Analyzing Ethical Issues In A Computer Centre: A Case Study On Doing Ethics Technique Essay.

The 'Doing Ethics' technique is a process for analysing ethical issues in any scenario. It doesn't guarantee that what you come up with will be the best solution, but it does help you to think ethically. The technique may seem a little vague and perhaps lacking guidance, however the following might help you to understand how to apply the technique in order to better understand ethical analysis.

1. What's going on?

2.What are the facts?

3.What are the issues?

4.Who is affected?

5. What are the ethical issues and implications?

6. What can be done about it?

Understanding the Issue

The purpose of this document is to analyze an issue where a student in a computer centre changed the deadline of his project submission by improper means. This document will be focusing on all the factors which are related to the case. This document gives an idea about the incident which occurred in the computer centre, all the facts involved in the case, which stakeholders are impacted by the case, all the ethical issues related with the case ad its resolving techniques in details (Burton, Brundrett and Jones 2014). The advantages of the resolved techniques are described in details in the later sections of the paper. Also, the best resolving techniques is mentioned along with its validation.

1.This unit of the document will be focusing on the issue created in a computer centre where a student named as Joe who was working on a project for his course in Computer Science subject, was about to submit his project on a particular date but he missed the date. In that particular computer centre, he previously worked as a programmer, he is used to all the loop holes of their computer systems so he decided to change the date of his project submission. He had the login credentials of the master account of the computer systems and was also acquainted with all the procedures of that institution. He successfully changed the time of his project submission by giving himself more time, and he completed the project easily (Xu, Hu. and Zhang 2013). This document will be focusing on the ethical moralities of this incident and will also provide effective resolving techniques which should have been incorporated by Joe instead of what he has done in details. This issue can be analyzed from the point of view of both Joe as well as the authorities of the computer centre.

 2.This issue helps in raising a very significant question about the moral perspectives followed by Joe referring to what happened after he missed the deadline of submitting his computer science project in a computer centre.

This case helps in understanding the unethical side of Joe when he changed the deadline time of his computer science project by unfair methods due to his past experience in that computer centre as a programmer.

He had ideas about the time allocation procedures of each of the students of different classes of that computer centre and using all his skills and knowledge which he gained from that institute in the previous year he accessed the login credentials of the master account of the management system of the institution. After getting the access to the management system of that computer centre he updated his deadline of project submission by giving himself more time than was allocated to him.

Identification of the Stakeholders

After accomplishing his target, he finished off his project without any difficulty. The possibility that Joe receiving a heavy penalty from the computer centre as a result of missing the guideline is forestalled due to his unethical hacking of the management systems of his computer centre.

This act of Joe can be completely supported as this saved him from facing trouble and criticism from the authorities who are in charge of his projects. Also, from a different angle it can be said that this act may have a bad influence on other students as they might want to replicate what he has done(Curbelo and Cruz 2013).

3.This case has a lot of significant sides which needs to be examined and analysed so that the issues are not repeated in the future. The issues related to the case are the allocation of the deadlines of Joe who is a computer science student (Bonnice 2014).

The other issue can be the fixed amount of time selected for the students regarding the submission of their project. The time period of project submission in the computer centre should be implemented in such a way so that the students have an abundant amount of time for studying the project well before working on it. The purpose of the working on a project should be resolved in a proper manner so that it can benefit the student in the future while working on similar types of projects. The completion of a project also provides every student an approach on how to deal with the complexities which arises while conducting the project.

The reason behind Joe not completing his project is also considered as an issue because it is the duty of every student to complete his project on the time period assigned by the authorities, the completion of the project will be beneficial for the students to have an idea about the time management in each module of the project.

4.This particular issue includes the involvement of both student and also the authorities of the computer centre. The scenario which was created by Joe by hacking into the project allocation management can have multiple consequences. The possibilities of what might have happened to him or any other student who are planning to replicate what he has done for his own benefits are discussed in this section of the document.

Ethical Issues and Implications

If the authorities of the computer centre acknowledged the changes which Joe has made then he can have been subjected to heavy penalty as per the rules and regulations of the computer centre. The authorities of the computer centre are affected by the issue as well because of Joe changing his project submission time unethically (Knox 2015).

From the professional ethics perspectives, it can be said that the computer centre are not true to their profession and are becoming biased to specific students which is hampering and affecting the rules and regulations of the computer centre and is also giving a wrong message to all the students who are aspiring to get admitted to that computer centre for various computer science subjects (Fink 2013).

The degree of effect may vary in this case as no other student may know about the unethical activity of Joe, along with that it can be said that if this activity of Joe gets leaked then the entire authorities of the computer centre may come under scanner of the state legislation creating a major ethical issue all-round the educational fraternity.

5.The ethical issues involved in this case is the method by which Joe who is working on a project for his computer science course in a computer centre, changed the submission time of his project submission. This case can be judged on various ethical grounds (Weiss, 2014).

Considering the action of Joe, the necessity of acknowledging the right and wrong should be understood so that the negative effects of this case can be avoided in the future. This issue may have a direct negative impact on the society.

Every student irrespective of their age and type of degree should be having the same ethical perceptions which will be useful for them as well as for the organisations in which they are studying. A student should be more careful about their activities through out their term as a student in a particular organisation their activities may be playing an influential role in the society and the entire educational fraternity (Peters 2015).

Considering the fact that that no incident is fully good or bad, in this case from the perspective of Joe it was a decent decision as his missed his opportunity to submit the project on time but from the perspectives of computer centre it can be understood that due the unethical hacking by Joe they are indirectly being biased towards a particular student which are against the moral values of that institution. The ethical standards of the computer centre should be maintained by all the students who are pursuing their course there (Schmidt and Döweling 2014).

Effective Resolving Techniques

6.There are numerous ways by which the ethical issue related with the case be resolved such as while allocating the guidelines by the authorities they should be aware of the time required to complete the project rather than just allocating any time. The persons who are concerned with the allocation of time for the projects in that computer centre should be having proper skills and knowledge about the projects which are conducted by the students so that they can have an idea of the time required to complete the project, it will be helping them to set the deadlines for the projects as well (Noddings 2013). The most important ethical issue in this case is the unethical hacking activity of Joe, his only purpose was to change the deadline and giving himself much more time so that he can finish off the project with ease. But the procedure by which he changed his deadline is completely unethical and this could have been avoided with a better alternative such as he could have to directly approach the authorities and talk to them about his problem. He should have communicated to all the authorities who are in charge of their projects as some of them could have straightaway rejected his proposal of increasing the deadline because allowing him may have an influence on the other students as well (Hillgren, 2013).

7.The different options behind resolving this case are described in this section of the document.

• Improved security systems: The systems through which the data of the students are stored should be more secured as compared with the existing security. The security service provided to the systems should be properly analysed on a regular basis so that there are no loop holes in the system. Special notification specification should be incorporated in to the system as it will help the user of that system know if there are any kinds of unauthorized access to the systems. This process will be helping in securing both the students as well as the campus authorities (Afreen, 2014).
• Proper knowledge and training: All the stakeholders of the campus should be given proper training prior to their course about the importance of their topic and all the other necessary details so that they can have a proper approach for all their future activities in the institution (Meso, Ding and Xu 2013).
• Role of the deadline allocators: The persons concerned with the allocation of the guidelines should be having proper knowledge about the topics that students generally choose. That person should be aware of all the complexities and difficulties which are generally faced by the students while completing the projects, and he should consider all the important factors which can delay the project before assigning the deadlines.  

8.Among the three options, the second option which states about the necessity of training of all the stake holders by an experienced professional of the institution seems to be the best possible option to resolve the mentioned dispute (B. Kim 2014). The training will be beneficial to understand all the recent related ethical issues. Apart from choosing the best solution the fact about these solutions techniques are that they cannot work every time they are applied in the institution, so the best way to solve this issue is to find an appropriate approach if similar issues arise in future and the training session will be helping the students as well as the other stakeholders to have that perfect attitude to deal with the challenges.

Conclusion

From this above writing it can be concluded that each of our activity in our daily life has an ethical side and we should be maintaining our moral ethics in all our associations whether it is an educational institution or somewhere else. This case revolves around Joe for his unethical hacking in an educational institution where he is pursuing his course in computer science.  Repetitions of such act should not be encouraged as it may have a direct negative impact on the society as well.

References

Afreen, R., 2014. Bring your own device (BYOD) in higher education: opportunities and challenges. International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science, 3(1), pp.233-236.

Kim, E., 2014. Recommendations for information security awareness training for college students. Information Management & Computer Security, 22(1), pp.115-126.

Bonnice, S., 2014. Computer Programmer. Simon and Schuster.

Burton, N., Brundrett, M. and Jones, M., 2014. Doing your education research project. Sage.

Curbelo, A.M. and Cruz, A., 2013. Faculty Attitudes toward Teaching Ethical Hacking to Computer and Information Systems Undergraduates Students. In Proceedings of the Eleventh LACCEI Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology.

Fink, L.D., 2013. Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. John Wiley & Sons.

Hillgren, P.A., 2013. Participatory design for social and public innovation: Living Labs as spaces for agonistic experiments and friendly hacking. Public and collaborative: Exploring the intersection of design, social innovation and public policy, pp.75-88.

Knox Everette, W., 2015. Irresponsible Disclosure: Google's Project Zero Deadline Game.

Meso, P., Ding, Y. and Xu, S., 2013. Applying protection motivation theory to information security training for college students. Journal of Information Privacy and Security, 9(1), pp.47-67.

Noddings, N., 2013. Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education. Univ of California Press.

Peters, R.S., 2015. Ethics and Education (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.

Schmidt, B. and Döweling, S., 2014, October. Designing for information work at the computer workplace with activity theory. In Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational (pp. 648-657). ACM.

Weiss, J.W., 2014. Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Xu, Z., Hu, Q. and Zhang, C., 2013. Why computer talents become computer hackers. Communications of the ACM, 56(4), pp.64