Week 3 - CST 300

This week we are submitting our Industry Analysis paper. I found the peer review to be extremely helpful as it provided an outside perspective. Sometimes, when writing a paper, it can be easy to lose track of your audience and how the words you have written are perceived. Overall, this week was not as intense as last week, there was still plenty of work to be done.

OLI Module 3

This week’s OLI module was titled “What do You Bring to the Team” and did provide a lot of information on different work styles, how to support these styles for the benefit of the team, and ways in which our team’s performance can improve. In the first part of the module, we were asked to reflect on our own individual work style. Recognizing the difference in how we process information can lead to a more successful team. Four different work styles were discussed: Get it Right, Get it Done, Get Along, and Get Appreciated. Personally, I lean towards Get it Right and Get Along. Generally, in a team I am not particularly direct, however I do try and make an effort to complete my work, be dependable and ultimately want everybody to get along. A series of videos was then shown where we reflect on how we can provide support to each different workstyle. 

The module ended with a review of conflict styles. The portion included an assessment that helped us determine our individual conflict style and my top ones were Avoiding, Accommodating and Compromising. I was a little surprised to see that I scored so high in the avoiding category, but it does make sense. In a professional or educational setting, I am significantly less assertive than in my own personal relationships. Real life applications of these conflict styles were shown, and a quiz was given on recognizing these conflict styles in action.

Time Management and Study Strategies

Last week, I mentioned that I struggle with maintaining a schedule and while I am good at organizing my time, following through on this can be difficult for me. The website linked in this week’s assignment offered additional tips for how to manage this issue and broke it down into different tips:

• Don’t be a Perfectionist
• Learn to Say No
• Learn to Prioritize
• Combine Several Activities

These are helpful and can be realistically applied. For example, combining several activities is something that I unconsciously do at times, but if I were to make a conscious effort to practice this in different areas of my life it could free up additional time that could be used for schoolwork. 

Module 3 – Readings and Activities

This week’s readings and assignments heavily focused on ethics, which happens to be the next topic for our upcoming paper. The lecture discussed different ethical frameworks, including ethical relativism, utilitarianism, care ethics, ethical egoism, divine command theory, natural law theory, Kant’s ethics, and virtue ethics. Part of our assignment included a discussion on Edward Snowden and the ethics of his decision to expose classified documents related to the NSA.

Our readings for this week heavily focused on integrity, ethics, and professional conduct. This tied into some of the issues presented in the video, 12 Issues – GCSE Computer Science. This video provided some additional background information on several topics and their ethics in relation to computer science and gave me some ideas for the upcoming paper.

What a Computer Science Major Needs to Know

This article was pretty comprehensive and covered so many different areas of computer science, with links. From Unix, to different core language, and machine learning, the amount of information on here was extremely helpful and I made sure to save a copy of it for future reference. One portion of the article referenced Artificial Intelligence, which is something I already have great interest in. As I went through the article, the amount of information did seem slightly overwhelming, especially with the additional reading suggestions, but a lot of these topics build on each other. Additionally, the author of the article mentioned that this was a living document and requested feedback on adding (or deleting) to this document. What I am most excited to learn more about is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The suggested book, Artificial Intelligence by Russell and Norvig, appears to a textbook that covers some algorithms and problem solving. Overall, this guide was very beneficial and is something I see myself using as a guideline.

Code of Integrity

Part of this week’s required reading is the CSUMB CS Online Code of Integrity. At every point in your personal, educational, and professional journey, having integrity is critical. Specifically for this course, it’s important not to take other’s ideas or words and use them as your own. This course will eventually segue into programming classes, where maintaining integrity will be just as essential. Ultimately, you want to do your own work because at the end of the day, you’re the one that’s going to be going through job screenings and assessments. You get what you put into the course and your educational development.