[veasnaphan]

Material

This course should more accurately by called "Ethics and Technology". The material mainly seeks to answer what is right and wrong, and different approaches to answering that question, regarding choices about technology (technology being physical artifacts as opposed to science). It is much like a high school English course with lots interpretation and discussion of essays, and then essay writing of your own, except all of the content is about ethics and technology. It is also much about learning to make strong arguments. It is very interesting. I was surprised that a hardcore scientist and techno-optimist like me had my eyes opened to the harm of technology and other viewpoints.

Prof

Dr Stefan Rodde was my professor. He is approachable, a good speaker, and extremely intelligent and articulate. Often, a student presents an argument in class, and after a series of rebuttals by Dr. Rodde, the student's argument is reduced to "uhh.. but I just feel that it's wrong" which impresses me everytime. He posts skeleton lecture notes, but these are very bare compared to the slides he presents during the lecture. He says that if attendance is poor, he will stop posting, but even when the lecture hall was almost empty, he still posted them everyday.

Breakdown

Essay 1 - 20%
Essay 2 - 35%
Tutorials - 10%
Final Exam - 35%

Difficulty

I expected it to be, but THIS IS NOT A BIRD COURSE. My TA told us that out of the 60 students in his section, about 2 of them get 11s. The essays are not marked lightly. My TA told me I wrote one of the best papers he read in the semester and I only got 11 on it. The readings are long, boring, and wordy. If you are not good at reading or writing essays, don't take the course. From what I saw, no mercy was shown to ESL students. If English is your second language, DONT TAKE THIS COURSE. The final exam was HARD. Dr. Rodde asked for 3 mini essays (each with multiple body paragraphs) on the spot, PLUS 5 short answer questions in 2 HOURS!.

Tips

You don't really have to keep up with the readings. Its also okay to miss some lectures because he doesn't test on anything outside the readings and their interpretations. But since some of the readings are so long, boring, and have such pretentious wording that it is impossible to get through without looking up almost every word in the dictionary, it is good to go to lecture because the discussion summarizes and clears it up well. To do well on the essays, take advantage of all the help your TAs offer. Email them for help every step of the ways (thesis, outline, arguments). They are very willing to help. Tutorial attendance is mandatory and is marked. Before the final exam, a list of possible terms and essay topics is given, and those that appear on the test are taken directly from this list. I recommend answering every question and memorizing them before the exam. You don't even have to study anything else. I even wrote an essay for each possible topic and memorized them to regurgitate on the exam. Good thing I did, because I still barely had time to finish the exam. Otherwise, there is very little workload and stuff to study in this course.