higher quality sources by using the library’s research facilities, most of which are just as easy to access online as any other part of the Web. The Z. Smith Reynolds Library on campus is an invaluable source of information. Check out zsr.wfu.edu/research/guides for pointers on how best to use the library’s resources. There are also many high-quality, credible sources that don’t appear on normal Web search engines but do appear on research database searches such as at researchexpress.wfu.edu, scholar.google.com or academic.live.com. While published books are often good, credible sources, peer-reviewed journals and other periodicals will tend to have more up-to-date information regarding rapidly changing topics.

Encyclopedias (such as Wikipedia, Encarta, Encyclopædia Britannica, etc.) can be a great source of general and background information, definitions, etc., and can help guide your research. However, an encyclopedia is generally not a primary source of information. Use these instead to lead you to more concrete sources of information. (Please do cite encyclopedias if you use them in your research, but they won’t be counted toward your five required sources.) In particular, bear in mind that Wikipedia, while being an extraordinary fount of information, is not formally edited—it contains unconfirmed information contributed by random, anonymous authors (perhaps even you!), some of whom have less-than-scrupulous motivations for choosing what to post. Inaccurate, misleading, malicious, and just-plain-wrong entries are not uncommon in Wikipedia. Any information of consequence taken from Wikipedia must be independently authenticated from other, credible sources before being used in your paper. Here’s what Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has to say about using Wikipedia as a research source:

No, I don’t think people should cite it, and I don’t think people should cite Britannica, either.... People shouldn’t be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should be ... background information to inform your studies for a deeper level.
(www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2005/tc20051214_441708.htm)

Citations and References:

A Research Paper is a summarization and analysis of information drawn from credible sources. It is not declaration of opinion. For any information that is germane to the paper topic but is not general, common knowledge, the origin of that information must be cited. (This applies to all major facts, not just direct quotations.) Cite your sources in the text of your paper by name, number or footnote, and provide a complete list of sources on a separate page at the end of your paper. You can find some good suggestions for how to cite various types of information sources at www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. MLA, APA, or any other reasonable format may be used, so long as your references contain sufficiently complete information to allow a reader of your paper to access the original source material and assess its significance. References must, at a minimum, include the author(s), title, date of publication, page number (if appropriate), publisher (or Web site), URL with date of access (for electronic sources), and any other necessary information. The instructor will wish to review some of your sources, so please ensure that your citations are complete, and that any URLs are correct and functional.

The author and date of writing are not always apparent for electronic sources such as Web pages, so if you do use a Web page that you feel is an authoritative source try to get as much information as you can for your citations. Some suggested formats for such references can be found at www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/citex.html and owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research. Some helpful suggestions for citing an online encyclopedia may also be found at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia. A reference to a Web page might look something like this:

Tillman, H.N. “Evaluating Quality on the Net.” (2003) Retrieved September 1, 2007, from http://www.hopetillman.com/findqual.html.

When referencing an Internet source, please provide a live link to the original source when possible (which you can do in Word by using the Hyperlink command on the Insert menu). If your source was found using a research database, your browser’s address bar in not an appropriate link to the source material. Instead, find a permanent link to the original source material that actually works, and is not just a temporary link to a transient search-results page. (For example, if your source comes from ProQuest, use the “Document URL” that’s listed in the document summary, not the address of the ProQuest search results page. Other search engines might offer a “Stable URL,” “PermaLink,” “DOI number” or other such valid link that serves the same purpose.)

Submission and Due Dates:

“If you can’t be on time, be early.”
               —Skip Prosser

Topic, Outline and References
Due Friday, April 4, 2008

As described above, you may choose a paper topic of interest. Once you have selected your topic, research that topic using the resources available to you, identifying at least five quality sources that represent the range of information available on your topic. Based upon that research, provide the following materials by class time on Friday, April 4 ^th:

• A clear statement (1-2 sentences) of your paper topic.
• An outline (approx. 1-2 pages) of how you intend to present your work in the final paper. The outline should include the main thesis of your paper, the background or context of your topic, the major points from your research that you will present, and the conclusions that your paper will draw.
• A printout or photocopy of the published abstract or first relevant page of each of at least five credible, authoritative sources that you plan to use. Ensure that each source includes its complete citation as defined above.
• Submit your topic, outline and reference copies as a printed, paper version on or before class time on Friday, April 4^th. To receive full credit on your research paper, your outline and sources must be submitted by class time on the due date.

Full Paper Submission
Due Monday, April 14, 2008

• Submit your paper on the due date as a printed, paper copy in class and also electronically as an attached file (.doc, .htm, .txt, or .pdf) on BlackBoard. The printed and electronic copies of your paper will be due by class time on Monday, April 14 ^th. Your paper is not considered to be turned in until both the printed and electronic versions have been submitted. Early submissions are perfectly acceptable and, in fact, encouraged. Papers late without excuse will be subject to a ½-letter grade penalty per calendar day late (including weekends and holidays).

(Note: To make submissions through BlackBoard, click on “Assignments” on the course main page as shown at right, then click on “>>View/Complete” for the desired assignment. Use the same Blackboard course that you use for checking your lab grades: SP2008 Overview of Computer Science CSC101.)

Additional Information:

Your paper must be your original work, done for this course.

• Please do not turn in a paper that makes excessive use of direct quotations. An original work is not created by stringing together quoted or paraphrased material from other sources.
• Please do not turn in a paper written for another course, your job, or any other purpose. If you have previously researched a topic for another course and would like to expand upon that work, please first discuss this with the instructor.
• Please do not turn in a paper that you did not write. This is dishonest and unfair to your peers, and only results in great unpleasantness for both you and the instructor. Unoriginal submissions will be rejected and reported to the Honor and Ethics Council for investigation and determination of appropriate sanctions.

Evaluation:

Your grade on the research paper contributes 10% to your overall grade in CSC 101. Grading of the research papers will be based on the following three, roughly equally weighted criteria:

Research

• research quality and thoroughness
• significance, relevance and credibility of sources
• primary sources used whenever possible
• sources represent expertise, not opinion
• sources are timely and up-to-date (when necessary)

Persuasion

• overall organization
• thesis, arguments and conclusions presented clearly
• points well-justified
• statements made match the references cited
• all sides of the topic, including conflicting or alternative viewpoints, are addressed appropriately
• stated conclusions are based upon and supported by the research presented
• thesis, arguments and conclusions represent the scholarly work of you, the author of the paper

Style

• grammar, spelling and punctuation
• sensible sentence and paragraph structure
• presentation—layout, page numbering, title, appropriate margin and font sizes, etc.
• originality—direct quotations only employed when required for special emphasis
• sources properly cited in paper body for all major facts presented
• sources properly listed on a separate References page
• hyperlinks to references function properly—linking to the original source material, not just a transient search-results page
• paper satisfies the requirements of the assignment