COMP 3309 Winter 2021 Essay Description Your task is to investigate a topic relevant to the class’s objectives: exploring Information Technology and Society, and then to write an expository essay. An...

Write an expository essayon
almost any information technology
and then explore its
relationship
with
society or social group.
Your analyses should discuss the
information technology’s

interactions

using at
least two of the ideas presented by the course:
worldviews, consequences, technological determinism, Social Construction of Technology, Panopticon, Community, Creativity, Economy, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms


COMP 3309 Winter 2021 Essay Description Your task is to investigate a topic relevant to the class’s objectives: exploring Information Technology and Society, and then to write an expository essay. An expository essay is a formal academic written work designed “to investigate an idea, evaluate evidence, expound on the idea, and set forth an argument concerning that idea in a clear and concise manner. This can be accomplished through comparison and contrast, definition, example, the analysis of cause and effect, etc.” [1] There are three parts to this assessment that each student must complete: 1. A first draft of the essay, provided to a classmate and also submitted to Blackboard, by midnight of March 15th. 1% of overall course grade. Note: The draft can be a MS Word docx file or a shared Google Doc file. You can choose your own partner or your instructor will randomly choose a peer-review based on the drafts’ topics. 2. A peer review, (see Appendices 1 & 2), including the annotation of a peer’s first draft and the completion of the peer review form. Both parts must be completed, provided to your partner and also submitted to the instructor, via Blackboard, by midnight of March 26th. 1.5% of overall course grade. Note: If you can get your review back to your peer earlier, that is even better. The annotated paper and the peer review form you submit to the instructor can be either a MS Word docx files or as links to a shared Google Doc file. 3. The completed essay (which presumably incorporates your peer’s suggestions), submitted to Blackboard by midnight of April 8th. 17.5% of overall course grade Note: The final version of your essay must be in MS Word docx or pdf format Topics The essay’s topic may focus on almost any information technology and then explore its relationship with society or social group. Your analyses should discuss the information technology’s interactions using at least two of the ideas presented by the course: worldviews, consequences, technological determinism, Social Construction of Technology, Panopticon, Community, Creativity, Economy, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms. Because I’ve taught this course quite a few times, the following topics will not be allowed, mostly because I am bored by reading about them: autonomous cars, cell/smartphones, video game industry, and bitcoin. Other than these topics feel free to pick an information technology, course topic and aspect of society/social group that most interests you. Let your topic inspire you to demonstrate you full analyses/communication abilities. Please check out Appendix 3 of this document for appropriate academic articles you might consider using to ‘jump-off-from”. If you are not sure if your topic is reasonable or valid, please consult with your instructor sooner rather than later. The Thesis Over the years, one of the most frequent problems with student essays has been that they lack a thesis: they simply start summarizing and so on. An essay needs a thesis, and it needs to be communicated in the introduction. Writing in post-secondary often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.[footnoteRef:1] [1: The Writing Center, “Thesis Statements”, UNC College of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved Jan 29th, 2018 from https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/thesis-statements/ ] A good way to determine if you have a clear thesis statement is if you can craft a clear title for your essay. If all you can come up with is COMP 3309 Essay you likely need to work on your thesis statement. Sources As this is a formal and academic essay, you will need a goodly number of quality sources (online or text). As a way to evaluate whether or not you have 'enough' resources, use the following guide. 5 points. Primary sources: peer-reviewed research articles in reputable journals. 4 points. Secondary sources: expert and literature reviews (from a reputable researcher/expert in the field) that summarize referenced information and referenced business reports (where a company is reporting on itself). 3 points. Tertiary sources: reputable publications like industry magazines or newspaper reports where the author has established themselves as well-versed in the topic (you'd need to research this) are worth 3 points. 2 points. Encyclopaedia articles: online or paper-based, are worth 2 points. 1 point. Blogs or other communications that formally or informally reference its information. 0 points. Any and all unreferenced opinion pieces, letters to the editor, comments etc. The total points for your essay’s sources should add up to 15. You can use any combination of sources types, for example, 7 separate encyclopedia articles is worth 2 X 14 =14 points and would be still short 1 point. Two literature reviews, two newspaper reports and an encyclopedia article would be worth 2 X 4 + 2 X 3 + 1 X 2 = 16 points. You can use additional sources as desired. To get you started, see Appendix 3 for a list of quality peer-reviewed papers that discuss a variety of computer and society topics. Choose one as a starting point. Once you have chosen a starting article be sure to continue researching until you have found enough sources to add up to 15 or more points. Appendix 3 also has a list of topic appropriate tertiary sources you may want to explore. Citation/Reference Style For the proposes of this assignment, you must use IEEE citation style for all references: citations and the Works cited. NOTE: The essay will be checked with Bb's SafeAssign: SafeAssign will compare a student's submission against other submissions and internet resources and produce an Originality Report that provides the student and the instructor with a sense of how much, how often and where a submission's contents are also to be found in other works. A high value in the Originality Report does not necessarily mean plagiarism: the tool is not that smart. It only makes note of text that is common between the submission and other sources. If you have a lot of fully and correctly cited (IEEE for this work) information and quotes then you may still see a high value reported. Similarly, if you share sources with others (especially in the Works Cited), SafeAssign will notice.  See https://help.blackboard.com/SafeAssign/Student/Originality_Report#interpret-safeassign-scores_OTP-4 for more details Length 2000 words I encourage you to think about fulfilling the expectations of the essay by considering its length in terms of the number of paragraphs needed to communicate a complete essay. An essay with an introduction clearly stating the thesis (1-2 paragraphs), it clearly describes/defines the background, terms and/or technologies (2 to 4 paragraphs), gives a thorough discussion of the topic referencing the sources and supporting the thesis (4 to 8 paragraphs), a concluding summary (1 or 2 paragraphs). Thus, the resulting essay will be around 12 paragraphs long. If you write 16 paragraphs and your essay is only 3 pages long, you are either Hemingway or your paragraphs need some more meat! On the other hand, the children’s chapter book Bunnicula is 14.5K words long and takes the average adult reader 1 hour to read[footnoteRef:2]. Please don’t make me take a whole hour to read your essay. [2: “Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery.ReadingLength. [Online] Available: https://www.readinglength.com/book/isbn-1416928170] Formatting I strongly urge you to use the built-in MSWord Manuscript Theme. You can find it under the Ribbon choice Design. This theme will set all your title, heading and paragraph formatting with one click. Figure 1: P.J. Perri. Screen capture, MS Word for Mac. Feb 2, 2021. Submission Details: You will need to provide a copy your draft to your partner (emailed file, shared link) AND to the instructor via Blackboard. Then a submit a copy of their annotated paper and accompanying completed peer review form (again both to your partner and to the instructor via Blackboard. Finally, you will need to submit a ‘good-copy’ of your essay to the instructor as a MSWord docx, pdf file or as a shared Google Doc via Blackboard. Appendix 1: Peer Review Completing this portion of the assessment, where you constructively critique a colleague’s paper, should help you develop your own essay writing abilities and improve your own essay. Grading for the peer review will be based on how well you analyze your peer’s paper and the level of help/feedback you provide them. Components Paper annotation - ½ the review’s marks: Annotate your peer’s essay with comments created via Word’s Review or via Google Docs provide constructive feedback to the author. The peer review should comment on the work’s grammar, presentation/organization style, application of theory, as well as detailed suggestions on how to improve the paper. Peer review form- ½ the review’s marks: Complete the form on the next page to evaluate each of the suggested aspects, providing both a score out of 10 and an explanation (1 or 2 paragraphs) for your evaluations. 10987654321 (Extremely well)(Poorly) Appendix 2: Peer review form Peer Review For: ___________________________ Peer Review By: ____________________________ Focus. Does the paper have a concise thesis that provides direction and focus? Does everything in the paper relate in some way to the thesis? Is the thesis stated in the introduction and reinforced in the conclusion? /10 Explanation: Summarizing and Description. Does the paper successfully summarize the ideas/themes/evidence from its sources? Is that which is summarized connected to the thesis and concisely documents the important issues in the readings? Is the summary concise and complete? /10 Explanation: Organization. Is the paper’s presentation logical? Are there clear transitions in and between paragraphs? Can the reader tell where one idea or example ends and another begins? /10 Explanation: Connection and Observation. Does the paper connect and critique the ideas and themes of the sources together? Does the paper also include the author’s own observations and feelings on those ideas? Is the author’s opinion well connected to the sources’ ideas? /10 Explanation: Mechanics. Does the paper demonstrate quality editing and proofreading (i.e., grammatically correct, free of spelling errors or sentence fragments, proper use of commas/semicolons/colons, etc.)? Have the submission guidelines (page numbers, margins, etc.) have been followed? /10 Explanation: Referencing. Does the paper apply accurate and consistent IEEE referencing notation? Are all quotes and paraphrasing correctly