CS-215 AI Literacy
Topic 03 · Ethics decision studio

AI Ethics and Responsible UseTurn principles into decisions, policies, and evidence.

Ethics is not a list of good words. Students practice how to move from transparency, fairness/justice, responsibility/accountability, privacy, and safety/non-maleficence to rules that people can actually follow and challenge.

Before class

Read the course-owned Four-Review and Principles Map, then open each assigned abstract or instructor-provided excerpt. In class the four reviews are optional theoretical support: you argue the five angles from cases, not from the papers. For the memo, the four reviews are required reading. A review paper synthesizes existing guidelines, governance documents, or research articles to identify recurring patterns, disagreements, and gaps; a review is not one binding policy, and it does not prove that a particular classroom rule will work. Each contributes a different question: Jobin · principles (what values recur), Corrêa · governance (what institutions must do), Giarmoleo · design + use (where concerns arise, including that the tool produces fluent but invented citations and that the student submits the output without verifying it), and Groen · reality + power (who experiences and controls the effects). Jobin maps recurring principle language and does not prescribe one university policy; published guidance is not the same as enforcement or demonstrated impact; the review did not test this university policy; and the three-lens overview does not prove that a particular classroom policy works. Full-paper mastery is not assumed before class. Never purchase a paper — use the accessible route and tell the instructor if one fails.

By the end

Four outcomes you can demonstrate.

The focus is judgment students can show, not vocabulary they can merely repeat.

01 · DISTINGUISH

Separate case facts, sourced claims, reasonable inferences, and unknowns.

02 · APPLY

Use principles, lived realities, power, and responsibility to examine one AI decision.

03 · OPERATIONALIZE

Replace “use AI responsibly” with permissions, disclosure, prohibitions, privacy limits, and assessment rules.

04 · DEFEND

Represent a serious counterargument and explain what evidence or condition could change a judgment.

Class route

Two meetings with separate learning arcs.

Meeting 1 plans 69 taught minutes plus an 11-minute flex and access buffer; Meeting 2 plans 73 plus 7.

MEETING 1

Five Angles, Four Roles

Define five ethical angles, then argue five college cases as a student, a teacher, a university and a policy maker — rotating roles from case to case.

80 MIN
  1. Five words, four rolesHow each round runs: the word, the case as a class, role play at tables, where the roles disagree.
  2. Transparency · definition + Case 1What transparency protects, then an undisclosed rewrite under a silent syllabus, argued in roles.
  3. Fairness + accountability · definitions + Cases 2–3Unequal tool access under one rubric, then an invented citation that was graded and quoted.
  4. Privacy + safety · definitions + Cases 4–5A whole class uploaded to a detector, then a fluent and dangerous lab instruction.
  5. Where the roles disagree + checkpointName where one role wanted what another could not give, then record five decisions.
  6. Flex and access bufferProtect discussion time, role rotation, and transitions.
Start Meeting 1
MEETING 2

From Slogans to University Policy

Run six policy cases as a four-role relay, then write the clause each one needed.

80 MIN
  1. LaunchOne vague rule, six cases, four roles, one laptop per table.
  2. Cases 1–2 · disclosure, protected inputsWhat a disclosure must contain; whose words may enter a tool.
  3. Cases 3–4 · what the grade measures, evidence and appealPermitted AI improvement and fairness; a detector score against the invented-citations lab report.
  4. Cases 5–6 · process evidence, silent defaultWho did the learning; the rule when the assignment says nothing.
  5. Memo + closeTurn the strongest clause into memo section C; confirm the submission boundary.
  6. Flex and access bufferProtect discussion, access questions, and transitions.
In-class exercisePolicy Simulation

Six cases, four roles, one laptop per table. Your table relays through student, teacher, university and policy maker, then writes the clause the case needed. Open it when your instructor names the case; it also works alone.

Open the simulation
Start Meeting 2
Evidence

Responsible AI Policy Memo

Write one integrated, evidence-calibrated policy memo using the class case and assigned reviews.

What to submit

  • Submit through the course LMS before Topic 4 using the filename Lastname-Topic03-PolicyMemo.pdf. The LMS course calendar supplies the exact date, time, timezone, and any late or resubmission rules.
  • Read all four reviews at the assigned depth and complete all four matrix rows. Cite at least two. For the deeper reading, use the listed full discussion/conclusion section for Corrêa or Groen and record one finding, one limitation, and one claim it does not establish.
  • Write 800–900 words under headings A–D: diagnose the case, challenge the ban-and-detector response, write an operational policy, and test its fairness.
  • Include brief references and an approximately 50-word AI-use disclosure, or state that you used no AI.
  • Keep your private judgment on Meeting 2, Case 3 (Student A and Student B) as your baseline for memo section D; it is part of the reasoning process, not a test of choosing the instructor’s opinion.
Open assignment
References

Core sources and optional extensions.

The class deck contains the required explanation. These links support verification, deeper reading, or alternate access.

Topic 3 Policy SimulationIn-class, Meeting 2: six cases, four roles, one laptop per table.Topic 3 Policy Lab DayOne 80-minute class after Topic 3: individual baseline, group stress tests, bounded critic, defense, and memo-evidence handoff.Four-Review and Principles MapRequired course-owned map: what each review contributes, its limitation, five plain-language principles, and their governance questions.Printable Four-Review and Principles MapOne-page landscape PDF of the required course-owned map.Responsible AI Policy MemoComplete assignment, reading path, rubric, privacy, and AI-use boundaries.Printable Policy Memo PDFPrint or annotate the same assignment offline.AI Ethics: From Principles to PowerCourse synthesis connecting the four reviews without treating them as one shared framework.AI Ethics in College AssignmentsCourse application of the reviews to disclosure, privacy, fair process, policy, and assessment.Jobin, Ienca, and Vayena (2019)Global landscape of 84 AI ethics guidelines.Corrêa et al. (2023)Review of 200 guidelines and governance documents.Giarmoleo et al. (2024)Systematic review of ethical concerns and responses.Groen, Sharon, and Becker (2026)Principles, lived realities, and power structures.NIST AI Risk Management FrameworkOptional instructor-guided risk-management reference.U.S. Copyright Office AI InitiativeOptional official source hub for authorship and copyright questions.