Ethics for Nerds

Hi everybody,

to help you out with your exam preparation, we decided to do an Office Hour this Thursday, 06.03., in E1.7 Room 008, from 10:15 - 12:00. We are happy to answer your questions there.

There will also be an online office hour during the same time slot via teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MmE4ZDc2ZjktNTZiZi00Nzk0LThkMDUtNDBlNWM1Y2JhODkw%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2267610027-1ac3-49b6-8641-ccd83ce1b01f%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22dff48562-9403-40c4-ab20-db7f257653e5%22%7d

Best regards
Your E4N Team

Hello everybody,

Sorry for the large amount of emails today! There is currently a survey about the course, and I would really appreciate your participation. Your feedback helps me improve the course and it is also very valuable for my research and my PhD project. Every response is important, and I very much appreciate if you are willing to take the time to share your thoughts. The survey is entirely anonymous to me, though, and I will never be able to tell who took part or which answers belong to which students. The survey is open until Sunday.

You will not have any benefits from participating in the study, and you will also have no disadvantage if you do not participate. However, as I am mindful of your time, participants have the chance to win a 10€ gift card as a small thank you.

You should have received an email with an invitation link, and you can also find the link on your personal status page in the dCMS.

Thank you in advance for your time and your input!

Best wishes,
Sarah

Hello everybody,

Please read the following information about the exam carefully:

• Today is the last day on which you can register for the exam on March 10. Please do so in the LSF and the dCMS! If you are improperly registered in the LSF, it is impossible for me to let you sit the exam, and if you fail to register in the dCMS, then there will be no exam and no summary printed for you.
• Your summary pdfs, as they will be printed for you to receive in the exam, are available for you to check out. You can download them as feedback to the first summary you submitted. (If you see feedbacks to multiple summaries, the files will be the same.) If you think that your document is faulty in some way or if it is missing altogether, let me know by Wednesday. Summaries will be printed on Thursday, and no changes can be made anymore after that. Notice that you will only have received a summary pdf if you achieved the exam admission.
  Hint: If some of your summaries were over the character limit and got truncated, just put the missing material on your cheat sheet.
• If you have Nachteilsausgleich and want to participate in the exam on March 10, please write me an email as soon as possible and no later than Wednesday.

If you have any questions about the exam, please let me know in time.

Best wishes,
Sarah

Hello everybody,

The feedback of all your submissions has been uploaded during the last few days. Everybody should be able to see whether they are admitted to the exam. We advise you to take a look at the feedback that you have gotten for your submissions.

Also, exam admissions from previous years have been transferred now. If you think that you should be admitted but your personal status page says otherwise, please write me an email as soon as possible.

If you want to participate in the main exam, you have to do two things:

1. Register in the LSF. Students who can register in the LSF but fail to do so in time cannot sit the exam. Please also make sure to account for any technical difficulties. It will be impossible for me to let you write the exam if you are not registered properly, even though you could have registered in the LSF.
2. Register in the dCMS. Go to your personal status page and register for the exam.

The deadline for both registrations is Sunday, March 2.

Best wishes,
Sarah

Mock Exam on Wednesday

Instead of a regular classroom session, we will have a mock exam this week. To take part in it, you will have to

1. register in the dcms for the mock exam. (Such that we know how much to print.)
2. bring a pen and some paper for solving the questions.

Unlike in the real exams, you can bring any other materials to the mock exam, e.g. your cheat sheet in case that you want to test it already.  Phones on silent are allowed, but no laptops or tablets (to not distract other people around you with big screens).

This event is organized by the tutors. The mock exam is ungraded and participation is voluntary. It will take You have the chance to ask questions about the mock exam afterwards, starting at 16:00 in the same lecture hall as usual.
 

Exam Admission

Don’t forget Project Phase 7 and, if necessary, the revision of Project Phase 5. You can only take part in the exam if you completed all project phases.

We will grade Project Phase 6 as soon as we can. But we got a lot of them and they are much longer than the other project phases, so please give us some time to do so. You will probably not receive feedback on them before Project Phase 7 is due. I know that this is slightly inconvenient, but since Project Phase 7 does not require a lot of effort, it hopefully will not impact your work on it.
 

A Few Remarks on What is Relevant for the Exam

• The whole script (Foreword to Chapter 13) is exam relevant in its entirety, unless something is explicitly marked as not being relevant for the exam.
• Also, the skills that you trained during the project will be exam relevant. (There will be no hEAR-specific questions, though. So, if you obtained your exam admission in a past iteration, you do not have to catch up on hEAR.)
• Most questions from the classroom sessions are not the type of question that would be suitable as an exam question. However, having attended the classroom sessions and/or looking at the slides again might nevertheless be beneficial.
• We test for skills, not for opinions. If your opinion differs from ours, that will not be an issue at all.
• The emphasis that certain topics had in the project or the lecture script give you a good indication of what is to come in the exam: The more a topic or skill was emphasized in the course, the likelier it is to be a big part of the exam. Reversely, the lower the emphasis was on a topic or skill, the unlikelier it is to be a big part of the exam. For example: being able to write a valid argument is a useful skill in the exam, whereas knowing five examples of fairness metrics by heart is not.
• The main exam and the re-exam are intended to have roughly the same difficulty.
• You are not graded on a curve. Your individual performance is what counts, not the performance of your peers.
• The exams of last year will be made available at the end of this week and you can check them out to get a feel for Ethics for Nerds exams. (Caution: the content has changed a bit, and  there are some question that you will not be able to solve with this years content. Of course, I will not ask you anything that requires knowing things that were not covered in the course.)
• You don’t need to know Codes of Ethics by heart.

Best wishes,
Sarah

Hello everyone,

we want to inform you of some changes in the schedule for the coming weeks.

Firstly, there will also be an online version of the project helpdesk on Thursday, so on 30.01. from 15:00-17:00, in addition to the one that takes place on campus at the same time, for the people that cannot attend in person. For this, you can use the following link:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MmE4ZDc2ZjktNTZiZi00Nzk0LThkMDUtNDBlNWM1Y2JhODkw%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2267610027-1ac3-49b6-8641-ccd83ce1b01f%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22dff48562-9403-40c4-ab20-db7f257653e5%22%7d

We will also offer another exam preparation session during the tutorial slot next Wednesday, so on 05.02. from 10:15-11:45, in E1 3 HS 003. There we will discuss the remaining tasks of the exam preparation sheet, so issues 2, 3 and 6, and try to answer any remaining questions you might have afterward.

Best regards

your team of tutors.

Hello all,

We have three weeks of semester left. I just want to quickly tell you what will await you.

Today’s classroom session (Jan 22): We will have a normal classroom session today. As the chapter went online really late, don’t worry if you did not prepare it yet. (The summary is only due next week, too.)

Next week’s classroom session (Jan 29): Next week, we are going to have a regular session again, but with a twist. You will be invited to come up with certain types of exam questions yourselves. Provided that your questions are good, I guarantee you that one of them is featured in the main exam and one in the re-exam. If you want to participate in this, be sure to attend the session.

The last classroom session (Feb 5): The last classroom session is organized by the tutors. They prepare a mock exam for you that you can take during the lecture time under semi-realistic exam conditions. This is a great opportunity to also test your cheat sheet if you have prepared it already by then. If you attend in-person, you will also get the opportunity to get feedback on some of your solutions afterwards.

There will also be a tutorial for further exam prep (Jan 29, 10:00) where you get to practice the more difficult types of questions and get helpful tips from the tutors. Also, please do not forget to get a tutor’s feedback on your reports, at least for at least your table of contents and your recommendations to ACE. The office hours and the project helpdesks are great opportunities for that.

Best wishes,
Sarah

PS: If you still want to evaluate the course, you can do so here until Sunday of this week: https://qualis.uni-saarland.de/eva/?l=154294&p=44a6hn

Hi everyone,

there are some changes in the timetable regarding the tutorials.

Firstly, there will be no tutorial tomorrow.

Secondly, the tutorial on 29.01. will be replaced by an exam preparation session. In this session we will discuss tasks that have already appeared in previous exams or are similar to such tasks. Like the tutorials, the exam preparation session will take place from 10:15 to 11:45 in E1 3 HS 003.

Best regards, 
your team of tutors.

Hi everyone,

us tutors would like to inform you that we have written a summary of Tutorial 2, which can now be found in the materials under "Tutorial Session".

It deals with common mistakes that are made when writing arguments and how to avoid them.

We hope that this overview will be helpful when working on Project Phase 5 and the Revise & Resubmit of Phase 4.

Best regards
Your favourite tutors

Dear everybody,

There will not be a classroom session tomorrow, which I want to apologize for. There will, however, be a new chapter by the end of the day. We also have uploaded the instruction for the last big project phase, which will be your ethics report. If you want to use the free time slot tomorrow, you can work on your current submission or, if you are already done, take a look at the instructions for the report.

Best wishes and apologies,
Sarah

Hi everybody,

the E4N-Team wishes you a happy new year!

We decided to transform the next Deep Dive Session this Friday (10.01.) into an Online-Q&A Session. Some of you seem to struggle a bit with writing and attacking arguments, so it might be a good opportunity for you to clarify some things or get feedback for your own arguments.

The session will start at 14:00 and close at 14:30 in case none of you attends up to this point. Otherwise, it will continue until all of your question are answered (or latest 15:45).

The session will take place via MS-Teams. You can join via the following link:

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NDA5ZDJkNTMtNzIwNy00ZTg0LWEzNDQtOTRhZjU4YWE2MzEw%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2267610027-1ac3-49b6-8641-ccd83ce1b01f%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22b746a296-921e-41de-8178-3c10b60093f5%22%7d

Keep also in mind that there will be a Project Helpdesk on Thursday for those of you that want to get Feedback for Project Phase 5 or the Revise & Resubmit of Project Phase 4.

Best regards
your favorite tutors

Hello everybody,

I wanted to let you know a few things:

1. The new project phase was released yesterday. It will be due the week after the holidays on January 10.
2. The new chapter is out as well. I extended the deadline for the summary until the day after the holidays to compensate for the little delay.
3. Next week, we will have a Christmas lecture that is a little different than our usual classroom sessions. It won't be super spectacular (no fire or explosions like some rumors apparently say) but I will still try to make it fun. You might even get a small present. If you do not manage to prepare the entire chapter until next week, don't worry, as we won't focus on that super heavily.

Best wishes
Sarah

Hello everybody,

There are a few new items in the timetable. In addition to the class on Wednesdays at 14:00 we now offer:

• Tutorials (Wed, 10-12, in person, HS 003, E1 3): A session with tutors where you can practice a lot of different skills that you will need for the exam. All materials will be uploaded in case you cannot attend.
• Deep Dive Sessions (Fri, 14-16, in person, SR 014 in E1 3): Exciting opportunity to dive deeper into philosophy and get into real philosophical discussions with real philosophers. This is not exam relevant but usually exciting for everybody who wants to know more.
• Project Helpdesks (Thu, 15-17, in person, SR 106 in E1 1): Come and ask questions about the current project phase or your revision of a previous project phase. You can also ask any other question, but questions about the project will be given priority.
• Office Hours (Tue, 12:00-12:20, online): Ask any kind of question you might have. If there are more questions, the office hour will be open longer than 12:20.

The first Project Helpdesk will be today, the first Deep Dive Session will be tomorrow and the first Tutorial will be next week.

Best wishes,
Sarah

Hello everybody,

You now have feedback for the first project phase that you can see on your personal status page. For everybody who missed the first deadline: you now have the possibility to submit your solution again by uploading it under the submission titles "Revise and Resubmit: Project Phase 1".

The next chapter is out, too. Please excuse the delay! Because of this delay, the summary deadline is only the week after next week, to give you enough time to read everything. Also, I will make sure that you can follow the next classroom session even if you did not fully read the chapter.

Best wishes,
Sarah

Hello everybody,

I wanted to remind you that there is no class today, as announced in the first lecture and in the timetable. I know that this is quite unfortunate given that I had to cancel last week’s session, too. Sorry about that!

❌ There will be no classroom session today.
❌ Accordingly, there is no summary deadline today.

However, there are still plenty of things happening:

✅ There will be a new chapter today which you will have to read until next week.
✅ The summaries of chapter 1 and chapter 2 will be due next week, so you have to prepare them accordingly.
✅ Project Phase 1 is still running until Friday.

I am happy to see you next week!

Best wishes,
Sarah

Hello everybody,

Unfortunately, not everything always goes as planned. Since I caught a very substantial cold, there are a few changes to our immediate schedule. Most importantly, there will be no classroom session tomorrow. The (hopefully) complete list of effects includes:

❌ There will be no classroom session tomorrow.
❌ There will be no chapter tomorrow and, accordingly, no new reading.
❌ The deadline for the summary of the current chapter will be moved to the next classroom session.

However, there are still some things happening this week:
✅ Project Phase 1 will be released tomorrow.
✅ Accordingly, you will have to read the project document, if you have not done so already.
✅ The deadline for the survey will be extended, so you still can do the survey.

My apologies that there will be no class tomorrow! I promise to make sure to organize things in a way that none of the above changes will be to your disadvantage in the end.

Best wishes,
Sarah