Individual Privacy vs. Security in cyberspace

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Residency Weekend Tips

Research Sources

This is a research paper. As such, you need to have research-level sources for your paper. I require at least five (5) sources be cited. Three (3) of these sources need to be peer-reviewed papers.

Some sources are not acceptable for research papers. Most of these are places where anyone can make a gratuitous assertion without any proof, such as general blog posts, social media sites, and sites like WikiLeaks. I include vendor white papers in this category because white papers are fundamentally sales brochures designed to convince you that the vendor’s product will solve a specific need. They are always biased and often misleading.

Peer-reviewed papers	Acceptable Sources	Non-Acceptable Sources
· Law Review · Scientific journals	· Court cases · Legal Restatements · News articles · News magazines · Professional magazines · Articles from experts in the field of study	· WikiLeaks · General blogs · Vendor White papers · Social Media Posts

Research Approach

A compelling research paper will at least partially cover both sides of an issue. This coverage should be fair and honest. Covering only one side of a topic or providing no more than a straw-person argument for the opposing side is not convincing and will not receive a top grade in that part of the grading rubric.

Example: In a research paper discussing whether Edward Snowden was a hero or a villain, one could argue he was a hero because he brought to light the spying activities of the intelligence agencies that seemed to violate US Constitutional protections. If one did not also mention the fact that there were also whistle-blower options available to report such activities or the fact that he broke the law by publicly disclosing the material, then the paper is less convincing and less scholarly.

Use your research as the basis for convincing the reader of your position. Although you are a highly educated individual and a professional in the field, do not write your paper with a focus on yourself. Avoid writing in the first person, such as “I believe Snowden is a hero because he shone a light evil deeds performed by the NSA.” Your argument is much stronger by writing in third person, such as “Snowden is a hero because bringing public scrutiny to the illegal activities of the NSA (Bright, e. al., 2014) and risking prosecution for the greater good of all (Kirchman, 2013). These actions require courage, which is the defining characteristic for any hero and the one characteristic absent from villains (Lee, 2016).”

Citing Sources

When you use knowledge gained from your research, be certain to cite that source in your paper. Otherwise, I must assume that the ideas are your opinions rather than a reasoned argument based on your research efforts. If you include a resource in your paper’s table of resources, it must be actually cited in the paper. If you cite each of your resources and all of your resources have citations in the paper, you will receive 100% for that part of the rubric. If you have no citations in your paper, you will receive 50% for that item in the rubric. Anywhere between full and no citations will result in a score of 75%. If you do not even have a table of resources, you will receive a 0% for both the citation portion of the rubric as well as for the research portion of the rubric.

Plagiarism

UC requires professors to use Safe Assign for papers submitted for this course. Since the papers are a group project, only the initial version submitted is considered for the plagiarism review. All subsequent submissions from the group will show up as 100% plagiarism since they will match the first person’s submission.

Plagiarism’s definition is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. If you copy verbatim from a source, even if you cite that source, this is plagiarism. I had a student who copied all the wording from an on-line, from the point following the name of the author to the last sentence of the page, then the student pasted this content into the paper and made a citation pointing to the source of the material. This was plagiarism. The department head agreed, and the student received a “0” for the paper, which also meant the student failed the course. The second time a student is caught plagiarizing results in the student leaving the university.

Reword or summarize the source material instead of using a complete copy-and-paste approach. Occasionally copying a specific sentence is acceptable, as long is this does not happen often in your paper and if you place the sentence in quotation marks and then cite the source in the paper. If your rewording is essentially the same as the original source, Safe Assign will flag it as plagiarized content. For a good summary of the topic of plagiarism, you can go here.

Style and Readability

I realize English may not be your primary language, and that this course is not a course in English composition. This is an advanced level course, and the course does require a paper. That paper is worth a considerable portion of your grade. To help you receive your best grade, please help me by making your paper easier to read.

Proofread your paper before submitting. At the very least, run the paper through a spell check process. I have been amazed at the number of papers submitted with obvious spelling issues. It would be a great idea to check the grammar as well. Your score will suffer if I have to spend time trying to determine which verb you should have included in your sentence, or if I have to decide which noun your pronoun really references.

Be consistent in your paper. I realize this is a group effort, but one person should review the final product and ensure there is consistency throughout the document. I had one paragraph with seven different date formats. That is sloppy work. I had another paper where the spelling consistently switched between British English and American English (e.g., colour vs. color, grey vs. gray, etc.)

If there is a “term of art” involved in the subject, use that term of art. I think some students use google translate to view an article in more comfortable language, but then use that term in the paper. Other students used synonyms instead of the term used in the regulation. This creates confusion and can affect your grade.

Examples:

· In the GDPR regulation, there are specific roles: Data Owner, Data Controller, Data Processor. I had a paper where the Data Controller was called the Data Microcontroller because Google’s Arabic translation.

· For a data retention policy, instead of using the term destruction, I had several synonyms used throughout the paper. Although destruction is the core concept, a data retention policy should not replace the term destruction with decimating, demolition, obliteration, or annihilation. If you are going to use a synonym, then it should be used consistently in the paper, not like the paragraph where all four of the synonyms were used for the word destruction.

APA Format

UC papers must follow the APA format. You can see an example APA formatted paper, and links to other APA assistance here. The Residency Weekend class content folder contains a template for your paper. Use this template and submit it is a Word format.

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