At the end of the semester your project team will be making a presentation on "Current Challenges Facing the ICT Professional". This briefing paper assessment is the start of your research geared towards developing that presentation. Each team member is to research one significant topic and write a briefing paper on the topic (for the benefit of their team members in compiling a series of questions for use in an interview with an ICT professional). It is common for briefing papers to be written in industry, so that professionals may remain informed about issues that matter to their employer. Developing the skills of research and communication required to write effective papers is important, and will commend graduates to employers. Reviewing accumulated knowledge is an essential early step in the research process, (whether researching to write an academic paper, or, as here, researching to ICT80008 Professional Issues in IT – Briefing Paper Assessment Guidelines Page 2 of 6 produce a business briefing paper, or, again as here, to develop a presentation). For this assignment, in order to put some structure around the briefing paper, the requirement is to write the paper in the genre of a literature review, as described below. (Below the terms 'briefing paper' and 'literature review' will be used interchangeably, although you should note that not all 'briefing papers' take the form of a 'literature review'.) A literature review is a description of relevant published knowledge from a particular field or selected topic/s. It considers what has been written by others, properly attributing content to authors, and compares and contrasts various perspectives. In general, such a review also evaluates the material reported upon: your purpose in writing the briefing paper is to convey to your reader not only what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic but also what the strengths and weaknesses are for each particular piece of reviewed literature (University of Toronto, 2011). Developing the paper will also help you gain experience in collecting data and then presenting it, in writing, in a coherent way. This is a skill that that is very much in demand from employers who are not just seeking individuals with good technical skills but also with good communication skills. As mentioned, undertaking the research and reporting on it is a necessary first step towards preparing for the presentation that your team will give, and also in preparing for the interview the team will conduct with a practicing ICT professional. It is therefore important that all team members read and comprehend the details of ALL briefing papers prepared by team members. Some documents providing a guide about literature reviews are provided on Blackboard. Use of the Briefing Papers Your completed individual paper will be used together with those of your team members in order to develop a set of questions on a range of topics to use for your subsequent group interview of an ICT professional. That interview will need to canvass the professional's opinion/s and experience/s as it relates to the topics of all the team members, as well as to issues raised in PIIT lectures, and issues that the interviewee might raise themselves in the interview. Through the process of all team members reading the various briefing papers, the team will be able to approach planning for the interview, and subsequently for the presentation, in an informed manner.ICT80008 Professional Issues in IT – Briefing Paper Assessment Guidelines Page 3 of 6 After interviewing the IT professional and gaining a practitioner's view on your topic you will then be asked to prepare a Group Report for submission, whose primary focus will be on the experience of your team's briefing papers, in the working life of the interviewed professional Briefing Paper Topics The briefing paper should cover ONE of the following topics1 : x Cybercrime x Authentication x Cloud Computing x Big Data x Data Analytics x Data Visualisation x Data profiling x Green IT / ICT and Sustainability x Diversity in the IT Workplace x Surveillance in the workplace/ x Uberveillance x Privacy x Google Glasses x Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) x The self-quantifiable movement x Social Media in the Workplace x Codes of Ethics x Professional Codes of conduct in different professions in Australia x Codes of Ethics x Professional Codes of conduct in ICT in different countries x Software contracts and liability x Outsourcing x Offshoring 1 Note that several topics could well be researched from a technical or from an application / societal context perspective. In this unit, it is not appropriate to take the technical perspective, save where technical issues impact on the application of the technology in context. Hence, for example, if your topic is "cloud computing", you should focus on how organisations use cloud computing, what the issues are, where the impediments are, etc., rather than on the detailed hardware and software technologies needed to implement cloud computing.ICT80008 Professional Issues in IT – Briefing Paper Assessment Guidelines Page 4 of 6 x ICT employment x Digital Divide x Life-long learning x Mentoring x Negative/positive issues surrounding the National Broadband Network (NBN) OR x A topic of YOUR choosing to be agreed with your tutor. The individual briefing topics of the members of your team should be selected carefully, and collaboratively, so that they support the end product i.e. the team presentation which address the theme of "Current Challenges Facing the ICT Professional". You should complete your briefing papers before information from the structured interview is gathered. Reviewing the literature on the topic area at this time helps you to plan, and focus the interview more meaningfully on certain aspects found to be important. The briefing paper should include approximately 7 to 10 sources. These sources should be based around a mix of academic publications such as books, texts, (serious) magazines and peer-reviewed conference proceedings and journal papers, and not just internet references, and they must be correctly referenced in-text as a mix of direct quotations and paraphrases and also listed at the end of your document in a reference list, using the Harvard referencing schema. The validity of the material you provide is strengthened by inclusion of articles from peer-reviewed literature; often internet material is simply in the form of 'opinion pieces', lacking validation and generally written to support the author's possibly biased opinions. References to core information (rather than opinion) on Wikipedia are no substitute for references to the original source material upon which the Wikipedia article was written – it is always better to read the source, and then to refer to it and I hope that you will follow this advice.