D773 Technology and Ethics: Emerging Trends and Society, catalog number HUMN 1110, is the three-CU course applying ethical frameworks to emerging technology including artificial intelligence, social media and digital media. The word emerging is what makes this course awkward and interesting at once: you are being asked to reason about things that are still changing, using sources that go stale faster than the reading list can be rewritten.
Reasoning about a moving target
Most academic subjects give you a settled body of knowledge. This one does not. A capability that did not exist two years ago is now ordinary, and a policy debate that seemed urgent last year has been overtaken. That has a direct consequence for how you should write.
Anchor the analysis in the durable part. Capabilities change; the ethical structures underneath them do not. Questions about consent, about who bears a risk they did not choose, about concentration of power, about what happens when a decision has no human author, and about whether a person can contest something done to them, are the same questions regardless of which system is in the news. Writing about the structure rather than the product is what keeps an analysis from reading as dated the moment it is submitted.
The second consequence is about sources. In fast-moving areas the useful literature is often a mixture of scholarship, regulatory documents, industry reporting and technical documentation, and their reliability differs sharply. Saying what kind of source you are using, and why it is appropriate for the claim it supports, is a habit that protects both the evidence aspect and the credibility of the analysis.
D773 and its catalog neighbours
The catalog carries related entries. D333 Ethics in Technology under HUMN 1101 applies frameworks to a named list including surveillance, hacking, data manipulation, plagiarism and piracy. D773 under HUMN 1110 frames the same style of reasoning around emerging trends, and the catalog also lists a two-CU graduate version of the emerging-trends framing under HUMN 5000.
Overlap in topic does not mean interchangeable requirements. Competency lists, task directions and rubrics belong to the code on your own Degree Plan, and only your Course of Study carries them. Where you find study material under a neighbouring code, the reasoning transfers even though the task detail does not.
Stakeholder mapping is the engine of this course
Emerging technology questions are almost always distributional. Someone gains, someone bears a cost, and the two are frequently not the same people. A stakeholder map is therefore not a preliminary step, it is the analysis.
Build it with four columns rather than one list. Who is affected. What they gain or lose, stated concretely. Whether they consented or even knew. And what power they have to change the outcome. That fourth column is the one students omit and the one that produces the strongest analysis, because the ethically interesting cases are the ones where the party bearing the cost has no route to object.
Run the map before choosing a framework. Consequence-based reasoning needs the gains and losses to weigh. Duty-based reasoning needs to know whose rights are in play and who owed a duty to whom. The map feeds both, which is why doing it first saves rewriting later.
Turning scored aspects into a writing plan
Open your Course of Study first, because WGU keeps the rubric there while the public catalog carries only competencies. Count the scored aspects. Each is judged independently on a three-point scale, a score of 2 in each passes the task, and nothing averages between them.
Then look for the aspect that asks for something other than analysis. Emerging-technology courses often include an aspect on future implications, on regulation, or on personal or professional responsibility. Those are different kinds of writing from the framework application and they need their own space, because a paper that is one long argument will leave them unaddressed.
A worked word budget. Take five scored aspects and directions asking for about 1,600 words. Reserve 130 for an opening that names the technology and the decision and 130 for a close, leaving 1,340 across five aspects, or about 265 each. Then move 100 words from the aspect that asks you to describe the technology into the aspect that asks you to apply a framework, since description is complete when it is accurate and framework application needs three moves in sequence: principle, application, implication.
A structure for an emerging technology analysis
Where directions set a format, follow it. Where they do not, this order keeps a fast-moving subject under control.
| Section | Contents | What keeps it from going stale |
|---|---|---|
| The technology | What the system does, in plain terms, and what it requires to work | Describing capability and inputs rather than a brand or a product version |
| The decision | The specific choice under examination, by a named kind of actor | A decision someone could actually make, not a general trend |
| Stakeholder map | Affected parties, stakes, consent status, power to act | Structure that survives a change in the underlying product |
| Framework application | A named framework, its principle, and what it implies here | Principles outlast implementations |
| Competing view | A second framework or a serious objection, answered | Shows the conclusion was reached rather than assumed |
| Implications | What follows if the practice spreads, and what would change the answer | Conditional claims age better than predictions |
| Position | Your recommendation, with its cost stated | A recommendation someone could refuse |
The implications row rewards a specific move: instead of predicting, say what evidence would change your conclusion. Writing that your position would shift if a system's error rate were shown to differ across groups is far stronger than forecasting what the technology will do next, and it cannot be overtaken by events.
Source discipline in a fast-moving subject
- Date every claim about capability. What a system could do at a given point is a fact with a timestamp, and leaving the timestamp out makes it unverifiable.
- Say what kind of source you are using. Peer-reviewed research, a regulator's document, a company's own documentation and a news report carry different weight and different interests.
- Treat vendor material as a claim rather than as evidence. It can be cited, but as a statement of what a company says about itself.
- Prefer primary regulatory text over reporting about it where a rule is central to your argument.
- Cite the framework you apply, using its standard formulation rather than a paraphrase you half remember.
- Keep the technical description accurate. Analysis built on a wrong account of how a system works fails on both the description and the analysis aspects at once.
One habit lifts this kind of writing consistently: name the thing you would need to know and cannot. Ethical analysis of emerging technology is frequently constrained by opacity, and saying which fact would settle the question, and that it is unavailable, reads as rigour rather than as a gap.
What Competent looks like in D773
WGU records outcomes as Competent or Not Competent, with no letter grades and no ordinary grade point average. Performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted with no penalty for the earlier version, so the cost of a return is time inside a six-month flat-rate term.
Submissions that pass on the first read tend to show:
- A technology described by what it does rather than by brand.
- A stakeholder map that includes consent status and power to act.
- At least one framework applied in full: principle, application, implication.
- A serious competing view answered rather than dismissed.
- A position with a stated cost, and a statement of what would change it.
Where a proctored objective assessment is part of the course, the rule is fixed. Proctored assessments are yours to sit. We prepare with framework drills, stakeholder mapping practice, worked cases and timed sets, and we give an honest readiness read. We do not sit or assist during an assessment and we never ask for portal credentials.
Five mistakes that cost time in D773
- Writing about a product instead of a practice. Products change and the analysis dies with them. Practices and capabilities persist.
- Predicting the future. Forecasts are unfalsifiable in a short paper and they crowd out the reasoning that is actually scored.
- Skipping the consent column in the stakeholder map. Whether an affected party agreed is frequently the whole ethical question.
- Using vendor claims as findings. Company documentation is evidence of what a company asserts, which is a different thing.
- Treating novelty as an ethical argument. That something is new does not make it wrong, and that framing collapses under any framework you apply.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study and the task directions. What comes back is aspect-mapped: a model analysis anchored in capability rather than brand, a four-column stakeholder map, a framework applied through all three moves, a competing view answered, and implications written as conditions rather than predictions, plus a walkthrough so the structure transfers to later policy and ethics work.
WGU terms run six months at a flat rate, so what lowers your effective cost per course is how many you close inside a term. Ethics courses reward front-loading: an evening spent building two stakeholder maps and rehearsing two frameworks usually removes several days from the deliverable itself.
Questions students ask about D773
Is D773 the same as HUMN 1110?
Is D773 the same course as D333?
How current do my sources need to be?
Writing ethics about something that keeps changing?
Send the rubric and directions. You get an analysis anchored in capability rather than brand, a four-column stakeholder map and implications written as conditions.
Where D773 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 19 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.