Due: Week 12, before class, in the Evaluation folder,
Content:
For your major project, you are to research and write a paper (introduction, support paragraphs, and conclusion, between four to six pages long) on a matter of ethical concern in your discipline. You will need to find a specific problem focus on. This might have to do, say, with on-the-job personalinteraction, or the given code of ethics for a profession, or ethical consequences of how a certain profession operates.
Solve the specific problem using the Ethical Decision Making Model(ACT) discussed in class. Examine the Code of Ethics of the profession.
In order to give your paper a theoretical focus, you will also need to choose one of ourtheoretical approaches to ethical thinking, which you will clearly identify and through which you will approach your topic; be specific here, as well, since each theoretical approachhassub-schools that differ – in other words, explain the school well too. The theories we have been looking at are, broadly,
Consequentialist (Teleological)
o E.g. Utilitarianism
Nonconsequentialist (Deontological)
o E.g. The categorical imperative
You mustfind at least three (3) reputable sources to draw your information from, and only two of these can be internet sources. While you might make use of Wikipedia to help in your research, you cannot use it as one of these sources (nor can the textbook be used as a main source).
Form:
The project will be graded 60% for content, 40% for form. To have good form, your essay must
have a title page (with effective title) and a Works Cited page (in APA format)
be double-spaced, in Times New Roman, 12-pt. font, with 1¼” margins
have numbered pages (beginning after the title page)
be written with good grammar, diction, and spelling
Advice on Essay Writing
Your major project is to be a five-paragraph paper, researched and written on one ethical problem, grounded in one ethical theory. Now, this may or may not sound straightforward enough, but you might want to keep the following points in mind.
Length: As indicated in the outline for the assignment, the essay must be between four and six pages long (double-spaced, in Times New Roman 12-point font). Does that sound easy? Yes and no (better to think “no”!). It is often said that longer essays are easier to write than short ones, because you have to be that much more careful with the words that you commit to the final draft.
Content: What do you do with the space that you’ve got? Well, you have five paragraphs to play with. Where does that leave you? You’ll have an introduction, three support paragraphs, and a conclusion. That’s not a lot, but you’ll have to say something of some depth and substance, not saying too little, and not trying to say too much. Now, how do you do that?
You’ll need to give some background to the topic, to let readers know exactly what it is that you’re looking at (assume they don’t know anything about the topic). The introduction is ideal for this, so that you can say what any uninformed or “naïve” reader needs to know about the problem before tackling the ethical issues. Specific details can always be brought up in the body paragraphs, when they become relevant.
The next three paragraphs should all address some distinct problem in the discussion. In other words, there shouldn’t be any significant overlap in the discussion from one paragraph to the next. Now, just what are you going to say? Make your essay original and insightful – find your “aha!” moment, where you see your subject in a way that makes it important to you and other people in a way you hadn’t thought about before, and find three ways to express that insight.
As for the ethical theory: while you have to make your argument using one of these, maybe you see people arguing using other perspectives that you don’t agree with. Why not discuss these too? Just be self-aware about the perspective that you are using, and make it obvious for the reader, so that how you understand the theory that you’re using is obvious, and someone who didn’t know about it would understand it as well.
You shouldn’t introduce anything new or important in the conclusion, but use it to reinforce the points you’ve already made. Don’t repeat any of your language here; find new ways to say the same thing.
Readability: Organisation is very, very important! Once your paragraphs are organised, make sure that you show this organisation in your thesis statement in the first paragraph (where you preview the content of the essay), topic sentences around the beginning of each body paragraph, and an effective review of the material in the conclusion. When you boil your discussion down like this, it lets the reader concentrate on the actual merit of your arguments in detail.
Be careful with the language that you use, too. Don’t aim for sophisticated or fancy sounding language, but use simple, direct vocabulary; explain or define any ambiguous terms to get rid of any confusion. Avoid meandering sentences, too; shorter sentences are usually more effective.
Format: All of the essays landing in the Evaluation folder should look identical; only the content should set them apart. This should be pretty straightforward to get down, though; see the assignment for a checklist. Note: sources need to be cited in APA format. In the essay itself, you put just the author’s last name (or, if there isn’t one, the first couple of words of the title), the year, and the page number (if available), in brackets, before the period in the sentence. In the full reference, on the Works Cited page, the date of publication is the second thing mentioned, after the author (or title, again, if there’s no author’s name available). And so on. For useful guides, see http://www.liu.edu/CWIS/CWP/library/workshop/citapa.htm (for good “Works Cited” style) and http://library.concordia.ca/help/howto/apa.php (for good “in-text reference” advice).
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