Module Introduction

This module provides a range of assessment rubrics used in classes on engineering and computer ethics. Rubrics will help you understand the standards that will be used to assess your writing in essay exams and group projects. They also help your instructor stay focused on the same set of standards when assessing the work of the class. Each rubric describes what counts as exceptional writing, writing that meets expectations, and writing that falls short of expectations in a series of explicit ways. The midterm rubrics break this down for each question. The final project rubrics describe the major parts of the assignment and then break down each part according to exceptional, adequate, and less than adequate. These rubrics will help you to understand what is expected of you as you carry out the assignment, provide a useful study guide for the activity, and familiarize you with how your instructor has assessed your work.

Ethical Theory Rubric

This first rubric assesses essays that seek to integrate ethical theory into problem solving. It looks at a rights based approach consistent with deontology, a consequentialist approach consistent with utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. The overall context is a question presenting a decision scenario followed by possible solutions. The point of the essay is to evaluate a solution in terms of a given ethical theory.

This next rubric assess essays that integrate ethical considerations into decision making by means of three tests, reversibility, harm/beneficence, and public identification. The tests can be used as guides in designing ethical solutions or they can be used to evaluate decision alternatives to the problem raised in an ethics case or scenario. Each theory partially encapsulates an ethical approach: reversibility encapsulates deontology, harm/beneficence utilitarianism, and public identification virtue ethics. The rubric provides students with pitfalls associated with using each test and also assesses their set up of the test, i.e., how well they build a context for analysis.

Student teams in Engineering Ethics at UPRM compete in two Ethics Bowls where they are required to make a decision or defend an ethical stance evoked by a case study. Following the Ethics Bowl, each group is responsible for preparing an in-depth case analysis on one of the two cases they debated in the competition. The following rubric identifies ten components of this assignment, assigns points to each, and provides feedback on what is less than adequate, adequate, and exceptional. This rubric has been used for several years to evaluate these group projects

This rubric provides assessment criteria for the Good Computing Report activity that is based on the Social Impact Statement Analysis described by Chuck Huff at www.computingcases.org. (See link) Students take a major computing system, construct the socio-technical system which forms its context, and look for potential problems that stem from value mismatches between the computing system and its surrounding socio-technical context. The rubric characterizes less than adequate, adequate, and exceptional student Good Computing Reports.

Computing Cases provides a description of a Social Impact Statement report that is closely related to the Good Computing Report. Value material can be accessed by looking at the components of a Socio-Technical System and how to construct a Socio-Technical System Analysis.

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This work is licensed by William Frey under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 2.0), and is an Open Educational Resource.

Last edited by William Frey on Mar 3, 2008 5:06 am US/Central.