---
title: What grade should a student receive?
date: 2021-07-21
---

## Scenario 

After taking the final exam, a student's course grade is
59.5% (on a scale where passing is 60%).

## Discussion

1. Address the grade assignment using a virtue ethics framework.

    What grade would the virtuous professor assign? Would it make a
difference if the grade was between an A- and an A? What virtues would
be involved in the decision?

2. Address the grade assignment using deontology.

    You have been asked to write a program that will determine grades so
that the grade assignment is less subjective. Come up with an algorithm
(for that program) for assigning grades when a student is near the 
borderline between two grades.

3. Compare your answers from questions 1 and 2. How are they similar and/or different?

4.  The following items come from the 
[ACM Code of Ethics](https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics).
Once you have finished the exercises on the grade scenario, look over these items. Choose one of them and consider how it might influence a choice that you might have to make as a future software engineer or project manager. Be prepared to share it with the rest of the class.

## Partial ACM Code of Ethics

-   Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that
    all people are stakeholders in computing.

-   Avoid harm

-   Be honest and trustworthy

-   Be fair and take action not to discriminate.

-   Respect the work required to produce new ideas, inventions, creative
    works, and computing artifacts.

-   Respect privacy

-   Honor confidentiality

-   Strive to achieve high quality in both the processes and products of
    professional work.

-   Maintain high standards of professional competence, conduct, and
    ethical practice.

-   Know and respect existing rules pertaining to professional work.

-   Accept and provide appropriate professional review..

-   Give comprehensive and thorough evaluations of computer systems and
    their impacts, including analysis of possible risks.

-   Perform work only in areas of competence

-   Design and implement systems that are robustly and usably secure.