Dublin Descriptors

Expected learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

Students will:

• Acquire a broad perspective on the ethical and social impacts and implications of information technologies;
• Be acquainted with normative ethics and normative argumentation;
• Learn how to recognize and analyze ethical and social aspects and issues inherent in technology;
• Be able to understand how technical problems are inherently connected to a social dimension within a socio-technical perspective.

Applying knowledge and understanding

Students will:

• Be able to use critical skills in clarifying and ethically analyzing cases-studies involving information technology;
• Be able to apply ethical theories to problems created, aggravated or transformed by computer technology;
• Be able to explore and assess possibilities for solving or diminishing existing and emerging ethical and social problems that attach information technology.

Making judgements

Students will be able:

• To autonomously analyze the ethical theories to problems created, aggravated or transformed by computer technology;
• To evaluate and select the appropriate knowledge in the effort of elaborating and justifying a philosophical argument on a topic autonomously selected.

Communication

Students will learn to:

• Exercise and improve their skills in critical writing;
• Present in an effective way the results of their independent research, being able to justify their choices.

Lifelong learning skills

Students will:

• Be better prepared to their future professional life in an ethically and socially responsible way;
• Be able to analyze problems through an ethical lens.

Type of assessment

Description

Dublin descriptor

Final project

(written paper or class presentation)

Students are required to:

• Develop a philosophical argument in which the presented claims are justified by the use of ethical argumentation and the relevant literature;
• To present this argument either in a scientific paper or in an oral presentation in class in front of the instructor and their student colleagues.

1, 3

4, 5

Written test

• Questions on the course topics that require to have carefully studied the suggested bibliography and the ability to apply it to case-studies;
• Questions on the ethical issues associated to information technologies that require to have studied the suggested bibliography and to have developed critical skills in analyzing technical problems with the tools provided by ethical theories and argumentation.

1, 2

3, 4, 5