Table of contents:

1. About this course
   1. Course description
   2. Role in curriculum
   3. Learning goals and assessments
      1. Major goals
         1. GEESE Rubric
         2. Course Learning Goals
      2. How you’ll progress toward these goals
         1. Progress binder
         2. Required Content for Progress Binder
         3. Portfolio
      3. How we’ll assign your final grade
2. Course preview
   1. Part I: Ethics–theory vs. practice
   2. Part II: Collaboration and critical sources
   3. Part III: Community-Based Ethics
      1. Warm-Up
3. Rough Schedule
4. Generic policies for my courses

What to call me	Chris or Prof. Mitsch
When and where (section 01)	BRKI 066, MWF 2-2:50pm; DANA 137, MWF 3-3:50pm
Office hours?	Make an appointment

Learning goals and assessments

Major goals

Ok, now for the big-picture goals I want us to work toward. This course is a bit tricky, in that it is the only course in which the department officially aims to achieve the following student outcomes required to for accreditation, namely Criterion 3 for each of the CAC and EAC:

 4. Recognize professional responsibilities and make informed judgments in computing practice based on legal and ethical principles. (Computing Accreditation Commission)

 4. An ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts. (Engineering Accreditation Commission)

GEESE Rubric

For that reason, I will be using the following rubric when I assess your work for ABET purposes:

	Able to make judgments informed by (impact on)…
Performance Levels	Ethical/Professional/Legal	Societal	Economic	Environmental	Global
Outstanding
Satisfactory
Developing
Unsatisfactory

Course Learning Goals

However, this rubric is not one you will need to think about much. This is because I want you to focus on the pre-requisite skills you would need to do the above. These skills are what actually matter, and they are also much more difficult to categorize and assess than the rubric suggests. Those skills are:

1. Collect and analyze information from varied sources. You will especially need to know how to find reliable and critical information about social, economic, environmental, and global issues with which you are not familiar.
2. Work collaboratively to identify problems and potential solutions. You must be able to work as a team, not as a collection of individuals. This means setting clear expectations for one another and yourself, communicating clearly, and distributing work equitably.
3. Subject proposals to serious and consequential scrutiny, even if it means substantial revision of your methods or even goals. If you come out of this class with one and only one thing, it should be a willingness to seek out and implement criticism of your work. I don’t care about what you decide is the right thing to do, but I do care about how you decide what the right thing is.

In addition to these, I expect you to meet the standard goals that apply to any class: show up, participate, work hard, respect me and your peers, etc.

Also, in case you are unaware, you are officially expected to spend 12 hours per week (for a total of 168 hours per semester) doing work for each one-credit class you take. Since we meet for 3 hours per week, that means you are expected to be doing 9 hours of work outside of class per week.

How you’ll progress toward these goals

Progress binder

At its core, this class is about developing habits and skills related to critical thinking, albeit packaged as ethical decision-making. For this reason, I want us to focus as much as possible on the actual habits and skills required to think critically. The entire course structure is intended to make this as easy as possible for us. However, I want to note one big feature of the course that is meant to help us: you will be submitting a final portfolio consisting of a selection of your work, and you will be submitting a physical copy of this portfolio (see next heading). As preparation for this portfolio, you will be keeping a binder of all of the work that you do in this course, including your readings, writing, weekly or daily reflections, a time log, and anything else we decide is worth adding.

Now, I know this probably seems odd—it’s 2025, why the hell would I have you submit something physical? There are actually many good reasons for doing so, at least to my mind, but the most important ones fall into two broad categories. First, thinking—and by extension, writing or giving a presentation—is a process; being able to easily survey that process will be super helpful for reflecting on it and making adjustments. This is just hard to do when it’s scattered across a bunch of files that you have to open individually, and that’s before we talk about how well those files are organized (spoiler: they never are). Having them physical also makes it easier to move things around.

Second, good thinking takes time, and distractions and interruptions are, by definition, hindrances to good thinking. (I’m not generally a fan of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, or his take on dual-process theories of cognition, but he at least gets the core idea across: fast thinking is easier, and often encouraged by our environment, but far less reliable.) Our digital lives are hella distracting, so getting off of those is a good idea. There’s also plenty of evidence that working more slowly and not on a screen—even with things as simple as reading or taking notes—is better for learning.

That said, I know this is going to be annoying at first—complain away! But, know that I am going to make you think about why it’s annoying, so be prepared to think critically. Of course, I am also open to evidence that it’s not working—either in general or for you in particular—so if you have a good criticism of this, let me have it! This is the first time I’m trying this, so there will inevitably be some kinks to work out.

Also, please note that this expectation does not invalidate any accommodations you may have or need. Part of the reason I’m spelling out why we are doing this is to make it easier for us to come up with reasonable accommodations should the idea not work for everyone. I’ll also throw out that doing this stuff physically serves as a management strategy for my ADHD: “out of sight, out of mind” is basically how my brain works, so having your binders/portfolios physically staring at me—instead of buried in a learning management system—will make it a lot easier for me to keep track of your work and, ultimately, give you the feedback you deserve. Making each of our needs as explicit as we can will help us find a solution that works for all of us.

Required Content for Progress Binder

I will not be explicitly checking your progress binder during the term. Instead, you will be updating the class each Friday on what you have done that week to make progress, including updates on what you’ve included in your binder. (I’ve retained the way I used to do this below–in the form of a “progress check packet”–to give you a sense for what you should discuss in your weekly learning reports.) Nevertheless, I expect your binder to contain:

• Annotated versions of all readings. For the Marino and Sadowski portions of the course, you must include the chapter you presented on as well as the chapter you responded to.
• A weekly reflection on your learning. You should talk about what progress you’ve made toward the learning goals and how, and you should explain how one artifact you have included is evidence of that progress. Aim for around a page per week.
• Materials from your Marino presentation with a summary of your collaboration debrief and an action plan
• Materials from your GEESE project with a summary of your collaboration debrief and an action plan
  • Since I will be using this for ABET assessment, please be sure that the materials you provide paint a full picture of your performance on each criterion. You will likely need to annotate something from your presentation as well as include annotated copies of the sources you used.
• Any worksheets we did in class
• Progress check packet–you should create a new version of this for each progress check
  • Cover sheet that explains your progress on each learning goal and explains how the content of your binder supports your explanation. You should point to specific things about specific artifacts. The goal of this cover sheet is for you to practice connecting the little things you to do to your bigger-picture goals. Note: this is about the three course learning goals underneath the GEESE rubric, not those in the GEESE rubric.
  • A summary of peer feedback that you received and an action plan for addressing the feedback. This must be done before you submit it to me. The goal here is to give you more practice with peer feedback as well as for you to get ideas for how you can organize your own work.
  • A summary of professor feedback and an action plan for addressing that feedback before the next progress check. Obviously this won’t be done before you submit your binder, but you should do it afterwards and add it in.

Portfolio

To give you a preview, here are some of the things I will expect you to include in your final portfolio:

• Annotated material for class’s final project
• Slides and transcript or notes for you humanities/social sciences video(s)
• Two peer response packets
  • Self-reflection prior to peer response
• • Summary of peer’s response (written together)
  • Action plan and reflection on peer response
• Reflections on two discussions with relevant experts outside of computer science
• Personal growth packet
  • Explanation of an individual goal(s) you have that will help you make progress on the major course goals and why this is a goal for you
• • Weekly paragraph reflecting on progress toward this goal and setting next goals
  • Final reflection on individual goal
• Three summaries of professor check-ins and action plans
  • One before beginning on the class project
  • One during the class project
  • One final check-in (action plan is for future courses/work)
    • Book here. Note that these are group meetings and there is space for a maximum of 9 groups. Plan accordingly!
• Collaboration plans for partnered and class projects
  • Accountability structure and checkpoints
  • Pre-mortem and action plan
  • Records of work done (e.g., meeting notes, time logs, to-do lists)
• Overall reflection on course learning
  • Explanation of progress toward learning goals
  • Artifacts that illustrate this progress
  • Discussion of your engagement in the class
  • What you’ve learned about your thinking
  • Self-assigned grade that is consistent with:
    • the contents of your portfolio
    • your explanation of learning goal progress
    • illustrative artifacts provided
    • your engagement in class

Okay, so that’s a lot. But don’t panic! I’m sharing all these details now for two reasons. First, having these details now will make it much easier for us to make any tweaks to our class along the way—to keep our eye on the prize, so to speak. So, for example, when we start working on your collaboration goals for your partnered project and y’all find it really tedious, I can point to this to emphasize that we are, in fact, building towards something. On the other hand, it lets you off the hook for stuff you may get hung up on but probably shouldn’t, like knowing “enough” about ethical theories or computer science. So having all these details here is meant to help us focus on what matters not to overwhelm us.

 Second, I have included all of these details to yet again emphasize a super important point about thinking and decision-making: it is an iterative, social, and metacognitively demanding process. Scan through the list again. See how there’s only one bullet point on the class project itself? That’s for very good reason—I don’t want you thinking of your class project as the “product” of your work in this course. If anything, I want you to think of the “product” of your work in this course as the process you go through along the way. Let’s be real here: while it’s possible, your class project is probably not going to change hearts and minds, including your own. The process you go through for that project, however, is one that will have that potential, especially as you refine it after you leave here.

How we’ll assign your final grade

Your final grade will be determined by your progress toward each of the major goals. If you submit good faith attempt at a portfolio that includes everything on the list above, and you submit it on time, you will receive at least a B. Your general level and quality of engagement in class, the depth of your reflection on your learning, and your attitude toward learning will account for the rest of your grade. (Note: having a “good” attitude does not mean not complaining about the class, but it does mean being willing to continue engaging and thinking critically about why continued engagement, even with stuff you hate, is worth your time.)

We’ll talk about this more in class, but at the end of the day, you are in the driver’s seat for your grade: do everything I expect, engage regularly, and make a good effort at assessing your progress, and I won’t complain if you assign yourself an A.

Course preview

Part I: Ethics–theory vs. practice

Module learning goals: Learn the basics of ethical decision-making, including: professional codes of conduct; legal expectations; where ethical decision-making happens; what influences ethical decision-making; how to evaluate individual scenarios.

Your main assignment will be to give one presentation and lead one discussion of some readings on ethical reasoning. These readings will consist of chapters of Marino’s Moral Reasoning in a Pluralistic World or a couple of supplementary papers. As presenters, your goal is to summarize the reading you present.

Part II: Collaboration and critical sources

Module learning goals: build up resources for group proposal; practice finding and summarizing research; practice engaging in ruthless criticism.

Your main assignments will be your midterm “project” and leading a discussion of a chapter of Sadowski’s The Mechanic and the Luddite. The project has several goals:

1. Practice gathering information from a variety of sources. In particular, you will get practice gathering information from unfamiliar sources and on aspects of problems you have not thought about much. You should be sure to include information from experts, which often means focusing on research from outside of engineering or computer science.
2. Practice developing collaboration plans and executing those plans. In particular, you will be working on collaboration within your groups, and your project will have comparatively well-defined parameters that make it easier to assign tasks.
3. Practice actively gathering feedback from other groups and leading critical conversations. Again, you will have comparatively well-defined parameters that will make it easier for you to identify the kind of feedback you are looking for.

I am laying out these goals partly to give you a sense of why we are doing this project and what I expect, but also to give you an opportunity to shape the project along the way if it’s not feeling like it’s meeting the goals.

On my end, this project has one additional administrative goal, which is that I will be using your work on this project to assess your performance for ABET purposes using the GEESE rubric (above).

The “product” you will be delivering is a ~20 minute presentation, with some kind of supporting visuals (e.g., slides), that proposes a community-engaged activity. Your chosen activity must apply (some of) the ethical and critical tools we have covered. Two ideas you may consider are running a reading group or creating a podcast series on a book of your choice. These are just ideas, so if you have another way you’d prefer to meet the goals of the assignment, feel free to come chat with me. In general, your activity proposal should:

1. Identify a specific judgment, real or imagined (but plausible), that relates to computers and society. I mean this to be fairly broad, so as long as I have a way to justify to my colleagues that the judgment somehow involves computing technology and society, that should work.
2. Identify a community that you wish to engage with. Unless we’ve discussed another idea, you should engage either with a community that with which you do not already have strong ties, or with a community that you feel is routinely excluded from decision making.
3. Gather information on the global, environmental, economic, and societal impacts, real or potential, that the decision would have. Also gather information on the professional, ethical, or legal obligations the decision-maker would have. I especially want you to work on avoiding superficial connections and using work from the social sciences and humanities as these are historically quite challenging skills for STEM students. This should be a deep engagement, so I would strongly recommend that you select a book that will serve as the primary source for you and supplement with other materials as needed.
4. Identify the values that you believe are at issue in this judgment. You will be iterating this as you engage in your activity.
5. Specify the principles you believe are at play in making this decision.
6. Articulate the judgment these values and principles lead you to.

You can think of what we are doing with this activity as the first couple of steps involved in probing the case consistency of an ethical judgment: gathering information that helps us see what all is involved, identifying a comparison that could be useful, and giving our first-pass judgment of what to do. At the proposal stage, each of these of these will be tentative: the point of doing the community-engaged activity is to see what you’ve missed.

On the way to your proposal, you will lead a discussion of one chapter of Sadowski’s book. Your goal should be to articulate the critical tools he presents. You will also check in with your group at several points about how the collaboration is going and what adjustments you need to make.

Part III: Community-Based Ethics

Warm-Up

In the previous part, your groups identified an intra-group judgment about a particular case. But this is only the first step in making good judgments. Recall that we are following Marino by focusing on the moral reasoning used to come to judgments, rather than the judgments themselves, and the way we assess the quality of that reasoning is whether it is applied consistently across similar cases. In this final project, you will be engaging with your community of concern to articulate, scrutinize, and defend judgments. Note: “scrutinizing” the reasoning of others does not mean you have to find their reasoning flawed, nor does it mean that you must disagree with their values, principles, or judgments. It simply means carefully assessing each part of the reasoning.

Your assessment should draw heavily from the tools we built up during the first and second parts of the class. While a major aim is for you to build the connection between the theoretical and applications-y ends of this course, here is a rough outline of the steps you’ll need to take to complete a satisfactory test of a judgment’s case consistency:

1. Articulate the judgment the other person is making. It should be clear enough that you can say what actions, by whom, in what context, etc. are and are not consistent with that judgment.
2. Enumerate the values and principles involved.
3. Identify a case worth comparing.
4. Articulate the judgment in the comparison case.
5. Enumerate the values and principles involved in the comparison case.
6. Gather facts relevant to each case’s judgment, values, principles and engage in ruthless criticism.
7. Determine which differences are morally significant or insignificant.

In a sense, this final project will be a class-wide one: collectively, you are building more robust communities for ethical decision making. As such, you will be regularly reporting on your group’s activity, and you will be expected to provide feedback and assistance to other groups. This is meant to get you practice on larger-scale collaborations. These often involve much more specialization than smaller-scale collaborations. This specialization can make it especially difficult to coordinate with your collaborators because you can’t assume everyone knows the same things. Large-scale collaborations are also more demanding when it comes to making changes in response to feedback. Getting practice dealing with these downsides of larger collaborations will be important for your time after Bucknell, basically no matter what you do.

On the positive side, however, larger-scale collaborations allow you to get more done. Ideally, I’d like us to find a combination of activities that feel like meaningful work to all of us and have enough overlap in form and content that you can help one another. Figuring out what that looks like will require some time, so I’d encourage you to start thinking early about options. In the past, students have done things like lobbied legislators, created a framework for AI use in the classroom here at Bucknell, and recorded podcasts on underappreciated problems in tech.

Rough Schedule

Generic policies for my courses

To see the other policies in play for this course, see the page on generic course policies. These apply to all of my courses.