Project Objective

The project for the Information Security unit is an 'Infographic' that will provide an overview of your group's recommendations on the security and privacy of data. The content should summarize your dialogues for the prompts released over the two weeks of the unit, and highlight the most important, interesting, or contrarian ideas that surfaced. Like the podcast, video and letter to the editor from the earlier units, this should be a fun and creative way for your group to discuss the complex issues surrounding information security. 

The Infographic is due 12/14 at 5:00pm.

Dialogue Guidelines  

Review the Dialogue Trainee Manual for information on how your dialogue sessions should be conducted.

Appoint one of your group members as the Facilitator. The facilitator's role will be to lead each discussion, and to keep the group organized. This means maintaining the focus of the group, helping to move the conversation towards the end goal of the creation of the Infographic and scheduling meetings and making sure everyone attends. Only one person should serve as the facilitator for the entire unit. The facilitator for this project should be different from your facilitators for the last three units.

Meet with your group each week for at least one hour to hold a discussion on the assigned prompt. Prompts will be released at the beginning of each week. See the Tuesday lecture information in the Course Calendar for the prompt and any additional instructions for that week's dialogue session.  

Each group member should be given an equal voice in the dialogues, and have equal input in the Infographic. 

Keep the discussions friendly and avoid arguments (this isn't Twitter!), but don't shy away from ideas that might be considered controversial.

Documenting Your Discussion on the Weekly Prompts 

Appoint one of your group members as the Scribe. Only one person should serve as the scribe for the entire unit. The scribe for this project should be different from the scribes for the last three units.

The scribe's role will be to keep notes for each session. The ideas the group wants to highlight in the Infographic should be recorded, along with any context you want to provide for why those ideas are important (Did an idea trigger a long dialogue? Were there diverging opinions on it when it was raised? Was it an idea that was new to the entire group?). You don't need to turn in the notes, but they should be reflected in the Infographic that is submitted as the project's deliverable.

Creating the Infographic

The Infographic must meet the following requirements:

1. It must consist of a number of panels equal to the number of members in your group. 

2. Each panel should be authored by a single group member and reflect a specific idea from the group's dialogues. Panels can then be combined into a single image file (an easy way to do this is by using a Google or Powerpoint Slide and exporting to PDF). 

3. The arrangement of the panels should tell a coherent story about security and privacy, reflecting the group's consensus on these topics. 

4. The Infographic should make use of photos, illustrations and explanatory diagrams in a visually appealing way to explain the relevant material. 

Make sure to note at the very bottom of the Infographic who was the facilitator and who was the scribe. 

The Scribe will add the Infographic file to their shared Google drive folder for the course. Ahead of the deadline, the scribe should send Ellen an email or slack message noting that your drive is the one that the TAs should check to retrieve the submission. 

Expectations of Group Effort

All members of the group should contribute their fair share to the dialogues and the Infographic. The Facilitator and Scribe are expected to put in some extra work. These roles have rotated in each unit, meaning everyone in your group should have served as either the facilitator or scribe at this point in the semester. 

A form will be circulated to each group member after the assignment is turned in so that they can assign what they thought was the effort each person put into the dialogues and Infographic. These effort reports will be factored into the individual grades that will be assigned to the students in the group.   

Prof. Scheirer will be grading the Infographics, and is very interested in what you have to say. Some of you will go on to work in the computer security industry following graduation, and your ideas may shape the future of this area of computer science. This project will help you think about what type of data should be protected and how.