Syllabus

Contents

ITCP 70020 / DHUM 74500 Spring 2020
ITP Core 2 – Interactive Technology and Pedagogy II: Methods and Practice

Course Info: Meets Mondays 4:15-6:15pm (see exceptions below) in room 3207 at the Graduate Center

Course group: https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/itp-core-2-spring-2020/

Professors

Sonia González ([email protected])
Office hours by appointment

Michael Mandiberg ([email protected])
Office hours: Mondays 2-3:30pm and by appointment (contact Julie Fuller to schedule)
Office: Room 3204.09

Course Requirements

All students should be members of the CUNY Academic Commons and users of Twitter (where lurking is acceptable). Remember that when you register for social networking accounts, you do not have to use your full name or even your real name. One benefit of writing publicly under your real name is that you can begin to establish a public academic identity and to network with others in your field. However, keep in mind that search engines have extended the life of online work; if you are not sure that you want your work for this course to be part of your permanently searchable identity trail on the web, you should strongly consider creating an alias. Whether you engage social media under your real name or whether you construct a new online identity, please consider the ways in which social media can affect your career in both positive and negative ways.

Course Learning Goals

  • Students will develop the ability to employ digital tools and methodologies in their scholarship and pedagogy.
  • Students will be able to contextualize their own work within theories, histories and political economy of the contemporary digital present.
  • Students will be able to produce a project proposal for a technology‐based project.

Course Assignments

This semester we will be working on three major assignments, with continuous blogging throughout.

Collaboration and Assignment Design
You will collaboratively craft, with at least one student from another discipline, the scaffold for a final project in an undergraduate course that engages with one or more of the core ideas explored to this point in your ITP experience. We’ll discuss the details for this assignment in class on February 24, and the assignment plan is due on March 19.

Project Abstracts/Short Proposals
Your midterm assignment is to create a project proposal (or two, if you’re still deciding between projects) that has at least two scope variations: one full and one reduced version. Details on the full assignment will be presented March 30 (and due in writing April 1).

Final Project Proposal and Proof of Concept
Your final project is to turn in a proposal for a larger project that includes a proof of concept. Your goal is to convince us that your proposal is relevant and productive AND that you can actually pull it off. The details will be discussed on March 30. You will present your projects at the end of the semester, and the final written proposal will be due by May 20th.

Blog posts
Everyone is required to initiate [three] discussion posts during the semester. The sign up sheet can be found in our Group Docs. The week prior to when we are discussing the text, students leading discussion forums will create a post with a write up (~250 words minimum) for other classmates to respond to. In turn, those not leading discussions are required to read other people’s posts and react to at least [two] posts each week with a 100-word minimum response. The goal is to make each discussion forum feel more like a class discussion rather than many separate conversations.

Those initiating the discussion posts and responding to the assignments should tie the conversation back to current events and the world as we experience it and draw from assigned and optional class readings as you see fit. The idea is that by making this fun and engaging for YOU, it’ll be fun and engaging for ALL.

Some mechanics: Steps to starting a post can be found here. Categorize the post as “discussion” and practice good tagging. Be sure to reply to the post thread, rather than making a new post. Initiate conversations no later than [Wednesday at 10a.m]. Responses should be posted no later than [Sunday at 10a.m.]

Labs, Workshops, and Support

ITP Lab Schedule

TLC Workshop Schedule

TLC Staff Office Hours

GCDI Workshop Schedule

Digital Fellows Office Hours

GC Library Workshop Schedule

Course Schedule

This schedule is a living document, expect it to evolve over the course of the semester.

1/27 – CLASS 1: INTRODUCTIONS

Assignments for 2/3 in addition to reading

  • Write a group forum post with your introductory project ideas
  • Write a brief bio for posting on the People page of our course site (don’t forget to use the People category so it shows up in the right place)
  • Make sure you’re part of the course on the Commons (join on our Group page): http://cuny.is/group-itp-core-2-spring-2020

Core Readings:

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UNIT ONE: Preparing a Project

2/3 – CLASS 2: CONTEXTS AND PRACTICALITIES, AND HOW TO GET THINGS DONE

Topics: In this class we will explore ways of thinking through and analyzing a project before it begins, and discuss issues that can arise along the path of the project. Context: Thinking about the What, Where, When, Why and How before you begin a project. The four little B’s (build, buy, borrow, beg). Which one is the right fit for your software project? When starting any media or digital project this is often the first consideration. Do you build it yourself, buy it off the shelf, use free and open source software (borrow) or use some of the free web services out there (beg)? We will also discuss collaboration, scope creep, and minimal viable products.

“Less is more” is both an aesthetic principle of modernism and a functional spec of agile development–as well as a politically-charged phrase when applied to publicly-funded activities. Agile development has a long history. It takes its most recent, and quite popular form in Ruby on Rails, 37Signals (AKA Basecamp), and their Getting Real PDF. We will look at what it means to make less.

Core Readings:

  • Chris Stein, Contexts and Practicalities
    • This post is a reading in itself and provides links to the other readings for the week. There are a lot of links and you won’t need to read through and analyze every article thoroughly. They are there to help give context, support and detail to the arguments made in the post.
  • 37 Signals, Getting Real (2009). Pages 2-74 of the PDF are required, but you will find it to be a fast read and may want to read the whole thing. PDF posted in our course group under Files.

Additional Readings:

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2/10 – CLASS 3: SUSTAINABILITY AND PROJECT PLANNING

Topics: In this class we will continue thinking about project planning, and focus on questions that reflect on the content, context, and structure of your project: What is the scope of your project? Who is it designed for? What are its significant properties?

Core Readings:

Additional Readings:

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2/17 –  NO CLASS

2/24 – CLASS 4: PRELIMINARY PROJECT IDEAS

Topics: Taking advantage of the early semester 1+ week break, we’ll aim to do some initial thinking/writing about your proposed projects and discuss them in class. Specifics of this assignment will be posted ahead of the 2 class.

Assigned: Collaborative Pedagogy Design assignment.

Guest speaker: Kimon Keramidas

Core Readings:

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UNIT TWO: Digital Pedagogy

3/2 – CLASS 5: TEACHING, LEARNING, TECHNOLOGY

Topics: This session will explore the evolving roles of technology in teaching and learning. What pedagogical opportunities does the integration of technology into the classroom make possible? What challenges does technology create for the student, the instructor, the institution? How do we understand the politics of educational technology that is both a field of inquiry and an industry? How do we locate our own values within all of this?

Core Readings:

Additional Readings: 

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3/9 – CLASS 6: CREATING SUCCESSFUL AND ACCESSIBLE ASSIGNMENTS

Topics: Crafting purposeful assignments is one of the biggest and most persistent challenges faced by faculty, and college classrooms are rife with prompts that confuse students rather than enlighten them to the expectations of an assignment. In this session we’ll explore what makes an assignment effective, discuss how technology fits into the process, and translate these principles to our own disciplines and contexts.

Core Readings:

Suggested Readings:

Suggested: Student Project Examples

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3/16 – CLASS 7: OPEN ACCESS, OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (FUTURE OF THE TEXTBOOK), AND IMAGES

Topics: Debates on the access to and use of information — text, images, video, etc. — have always been important in higher education. Where do these debates stand now, and how are they manifested in different academic spaces?

Due Thursday March 19th: Collaborative Pedagogy Design assignment.

Readings:

Suggested Readings:

Guest speakers: TBD

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3/23 – CLASS 8: FAILURE

Topics: All successful digital projects have moved through moments of failure and frustration. Such experiences are common in the classroom as well. In this session we’ll explore how to anticipate failure and how to lower its costs.

Readings:

Suggested Readings:

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3/30 CLASS 9: Mid-semester Projects Discussion

Project Abstracts/Short Proposals presented in class.

April 1 – Midterm assignment due in writing (posted on our course site)

4/6 – CLASS 10: HYBRID AND ONLINE LEARNING

Topics: Over the past two decades universities have pursued a range of strategies to support online and blended learning. These strategies implicate interests and conflicts that go beyond the pedagogical affordances of a particular technology or approach. In this session we’ll explore some of these strategies and trace their implications.

Readings:

Suggested Readings:

UNIT THREE: Technology and Society

4/20 – CLASS 11: THE BIASES OF TECHNOLOGY – Synchronous class

Topics: Most conversations about technology and education concern how to use computers in the classroom. And while software and connectivity may enhance many courses when used appropriately, their deeper value may be in the example they provide of how different technologies influence labor, learning, interaction, and thought. What are the biases of the technologies we are using, and how can we interrogate those biases from within the environment they have created?

Readings:

Suggested Readings:

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4/27 – CLASS 12: WIKIPEDIA: A COLLABORATION AND A SOCIETY – Asynchronous class

Readings:

Suggested Readings:

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5/4 – CLASS 13: DIGITAL ETHICS: PRIVACY, TRANSPARENCY, PLATFORM CAPITALISM – synchronous class

Topics: As digital technologies and the internet continue to develop and change our lives inside and outside of the classroom, conversations about approaches to research and teaching now necessarily include digital ethics. We will discuss access to digital technologies and support in using them, the implications of corporate development of digital technologies and the internet, and privacy and data transparency considerations for ourselves and our students.

Readings:

Suggested Reading:

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FINAL PROJECTS

5/8: Video proposal uploaded to voicethread

Remember, you don’t have to make a high production value spectacle — you narrating a powerpoint, or speaking directly into the camera works just fine! If you have technical problems, please(!) let us know.

5/8 – 5/17: CLASS 14: Review STUDENT PRESENTATIONS on Voicethread- asynchronous

5/18 – CLASS 15: End of semester celebration, and symbolic closure-at-a-distance. – 1 hour, synchronous

5/20: FINAL written PROPOSAL DUE

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