Assignments and Grading

There are 6 components to your final course grade: Weekly discussion papers, class discussion leadership,in-class presentations, miscellaneous class participation, a mid-term exam, and a semester project.

Weekly discussion papers - 10%

For most class meetings, there will be several assigned readings. These are intended to provide some foundation for a discussion during class. A standing assignment is to write a position statement (stating and defending a position with respect to some issue discussed in the reading) and discussion questions (questions you would like the class to discuss based on or inspired by the assigned reading). These weekly papers should be kept very brief (<500 words). Submit them to me and to that week's designated discussion leaders at least 24 hours before class (i.e., 3:30 pm on the Wednesday before class). This is not supposed to be an onerous writing burden, but just a motivator to help you think about the reading critically and get some discussion points organized before the class meeting.

Class discussion leadership - 10%

Each week one person will be designated as class discussion leader. This role involves grading and presenting position statements and discussion questions submitted by the other students. (Class discussion leaders do not have to submit position statements and discussion questions.) Please "grade" the papers by sorting them into three categories +, 0, and - (roughly about 60% should be 0, and 20% each should be + and -), and convey your sorting to me by email. (This "grading" is just to give me a rough idea of how the papers were viewed by the discussion leader - who after all tried to actually use them. It is not literally a grade.) Collate the content of the various papers for the class discussion of assigned readings.

Individual in-class reports - 10%

Some of the readings for any given class meeting are read by only one member of the class and then presented to the entire class in a semi-formal (semi-formal in the sense that uyou prepare the presentation, but it can involve lots of question-posing and other interaction with the rest of the class).

Miscellaneous class participation - 10%

In additional to the various specific mechanisms and channels for class participation, you are also encouraged to raise your hand and make other assorted contributions to the class including, but not limited to, the following:

Web board discussion contributions (comments, pointers to resources)
Feedback and assistance to other members of the class
In-class participation

Please send me an email every Monday throughout the semester summarizing your course-related activities from the prior week. This does not have to lengthy and you do not have to tell me everything you learned, just what you did. This email is also an opportunity to ask for help!

Literature Review - 15%

Each student will write a relatively short (<4000 words) literature review for a topic not related to his/her semester project (see immediately below). I would like you to do the "library" research to develop a reference list, organize the material around a small number of themes, and then summarize, analyze, and assess the sources you have identified. Please format your literature review paper in ACM conference style (http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chipubform/) -- I think that 4000 words is less than 8 ACM-pages.

Please select one of the following topics (e.g., by sending me an email), or suggest a topic you want to look into:

lifelong learning (Gerhard Fischer is a starting point, what is learning like in the elderly?, how do people learn outside of the workplace?), Hongmei Wang
end-user programming (what would universal programmiong mean? what is keeping it from happening?, consider programming as an aspect of literacy, what is the legacy of Hypercard?), Thomas
programming for kids (constructionist learning in the tradition of Seymour Papert, Mitch Resnick, and Amy Bruckman is the starting point),
community networks (this was a major movement in computing in both the early-to-mid 1980s and in the mid 1990s - what happened to it? how has it changed? what are the current challenges and success cases?),
evaluating knowledge management (in organizational science there is a lot of talk about knowledge management, sharing of practices and resources, learning communities, etc. -- how can we know if knowledge management interventions actually accomplish anything? find examples of evaluation/assessment work and synthesize and critique it), Haiyan Huang
social capital (the term social capital is widely used now; briefly identify its origins and history, but spend most of your effort collating and assessing its current uses - and misuses), Sara
social networks (social networks and social network analysis are one way to describe organizations, communities, and other groups; briefly survey the general usage of social network concepts, but spend most of your time specifically investigating the use of these concepts in understanding communities, Keith Hampton at MIT would be one starting point),
community and democracy (one thread of sociological thought about American society - going back to Tocqueville in the 1830s - describes communities, local voluntary associations, and civic collectivism as foundations of American democracy; review this line of analysis, focusing on its current utilization and perceived validity, Robert Bellah and his students would be a starting point),
case studies (case studies are widely used in professional education (law, medicine, business) as a way of making learning discourses more realistic; review some of this literature, analyzing the key causal relationships that enable learners (and perhaps teachers) to benefit from using cases, use this analysis to develop and analyze one or more proposals for using case-based learning in community settings, what changes when cases are employed in informal learning?), Ivanna Terrell
Neil Postman (Neil Postman has been an outstanding techno-critic for many years, read any two of his books and summarize, analyze, and assess his main arguments, then reply to him from the perspective of community-oriented/community-controled/community-based technology (you should use futher sources in developing and defending your response to Postman)) Lu Xiao
Contrast in Learning Theories: Here is what I'm going to review and synthesize (first two are books). The reason I chose these is because they present an interesting contrast in views.Umer Farooq
- "Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation", by Jean Lave
- "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School", by Bransford et al.
- "Models of teaching and learning: Participation in a community of learners", by Barbara Rogoff
- Firsthand learning through itnent participation", by Barbara Rogoff
Kids and Teenagers affected by technology: how computer technology and Internet are affecting the way kids and teenagers learn, relate to each other and to their groups, develop individual and group identities (Erickson), and accomplish everyday commitments (Grintner) Gregorio

Semester Project - 45%

The semester project should involve identifying a serious research question, undertaking a planned course of actions to investigate the question (including review of relevant multi-disciplinary literatures), writing a research report, and making an oral presentation in class. The paper should be substantial; I'm not hung up on sheer size, but I am expecting something in the 10,000 - 15,000 word area. Please format your research paper in ACM conference style (http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chipubform/).

You can employ any reasonable method you want to (describing, justifying, and assessing your method is of course part of the project itself). I have a personal interest in participatory action research (http://www.caledonia.org.uk/par.htm; see also the listing for "action research" in the Encyclopedia of Informal Education, and Stringer, 1999), but I am also interested in survey methods and statistical analysis, interviews and content analysis, as well as traditional cognitive and social model-based approaches.

Please give me a 1-page written topic declaration on or before October 9; a 5-page summary of your research activities, references you are working with, tentative themes you are developing, and plans on or before November 6, and the final paper not later than December 11.

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