CS103F: Ethical Foundations of Computer Science

Blog Post 3

Due Friday, February 8, 2019, by 11:59p

For this blog post, please consider and respond to the following scenario:

Three students---Alice, Bob, and Carlos---are working on a class assignment. When integrating their parts of the project, Bob says he doesn't understand Alice's code, and so he does not want to include it. Alice replies that Carlos had no issues reading her code, and Carlos agrees that he read through Alice's code and thought it was clear and correct. Bob says he already rewrote Alice's code and wants to include his version instead of hers.

As you create your response:

First, explore the potential group dynamics occurring here. Consider why Bob acted the way he did. What position does this place Carlos in, and how might he feel about both Bob and Alice as a result? Also consider how Alice might feel about Bob's actions and if this changes her relationship to either Carlos or Bob. How do these dynamics change if the team members had different genders? Note that there is no right or wrong conclusions to draw in this scenario. Since there are many additional pieces of context missing from this scenario, you are free to make up/infer details to help with your analysis.
Next, examine how this sort of incident affects both the groups and the individuals. You may consider the effects in terms of project productivity and quality, changes in interpersonal relationships, and/or any long term changes in viewpoint or changes in behavior that this incident may cause for any of the three group members.
Finally, decide as a group how best to handle this situation from all 3 group members' positions. What can Bob do to help the team remain productive and welcoming? How can Carlos react in a way that is fair and helpful? How should Alice respond? Also, whose code should be submitted to the master version of the project?

Please keep each of these pieces to approximately 100 words.

We do expect professional presentation: your spelling and grammar should be correct---you should not be using text shorthand or emojis.

Once you have created your blog post, submit a URL to the relevant assignment on Canvas. When you submit your URL, Canvas will take a snapshot of that URL, so be sure to submit once you are finished with your blog post.

Finally, The Ethics Centre has blog posts that may be useful as examples--they are often longer than your requirement, though. One of the recent good examples is "Why Victims Remain Silent... and Then Find Their Voice".