Ethics for Nerds

Ethics for Nerds is an almost entirely self-paced course. You can learn whenever you want and in your own pace. Only the order in which you have to go through the topics of the lecture is fixed. The rest is pretty much up to you. In the end, you will have to put your skills to the test by writing an Essay in which you argue for your position on a topic, and pass an exam.

The lecture covers three main topics: ethics (E), precise thinking (PT), and current topics in computer ethics (C). Ethics for Nerds offers you plenty of ways to learn new things or train new skills.

Lecture videos (along with the slides)

The lecture videos are your primary source for learning new things. They are bite-sized such that you do not have to watch a complete lecture at once. Make sure to watch all the videos! You can either download them from our cloud or watch them on Youtube. You will find the links in the Materials section of the dcms. You might find it helpful to slow the videos down or to speed them up.

(Note that all the videos say “2020” instead of “2021”. But don’t worry, you do not have outdated videos. We were just a little too optimistic about the end of the pandemic last year. We timestamped the videos with 2020 thinking that we would be back to normal in 2021.)

Your Discussion Group

You will be assigned a discussion group of three to five people. The discussion group is meant for, you guessed it, discussions. Last year we were told that students would have liked if discussions had been incorporated into the digital format more, so this is our take on that. You are invited (but not obligated) to meet in your discussion group once a week for at least one hour. It might also be helpful to make sure that all of you have seen roughly the same videos each week (though that is not mandatory either). We issue a discussion question every week that you are invited to discuss. It is not mandatory to do so, though, and you can also discuss any other question that interests you as a group. You can use the team in Microsoft Teams (Teams code: yki62xr) that will be opened for your group, but you can also switch to any other conferencing tool if all group members are ok with that. In order to get your exam admission, you will have to write short protocols of your discussions once in a while.

Training Exercises

Training exercises are exercise sheets with which you can train relevant skills and check your understanding of the topics of the course. Many of these exercises come with example solutions. Training exercises are perfect for discussions in your group, and it can also be helpful to solve them together.

Office Hours

We usually offer four one-hour office hours each week. The office hours are scheduled to match your discussion group meetings, such that you can drop by whenever you have questions. The office hour is first-come-first-serve style, so you might have to wait a bit until it is your turn. Slots are

• Tuesday 9-10 (with Ursela)
• Wednesday 16-17 (with Ursela)
• Thursday 15-16 (with Kevin)
• Friday 11-12 (with Sarah)

Note that you might be referred to a Thursday or Friday office hour if you have questions that go beyond the scope of the lecture or that are on lecture content that is much ahead of the exemplary study guide.

Forum

We also answer your questions in the forum in the dcms. Just post whatever comes to mind and we will be sure to answer it.

Study Guide

Even though everything is self-paced, you will be given a guide that you can follow if you don’t want to worry about finding your own pace through the materials. It helps you to make sure that you can fit everything in the semester and that you do not get stressed out when the time for assignments comes.

An Experimental Ethics Script

At the heart of the course is, of course, ethics. There is a work-in-progress script that tries to give you yet another way to take the topic in if you want to read about the same topics but with different examples and explanations. The script explains everything from square one, so you do not have to watch the videos before reading the script. (But you should watch all the videos at some point since the videos cover topics that are still missing in the script.)

 

Exam Admission

There are plenty of different things that you have to do in order to get the exam admission but most of them are neither very complicated nor too time-consuming. They are mainly meant to give you a heads-up from time to time such that you know how you are doing. You have to hand in a few discussion protocols that should state the most important points in a group discussion, and that typically won’t be longer than a page.  We will check them, but they won’t be graded.

There also are short quizzes that you should hand in when you completed a section of the course in order to check whether you understood the key points form the lecture correctly. You have to pass each of them individually, so you have to hand every one of them in. A Milestone Quiz is passed if you get more than 50% of the points.

Further, there are two assignments, and you have to get 50% of the overall points of both assignments. You can but do not have to hand in assignments as a group. The main and most time-intensive part of your exam admission, however, is the essay.

You get the exam admission if

• your group has handed in at least four one-page discussion protocols, and
• you passed each of the three Milestone Quizzes, and
• you reached 50% of all the available assignment points, and
• you passed the essay.

Some admission criteria are to be fulfilled individually, and some as a group. The following table tells you which elements is which

Admission element	Group work?
Discussion Protocols	yes (per protocolled discussion, only one protocol is handed in for the whole group)
Milestone Quizzes	forbidden
Assignments	allowed, but not mandatory
Essay	forbidden  (though you can discuss your essay with others!)

 

Grade

Your grade is the better grade of the exam and the re-exam, and you can get a bonus on your final grade if you handed in an outstandingly good essay.

 

Important Deadlines

New material releases

The materials are released in bulk as follows:

• Release Block E: week 1
• Release Block PT: week 3
• Release Block CT: week 5

(The solutions for the exercises are also updated in between.)
 

Assignments, Milestones, and Essay

You will have to earn 50% of the overall points in the Assignments. You have two deadlines available for this. If you hand in by the regular deadline, you get all the points that you earned on the respective Assignment. If you hand in on the late deadline, your Assignment will be corrected and 30% of the points that you got on this Assignment will be deducted. You cannot hand in an Assignment twice.

You will also have to earn at least 50% on each of the Milestone Quizzes and pass the Essay. There are no late deadlines for the Milestone Quizzes or the Essay!

	Release	Regular Deadline	Late Deadline (-30%)
Assignment 1	Mon, 3 May	Sun, 6 June, 23:59	Sun, 25 July, 23:59
Assignment 2	Mon, 31 May	Sun, 27 June, 23:59	Sun, 25 July, 23:59
Milestone Quiz E	Mon, May 3	Sun, 25 July, 23:59	None!
Milestone Quiz PT	Mon, May 17	Sun, 25 July, 23:59	None!
Milestone Quiz C	Mon, May 31	Sun, 25 July, 23:59	None!
Essay	Mon, May 24	Fri, 30 July, 23:59	None!

 

Exam

The exam dates are like follows:

• Exam: Wednesday, 25 August
• Re-Exam: Thursday, 23 September

The exam will be a take-home exam. Also check out the Exam FAQ (login needed).