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

5. Booklet

One of the most effective learning techniques is to write notes and refine them during the semester. For more techniques, see the Teaching Philosophy. We observe that many students cannot motivate themselves to write notes on a regular basis. ⊕

As an incentive for extensive note-taking, we implement the personal booklet technique in this course. The booklet consists of up to 15 pages of size A5. Every week you can submit or upload one A5 page by a certain deadline. You can fill this page with any content you deem useful for the exam (subject to the conditions described in section Requirements). We will assemble your pages and print them in color to create a booklet. We will give you your personal printed booklet together with the exam tasks. You will have to hand in your booklet together with the exam again.

eating pages for your booklet requires you to think critically. What is the best way to compress the material and write it down clearly and concisely? The booklet encourages this active learning process. If you work in a learning group, it is probably most beneficial if each member of your group prepares a draft of the page, and you discuss the drafts in your group before all group members assemble their pages.

5.1 Requirements

All pages must be in your handwriting, either on paper or by using a tablet. Copying by hand helps your brain remember what is in the booklet – even if you copy blindly from sources like Wikipedia. Ideally, you will know precisely what is and what is not in the booklet so that looking up content during the exam is fast

Screenshots from slides or readings are not acceptable – unless they are drawn by yourself. A non-handwritten headline inserted by some note-taking apps (showing the current date, etc.) is permissible.

Arranging and resizing several handwritten pieces on a page is permissible. The decisive factor is that the content is in your handwriting.

You do not have to include citations on the pages, i. e., it is allowed to reproduce lecture slides, content from Wikipedia, etc. without mentioning the source. It is irrelevant whether booklets of different students contain the same content – as long as they are in the respective students' handwriting.

Developing booklet pages in learning groups is allowed – as long as each booklet page has been entirely handwritten by the respective student.

This rather strict set of regulations may seem pedantic, but it is necessary to maintain equal opportunities.

5.2 Page Submission

The submission of booklet pages is handled via our booklet web application at https://booklet.psi.uni-bamberg.de. The booklet application requires you to authenticate via single sign-on. During the first sign-on, the application may ask for your student number. Please enter your student number correctly.

There are two ways to hand in your booklet pages: uploading a scan or submitting on paper. For the latter, you have to use the paper template provided in the booklet tool for the respective page, write your content on it and drop it in the mailbox of the PSI Chair in the foyer of the building WE5. You will find further instructions on the template. We will scan your page at 300 dpi in color.

In the following, we provide some tips for those who intend to upload a scan.

First of all, note that we will print your pages in A5 format on a laser printer. If you write very small, you must take special care to upload a sharp image with high contrast. Check that your submissions are not too pale, cut off at the edges, or fuzzy. If you take photos of your pages, ensure sufficient and – more importantly – even illumination and use a sufficiently high resolution. Consider using a dedicated app that helps with digitizing paper documents.

What is a sufficiently high resolution? Printouts are easy to read when they have at least 300 dpi. Thus, the short side of your page should have at least 1771 pixels, the long side at least 2480 pixels.

You can use the preview function of the booklet tool to adjust the cropping and improve the contrast. To get a feeling of the readability, change the scaling on the computer screen so that the displayed size corresponds to an A5 sheet placed on top of it. If you can read everything at this scale, you should be fine.

6. Examination

There will be a written exam of 60 minutes at the end of the winter semester. The exam will most likely require your on-site presence. The next exam will take place at the end of the summer semester. The exam questions will be in English but you can answer in English or in German.

6.1 Relevant Material

Exam tasks may focus on content from the lectures, the mandatory readings, and the case studies.

Please have a look at the previous exams in VC to become familiar with the style of the exam tasks.

6.2 Authorized Aids

We will give you your booklet together with the exam tasks. Only the booklets distributed by us are authorized, i. e. you are not allowed to bring any further notes to the exam.

Booklets that have not been entirely handwritten by yourself are no authorized aids. It is your responsibility to check whether your booklet meets this criterion. If you notice that one of your pages is not compliant after the submission deadline of the respective page has passed, you can delete it from your booklet until two weeks before the date of the winter semester exam. Replacing the content of deleted pages is not possible.

If we discover during or after the examination that unauthorized aids have been used, we must proceed in accordance with §7 (4) APO, i. e., you will fail the exam. In severe cases and cases of repeated misconduct, additional measures may be imposed by the examination board.

7. Expectations

We love teaching, and we care for you. ⊕ Please find more information on my expectations in the Teaching Philosophy in VC On occasion, however, we have to make unpopular decisions to make you (more) successful. For me, it is more important to be a good professor than your favorite professor.

We will not focus on teaching you facts. Instead, we want to teach you how to think. In some parts of the course you will have to learn concepts by yourself.

It is your responsibility to

• abstain from cheating and plagiarism,
• invest sufficient time for self-studying,
• prepare before attending lecture and tutorials,
• consider switching to a part-time studies program if you cannot handle the workload,
• and to learn to ask effective questions.

We recommend attending the lectures “live” instead of postponing watching the recordings. Also, take notes in hand-writing, post-process your notes, and build learning groups in which everyone works on all tasks individually before discussing them in the group instead of distributing the load within the group.

8. Academic Integrity

We are investing much time to offer you a high-quality academic education. In response, we expect you to act with integrity, namely by behaving per the commonly shared values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. ⊕ Parts of this section are inspired by the Academic Integrity Tutorial of University of Waterloo (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Cheating on the exam, when preparing your essays, or the booklet pages

• abuse the trust between you and me,
• aim at creating an unfair advantage,
• are disrespectful toward me as your professor, your fellow students, and the institution as a whole, and
• represents a failure to take personal responsibility.

Any action or attempted action that breaches one or more of the fundamental values associated with academic integrity is considered academic misconduct.

Acts of academic misconduct can interfere with your intellectual development as they obstruct the opportunity to meet a university education's challenges. Moreover, such actions can potentially undermine our students' and faculty's reputation and credibility, which degrades the value of a degree our university. Thus, we cannot tolerate academic misconduct.

Academic misconduct is often a result of overwhelming pressure. Please seek help instead of giving up your integrity. The university offers psychological counseling services to all students. We are also there for you if you struggle, but you have to get in touch with us for that.

9. Contact and Support

⊕ Your instructor is Prof. Dr. Dominik Herrmann.

Please ask questions when you are stuck or when you do not understand something. You can ask questions during the lectures or asynchronously.

We prefer to get questions about the content in Rocket.Chat or in the Q&A forum in VC. Please also post answers if you can answer a question of your peers.

Asking questions in German is fine if you are uncomfortable with English. Alternatively, use tools such as deepl.com for translation.

If you have a question about organizational or examination matters which you do not want to post publicly, you can reach me via e-mail at dominik.herrmann@uni-bamberg.de.

10. Textbooks and Readings

This course is loosely based on the following three textbooks:

• Ibo van de Poel and Lamber Royakkers: Ethics, Technology, and Engineering – an Introduction.
• Herman T. Tavani: Ethics and Technology: Controversies, Questions, and Strategies for Ethical Computing.
• Jay Quinn: Ethics for the Information Age.

We will publish links to more focused readings in VC. Some of these readings are mandatory readings.

11. Outline of the Course

Finally, let's preview the content of the course. We will cover the following areas in the order given below:

1. Introduction
2. Responsibility
3. Professional Codes
4. Critical Reasoning
5. Moral Judgements
6. Privacy
7. Designing Technology
8. Automated Decisions

Learning Outcomes.  Participants will be able to reflect on their actions as a scientist as well as a computer professional. They learn how to evaluate the trade-offs that are inherent in new technologies and how to design information systems in ways that support the needs of a digital society. Successful participants will obtain the ability to apply ethical thinking to novel problems and potential solutions.