CS492/692 - Winter 2009 - Role Playing Exercises

Please read the RPE requirements first.

Each student in the class must select ONE of the RPEs listed below to complete. Each RPE team consists of 2 or 3 people. The timeslot for each RPE is indicated in the class schedule handout. All of the class will be sorted into RPE groups by Friday January 16. Please send e-mail to cs492@student.cs before January 16. You may indicate any of: which RPE topic you prefer, which team of that RPE you prefer, whom you prefer to work with on your team. The TA will slot you into an RPE, as he receives e-mail, so this is more or less first-come, first-served. Students who do not express a preference will be slotted into the remaining spots on RPEs. You will be able to see where you have been slotted in, by visiting the course website and following the RPE link. The TA will continuously update the list of students assigned to RPEs on the course website, to show what is still available to select. Please note that the "endgame" for getting students positioned into RPE teams is always a little bit "tricky"; students e-mailing at the last minute may find out that they cannot get their first preference and will simply be put where there is a remaining need. On the positive side: all students should in fact be capable of arguing on either of the sides of any of the RPEs. It is often an enjoyable challenge to discover arguments to make for a position that seems, on the surface, quite opposite to your own inclinations.

Please note that all students are expected to ATTEND all RPEs, to present questions to the teams in the discussion period. The TAs will be registering attendance and recording your participation. In addition, both teams in the RPE will be required to post up their position statements in advance of the oral presentations. This provides another opportunity for discussion on the topic, within the newsgroup. Since our class size is in fact quite large, the newsgroup often becomes an ideal forum to voice opinions on the topic after the RPE (and should be perceived as the place where you can add your comments, if the TA was unable to select you from the audience, during the RPE).

All students will also complete Assignment 6, due on the last day of class (Apr 1), which records the RPEs attended (and includes a longer commentary on ONE of the RPEs).

To find out when a particular RPE will take place, please refer to the timetable. The first round of RPE allocation is over now. If you haven't been allocated a slot yet, please send your top three preferences (RPE# + A/B) to the course TA.

• Role-playing exercise 1: Censorship of electronic communication in foreign countries
• Role-playing exercise 2: Professional responsibility when workers are displaced
• Role-playing exercise 3: Universal IDs
• Role-playing exercise 4: Electronic Monitoring
• Role-playing exercise 5: E-learning for university-level courses
• Role-playing exercise 6: Minimum liability for software
• Role-playing exercise 7: Managing the use of e-mail in businesses
• Role-playing exercise 8: Computers in the elementary school curriculum
• Role-playing exercise 9: Limiting the Use of Intelligent Software
• Role-playing exercise 10: Piracy of Software

Please send any corrections to cs492 [at] student [dot] cs [dot] uwaterloo [dot] ca