The Tenant Management System: A Case Study
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Topic area |
Intellectual Property |
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Target audience |
Undergraduate or graduate in CS/IS |
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Activity type |
Research and class discussion |
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Time Required |
Internet exercise: One to two hour student time to research topic on the Internet and 50 minutes of class time to discuss findings. Case Study: 50 minutes of class time for discussion of case study. |
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Attachments |
Internet exercise |
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Additional materials |
ACM Code of Ethics or IEEE Code of ethics |
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Background needed to complete the assignment |
None |
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References |
Students will do an Internet search on intellectual property rights. |
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Last modified |
August 1999 |
Abstract:
A team of students in a senior projects class writes a highly specialized tenant management software for the owners of a multi-unit apartment complex. A team member’s wife gives a copy of the software to a third party. The object of the assignment is to analyze the student's ethical responsibility to the owners of the apartment complex, to the tenants, to the school, to his or her profession, and to society and determine what action must be taken, if any, in resolve any ethical problems that may have arisen.
Goals for the activity:
The goals of this exercise is to help students understand the concepts and arguments concerning intellectual property and to discuss the ethical considerations between a systems developer and the user requesting the system.
Knowledge/skills/attitudes to be developed:
By doing this activity, students will gain insight into ethical issues concerning their use of software and the development of systems.
Procedure:
Students will research the Internet to find 10 articles relating to both legal issues and ethical issues concerning intellectual property. A class discussion on the issues found from this research will help students formulate an understanding of the topic.
A class discussion of the assigned case study in the next class period will enable students to apply the research theory to a real world problem.
Assessing outcomes:
Results of the Internet search can be graded for coverage of the topic and relevance to the case study. Participation in class discussions can be graded based on some predefined standard for class discussions as defined by the instructor.
Additional remarks:
None.
Author contact information:
Dr. Tony Fabbri
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Lake Superior State University
Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783
E-mail: afabbri@gw.lssu.edu
(906)-635-2747