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To help you get experience with a particular kind of short writing that you will encounter as a CS professional.
Four pages (approx. 1000 words) + Cover Sheet (for grading)
A short "white paper" to employees of your company about an assigned issue of CS ethics or professionalism (see the table of writing assignment topics), to call this issue to the attention of your boss and your workgroup.
Technical employees in a CS professional work setting
The Virginia Tech honor code is in effect for all work. This means that this writing assignment is to be done alone, without help from someone else. Exceptions: Getting help in your writing from the Writing center is an important exception, and is always encouraged. Further, this application of the honor code is not intended to interfere with the free exchange of ideas and peer assistance that support learning, including general discussions about the assignment and the type of writing involved with other students, the instructor, and/or the GTA.
NOTE about plagiarism: We will be especially zealous in prosecuting Honor Court cases involving plagiarism, especially those where material is taken from other students or from the Web or Internet. Plagiarism of any work from a current or former student in this course is considered to be an honor code violation. Through the use of peer evaluations and collaborative development, and the use of the WWW, there is a strong possibility that you will be exposed to concepts and ideas that you can use in your own work. Getting permission to use those ideas and concepts from the originator (except when it is already in the public domain) and/or giving appropriate acknowledgment in your own work circumvents a charge of plagiarism.
You are to write a short "white paper" about a professional issue to employees in your CS professional workgroup.
A white paper is a step up from the email you wrote for Writing Assignment #2. It's a bit larger and is definitely more formal. The grammar, typing, and spelling should be as good as you can make them. A white paper usually has an objective -- in this case, to raise awareness about an issue. It has to make a good first impression with style and content in order to accomplish the objective.
Here is how to do your assignment. Pretend you are working in some job as a CS professional and you wish to take a stand on the assigned topic area. The issue should be treated as thought it were important enough to justify writing to your colleagues about it. You are to write a white paper of about 1000 words (four pages) to be distributed to your colleagues, to bring this issue to their attention and to explain alternative actions, propose a response, and explain what to do and how.
Be explicit and clear enough about everything in the white paper content, so we (instructor and GTA, as outsiders) can understand the issue and why you are sending out this white paper. This assignment has only one draft.
As usual, you should get two proofreaders to read your assignment and make suggestions for revision. They are not to just read it over and make some general suggestions, but are supposed to make specific editing markups throughout the text. Your two proofreaders should sign the grading form for this draft of your assignment.