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To help you get experience with a particular kind of short writing that you will encounter as a CS professional.
Three pages (approx. 750 words) + Cover Sheet (for grading)
A memo to your boss 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.
Your boss, head of your immediate workgroup 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 memo about a professional issue to your boss, the head of your CS professional workgroup.
A memo is a step up from the email message you wrote for Writing Assignment #1. 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 memo 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 boss about it. You are to write a memo of about 750 words (three pages) addressed to your boss, to bring this issue to his or her attention and perhaps explain an appropriate action and how to take it.
Be explicit and clear enough about everything in the memo content, so we (instructor and GTA, as outsiders) can understand the issue and why you are sending the memo to this person. 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.