COMP4920 - Management and Ethics

December 24, 2023 5 minute read medium

Difficulty: 7/10 · Time Commitment: 7/10 · Enjoyability: 7/10 · Mark: 83

Summary

I did COMP4920 (Management and Ethics) in Term 3 2023. This course is the sole ethics course offered for computer science students at UNSW and is a core course for all computer science students. The course has undergone significant improvements since pre-2023 offerings and has become more focused on ethics. Despite this, there are still some issues with this course and steps that can be taken to prepare for it which I will discuss in this review

Positives

Passionate lecturer who has extensive knowledge of the course and field of ethics. Lectures are detailed and refer to academia consistently
Course content is relevant to assessment tasks and tutorials are engaging and collaborative

Negatives

The course does not provide clear ways to improve throughout the term
Assessments more strongly assess writing style than course understanding, making effort and course marks completely uncorrelated

In-depth

Structure

COMP4920 consists of weekly lectures on different forms of normative ethics and metaethics. There are weekly readings to supplement the lecture content and tutorials that discuss these in more depth. The course starts off really complex and readings in the first few weeks are quite complex to understand. However, as the term progresses, content becomes simpler. Additionally, there are several assessments scattered throughout the term. The first two are essays on various concepts covered within lectures. Then, there is a group presentation on automated design making and value sensitive design towards the end of the term. This is assessed as a group and requires all members to actively participate. Lastly, there is a report that covers the main concepts of the presentation in a more formal style with citations and more in-depth explanations of the main themes. This is marked individually (you summarise which sections of the report you wrote) but you can elect to have it marked as a group if there are no significant contribution issues.

Lectures and Tutorials

The lectures start by covering metaethics and then quickly progress to different forms of normative ethics. This starts off with utilitarianism and deontology, contrasting the different ways of reasoning with different actions and the biggest issues with each of these theories. Then, it covers virtue ethics. I don’t think the lectures and tutorials in this course taught this well and I had to spend a lot of time reading resources online to have a basic grasp on it. Additionally, I recommend asking your tutor to spend a lot of time on the application of these frameworks to the real-world rather than focusing on the concepts themselves as actually testing their limits helps a lot in understanding how they work. I still haven’t been able to find a compelling explanation for why rule utilitarianism is not deontology. However, I think more practical differences would be useful in my understanding of that.

If you find yourself strugglig with lectures and readings, that is completely normal. Focus on your tutorials: take notes from the lectures and ask questions in tutorials. Tutorials are very abstract and class-driven, leaving a lot of room to deviate from the structured weekly content to focus on specific topics. Make the most of this by actively engaging in class.

Essays

The essays in this course help consolidate the content being taught. However, having a good writing style is as important as the actual theory you discuss. I recommend conducting some research and planning before starting, and then focusing mainly on your writing style while writing the essay. It is unfortunate that the theory isn’t assessed well but by ensuring you include major concepts from class and write well, you will do well.

Make sure to start early for essays as it gives you opportunities to ask clarifying questions. For one of the essays, I decided to completely restart after finishing after gaining a better understanding for class and asking directed questions about the theory I was discussing which led me in a different direction to my first essay. Consequently, it is rewarding to start early.

Final Assessments

The presentation and report are done as a group of 3. Effective collaboration is the key to a strong presentation. Pick a topic that you are all keen about and start with a lot of research and understanding before actually creating your presentation. Then, make sure to practice the presentation several times as a group. Confidence and clarify are extremely important and can be the difference between a mediocre and great presentation.

If you have taken the time to conduct substantial research while creating the presentation, the report is extremely straightforward. You can subdivide most of the report by the concepts you researched and then rework your notes to fit within those sections. Make sure to include lots of citations and clarify all novel concepts you introduce. Make sure that you review other group members’ work and have a coherent structure where the writing style and grammar of different sections are consistent. Additionally, put an emphasis on how your report is written. Make sure that it is easy to read and uses simple language. Refer back to the overall thesis throughout the report and take advantage of the introduction and conclusion to emphasis the key ideas you talk about.

Advice

The first two weeks don’t define the entire term. Metaethics is difficult to learn and understand. The theory gets simpler throughout the term so make sure you consistently stay up-to-date and don’t get demoralised after the first few weeks.
Focus on your writing style. The way you write matters just as much as what you write in your essay. This is not idea but seems to be the case. Make sure that your work is grammatically sound, easy to read and written well. Communication is an essential skill and simply tackling complex ethical issues is not enough if you aren’t able to communicate your ideas to the reader effectively.
Pick and choose your readings. There are a lot of readings in this course and from my experience, a lot of them are poorly placed. Some readings that would be very effective after specific lectures are placed a few weeks too early and some readings useful before essays are placed after them. When looking for readings to learn the content, feel free to skip and come back to readings that are not relevant to what you’re currently learning, and find readings from later weeks which will complement what you’re learning.