INFO-H 565 Collaborative and Social Computing
3 credits
- Prerequisite(s): None
- Delivery: On-Campus
Description
This is a seminar course in which students will engage with seminal research in collaborative and social computing through a series of genealogical threads linking ‘big ideas’ in the social sciences to the ways in which they have been appropriated in collaborative and social computing research. Through their synthesis of the course readings, students will connect these big ideas to the design and use of seminal ‘historic’ and contemporary social and computing technologies.
Over the course of the semester, students will also carry out research in collaborative and social computing. They will conduct a genealogical literature review about a social science theory of relevance to collaborative and social computing; analyze the ways in which that theory has and has not been applied to the design and analysis of collaborative and social computing systems; construct a design space based on their findings; and produce a series of conceptual design proposals to address either a gap in the design space and/or to flesh out a sweet spot in that space. Research papers will be curated by the instructor and high-quality work will be submitted for review to the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.
This course does not require any previous technical or design experience.
Learning Outcomes
- Apply critical reading skills to a diversity of texts, including social theory from other disciplines and informatics research reflecting varied epistemological stances and methodological approaches.
- Apply theories and insights from a diversity of texts to the design and use of contemporary collaborative and social computing systems, via both written and oral modalities.
- Conduct an in-depth, genealogical, and interdisciplinary literature review.
- Construct a design space derived from the research literature and from a competitive analysis of contemporary systems.
- Create conceptual design proposals to exemplify interesting features of a design space.
Policies and Procedures
Please be aware of the following linked policies and procedures. Note that in individual courses instructors will have stipulations specific to their course.