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To help you get experience with a longer kind of writing that you will encounter as a CS professional.
Eight pages (approx. 2000 words) + Cover Sheet (for grading)
A proposal to your workgroup about an assigned topic in CS ethics and professionalism (see table of writing assignment topics)
Your workgroup on the job as a CS professional, including your boss
Use the general CS3604 course resource site for support material about the topic. Beyond this you can (and should) look in the library and on the Web. This is an excellent topic for Web research (but be warned about not plagiarizing from the Web).
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.
This part of the assignment is intended to get you to think about the writing process as well as the product.
Two pages (approximately 500 words)
Your instructor and GTA
Write a description of your plan for the writing process for this assignment.
Take notes on your approach to writing as you work. Since this is the first deliverable for the assignment, it is mostly about planning rather than what you have already done. Describe how you are (or plan to be) approaching the topic, doing outlining, gathering input material, took notes, etc. Include the fact that you will be doing a first draft and a final draft, with a peer review in between. Describe any other drafts or iterations you plan.
Eight pages (approximately 2000 words)
Your workgroup on the job as a CS professional, including your boss
You are to write a proposal about the assigned topic area. You have three objectives in writing the proposal:
Here is how to do your assignment. Pretend you are working in some job as a CS professional and the assigned issue has come up in your work environment. You have discussed it with your boss and he or she is concerned and has asked you to write a proposal to your workgroup to do something about it, with the above three objectives.
Here are the mechanics:
IMPORTANT: This part of the assignment requires you to hand in TWO (identical) copies of your proposal. One copy should have the cover sheet per the instruction in the next paragraph. The second copy should NOT have a grading form attached. Failure to hand in two copies will result in a 10-point deduction from the paper grade for this draft and will probably delay our ability to grade it for you.
Cover sheet (grading form with criteria for evaluation ), with top portion filled out must be used as the COVER SHEET for the first copy (only) of this part of the assignment. Staple grading form as cover sheet to the front of your paper. Papers without cover sheets on the first copy will get a deduction of 5 points. Fill out the top two lines and get your proofreaders to sign at the bottom (for both drafts, this time). It is important that you understand that the term "first draft" here does NOT mean "rough draft". In fact, it is the opposite, the first draft is expected to be the very best writing you can do. The iterative writing process is designed to make your final draft even better.
Summary of deliverables for Assignment 5b:
Package #1 (stapled together in this order):
Package #2 (not stapled with the rest):
Note about timing of Assignment 5b: If you hand Assignment 5b in late, it will mean that your peer reviewer will be late starting the peer review. This means you might get the peer review returned to you late, meaning you have even less time to do Assignment 5d, the final draft.
After you hand in your first draft, we will randomly assign a peer reviewer from the class to each paper. This means that you will get someone else's paper to review. This part of the assignment is your peer review of that other student's proposal.
Your peer review should have at least these parts:
The detailed corrections and other suggested changes should be marked up in the text using the simple editing techniques (e.g., for insertion and deletion) that we used in class and that you receive on your other writing assignments. Mark it up by hand and write insertions and explanatory comments in the margins.
Your high level comments about the overall style, content, and readability should be separate from the text. Your suggestions should be constructive and helpful (i.e., understandable in terms of directions for revising the writing. Consult our course material about doing a peer review. Another useful set of questions, originating from the Department of English, Virginia Tech, may be helpful.
To convey your peer review comments back to the author, you should use the peer grading form, which contains the same categories that we use for grading the assignment. The peer review form is different only in that it ignores numeric grades, since the purpose of a peer review is to give constructive feedback. Use this form to write specific comments and suggestions in the various categories of evaluation criteria.
Summary of deliverables for Assignment 5c, all stapled together in this order:
This part of the assignment represents the iteration of your writing. In a one-semester course like this, we have to compress the process from what it would be in the real world, where it is not uncommon for a journal article, for example, to undergo 20 iterations over a period of six months! A proposal like this would surely benefit from at least a half-dozen thorough iterations. At least this will follow the spirit of that kind of iterative writing.
Separate proof readers outside class are not required for this final draft.
Summary of deliverables for Assignment 5d (in this order, please):
Please NOTE: You can staple the first 4 items together, or clip them together with a good spring clip (not just a regular paper clip, which comes off easily). Whichever way you treat the first four items, please just clip (do not staple) item 5 (the peer review) to the rest. We have to remove that and hand it back to the peer reviewer.