Emerging Ethics: Teaching Communication Design in Professional Writing Courses

This experience report discusses the ways graduate student instructors (GSI) have engaged students in upper-level business and scientific writing courses at a large university by incorporating social justice approaches with an emphasis on the ethical uses of emerging technologies. Emerging technologies are often introduced into professional writing courses as powerful tools that can change and influence how common writing tasks and practices are taught. In this report, three doctoral students present specific examples of ethical dilemmas when teaching these courses to provide students with opportunities to incorporate and practice the use of emerging technologies within specific contexts. Each section of this report features one of the GSI's considerations and reflections on how emerging technologies can be incorporated into professional writing courses using various ethical frameworks in socially just ways. The report concludes with some general take-aways from the faculty member's role in privileging the experiences of the GSI's in the use of emerging technologies especially in terms of inclusive practices in the classroom.