D842 Technology and Ethics: A Look at Emerging Trends and Society, catalog number HUMN 5000, is the two-CU graduate course that applies ethical frameworks to emerging technology trends including artificial intelligence, social media and digital media. Two competency units makes it one of the shorter graduate courses, and the brevity misleads people. The material is not difficult to read. It is difficult to write about well, because the assessed skill is applying a framework rigorously to a specific case, and almost everybody's instinct is to state a view and then look for support.
An ethical analysis is not a considered opinion
The distinction that decides this course is between an argument and a position. A position says surveillance advertising is wrong. An argument says surveillance advertising is wrong, and here is the framework under which it is wrong, and here is the specific feature of the practice that the framework condemns, and here is what a reasonable person applying that same framework would say against me.
Frameworks are tools with different outputs, and using them properly means letting them disagree with you. A consequence-focused analysis asks who is harmed and benefited, how much, and how certainly, which means it will sometimes license something you dislike because the aggregate outcome is favourable. A duty-focused analysis asks what obligations exist regardless of outcome, which means it will sometimes condemn something useful because it treats people as instruments. A character-focused analysis asks what the practice does to the people who build and use it. A justice-focused analysis asks how burdens and benefits are distributed and who was not consulted.
The strongest submissions in this course apply at least two frameworks and show where they diverge, because the divergence is the interesting part. If every framework you apply produces the same verdict as your opening instinct, you have almost certainly used them decoratively.
The second skill is specificity about the technology. Artificial intelligence is not an ethical object; a particular system, trained on particular data, deployed in a particular decision, is. Write about a hiring screen that ranks applicants using historical hiring outcomes, or a recommendation system optimising for watch time among adolescents, and the analysis becomes possible. Write about technology in general and the analysis has nothing to grip.
Turning the rubric aspects into an argument plan
WGU keeps the scoring detail for D842 inside your Course of Study rather than in the public catalog. Open it first. Work is judged as Competent or Not Competent, with no letter grades and no ordinary grade point average behind them, and where a rubric applies each aspect is scored on its own against a three-point scale and needs a 2.
Head each section with the rubric's noun. Ethics writing tempts students into flowing essay structure, and flowing structure hides the place where you applied the framework, which is usually the highest-weighted thing in the document.
The word budget, worked. Assume five scored aspects and directions asking for roughly 1,800 words, which is a realistic size for a two-CU course. Reserve 150 words for a case description and 120 for a conclusion. That leaves about 1,530 for scored content, or 306 an aspect. Then weight it. The framework application aspect and the counterargument aspect are the two that decide the outcome, since description of the technology is cheap and rebuttal is where most submissions thin out. Take 70 words from each of the three descriptive aspects and add 105 to each of those two.
A drafting rule that prevents the standard return: write the strongest objection to your own conclusion before you write the conclusion. If the objection is easy to dismiss, you have chosen a case with no ethical tension, and a case with no tension cannot demonstrate ethical reasoning.
A structure that fits an applied ethics submission
Where your task directions supply a structure, follow it exactly. Where they do not, this order matches how applied ethics aspects are usually written.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| The case | The specific technology, deployment and decision, described factually and cited | Scored for specificity; a general technology description cannot be analysed |
| Stakeholders | Who is affected, including people who never chose to interact with the system | Scored for reach; the unconsulted parties are the ones students omit |
| Ethical question | The precise question at issue, narrow enough to answer | Scored for focus; is this technology good is not answerable |
| Framework one | A named framework applied step by step to this case | Scored on application; naming a framework and then reasoning informally is the common miss |
| Framework two | A second framework applied to the same case | Scored for producing genuine contrast rather than agreement by construction |
| Tension | Where the frameworks disagree and what that reveals about the case | The section that most distinguishes graduate work here |
| Counterargument | The strongest opposing position, stated fairly, then answered | Scored for fairness of the statement as much as for the answer |
| Position and implications | Your conclusion and what should change in practice or policy | Scored for following from the analysis rather than preceding it |
Keep one case throughout. Ethics submissions weaken fast when the analysis begins on facial recognition, illustrates with a social media example and concludes about artificial intelligence generally, because no framework was ever applied to a single object.
Evidence craft in a technology ethics submission
Applied ethics needs two kinds of source and most students supply only one.
- Cite the ethical framework to a philosophical or applied ethics source rather than paraphrasing a summary you half remember. Frameworks have technical content that summaries flatten.
- Cite the factual claims about the technology separately. How a system works, what data it uses and what harms have been documented are empirical questions with empirical sources.
- Distinguish reported harm from speculative harm. Both belong in an analysis, and conflating them weakens the argument.
- Prefer recent sources for a fast-moving subject, and note publication dates where a claim may have aged.
- State the strongest opposing case in the words its supporters would recognise. A weak version of your opponent damages your own credibility with an evaluator.
- Use APA throughout and keep quotation minimal, since ethics writing is heavily reproduced online and WGU scans submissions for similarity.
The move that reads as graduate level is stating what your framework cannot settle. Consequence-based reasoning struggles where harms are diffuse and unmeasurable; duty-based reasoning struggles where obligations conflict. Naming the limit of your own tool is a strength, not a hedge.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects score independently, and returns in this course cluster around framework application and counterargument.
- Every scored aspect has its own heading using the rubric's noun.
- The case is a specific deployment, not a technology category.
- Each framework is applied step by step rather than named and abandoned.
- The two frameworks produce a real difference somewhere.
- The counterargument is stated as its advocates would state it.
- The conclusion follows from the analysis, and the implications are concrete.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs time rather than standing. In a six-month flat-rate term the time is the point, and a two-CU course is exactly the kind of thing that should close early to leave room for the heavier ones.
Where D842 sits alongside a proctored objective assessment, the boundary is fixed: we prepare only, never sit an assessment, and never ask for portal credentials.
Five mistakes that cost time in D842
- Writing an opinion piece with citations attached. If the conclusion was fixed before the framework was applied, the analysis aspect has nothing to score.
- Choosing a case with no tension. A practice everybody already condemns produces an easy paper and a weak one. Pick something where reasonable people disagree.
- Describing the technology at length. Two pages explaining how machine learning works is background, and in a short course it consumes the space the argument needed.
- Naming frameworks without applying them. A sentence saying a utilitarian view would consider consequences is a definition. Working through who gains, who loses and how much is an application.
- Building a weak opponent. Evaluators reading a counterargument aspect look for the strongest opposing case, and a caricature costs the aspect even when your conclusion is sound.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study, the task directions and the case you are considering. What comes back is aspect-mapped: a case narrowed to a specific deployment, a stakeholder list that includes the people nobody asked, two frameworks applied step by step, a tension section that makes the divergence explicit, and a counterargument written strongly enough to be worth answering.
The reasoning transfers well beyond the course. Graduate programmes across technology and education increasingly ask for exactly this move, and a student who can apply a framework rather than assert a position writes those assignments considerably faster.
Questions students ask about D842
Is D842 the same course as HUMN 5000?
Do I need to have studied philosophy?
Can I write about a technology used at my workplace?
Ethics task that keeps turning into an opinion piece?
Send your Course of Study rubric, the task directions and your case. You get a narrowed case, two frameworks applied properly and a counterargument worth answering.
Where D842 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 9 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.