| Topic area | Intellectual Property |
| Target audience | Undergraduate and graduate level IS/CS/CE/EE majors in general. |
| Activity type | Reading assignment, worksheet, class discussion. |
| Time required | In class time: 50-minutes to 75-minutes. Out of class time: 1 to 2 hours |
| Attachments | Worksheet |
| Additional materials | A copy of the article "Sharp reaction to piracy article"
by Bruce Conradie in Computers in Africa, June, 1998, pp 4-6. To help the students understand the issue better, the following two additional short articles are also provided: "Forty-three percent of Canadians condone software piracy Decima survey reveals", Canada News Wire. ( http://www.newswire.ca/releases/March1998/12/c2701.html) "A software piracy lesson",Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1998. |
| Background needed to complete the assignment | Since this article is not easily accessible from other sources, students need to be given a copy of this article. Students should be able to read critically and form a personal informed opinion. |
| References | None. |
| Last modified | August 1998 |
Goals for the activity:
This is a multi-purpose activity intended to:
Knowledge / skills / attitudes to be developed (behavioral objectives):
By doing this activity, students will sharpen their critical reasoning and
thinking skills, gain insight into the issues, develop an appreciation of
differing views and learn to accommodate others' views without
compromising their personal ones.
Procedure:
Since the activity may involve reading about six pages, it may take long for
students to carefully read it, complete the worksheet and discuss their response
in one class meeting. So the preferred approach is to give the students the
articles together with the worksheet as a homework assignment to do the worksheet
and prepare for a discussion of their responses. If the first part of the works
heet is to be graded then it should be collected at the beginning of the class
period.
Class discussion can proceed by first calling on students to give definitions of terminolgies and then engage in further substantive discussions. For each of the subjective questions, explicitly ask after the first response if there are any other different responses. Alternatively, the class can be broken into small groups, with each group assigned to come up with a conscious response to one of the first five questions on the second part of the worksheet.
Assessing outcomes:
The simplest assessment of outcome is to grade the responses on the first
part of the worksheet. These questions are primarily objective or factual aimed
for student understanding of the terminology. The questions on the second part
are more subjective and may need more reflective time. Accessing this part of
the worksheet, therefore, may be based on a variety of ways including grading
discussion participation or written essays based on the discussion.
Additional remarks:
None.
Author contact information:
Joseph M. Kizza
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Chattanooga, TN 37403
Fax: (423) 755-5229
E-mail: Joseph-Kizza@utc.edu