Course Project – Recommendations Essay
Over the past several weeks, you have conducted extensive research on your chosen technology to explore its history, current strengths and weaknesses, and its potential opportunities and threats from an ethical and equity perspective. You are becoming a credible expert able to deliver insightful recommendations to powerful change-makers who in turn can influence the technology for the benefit of individuals, societies, cultures, communities, and their environments.
Your task over the next 2 weeks is to synthesize the information you have gathered and develop specific and practical recommendations your audience can use to maximize the technology’s benefits and opportunities while minimizing or resolving problems and threats.
Remember that your audience is the owners, developers, regulators and/or other powerful change-makers who directly influence the technology as we see it today and in the future. Individual consumers are not your audience, since you cannot effectively address them with an essay, and they cannot individually implement changes that will have a systemic influence on the technology.
As you prepare your recommendation, reflect on and apply the ethical theory you believe to be most appropriate for the situation. Will you maximize utility, focus on social benefit, follow certain values or moral rules?
Your research-supported recommendations section should provide one or more specific, detailed, practical, ethics-based suggestions for how your audience can best develop, implement, and manage the selected technology. They might include expansions to the technology’s abilities, development of new applications, regulations to control the safety or equity of its use, distribution to new people and places, and so on.
Please review the Course Project Overview page in Modules to guide your project completion. As a reminder, the template shared earlier suggested the following outline for your recommendations and conclusion sections:
Recommendation
First recommended action to resolve or at least mitigate the technology’s current and potential negative impacts on some or all stakeholders and/or to maximize current and potential positive impacts of the technology
Specific people, organizations, or agencies responsible for various aspects of the action
Action to be taken, such as specific policy changes, investments, infrastructure projects, or other interventions, including specific tasks, locations, communities
Details about resources needed, costs, timeline for completion, potential barriers, etc.
Expected positive outcomes or benefits
Additional recommended action(s)
People
Action
Details
Outcomes
Conclusion
Concise review of history leading to the current situation and potential future impacts
Summary of recommended action(s) the audience and others should take to address or mitigate problems and maximize benefits
Closing call to action
First step
Vision for the future
No assignment is due this week, but you will share several paragraphs from your recommendations section in this week’s Discussion. By collaborating with peers and professor, you can gain insights to help strengthen your argument and improve your recommendations’ practicality and potential effectiveness.
Remember to take advantage of the various tutoring options as you prepare your final essay.
Requirements for the final Recommendations Essay due at the end of Week 7:
Researched, ethics-based analysis of the historical, current, and potential future implications of a specific, emerging technology, all supporting practical recommendations for enhancing the technology’s benefits while reducing or eliminating negative impacts on people and places
1200-1500 words
Four or more academic-quality sources used and cited to support each section of the essay
Word document formatted in the current APA style.
