Contents
ITCP 70020, Spring 2018
ITP Core 2: Interactive Technology and the University: Theory, Design, and Practice
Course Info: Meets Mondays 4:15-6:15pm (see exceptions below) in room C196.06 (in the basement of the Library) at the Grad Center
Course site: https://core2s18.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ (shortlink http://cuny.is/core2-s18)
Professors
Maura Smale (msmale@citytech.cuny.edu)
Office hours: by appointment (at the GC or City Tech or elsewhere)
Luke Waltzer (lwaltzer@gc.cuny.edu)
Office hours: by appointment at Graduate Center
Course Description
The second core course serves as the “content course” for the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate. This course makes it possible for participating doctoral and masters students to build on the theoretical insights gleaned in the first core course by beginning to conceive of and develop an interactive technology project within their own disciplines and areas of interest.
This course will survey interactive technology in educational spaces. We will discuss project planning and execution; hypertext and narrative; visualization and design; modes of learning and the structures that impact them within and outside of the classroom; software development and deployment in educational contexts; the conceptualization and production of educational media products; historical and emerging questions about digital literacy and the role of educators in its development; and the labor politics of all of the above. We will employ an interdisciplinary perspective on the application of digital media to classroom teaching and scholarly research and presentations, drawing upon the experiences of the faculty members and all the students in the course.
Labs attached to the course and available throughout the Graduate Center community will also support hands-on introductions to key educational uses of new media applications, including online writing and composition tools, electronic archives, experimentation in virtual spaces, and other approaches. Students will learn skills, concepts, and contexts and then will design and prepare a proposal for a multimedia-based project in their discipline, for their final grade. We will emphasize collaboration and minimal viable product as a means to avoid the scope creep endemic to first-time-makers’ projects. Students will be expected to use labs and other support opportunities at the Graduate Center to gain enough competency in an area of technical expertise such that they can develop a proof of concept in their term project, a proposal for a multimedia-based project.
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.
Reading:
We’ll read selections from these blogs throughout the semester, and we strongly recommend that you add them to your regular internet reading routine (via Twitter, RSS, or whatever works best for you). All three address technology in higher education from different perspectives and are useful for teaching and research.
- Prof Hacker, a collaborative blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education: http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/
- Hack Education, by Audrey Watters: http://hackeducation.com/
- Library Babel Fish, by Barbara Fister at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish
Course Assignments
This semester we will be working on three major assignments, with continuous blogging throughout.
Provocations and responses
We’ll continue the practice established in Core I of having students act as motivators for each class meeting by writing provocations on the blog on the reading/subject of the week, and carrying on a conversation on the blog in advance of class. Since class meets on Mondays, please post your provocations by the end of the day Saturday so that discussion can start Sunday.
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 given March 5th and the assignment is due April 5th.
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 March 5th, and the assignment plan is due on March 24th.
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 19th. You will present your projects at the end of the semester, and the written proposal will be due by May 24th during finals period.
Labs, Workshops, and Support
Course Schedule
This schedule is a living document, expect it to evolve over the course of the semester.
January 29: Introductions
Assignments for 2/5 in addition to reading
- Write a blog post with your introductory project ideas (don’t forget to categorize)
- Email Maura and Luke (at least) 2 dates you’d like to sign up as class motivator by Fri, Feb 2
- Write a brief bio for posting on the People page of our course site (don’t forget to categorize)
- Make sure you’re part of the course on the Commons (join on our Group page): https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/itp-core-2-spring-2018/
UNIT ONE: Preparing a Project
February 5: 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 publically-funded activities. Agile development has a long history. It takes its most recent, and quite popular form in Ruby on Rails, 37Signals, and their Getting Real PDF. We will look at what it means to make less.
Class visitors: Inés Vañó García, Achim Koh, Makeba Lavan, Robert Robinson
Reading:
- 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.
- What is Agile? http://www.agilenutshell.com/what_is_agile
- Agile v. Waterfall http://www.agilenutshell.com/agile_vs_waterfall
- Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
- Miriam Posner, How did they make that?
- Bamboo DiRT, a registry of digital research tools for scholarly use. Note that this is also available as a plugin here on the Academic Commons — you can access the directory from our course group in the left navbar.
No Class February 12 (Lincoln’s Birthday) OR February 19 (President’s Day)
TUESDAY February 20: Preliminary Project Planning
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 February 5th class.
Reading:
UNIT TWO: Digital Pedagogy
February 26: 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?
Readings:
- Thomas Harbison and Luke Waltzer, Toward Teaching the Introductory History Course, Digitally, in Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, eds, Writing History in the Digital Age, Ann Arbor: MI, University of Michigan Press, 2013.
- Joseph Ugoretz, Two Roads Diverged in a Wood: Productive Digression in Asynchronous Discussion, Innovate 1:3, 2005.
- Chapters 1-3 in Maura Smale and Mariana Regalado, Digital Technology as Affordance and Barrier in Higher Education, New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2017 (posted to course group).
- Maura Smale and Jody Rosen, Open Digital Pedagogy=Critical Pedagogy, Hybrid Pedagogy, 2015.
- Audrey Watters, A Hippocratic Oath for Ed-Tech, January 2015.
- Audrey Watters, Ed-Tech and Trump, February 2016.
- Audrey Watters, Education’s Online Futures, December 2017.
- One Feminist Online Media Mantrafesto* http://feministonlinespaces.com/
Motivators: Jenna, Jing
March 5: 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 to 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.
Readings:
- John Bean, selections from Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, Josey Bass, 2011. Read Chapters 1-3, available via our course group.
- Karwai Pun, Dos and Don’ts on Designing for Accessibility, Gov.uk, 2016.
- CUNY SPS, Accessibility and Universal Design in Learning
- An Introduction to Universal Design
- Jade E. Davis, Creating a (almost) Failproof Final Project or Paper, HASTAC, Dec 12, 2014.
- Jade E. Davis, Frugal Innovation in Digital Learning, HASTAC, Aug 23, 2017.
- Browse the Assignments section of JITP (Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy).
- Peruse Visible Pedagogy https://vp.commons.gc.cuny.edu.
- GC Teaching and Learning Center, Teach@CUNY Handbook: https://handbook.commons.gc.cuny.edu/assignment-and-project-ideas/
- Alex Halavais, Blogging Course Texts: Enhancing Our Traditional Use of Textual Materials in Learning Through Digital Media Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy (ed. Scholz), 2011.
- Ulises A. Mejias, How I Used Wikis to Get My Students to Do Their Readings in Learning Through Digital Media Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy (ed. Scholz), pp. 99-107, 2011.
- FemTechNet Key Learning Projects
Suggested: Student Project Examples
- Macaulay Seminar 2 Encyclopedia
- Year of the Flood Project and planning mural
- Students Receive Unique Learning Experience by Creating Online Journal Texas A&M Entomology Dept, 2014.
Motivator: Kahdeidra
March 12: Hybrid/Online Learning, Connectivism, and the University I
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:
- Jim Groom, The Glass Bees, Bavatuesdays, May 25, 2008.
- George Siemens, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, eLearnspace, December 12, 2004.
- Stephen Downes, The Elements of Connectivism, 2011.
- George Siemens, MOOCs Are Really a Platform, eLearnspace, July 25, 2012.
- Amelia Abreau, Quantify Everything: A Dream of Feminist Data Future, Model View Culture, 2014.
- FemTechNet, a DOCC
- FemTechNet Manifesto and white paper
- Online Open Course, introduction at Just Publics @365 to Reassessing Inequality & Reimagining the 21st Century, a POOC.
- The Online Learning Consortium.
- On Hybridization, Baruch College Center for Teaching and Learning.
Motivators: Christina, Filipa
March 19: Hybrid/Online Learning, Connectivism, and the University II
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:
- Chapters 4-5 and Appendix in Maura Smale and Mariana Regalado, Digital Technology as Affordance and Barrier in Higher Education, New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2017 (posted to course group).
- Moya Z. Bailey, All the Digital Humanists are White, All the Nerds are Men, But Some of Us are Brave, Journal of Digital Humanities, 2011.
- Susana Loza, Hashtag Feminism, #Solidarity is for White Women, and the Other #FemFuture, Ada: A Journal of Gender and New Media Technology, Issue 5, 2o14.
- DN Lee, Responding to No name Life Science Blog Editor who called me out of my name Scientific American, 2013. (See also Scientific American’s Troubling Response to Its Blogger Being Called an Urban Whore, Amanda Hess, Slate, 2013.)
- Geek Feminism Timeline of Sexist Events
- Reply All Podcast, The Writing On the Wall Episode 9. Jan 15, 2014.
Motivator: Carolyn
March 26: Open Access, Open Educational Resources (future of the textbook), and Images
Topics: Debates 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 manifest in different academic spaces?
Collaborative assignment design due today
Readings:
- Jill Cirasella, Open Access to Scholarly Literature: Which Side Are You On?, 2013.
- Peter Suber, Open Access: Six Myths Put To Rest, The Guardian, October, 2013.
- Leslie Chan (interview), Confessions of An Open Access Advocate, 2017.
- Jessamyn West, Open, Now!, METRO Conference, 2014.
- Anastasia Salter, Reasons to Open Source Your Syllabus, Prof Hacker, 2017.
- Rajiv Jhangiani , A Faculty Perspective on Open Textbooks, 2014.
- Robin DeRosa, OER: Bigger than Affordability, Inside Higher Ed, 2017.
- Open @ CUNY
- Academic Works
- Creative Commons
- Alexandra Juhasz, A Truly New Genre, Inside Higher Ed, 2011.
- Alexandra Juhasz, Learning from YouTube, 2011.
Motivator: Natacha
March 30-April 8: Spring Break
Midterm assignment due April 5th (posted on our course site)
April 9: Mid-semester Projects Discussion
Project Abstracts/Short Proposals Due.
UNIT THREE: Digital Literacy and Ethics
April 16: Digital Literacy: Writing and Reading the Internet
Topics: “a self-aware attention to the current conditions of the internet … [is critical]. A very serious project of digital media literacy is critical for our democracy, and is a crucial place where scholars and our students, regardless of our fields, can make pivotal contributions. As citizens, we need to understand how the internet works—technologically, financially, legally, socially. We scholars and educators need to teach and learn how to better read digital media, to understand who makes it, owns it, and circulates it.” — Alex Juhasz, “Four Hard Truths about Fake News.” Digital storytelling and feminist wikistorming are two, large-scale, multi-sited digital literacy projects that educate to better make and read internet media.
Readings:
- Rolin Moe, All I Know is What’s on the Internet, 2017.
- Sam Wineburg, 4 Steps Schools Need to Take to Combat Fake News, 2017.
- Barbara Fister, The Black Box Problem, Inside Higher Ed, 2017.
- Alex Juhasz, Four Hard Truths About Fake News, JSTOR Daily, 2016.
- Alex Juhasz, “#100hardtruths-#fakenews,” 2017.
- Amanda Fillipachi, Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists, The New York Times, April 24, 2013.
- Ayush Khanna, Nine out of ten Wikipedians continue to be men: Editor Survey, Wikimedia Blog, April 27th, 2012.
- FemTechNet: Wikistorming
Motivator: Kyueun, Zohra
April 23: Digital Ethics: Privacy, Transparency, and Other Concerns
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:
- Pew Research Center, Digital Readiness Gaps, 2016.
- Jessamyn West, Bridging the Digital Divide, 2014.
- Teaching Technology: Tressie McMillan Cottom on Coding Schools and the Sociology of Social Media, Logic, 2018
- Safiya Umoja Noble, Google Search: Hyper-visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Girls Invisible, InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture, 2013.
- Engine Failure: Safiya Umoja Noble and Sarah T. Roberts on the Problems of Platform Capitalism, Logic, 2018.
- Chris Gilliard, Pedagogy and the Logic of Platforms EDUCAUSE Review, 2017.
- Safia U. Noble and Sarah T. Roberts, Out of the Black Box, EDUCAUSE Review, 2017.
- Jade E. Davis, The Importance of Student Privacy in Big Data, HASTAC, Nov 6, 2017.
- Jade E. Davis, When Social Media Assignments Increase Risks for Vulnerable Students, HASTAC, Mar 6, 2017.
- Audrey Watters, The Weaponization of Educational Data, 2017.
- Digital Security in the Age of Trump, https://www.equalitylabs.org/internet-freedom-and-digital-security/
Motivator: Jonathan
UNIT FOUR: Making in the Academy
April 30: Making, Play, and Physical Computing in the Classroom
Topics: What opportunities do play and making open up in the classroom? We’ll explore how to harness consumer technology for a range of pedagogical purposes, and also think through the political implications of doing so.
Readings:
- Erica Kaufman, 3d Research Writing, Cacophony, January 23, 2013.
- Erica Kaufman, Be Interested? Cacophony, April 16, 2013.
- If not viewable at the above links, see http://web.archive.org/web/20130924214912/cac.ophony.org/author/Erica/.
- Michael Branson Smith’s Gifs
- The Daily Create, DS106
- CUNY Games Network (n.b. video blogs interviewing CUNY faculty and students on their use of games for learning)
- Anastasia Salter, Play to Learn: Games in the Classroom and Beyond, 2013. (n.b. links to her Games in the Classroom series on Prof Hacker)
- Maura Smale, Play a Game, Make a Game: Getting Creative with Professional Development for Library Instruction, Journal of Creative Library Practice, 2015.
Motivator: Zachary
May 7: 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:
- Phillip Ethington, Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge
- Virtual New York City, https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/
- Peas and Carrots Playhouse, https://mauraweb.com/peasandcarrots/playhouse.php
- Alison Carr, In Support of Failure, Composition Forum, 2013.
- Sean Michael Morris, The Failure of an Online Program, Hybrid Pedagogy, 2013.
- Bonnie Stewart, How NOT To Teach Online: A Story in Two Parts, Hybrid Pedagogy, 2013.
- Failure, curated by Brian Croxall and Quinn Warnick, in Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, 2016, on the Modern Language Association’s MLA Commons.
- Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy’s Teaching Fails columns, choose and read two.
- Alexandra Juhasz, Access Denied, Internet Dark: Technology, Prison, Education, 2015.
Motivator: Lauren
FINAL PROJECTS
May 14: Student Presentations
Filipa, Jenna/Lauren, Jonathan, Kyueun, Natacha
May 21: Student Presentations
Carolyn, Christina, Jing, Kahdeidra, Zach
