week 3: time management, study strategy, and my learnings this week

Part 1

Last week, one of the weaknesses I highlighted included was not extracting important details. Something I'm doing (and did this week) was to slow down and take some additional time to focus on smaller details. What I did differently was take notes on lectures, prompts, and my thoughts before spending time on assignments and writing. I believe that doing this has made me a lot more productive and efficient. This is because previously, I would spend time working on the assignment at hand, but forget to add details here or there. I would then have to go back, revise my work, and make changes, causing me to do a lot of double work. I feel that this week, I spent a lot less time on doing things twice. 

From the link, I decided to read up more on skimming tips (https://www.academictips.org/acad/skimming.html)

This, paired with extracting important details, helped my overall study strategy greatly this week.

Part 2

This week, we focused on ethics in technology, specifically preparing to write an ethics argument essay. The essay requires analyzing both sides of technology-related issues through ethical frameworks like utilitarianism, Kant’s ethics, and others. We explored the ethics of Edward Snowden's actions, which helped deepen my understanding of ethical frameworks and argument structure. Additionally, working on the scenario-based assignment allowed me to review Kantian Deontology and Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism focuses on maximizing good outcomes for the greater group of people, while Kantian Deontological ethics emphasizes following rules and duties out of obligation. Also, I worked on my industry essay, and even met up with a tutor through CSUMB this week, which I thought was really productive, and went really well. I learned a lot and made changes to my writing which I hope will be reflected in the next essays to come.

Part 3

The reading "What Every Computer Science Major Should Know" describes what success for both students and incoming employees looks like. Some key takeaways in this reading include the importance of building a portfolio by showcasing projects and skills on a personal website, and not just relying on a resume. The reading also emphasizes the need for students to be proficient in understanding multiple programming languages, engineering skills, operating systems, networking, and system design. While some of these topics are covered in the CSUMB online CS curriculum, others require self-study and a lot of practice. While reflecting on this, I realize that I have much to learn, but I'm excited to explore areas that interest me further and use this guide as a checklist for my future growth as an engineer.

Part 4

Integrity is really important for both myself and other students because college is a reflection of one self's work. Having integrity is really important because it promotes fairness in an environment where everyone is given similar opportunities. Having a mutual sense of integrity between classmates and peers ensures that there's a shared sense of responsibility and respect for each other, especially in a remote environment where students don't interact with each other face to face. 

Given the industry and subjects that we're studying, there will be a lot of references to online resources, open-source code, and other students' works. However, claiming someone else's work as your own is unethical. It's really important to credit people as needed if you use their work. I personally don't feel that it's wrong to use other people's work in your own work in a work setting, AS LONG AS you appropriately credit them for the work they did. However, I feel differently in a school setting, since everyone is given the same assignment, and we're graded on our individual skill set.

According to the CSUMB CS Online Code of Integrity, the 3 rules include:

1. Don't submit solutions or code that are not your own.

2. Don't share your code or solutions with other students.

3. If you got help from anyone or anywhere else, you must indicate and notate this.