MIRPUR UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (MUST), MIRPUR

DEPARMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Professional Practices
BIT-4802

Lecture [1] : Introduction

Dr. Samina Khalid

(Assistant Professor)

Date: April 23, 2020

 COURSE DESCRIPTION

A foundational course in computer science that is:

Designed to familiarize students with professional practice in computer science, and

to enable them to:

 Identify ethical conflicts,

 Identify their responsibilities and options, and

 Think through the implications of possible solutions to ethical conflicts.

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 COURSE OBJECTIVES

Objective of this course are following:

 To make students aware of themselves as members of a profession, with shared community

principles.

 To make students aware of the ethical implications of their professional choices, and of the
communities (employer, customers, society at large) whose interests they serve.

 To make students aware of how they apply ethical principles to resolve situations that arise in their
professional lives.

 To make students aware of professional organizations that can help them deal with professional
issues.

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 COURSE SCHEDULE

Till Mid Term

Topic 1: Introduction to Ethics, Philosophies, regarding to Ethics and morals

Topic 2: Introduction to Computer and Cyber Ethics

Topic 3: Computer Ethics history. Sample Case Studies

Topic 4: Ten Commandments

Topic 5: Sample topics to study in this subject

Topics 6: Types of Ethics, Relationship of different types of ethics

Topic 7: Essential components of personal ethics, ACM code of conduct

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 COURSE SCHEDULE

After Mid Term

Topic 8: Definition of Cyber crime, general types of cyber crime, cyber crime statics

Topic 9: Types of Cyber crime technically specified by Australian institute of criminology

Topic 10: Management Hierarchy, IT organization structure, staff management, five golden rules of
staff management

Topic 11: Definition of team, team management, four C’s of team management,

Topic 12: Elements of healthy teams, way to inspire and motivate team, ethical issues in team
management.

Topics 13: Character of high performance teams

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 COURSE TEXTBOOKS

Book 1:

1. Bott, Frank, Allison Coleman, and Diane Rowland. Professional issues in

software engineering. CRC Press, 2000.

2. Deborah G. Johnson, “Computer Ethics”, Pearson Education (2001) 3rd

edition.

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 GRADING POLICY

Mid Term: [30%]

Quizzes: [5%]

Assignments: [5%]

Semester Project: [10%]

Final Exam: [50%]

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 HOMEWORK & ASSIGNMENT POLICY
Assignments:
 Each student needs to submit two assignments, on before midterm and one after midterm examinations in hard form
and also in soft form with plagiarism not more than 15% (references must be included at the end of each assignment).
 Assignment must need to upload on turnitin class for plagiarism checking. Otherwise hard form will not be
acceptable.
 Front page of assignment must be properly formatted with following information:
 Assignment title, Assignment No., Student Name, Student Roll no (properly formatted according to CMS), Session,
Subject Name, Subject Code, Plagiarism (%), Submission date, and Instructor Name.
 Late submission of assignments will not be entertained.
 Plagiarised Assignment will be marked zero

Quizzes:
 There will be unannounced quizzes randomly (before start of lecture / after lecture) and one announced quiz before
midterm and terminal examination.
 If any student would not be able to attend quiz, quiz will not be taken again.
All assignments and quizzes will be considered for grading

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Professional Practices
Overview of computer Ethics
 Today’s Agenda

 Historical, social, and economic context of Computing

 Software Engineering,

 Computer Science,

 Information Technology

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 Historical Perspective

 One of the most silent concerns;

 Computer threatened our notion(concept) of what it means to be human
because
 Computer can do anything that was considered unique to be humans, rational (logical,
intelligent) thinking. E.g. Artificial Intelligence…….

 So, There was some fear might computer take over decision making from humans. E.g.
2001 movie, “Are there decisions that computer should never make” by jim moor in
1979.?

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 Historical Perspective

 In early age of computer, concerns about computers were not exactly

ethical in character.
 E.g. No one explicitly argued that its immoral to go forward with the
development of computers because of its threat to our concept of human
beings. Neither its immoral to turn over decisions making power to computer.

 Rather, the implicit argued that there would be terrible consequences

e.g. possible disasters and degradation of human life. Where decision
making turned to over to computers.
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 Historical Perspective

 These concerns did not come from the use of computers; they arose
from simple ideas of computers ?
 There very idea of a technology that could think or do something very close to
it was threatening to our understanding of what it means to be human.

 Computer can think like humans- Cognitive science and other

disciplines (see Bynum and Moor, 1999)

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 Historical Perspective

 In late 1970s, the ethical issues began to be more clearly articulated in

the works of Joseph weizenbaum (1979) and Abbe Mowshowvitz
(1976).
 When Privacy Protection Commission did a major study of Privacy.?
 In those days computers were used in big governments and large scale organizations for
maintaining their databases (especially personal information databases).

 Computers are being used for large numerical calculations primarily for government
activities such as weapons development, space travel, etc

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 Historical Perspective

 The next major technological shift was development of small computers.

 Remote access had come on scene, first as access on mainframes, later as web of
telecommunications connections between small computers.

 Attention turned to software's and ethical issues surrounding it.

 Computer technology become visible and powerful into the consumer market place.

 Software's were recognized as something with giant market values, and hence, all the
ethics issues having to do with property arose.

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 Should Software Be Owned?

 If so how?
 Would current intellectual property law provide adequate protection?

 Along with property rights issues came issues of liability and responsibility.

 In market place, when consumer buy and use computers and software,
they want to rely on these tools and when something goes wrong, they
want to know who to blame or they want to be compensated for their
losses.

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 Should Software Be Owned?

 During this period, attention began to focus on computer hackers.

 They did not like the idea of property rights in software.

 At the same time, those who acquiring property rights and or making a
business of computing saw the threat posted by hackers, a threat to property
rights and to system security.

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 Technology Shift 1990’s

 Attention turned to the internet;

 The coming together of computers, telecommunication, and media was the next major
shift to the technological development.
 Expanded use of internet brought a seemingly endless set of ethical issues as the
internet came to be used in so many different ways in so many different domains of
life.
 During 1980’s and 1990’s one other technological development that grew slowly was
the use of computer in wide variety of visualizations activities;
 Computer graphics and gaming, simulation activities in medical imaging and scientific
models this gave raise to the idea of virtual reality.

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 Internet Raised All Past Concerns

 Privacy issues are impaired on the internet;

 The democracy issues came back into play with a new claims about the
internet’s democratic (independent) character;

 Privacy rights expanded to web sites and global property rights become ever
more important and so on.

 Very slowly and quietly, ethical concerns have been raised about this
thrust of computer technology

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 Summary

 During 1960 and 1970s the dominant uses of technology were for database
creation and large scale calculations.
 Give raise of centralization of power and big government and threats to personal privacy.

 During 1980s micro computers were developed and made readily available,
remote access to large mainframe computers also become possible.
 The telecommunications lines linking to computers that later become internet.

 All these concerns give raise concerns about property rights, liabilities issues, and
threats posted by hackers. As well as gave raise to seemingly endless array of
ethical issues.
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 Reading Assignment

 To learn more about computer ethics just read case studies given in preface of
book as overview of book chapters.
 Why computer ethics.
 Philosophical ethics
 Professional ethics
 Ethics and internet; online ethics
 Privacy
 Property
 Accountability
 Social implications and social values

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 Acknowledgments

GOOGLE BOOKS LINK

1. Deborah G. Johnson, “Computer Ethics”, Pearson Education (2001) 3rd edition.

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THANKS