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Unit Synopsis
Technology is at the forefront of social transformation in the 21st century, reshaping how individuals, organisations, and governments interact. In this unit, you will explore the dynamic relationship between digital technologies and society, with a focus on ethics, governance, and accountability. As an emerging ICT professional, you will critically examine how digital systems can both support societal needs and introduce complex ethical, legal, and governance challenges. Topics include artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, privacy, intellectual property, censorship, workforce disruption, and information overload. You will apply ethical theories and professional codes of conduct to analyse real-world dilemmas and develop persuasive arguments in personal, organisational, and policy contexts. By the end of the unit, you will be equipped to engage with digital governance issues and contribute responsibly to the design and oversight of technology in society.
Details
| Level | Undergraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 1 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 2 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Co-requisite: COIT11239 Professional Communications Skills for ICT or ENEG11005 Fundamentals of Professional Engineering. Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 2 - 2026
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Practical Assessment | 20% |
| 2. Written Assessment | 30% |
| 3. Practical Assessment | 50% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: Unit Coordinator Reflection
Navigating academic integrity in the era of Generative AI presents challenges.
Introduce a marking rubric to address generic answers typical of AI-generated responses and missing references.
A revised marking rubric was implemented to discourage generic responses and require appropriate referencing.
Source: Student feedback
Assessments require more explicit instructions and expectations.
Enhance specifications to ensure greater clarity, consistency, and structured guidance for students.
In Progress
Source: Unit-Coordinator self-reflection
The co-requisite unit COMM11003 is no longer on offer.
Remove COMM11003 from the list of co-requisites
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Describe the roles of contemporary digital technologies on the social contexts of the information age
- Explain how your professional and ethical responsibilities as an ICT professional affect society
- Discuss the ethical, social, governance and security issues related to AI, data-driven technologies, and other contemporary digital domains
- Evaluate ethical, social, and cyber security issues in the design, deployment, and use of AI and data-driven technologies, using ethical theories, government policy and professional codes of conduct.
The Australian Computer Society (ACS), the professional association for Australia's ICT sector, recognises the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). SFIA is adopted by organisations, governments, and individuals in many countries and provides a widely used and consistent definition of ICT skills. SFIA is increasingly being used when developing job descriptions and role profiles. ACS members can use the tool MySFIA to build a skills profile.
This unit contributes to the following workplace skills as defined by SFIA 9 (the SFIA code is included):
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and data ethics (AIDE)
- Data management (DATM)
- Governance (GOVN)
- Information and data compliance (PEDP)
- Information security (SCTY)
- Organisational change management (CIPM)
- Problem management (PBMG)
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Practical Assessment | • | • | ||
| 2 - Written Assessment | • | • | ||
| 3 - Practical Assessment | • | • | • | • |
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Communication | • | • | • | • |
| 2 - Problem Solving | • | • | ||
| 3 - Critical Thinking | • | • | • | |
| 4 - Information Literacy | • | • | • | |
| 6 - Information Technology Competence | • | |||
| 7 - Cross Cultural Competence | • | |||
| 8 - Ethical practice | • | • | • | • |
| 9 - Social Innovation | • | |||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10 | |