Communication: Most day-to-day class announcements will go out over Slack. A weekly update on the week to come will go out every Monday on Canvas and Slack. To reach us, please either DM on Slack or email *both* Amy and Ruotong, and one of us will respond. You can also post to public Slack channels for general discussion or questions that may be of interest to others.
By the end of this class, you will...
Capstone Project: This course is primarily oriented around producing a capstone project as a group. Every class will incorporate some dedicated time to work on the project, and there will be group assignments due at regular milestones. Groups will be formed during the first week of class. Groups will be expected to give updates to the rest of the class throughout the quarter after milestones and gather feedback. Each group will also be expected to have at least one 10 minute check-in per week with Amy or Ruotong sometime during group work time. The project will culminate in a Final Showcase where students can demo their projects to the public.
In-class Lectures, Discussion, and Activities: The other main part of class will involve short lectures, class discussion, and activities that cover different major social computing topics relevant to current events and our everyday lives. We will recap readings that were assigned, discuss students' reflections, and students will present their assignments. Active participation by all students will be expected. On one or two occasions, we will have a guest speaker come visit the class.
Reading and Reflections: Each class we will have ~1-2 assigned short readings related to the social computing topic of the day. We will be using Hypothes.is as a way for all of us to read together and collectively annotate the reading before class with our thoughts. Students are expected to leave at least one comment per reading responding to any of the reflection prompts posted on Hypothes.is.
Assignments: There are 5 4 individual assignments during the course for students to
do some hands-on exploration, sharing, and deeper reflection on course topics related to social computing.
These assignments will be presented and discussed
during class time.
You are expected to attend and actively participate in every class session. I expect you to be respectful to your teammates and contribute equally to the work. If there come situations where you are unable to contribute equally, I expect you to communicate this to your teammates and to find a way to make it up to them. To make the most of the class, I expect you to be on time and to have completed any readings before class. Finally, I expect you to actively participate in conversation and feedback and be respectful and attentive towards any group presenters and guest visitors.
If you can't make class because of an extenuating circumstance, please let me know before class, and I can excuse you. You will still be expected to complete any readings, responses, group work, and assignments related to the class that you miss.
Deadlines are primarily there to help the class run smoothly, as milestones build on each other. However, if you or your group has an extenuating circumstance or just could really use extra hours or a day, definitely reach out to me about receiving an extension! Please be proactive in letting me know about things that come up instead of telling me after the fact so that we can plan together and others are not disrupted.
This course welcomes all students of all backgrounds. The computer science and computer engineering industries have significant lack of diversity. This is due to a lack of sufficient past efforts by the field toward even greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Allen School seeks to create a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment for our community and our field. You should expect and demand to be treated by your classmates and myself with respect. If any incident occurs that challenges this commitment to a supportive, diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment, please let me know so the issue can be addressed.
If you have any questions about disability or religious accommodations, please refer to university policies regarding disability accommodations or religious accommodations. Feel free to also contact me for any reason regarding other accommodations.
Please write and submit a personal contribution statement using this Google Form every time that you submit a group assignment. This allows you to personally specify what proportion you contributed to the work done by the group.
The statement should include (1): your estimate of the percent of group work completed by you, and (2) a summary of the work you did. For example, your statement could be: “40%, researched the background of the problem, outlined the content of the document, wrote the first version of one paragraph, also selected the images to be included.”
Please know that we do not expect everyone to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should try to work as a team and support each other. Please come to us early if you are dealing with unresolved issues regarding unequal contributions. During the quarter, we may solicit private feedback regarding group dynamics from members.
Related courses I consulted include: Sarita Schoenebeck's Online Communities course at UMSI, Ethan Zuckerman's Fixing Social Media course at MIT Media Lab, Amy Bruckman's Design of Online Communities course at Georgia Tech, Eric Gilbert's and Munmun De Choudhury's Social Computing courses at Georgia Tech, Steven Dow's Social Computing course at UCSD, Juho Kim's Introduction to Social Computing course at KAIST, Michael Bernstein's Social Computing course at Stanford, Andres Monroy Hernandez's Social Computing Seminar course at Princeton and Haiyi Zhu's and Steven Wu's Human-AI Interaction course at CMU.
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