homesyllabusassignmentspresentersblogwiki

justine cassell - instructor // email

david huffaker - t.a. // email
francisco iacobelli - t.a. // email

Spring Quarter, 2007 Northwestern University

Here are details about each of the assignments

Weekly Class Blog

Before each class meeting students are required to post at least one interpretive and motivated question from the readings assigned for that class on the class blog. You are also required to comment on two of your classmate’s blog posts.

The point of the questions is (a) to demonstrate that you have done the readings, and (b) to give the instructor a roadmap for class discussion. Questions must therefore relate to a minimum of two of the readings (examples of good questions will be given in class). Questions must be posted to the class blog by Monday at noon (24 hours before the class meets), so that the instructor can base her discussion of the readings on the questions submitted. Questions that are posted after Monday at noon will be marked down.

Occasionally I may cancel the question requirement in favor of another equally straightforward and non time-consuming assignment. Due each class period.

Blogs are most interesting when each post launches a conversation. Just to make sure you get to experience that phenomenon, you are required to comment on two of your classmate's posts each week. So, when you are online posting your own questions, take a moment to post a response to a classmate's question. Responses must be posted to the class blog by Tuesday at noon. Responses that are posted after Tuesday at noon will be marked down. Due each class period.

Class Presentation of Assigned Readings

Each student is required to analyze and present an online community in the context of the theory presented in the assigned readings, once during the course of the quarter, in conjunction with other students. In other words, you will work with your classmates to create a group presentation on an online community and how it relates to the readings. You will sign up for this during the first class.

Please note: you will get negative points if you go over the reading point-by-point (after all, we have all read the readings already!). You will get negative points if you go over the features of an online community without referring to the theory from the readings for that week. You will get positive points if you find a community that illustrates the readings, and you tell the class something they don't already know about this community, by using the theory from the readings to analyze the community. This is a chance to go hunting for obscure online communities, and to learn how to use the theory from the class to analyze them!

Class presentations will be posted on the Blackboard. Due once during the quarter.

Exploring Second Life

You will familiarize yourself with a state of the art graphical avatar online community, Second Life. Due April 3rd.

Here's what to do:

• Register with Second Life (which is free) and download the second life installer that is appropriate for your system (Linux, Windows or MacOS).
• Create a Second Life name and an avatar
• Complete the tutorials on Help Island
• Write about your experience in your blog post, including the following points:
  • Please report your second life name
  • Challenges you found. What activities were harder to get used to, which ones seemed natural.
  • Interactions you had with either things or people. Was it easy to chat, buy clothes or meet people.
  • Your expectations for future interactions within second life: What things you think would be interesting to explore or what activities seem like they would be fun to do within second life.
  • A short personal view on your experience. Do you think second life can provide a good environment to foster a community? Why or why not.

If you have trouble, contact your TA!

Social Network Analysis

You will analyze an online community by making a visualization of the communication patterns of that community. For this assignment you will turn in your visualizations of the networks and prepare a 2-3 page report about the networks and what your visualizations illustrate. You may complete this assignment in teams (2 people max), if you like. Due April 10.

Details
In order to complete this assignment, you will have to identify and map an online network, and utilize social network software. Follow these steps. Links are provided for detailed explanations. Ask your TA for help!

1. Start Here. Read about the basics of social network analysis.

2. Choose a group . Choose an online community – this may include a message board forum, a blog community, an online game or any other web site or device that is utilized by a large number of people. The more novel the community, the more interesting!

You MAY NOT USE Friendster, mySpace or Facebook because they already show links between users in the form of "friends".

3. Identify relationships. Make a list of all the members of the community. Define a measure for whether or not they are "linked" to each other. For instance, in Friendster, there is a list of connected "friends", but there are also second-degree and third-degree friends. You could also define a link between users by whether or not they "talk" to each other, as in a message board, or have "played" together, as in a game. Sometimes, these links are not easily noticeable, and you will have to observe the community in order to understand the relationships.

4. Create a network "map" (aka, a sociomatrix). In order to use this program, you will have to turn the relationships you identified into a matrix, just like a spreadsheet (in fact, EXCEL is great for this, if you map is smaller than 256 people). Your final should look something like this:

And your final comma separated value should look like:

Justine,Eszter,Dave,Paul
1,1,1,1
1,1,1,0
1,1,1,0
1,0,1,1

Notice that the matrix is a mirror, where 1 = "linked" and 0 = "not-linked". This is a simple example - read "5. Using matrices to represent social relations" for a complete description.

5. Use a social network analysis web application to map your results. Visit www.netvis.org and create a user account. Once you register, you should log in and upload your socio matrix (map) into this program.The authors have provided extensive examples for using this program. These examples are available by clicking on the links that say “example”.

6. Write up your results. In your report, focus on the following questions:

• What do these network visualizations tell you about the group?
• How is the group structured? Who's in it? How well is it working? What are the communication patterns?
• Are there cliques or subgroups?
• Who are the important people in the group?
• Are the 'right people' talking to or linked to one another? Who should be talking to whom?

Note: This assignment was adapted from Robert Kraut's Group and Organizational Communication class at Carnegie Mellon University.

Proposal for the Design of an Online Community

You will submit a proposal for the design of a new online community (it can be as simple or complex as you like. You will be working in teams of up to four people with at least one tech-savvy person on each team). Your community can be a web site, but it could also involve a tangible device like a mobile phone!

Refer to the guidelines presented in the readings for your proposal. Make sure that you describe target audience, purpose, design principles, technological tools, and how this online community fills both a social and technological void. Proposal should be no longer than 5-7 pages.

You will also be required to utilize the class WIKI to organize and collaborate with your teammates. This is also where the instructors can review your progress. This includes all documentation (such as the proposal itself) and meeting notes. Due April 17.

Project Prototype

Before you complete your final projects, you will develop a prototype in order to get feedback from your peers. This can be soft prototype, such as a series of illustrations or schematics that demonstrate what the project is and how it work. Or it can be a hard prototype of the actual technology, such as an online user interface, a Flash animation, etc.

You will present the prototypes during class in order to get feedback from your fellow students, as well as the instructor and teaching assistant.

Again, you will also be required to utilize the class WIKI to organize and collaborate with your teammates. Please include information and any links to your prototypes. Due May 8.

(2nd) Second Life Assignment

Your task is to enhance your Second Life environment by designing and implementing an object that interacts with other users. The object has to perform some interaction with the users by eliciting responses from the user. These responses can be "verbal" (i.e. chat) or non-verbal (such as "touch the button") Based on these responses, the object has to perform an action. This action can be a physical action, such as moving the object, or a verbal action, such as giving advice. If you've never done something like this before, don't worry - Second Life gives lots of support (and so do your trusty TAs). If you're an old hand at this kind of thing, then go wild and impress us! You will be demonstrating your Second Life object to the class. Due May 15.

Final Online Community Project

Complete the design and implementation of your online community. Test your online community with a set of users. You will demonstrate the final community to the class, concentrating on the motivation on the design, what worked, and what didn't work. You will also show how your test users used the site and what behaviors you witnessed. This should be done in a powerpoint presentation, that you wil show the class on May 22nd. Each team member should also turn in a 2-4 page report about your community (in order to do well on the report, each of you must understand both the design and the implementation of your site).

REMINDER: Please utilize the class WIKI to organize and collaborate with your teammates. Due May 22.

Final Paper

See instructions above concerning final paper proposal. For some good examples of papers about online communities, check out the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

The final paper should be 12-15 pages for undergraduates and 15-20 pages for graduate students. Due June 6 @ 2pm via email .

The final paper will be graded on both content and form. Content means the originality and interest of the research question, nature of the methodology used to investigate the question, plausibility of your interpretations. Form means the organization, clarity and quality of the writing, and the scholarly use of conventions such as citations and footnotes. An 'A' quality term paper finds an interesting research question, makes use of primary and secondary sources to address the question, and adds interesting and original interpretations of the author's own. It is well-organized and clearly and professionally written.

General Note about collaboration: You will be encouraged to carry out the community observation, analysis and design assignments in groups. For the online community you must do your short report separately. For the final paper, you may actually write the paper as a team. However, if you write a paper together, you must include at the end of the paper a paragraph stating which part of the work was done by each member of the team. In order to make sure that your collaboration falls within the Northwestern guidelines of academic integrity, you must read : http://www.northwestern.edu/uacc/ and http://www.northwestern.edu/uacc/plagiar.html.