HOLMES
INSTITUTE
FACULTY
OF HIGHER
EDUCATION
UNDERGRADUATE
PROGRAM
Assessment Details and Submission Guidelines
Trimester T2 2020
Unit Code HS2121
Unit Title Professional Issues in IS, Ethics & Practice
Assessment Type Individual Assignment
Assessment Title Individual case study analysis (Report)
Purpose of the assessment (with
ULO Mapping) Students will be able to:
a. Demonstrate theoretical and practical knowledge of professional practice and ethics in the Information Systems discipline.
b. Understand and review the roles and responsibilities of Information Systems professionals in organisations and society
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c. Understand the role and application of standards, codes of conduct and legislative/regulatory obligations on the level of professionalism of the ICT industry.
d. Develop an awareness and skills relating to written and oral communication vital for professional Information Systems practitioners.
e. Be aware of the issues and challenges (ethical, legal, technological, social, political etc) that impact upon the administration and leadership of contemporary organizations.
Weight 20% of the total assessments
Total Marks 100% scale to 20%
Word limit 1000-1500 words
Due Date Week 07
Submission Guidelines • All work must be submitted on Blackboard by the due date along with a completed Assignment Cover Page.
• The assignment must be in MS Word format, 1.5 spacing, 11-pt Calibri (Body) font and 2 cm margins on all four sides of your page with appropriate section headings.
• Reference sources must be cited in the text of the report, and listed appropriately at the end in a reference list using Harvard referencing style.
2018
HS2121 Professional Issues in IS, Ethics & Practice 1
HOLMES
INSTITUTE
FACULTY
OF HIGHER
EDUCATION
UNDERGRADUATE
PROGRAM
Academic Integrity
Holmes Institute is committed to ensuring and upholding Academic Integrity, as Academic Integrity is integral to maintaining academic quality and the reputation of Holmes’ graduates. Accordingly, all assessment tasks need to comply with academic integrity guidelines. Table 1 identifies the six categories of Academic Integrity breaches. If you have any questions about Academic Integrity issues related to your assessment tasks, please consult your lecturer or tutor for relevant referencing guidelines and support resources. Many of these resources can also be found through the Study Sills link on Blackboard.
Academic Integrity breaches are a serious offence punishable by penalties that may range from deduction of marks, failure of the assessment task or unit involved, suspension of course enrolment, or cancellation of course enrolment.
Table 1: Six categories of Academic Integrity breaches
Plagiarism Reproducing the work of someone else without attribution. When a student submits their own work on multiple occasions this is known as self-plagiarism.
Collusion Working with one or more other individuals to complete an assignment, in a way that is not authorised.
Copying Reproducing and submitting the work of another student, with or without their knowledge. If a student fails to take reasonable precautions to prevent their own original work from being copied, this may also be considered an offence.
Impersonation Falsely presenting oneself, or engaging someone else to present as oneself, in an in-person examination.
Contract cheating Contracting a third party to complete an assessment task, generally in exchange for money or other manner of payment.
Data fabrication and falsification Manipulating or inventing data with the intent of supporting false conclusions, including manipulating images.
Source: INQAAHE, 2020
HOLMES
INSTITUTE
FACULTY
OF HIGHER
EDUCATION
UNDERGRADUATE
PROGRAM
Assignment Case Study:
Facebook Troubles with User Privacy
On Christmas 2012, Randi Zuckerberg posted a photo of her family to her private Facebook page.
Unfortunately, the privacy settings on Facebook can confuse even the company’s top executives. Randi, the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a former senior Facebook executive, soon found that her photo had leaked to the general public and had been tweeted to thousands of people. Randi tweeted Callie Schweitzer, Director of Marketing at VOX Media, who had first posted the photo to Twitter: “Not sure where you got this photo. I posted it to friends only on FB. You reposting it to
Twitter is way uncool.”
This incident came only 11 days after Facebook had released new privacy controls meant to help Facebook users understand who is able to see the content they post. A new shortcuts toolbar allowed users to control “Who can see my stuff” without having to go to a new page. The new release also offered in-product education. Messages explained how content that users hide in their timelines could still appear in their news feed and on other pages. Evidently, these controls did not go far enough to protect Randi Zuckerberg’s privacy.
In fact, since Facebook was launched, it has had ongoing issues with addressing the privacy concerns of its users. In late 2011, Facebook settled a suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that charged Facebook with deceiving its customers about privacy issues since 2009. (The FTC regulates companies that take credit card information from consumers.) Facebook claimed that it would not share personal information with advertisers, that third-party applications would only be given the information they needed to function properly, that no one could access photos or videos from deleted accounts, and—perhaps most relevant to Randi Zuckerberg’s experience—that information posted to an individual’s Friends List would remain private. The FTC found that the company had not delivered on any of these claims. As part of the settlement, Facebook agreed to stop these practices until they had a better disclaimer and opt-out procedure. Mark Zuckerberg also issued a statement saying that, over the course of the previous 18 months, Facebook had introduced 20 new tools to address these and other privacy related concerns.
However, by August 2012, the FTC had launched a new investigation into Facebook privacy practices. Facebook had partnered with Datalogix—a company that collects credit card purchasing information, such as where users are shopping and what they buy. Facebook users were included in Datalogix advertising research although they were not informed of this. Moreover, if Facebook users did, in fact, find out about the use of their private data, they could only opt out of the research by going to the Datalogix homepage.
Facebook has also had privacy problems arise with its subsidiaries. In September 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram, a social media application that allows users to upload photos for long-term storage and sharing. Instagram boasted a user-base of 100 million users. On December 17, 2012, Instagram posted a privacy notice claiming the right to sell all photographs posted to its site without compensation to the user. The company further claimed that it could sell any other metadata associated with the photo, such as usernames, gender, addresses, mobile phone number, and email addresses—all information users were required to provide when setting up an account. Instagram asked users who did not agree with the notice to remove their accounts within a few weeks. The new policy would go into effect for all users who accessed their accounts after January 19, 2013.
The announcement garnered a great deal of public resentment. On December 18, 2012, Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom clarified that, despite the notice, the company had no current plans to sell users’ photos. He explained that the company would be redrafting the privacy notice. In the meantime, competitors like Flickr have picked up a larger market share as a result of Instagram’s privacy misstep.89
Facebook is a powerful tool for communicating and reconnecting with friends and family. The service it provides is so valuable that users continue to flock to it. However, with every step forward, Facebook seems to take one or two steps backward in its protection of user privacy. Whether at the hands of the FTC or the competition, Facebook will no doubt continue to face repercussions for its decisions.
Although Randi Zuckerberg may have blamed Callie Schweitzer for poor online manners, it is likely that most of the billion Facebook users would prefer to rely on some mechanism beyond social media etiquette to protect their photographs and private information.
Discussion Questions: You are required to answer the following questions in you report:
1. Do you think that Facebook or careless, uninformed users should be held responsible for privacy issues related to using Facebook? Explain.
2. What additional measures should Facebook take to protect user privacy? What additional actions are required on the part of Facebook users to maintain adequate privacy?
3. Describe a privacy issue so serious that it would cause you to stop using Facebook.
Sources:
Terri Schwartz, “Randi Zuckerberg’s Family Photo Leaks Because of Confusing Facebook Settings,” Zap2it, December 27, 2012, http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2012/12/randi-zuckerbergs-family-photoleaks-because-of-confusing-facebook-settings.html; Debra Donston-Miller, “Facebook’s New Privacy
Policies: The Good News,” InformationWeek, December 14, 2012, www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/social_networking_ consumer/240144443/facebooksnew-privacy-policies-the-good-news; Thomas Claburn, “Facebook Settles FTC Charges, Admits Mistakes,” InformationWeek, November 29, 2011,
www.informationweek.com/security/privacy/facebook-settles-ftccharges-admits-mist/232200385; Jeff
Goldman, “Privacy Concerns Raised Over Facebook-Datalogix Partnership,” eSecurity Planet, September 25, 2012, www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/privacy-concernsraised-overfacebook-datalogix-partnership.html; Charles Arthur, “Facebook Forces Instagram Users to Allow It To Sell Their Uploaded Photos,” The Guardian, December 18, 2012,
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/18/facebook-instagram-sell-uploaded-photos; “Humbled
Instagram Backs Down on Controversial Changes to Serve User Photos As Ads,” Independent.ie, December 21, 2012, www.independent.ie/business/technology/humbled-instagram-backs-down-oncontroversial-changes-to-serve-user-photos-as-ads3333391.html.
REPORT STRUCTURE:
1. Introduction – State an introduction of the case.
2. Discussion – Answer and discuss the “Discussion Questions” above and build your arguments into a cohesive thread, presenting your observations and findings as well.
3. Recommendation – This is the section where you present your recommendations
4. Conclusion – Summarise your findings, consolidating and drawing attention to the main points of the report.
5. References. (cite here the references you have used in your report)
PLEASE NOTE:
• All assignments must be submitted electronically ONLY, uploaded to Blackboard and Submission of SafeAssign. Submission deadlines are strictly enforced and a late submission incurs penalties.
• DO NOT SHARE YOUR ASSIGNMENT WITH OTHER STUDENTS under no circumstances even after the deadline and after you submitted it in the Blackboard or even after you have marked. If there will be any similarity detected by SafeAssign or the marker, it is an academic misconduct case and BOTH of the students will get ZERO and will be reported to the institution for further investigation.
Marking criteria
Marking criteria Weighting
Presentation (Report structure, Layout, Grammar and spelling, Written style and expression) 10%
Referencing 10%
Answering and discussing the questions (20% each) 60%
Quality of evaluation 10%
Recommendations and justification 10%
TOTAL Weight for this assignment marking: 100 (Total of 100 marks to be scaled to 20% of actual marks for this assignment) 100%
HS2121 Professional Issues in IS, Ethics & Practice 7
Marking Rubrics
Grades Excellent Very Good Good Satisfactory Unsatisfactory
Presentation
/10 Professional presentation with excellent writing skills Professional presentation with very good writing skills Professional presentation
with good
writing skills Professional presentation and well written Poor presentation
Evaluation Quality /10 Assessed critically in depth and suggested excellent strategies logically and presented in very convincing manner Assessed
critically and
suggested strategies logically and presented in convincing manner Assessed well and suggested strategies logically and presented in well Assessed and suggested strategies Argument is confused and disjointed.
Discussion
/60 Demonstrated excellent ability to think critically and sourced reference material appropriately Demonstrated excellent ability to think critically but did not source reference material appropriately Demonstrate d ability to
think critically and sourced reference material appropriately Demonstrated
ability to think critically and did not source reference material appropriately Did not demonstrate ability to think critically and did not source reference material appropriately
Recommendation /10 Logic is clear and easy to follow with strong arguments Consistency logical and convincing Mostly consistent logical and convincing Adequate cohesion and conviction Argument is confused and disjointed
Harvard or IEEE
Reference style
/10 Clear styles with excellent source of references. Clear referencing style Generally good referencing style Sometimes
clear referencing style Lacks consistency with many errors
HS2121 Professional Issues in IS, Ethics & Practice 8