C/IL 102 Spring 2009 Research Project

C/IL 102 Spring 2009
Term Paper and Class Presentation
Due May 11 (formerly May 4)

Background:

For this assignment, you are to investigate a topic in the realm of computing or information technology, perhaps one that is controversial in some way. Your investigation will culminate in you producing a term paper using Microsoft Word and doing a short presentation in front of the class (with the aid of "slides" produced using Microsoft Powerpoint).

You are to work in teams of two to four. If you need help in finding classmates to form a team, I will provide it.

Possible Topics

Below is a list of possible topics, which you should not regard as being exhaustive. They are simply suggestions.

club/loyalty cards: Investigate the practice used by, for example, grocery store chains (e.g., Price Chopper, Sure Save) of using product bar codes in combination with "preferred customer cards" to keep track of food purchases made by individual shoppers. What do they do with the collected information? How is it used to benefit the grocery store? What potential harm or nuisance can it cause for the card holder, who (typically) gets the benefit of lower prices on certain products each week?
Microsoft, Inc.: There are several aspects of this company that could be investigated. Microsoft commands a large share of the market with respect to personal computer operating systems and some categories of personal computer software applications. Why is this? Are their products superior? Or do they employ unfair business practices to prevent other products from competing fairly with theirs? How did Microsoft become so powerful in the first place? Of what transgressions have they been found guilty in various legal proceedings over the years? Is Bill Gates really a "computer wizard", or was he just a rich kid who used deceit and cunning to establish and maintain the dominance of his company?
Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Report upon the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), or Patriot Act, or other controversial legislation pertaining to information technology and privacy rights.
digital rights management (DRM): This is a term that refers to technologies that enforce restrictions on access to various forms of digital data, including software, music, and movies. For example, depending upon your source for digital music, you may get a version that will play only on the particular device onto which you downloaded it. Critics view such restrictions as being an "abuse" of copyright.
P2P file Sharing: Investigate peer-to-peer file sharing (e.g., downloading music from the Internet) and the legal issues it raises with respect to intellectual property rights.
face recognition and other surveillance technologies: Report upon surveillance-related technologies being used by the government. For what purposes are they being used? How might they be mis-used?
RFID chips: Investigate potential uses (and abuses) of radio-frequency identification chips, which can be embedded within consumer products (or pets, or humans) for the purpose of storing identification or medical information. What privacy issues are raised?
event data recorders in automobiles: These are similar to "black boxes" in airplanes that record data that, in some cases, help in determining the cause of a crash. Increasingly, such boxes are found in automobiles. Report upon the uses (and potential uses) of such black boxes to insurance companies and law enforcement agencies and how this impacts upon the privacy rights of drivers.
electronic voting: In recent years, prompted in part by the problems that occurred in Florida in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, there has been a push to "modernize" voting procedures by replacing old voting mechanisms (e.g. paper ballots, mechanical voting machines) by electronic voting machines. Some have even advocated voting via the Internet. Explore this issue, and explain why electronic voting is no "silver bullet".

Each team should begin by choosing a topic and then performing some preliminary research. The purpose of this is to find potential sources of information (e.g., books, journal/magazine/newspaper articles, web sites, etc.) and to help you focus upon what particular aspect of your topic you want to explore. (Your paper will be relatively short; thus, your topic must be fairly narrow.)

A good places to search for potential source materials is scholar.google.com. This site is especially nice in that, assuming that you submit a query from a computer on the U of Scranton network, the response will include hyperlinks to the full-text versions of any articles to which the University has access.

Submitting a Proposal

Having done a preliminary investigation, by April 18 one member of your team should send an e-mail to me (as well as the other members of the team) at mccloskeyr1@scranton.edu identifying your team's members, describing your intended topic, and summarizing what sources of information you have located. It need be only a couple of paragraphs in length. In effect, this will serve as your "proposal". I will reply soon thereafter, letting you know whether or not your proposal is acceptable. In the unlikely event that it is not, I will probably give you some suggestions as to how to modify it to make it acceptable. (I don't foresee rejecting a proposal outright unless the topic is totally inappropriate or it is clear that you have done no preliminary investigation.)

Your e-mail's subject line should include the phrase "CIL 102 proposal" (or something similar).

Format of Term Paper

Generally follow the MLA guidelines provided by Capital Community College in developing your paper. In particular, adhere to the formatting guidelines reached by clicking on the Paper Format button on the left margin. (Exceptions: Feel free to single-space the heading (giving your names, instructor name, etc.) as well as each citation on the Works Cited page (but leave a blank line between two citations).

Your paper should be six to ten pages long, not including the Works Cited page. (Note that, with double-spacing, six pages is not all that much.) Your Works Cited page should include at least six sources of information, at least three of which originate from somewhere other than the World Wide Web. (An article from The New York Times, for example, did not originate on the WWW, regardless of whether you accessed it via the WWW.)

E-mail your paper (in Microsoft Word form as an attachment) to mccloskeyr1@scranton.edu by noon, May 4, 2009. In the subject line, include a phrase such as "C/IL 102 paper".

Class Presentation

Prepare a short presentation (using Microsoft Powerpoint to produce "slides") to accompany your paper. Your slides should be appropriate for delivering a 10-13 minute oral presentation of your research paper, which your team will do in class sometime during the last two weeks of class (May 4, 6, 11, or 13). (We'll work out exact scheduling later.) For guidelines on developing Powerpoint presentations, see Effective Powerpoint Presentations. (Scroll down a little from the top of the web page to arrive there.) E-mail your slides (as an attachment) to mccloskeyr1@scranton.edu preferably within the same e-mail message as the one in which you sent your Word document.

Warning Regarding Plagiarism

As you probably know, there are a number of Web sites from which you may purchase research papers. To hand in such a paper (or a modified form thereof) would be a flagrant example of plagiarism. Ah, but there exist software tools for detecting plagiarism. They are not foolproof, but they are often effective. If I were to determine that a submitted paper was plagiarized, I would give the offending students a failing grade for the course and take the matter to the dean in order to instigate further punitive action.

To learn more about the issues of plagiarism (and, more generally, "academic integrity"), it is recommended that you go through the U of Scranton's Scholarly Research and Academic Integrity Tutorial, to which there is a link from this page, which also contains links to related information.