Final Project

As we've discussed in class, you must explore a topic intersecting Computing and Technology (i.e., a topic similar to, or perhaps the same as, the topics we've gone over in class.)

Poster/Flash Talk

You will present a flash talk & poster as a part of the final project. The flash talk will be a practice that should help you to prepare for the poster session.

• Your flash talk should consist one slide (your poster on a slide) and your presentation should last a maximum of 90 seconds. (I will cut you off :-))
• Your poster presentation will be judged according to the rubric found in resources.

As a part of the project you will develop a Case Study based on the topic you've chosen.

You will incorporate your Case Study into your Medium Post. It is expected that the Medium post will be more refined with than the Poster/Flash Talk you present. I imagine (hope) that the discussions you have during your poster presentation will allow you to develop a more mature case study. As noted in the Final Project Medium Post Rubric, your Final Project Medium Post should address several questions in your analysis. Those questions are below:

1. The purpose/intended function of using computing in the hypothetical scenario.

• This will be the outline of your case study, which might be built around a hypothetical computing system/project and context in which this system is applied.
  
  2. The various types of stakeholders that might be involved in such a practice, and the different stakes/interests they have in the outcome.

3. The potential benefits and risks of harm that could be created by such a project, including ‘downstream’ impacts.

4. The ethical challenges most relevant to this project (be sure to draw your answers from the list of challenges outlined in Part Two of this module, although feel free to note any other ethical challenges not included in that section).

5. The ethical obligations to the public that such a project might entail for the data professionals working on it.

6. Any potential for disparate impacts of the project that should be anticipated, and how those might differently affect various stakeholders.

7. The ethical best-case scenario (the maximum social benefit the data practitioners would hope to come out of the project) and a worst-case scenario (how the project could lead to an ethical disaster or at least substantial harm to the significant interests of others).

8. One way that the risk of the worst-case-scenario could be reduced in advance, and one way that the harm could be mitigated after-the-fact by an effective crisis response.

9. At least three brief proposals or ideas for carrying out the project in the most ethical way possible. Or, if the project as outlined could never be carried out in an ethical way, identify a redesign or alternative project that would be more ethically sound. Use the module content, especially Parts Two and Five, to help you come up with your ideas.
  
  

  *Note that this is slightly adapted from the Case Study assignment on ~page 59 of the Introduction to data ethics module by Markkula Center for Applied Ethics *