Author: Cadence Daniels

Week 10 – Project Update

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Engineering Ethics & Bias Awareness

I’ll be following up with the undergraduate Tandon professors I contacted to obtain syllabi for their ethics/philosophy courses. In the meantime, I’m working to simulate this Engineering Ethics Activity from Utah State University and incorporate elements from smaller exercises that I’ve found. The issue I’m currently running into is that the target audiences for almost all of the activities I’ve found have been for young children (behavioral studies) or college students (psychology students). Hopefully, the Tandon syllabi can help me to target the conversation at a higher learning level.

Week 9 – Project Progress

Cadence Daniels 1 Comment

As per our in-class discussion last week, I have decided to condense my solution to one that measures short-term awareness, not long-term introspection. Instead of having a full course, I’m working to develop an exercise that can push entry-level engineering students to see the effect of bias in products.

I’ve begun reaching out to professors of similar courses at NYU Tandon to review their syllabi, relevant coursework and activities. I’ve added the descriptions for the two courses below.

 

HU-UY 347 | LA-UY 143 | PL-UY 2064 | PL-UY 2144 Ethics and Technology
This course considers how technology shapes and patterns—and is shaped and patterned by—human activities, from a moral point of view. This course focuses on how the technologically textured world changes human life, individually, socially and culturally, for better or worse. The course considers several views of technology and several ethical theories for evaluating technology. The course explains the structures of change and transformation and develops critical forms of thought, so that students can understand, evaluate, appreciate and criticize technological development.

PL-UY 2204W Philosophy of Technology
This survey of prominent approaches to the philosophy of technology asks: What are the philosophical problems presented by technology? How does technology influence ethics, politics and society? What is the relation of philosophy of technology to the traditional branches of philosophy (aesthetics, epistemology, metaphysics)?

Week 8 – Restructure ITP

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I used the design of MAGNET to remodel ITP. Placing staff and administration offices on one side and learning environments (classrooms and workspace) on the other helps to separate activity and improves navigation. Concentrating the hardware spaces (Physical Computing & Shop) on one end of the floor reduces the “skill intimidation” faced by students entering spaces with unfamiliar equipment. One issue in this redesign is it doesn’t promote “spontaneous ideation” that the open spaces in MAGNET do.

 

itp_2015floorplan

ITP Floor Plan, 2015

 

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Week 5 – Design Challenge

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What is the problem you’re trying to solve?

Ethical development through user-centered design is not promoted in many fields of higher education, primarily engineering programs. Most of these teaching environments do not challenge students to think about their moral responsibilities as innovators. They are rarely asked to ponder the question, “What does it mean to be responsible for the next century of human interaction and productivity?”

 

I. Take a stab at framing it as a design question.

How can we develop a moral foundation for budding “makers” and their lasting impact in society?

 

II. Now state the ultimate impact you’re trying to have.

  • Encourage humans to help understand humans by enhancing ethical literacy.

  • Engage moral discussions by exploring existing ideas and present questions about different contexts, perspectives, and application

  • Review concepts, morals, and opposition that may be personal, local or systematic

  • Offer “unbiased” consideration of topics that presents multiple perspectives

 

III. What are some possible solutions to your problem?

  • Artificial Intelligence Bot: provides individual conversation with different arguments to base your decisions
    • Develops map of user’s mind by storing ideas and conversations to best understand interests and perspectives
    • Share articles and supplementary information based on conversations
    • Not: a logistic assistant that self-develops with the goal of improving knowledge and assistance
  • Introductory Innovation Ethics Course: pushes students to simulate the long-term impact of innovation on specific societies
    • Model UN Format: each student represents as a member of a certain community (i.e. nationally, systematically, locally), with a given identity and set of values/priorities – must then come together to evaluate their impact from a given product/service/innovation

 

IV. Finally, write down some of the context and constraints that you’re facing.

  • Audience of “makers:” students currently building knowledge about careers involving product development and interaction (i.e engineers, technologists, marketers/advertisers, researchers)
  • Scope & Relevance: education, political and socioeconomic views, news literacy, identity (cultural, gender, sexual, international), medical health (mental, physical, self-help), ideation and entrepreneurship
  • Constraints
    • No Generic Moral Foundation: cannot tell students what to think, but how to develop ideas without being limited or blinded by their identities or backgrounds
    • Personal Triggers: telling someone that a specific part of their history might affect their work can ignite large personal and communication issues
    • Reducing Conformity: conversations focused on a diverse set of topics can older be covered in-depth with an equally diverse group of students
    • Technological & Efficiency Constraints
      • AI is very cost intensive when developing and testing – cataloged data is not always easy to access (I can’t go make a moral development bot with Google’s data.)
      • New curriculum and untraditional course formats are difficult to get approved.

 

V. Does your original question need a tweak? Try again.

I wasn’t able to quickly develop five solutions to my problem, so it may be too broad to cover all of its aspects. If I specify the audience to strictly engineering students, I can include the solutions below. The question now becomes: How can we develop a moral foundation for engineering students and their lasting impact in society?

  • Requiring senior design projects to prove the use of user-centered design and the possible effects of the student’s identity and background on the product presented
  • Offering scholarships and financial support to those who prove/promote moral literacy
  • Real-World Competitions: use students to solve local problems that would be irrelevant to them otherwise

Week 4 – Teaching Assignment

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I chose to focus on the NYU Entrepreneurs Festival (NYUEF) organizing team, primarily brand marketing efforts. I am the Creative Director for this annual, student-lead event in which I manage the Creative & Marketing Teams. Now in my third year working on this initiative, I have gained an extensive understanding of brand development and team structure. Recently, I gave an introductory presentation outlining the tasks, goals, and timeline for the two teams. As the audience of the presentation were already vaguely familiar with the presence and goals of NYUEF, I chose a close colleague (Rosa) who was aware of my previous involvement to evaluate the effectiveness of the content.

Pre-Content Assessment
This written testing included ten questions mainly to gauge Rosa’s general knowledge of NYUEF (i.e. who/what/where/when, team structure). Only the last two questions asked about aspects of brand marketing.
Result: Rosa answered almost every question correctly, only stumbling on references to team structure and previous themes. This shows that throughout the event’s promotion, almost every piece of marketing content included the core details of NYUEF that were subconsciously remembered.

Learning Content
Before starting the presentation, I informed Rosa of the goal of the content: to explain the unique roles and responsibilities of the Creative & Marketing Teams respectively and unified. While reviewing the material, Rosa recognized some errors she had made in the post-content assessment.

Post-Content Assessment
This written testing detailed the tasked and structure of the two teams (i.e. responsibilities, new ideas). A few repeated and unanswered questions were included to test for guessing and selective reading.
Result: Rosa struggled with the general event questions (i.e. exact 2017 dates, specific leadership) that were similar to those in the pre-content assessment, likely due to the absence of experience on the organizing team. She succeeded in identifying the newer material introduced in the presentation.

Conclusion
In all, the presentation was effective in relaying the organizational details but lacked in solidifying logistics. This is expected as concrete details and facts are more difficult to retain than experiential components.

Week 2 – Writing Assignment

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All of my education thus far has been through the United States Education System. Between Minnesota, Texas, and New York, I have not seen any drastic differences that compare with international systems. One of my good friends, however, marks some interesting adjustments between his experiences in Turkey and America.

Paul attended Eastern Mediterranean University in Northern Cyprus for his undergraduate career and New York University for his graduate. His three biggest differences were the community, financial support and opportunity. His engagement was dependent on the individual help he could receive from his professors on specific problems and subjects. The environment was mostly welcoming, despite the language barrier. Some administrators were not used to dealing with people unlike them or accepting different cultures. The community was fairly westernized though there were certain ways of addressing professors that were different than that of the Unites States or his home in Nigeria.

It’s hard to get scholarships everywhere. Most are offered to undergraduates over graduates. Fortunately, Paul was granted a fairly generous, but the strains of Northern Cyprus’s small economy were apparent. It was a small island in Turkey and an embargo at that. In Turkey, there didn’t appear to be many opportunities outside of the classroom. Paul didn’t feel that the small jobs available wouldn’t help to elevate his career. Looking back, he believes even those positions could have offered important lessons. When moving to New York, however, he had already known of America as the “Land of Opportunity.” He came with a sense of urgency with what he wanted and the best way to kickstart his own “American Dream.” With New York’s bigger population and economy, Paul opened himself up to every opportunity that came his way. Today, he believes the drawback is the burden of opening yourself up to too many things that don’t move you forward.

 

Week 1 – Introduction & Writing Assignment

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I have a personal passion for leveraging technology to innovate communication, productivity, and interaction. As a junior at NYU Tandon, I’m pursuing an undergraduate degree in Integrated Digital Media, with a supplementary minor in Computer Science and a concentration in Interaction Design & Human-Computer Interaction. My background is in graphic design, brand marketing, product development, prototyping, and front-end web development. I’m currently continuing work with user experience, immersive technology, social impact and empowerment.

My involvements include serving as the 2016-17 Senator for the NYU Chapter of National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and co-founding NYU Women of Entrepreneurship (WoE). I also serve on the core organizing team for the annual NYU Entrepreneurs Festival as the 2016 & 2017 Creative Director. As an intern at the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, I specialized in diversity and community to increase inclusion through innovation within the entrepreneurial ecosystem of NYU and New York. Upon graduating from Tandon in 2018, I hope to join ITP at NYU Tisch.

 

 

  • Why did you choose to attend Graduate School?
  • Do you think a Higher Education is necessary today or in the future?
  • Now that you have stated some reasons why you are pursuing a degree at a traditional school, investigate and write about other ways to obtain this knowledge in alternative learning experiences.

I come from two grandparents who are professors. They installed in our family a very deep admiration and importance in education. Of their children, however, only my mother completed higher education (interrupted when she became a single mother). Yet, they have all grown to be successful in their respective fields. Despite their varied paths, they all continued to learn, even after leaving higher education. For myself, my family never introduced college as a choice. It was never “elementary school, middle school, high school – then work or college.” It was “elementary school, middle school, high school, undergrad – then work or more college.” The burden wasn’t necessarily in going to college. I recognized the need to stay focused and get it done better than my family did/could previously.

The difference for those that decide to pursue and complete a track through traditional, institutional education is not initiative. It’s possibly certification, structure, community engagement, or other aspects of developing beyond that of tradition.

Generally, 10 years of employed experience equates to a degree. For those in my family that didn’t complete higher education, the alternative was intensive self-development to compensate for the loss of certification. This includes freelancing, community mentorship, topical trial-and-error, independent research, etc.