Course Overview and Expectations

We'll review the course web site, including the syllabus and the course outline. We'll also do introductions, and talk about my expectations of students in this class.

Weekly Reviews

You will need to choose one of the readings assigned each week to review on your class blog. You will also need to find and review at least one additional reading on one of the topics for that week. The second reading can be, but does not have to be, from a peer-reviewed journal or conference. It could also be an online essay or blog post, a book or book chapter, or even an in-depth newspaper article. However, it should have some analytical content--a short news item describing a new software package, for example, would not be appropriate. When in doubt, ask me. I will assign grades for these at the end of week 4, week 7, and week 10--but I will also comment on the entries on an ongoing basis.

The review of the assigned article for a given week should be posted no later than the beginning of Thursday's class that week. The review of the additional article for the week should be posted no later than the following Saturday at noon.

Midterm Exam

The midterm will be a take-home essay question exam, which you will have one week to complete. I will post the exam here at the end of week 5.

Final Project

Your final project for the class will be a design document outlining an online community with a specific target audience, and a storyboard prototype for that site. It could be a community site to support an online game, a neighborhood site, a political action site, or any number of other possible community implementations. I would prefer that you work in teams of 2 or 3, but if you would prefer to work independently that is also acceptable.