Writing Assignments Ethics

Short Writing Assignment #1: 600 words

• Stage 1: Please write an 600 word maximum answer to the following question by September 19, 2020 11:59pm.

• Topic: Sapolsky Question will be posted here.

• Advice about collaboration: I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes, and your own notes. Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. It's a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. Put a word count in the file.
2. In Word, check "File" and "Options" to make sure your name does not appear as author. You may want to change this to "anon" for this document.
3. Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font, using normal margins.
4. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "Sapolsky".
5. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Points dropbox.

• Stage 2: Please evaluate four student answers and provide brief comments and a score. Review the Assignment Rubric for this exercise. We will be using the Flow, Content, and Insight areas of the rubric for this assignment. Complete your evaluations and scoring by Thursday, March 7, 2019, 11:59pm.

• Use this Google Form to evaluate four peer papers. The papers will be in our shared folder, but please do not edit or add comments to the papers directly. This will compromise your anonymity.
• To determine the papers you need to peer review, I will send you a key with animal names in alphabetically order, along with saint names. You will find your animal name and review the next four (4) animals' work.
• Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go ahead and review enough papers to get to four reviews. This assures that you will get enough "back evaluations" of your work to get a good average for your peer review credit. (You will also have an opportunity to challenge a back evaluation score of your reviewing that is out of line with the others.)

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, I will give you the higher of the two grades. Up to 14 points.

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [1]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. Up to 10 points, in Q&W.

• Back evaluations are due TBD, 11:59pm.

Assignments

Final Essays

• Please write two 600 word essays on the following two prompts. The deadline for this assignment is Thursday, May 9, 2019, 11:59pm.

• Topic A: Imagine you are addressing a group (co-workers, legislators, friends) who have fallen into divisive and uncooperative partisan behavior. You can't talk to them in person, but, you can write them a letter summarizing the major findings from your study of ethics and morality that bear on understanding political and moral difference. Present a brief summary of those findings and be sure to say how this should change the group's thinking and behavior.

• Topic B: Choose one of the following topics for topic B:

• B1. Assess the current options for strengthening the global "right to protect" as a means of addressing a range of problems from endemic violence in a country to corruption and genocide. Are stronger globalist approaches attractive? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Be sure to make an overall recommendation on the basis of your assessment of options.
• B2. What are the major moral grounds for having a positive attitude toward global free trade? What are the moral considerations for being sceptical about global free trade? Looking at the options for advancing positive values and minimizing moral harms, what strategies (consider nation based, multilateral, and globalist) would you advocate and to what extent to you think global free trade is, on balance, promotes morally positive values and social outcomes.

• Collaboration: Unlike the papers, these essays are your final exam. Therefore, please do not confer with each other about them.

• Prepare your essays and submit them in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. Please put your word count in the file.
2. Format your essays in double spaced text in a 12 point font, using normal margins.
3. Save each essay in a separate file, using the ".docx" file format. Use the filename "A" for the first essay and "B1" or "B2" for the second essay.
4. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Final Essays dropbox.