Course Syllabus

  Course Description

This survey course sets the stage for the study, design, and develop information technology for the good of people, organizations, and society. This includes ideas on what information is in relation to data, knowledge and wisdom; where information comes from; how people create, categorize, store, find, filter, interpret, manipulate, and use information; and how information, systems and technology can be powerful, at times beneficial and at times harmful. The course positions these topics not as neutral technical activities, but as socio-technical ones rich with human values. The course engages how information systems both reflect and embed, and can counter historical and structural forms of oppression and exclusion, especially in relation to race, gender, and ability.

 Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, you will:

1. Have a foundational understanding of what constitutes information.
2. Understand relationships among data, information, knowledge and wisdom.
3. Understand the role of culture in our construction of information and knowledge.
4. Understand computing technologies (broadly construed) as information technologies.
5. Understand that information systems are fundamentally socio-technical systems which are shaped by and then shape important human experience and human values.
6. Understand basic methods for designing information technologies, including research, ideation, and prototyping.
7. Apply basic analytic, conceptual, and empirical methods to understand information and information systems.
8. Understand how information systems can reflect, embed, and counter historical and structural forms of oppression and exclusion, especially in relation to race, gender, and ability.
9. Understand careers in information, information systems, and information technology.

In this class, I expect you to:

• Have humility about each others' different positions, power, and privilege
  • Do proactively fix inclusion issues or report them to a TA or instructor
  • Don't assume everyone has the same resources or rights as you
• Respect everyone's identities and lived experiences
  • Do respect names, pronouns, and pronunciations
  • Don't make assumptions about who someone is or what they believe
• Be responsive to your instructors and each other
  • Respond to emails and other messages within a few days
  • Never ghost a collaborator unless someone's behavior is harassment 
• Credit other people for their work
  • Do give explicit credit for any images, video, or other content you reuse
  • Don't copy other people's writing or content and present it as your own
• Prioritize learning over grades
  • Do ask questions and pursue curiosities
  • Don't obsess over points and GPAs

And I expect everyone in class to help assert these expectations — you, your TAs, and of course myself.

Additionally, when in-person, I encourage you to wear a well-fitting, high-quality mask, whether for your own comfort or to protect vulnerable others around you and their friends and families. I also encourage the same for those visiting me for office hours in-person (shown on the course schedule page). Although I choose to continue wearing a mask while indoors, you may choose not to. Your decision will have no bearing on your grade in my class.

  Required Materials and Technology

We will use one free online-only textbook: Foundations of Information, by Amy J. Ko. (Yes, that's me). This book represents one perspective on information among many, but I have worked with many iSchool faculty to ensure that the book reflects our broader expertise and perspectives. I wrote the book for a broad audience, and host it online to make it easier to access and read. The book is always evolving; send me feedback if you have it and suggestions for resources. Assigned readings are visible on the course schedule.

In addition to the book, you will be reading research papers, book chapters, and/or listening to podcasts. All of these additional resources will be found online in digital libraries and elsewhere on the internet, and are linked in the book. If you are on UW wifi, you should be able to access the articles for free. If you are not on UW wifi, you'll need to use the UW Libraries Proxy Bookmarklet to get past the pay wall.

We will rely on several technologies in the class:

• Ohyay for participating remotely (or while in class if you want to chat or use emoji reactions)
• Discord for chat during and outside of class time, as well as announcements and in-class activities. You must set your nickname to your name in Canvas, so we can identify you.
• Google Docs to draft reports.
• Google Sheets for in-class activities
• YouTube for final presentations.

Because we will be relying heavily on Google services, be sure to activate up your UW Google Workplace account. This is not the same as a personal Google account, as it is tied to your UW NetID. We will use your UW NetID for all permissions, so be sure you're logged in via your UW NetID when accessing course materials. We will ignore all requests to add personal Google accounts to resources; if you don't have access, it's probably because you're not logged in with your UW account.

Finally, I maintain an INFO 200 playlist to create ambiance for the course. Send me song ideas or post them in Discord #share if you have suggestions!

  Course Structure

The course involves several activities:

• Synchronous twice-weekly lectures (<4 hours/week), where we will discuss the reading together and engage in an in-class activity for credit. Slides and lectures will be recorded and posted on the course schedule after class. You may attend in-person or online, in Ohyay.
  • In-person may help you focus, offer time to chat with classmates, TAs, and I during breaks and before and after class, and likely be more fun.
  • Online may help you manage other life responsibilities, prevent spreading illness, and prevent costly and stressful commutes.
• Synchronous weekly lab (<1 hour/week), where you will work with your teammates and classmates on analysis and design reports. Labs will not be recorded and you must attend them in-person. But you can access slides after lab and make up the lab activities with teammates.
• Readings (<4 hours/week), including chapters from the course textbook, Foundations of Information, as well as optionally presenting a reading or podcast in one of the lectures for extra credit.
• Projects (<5 hours/week), including brainstorming, writing, prototyping, and presenting with your teammates.
• Office hours. These are a key resource. Come to chat with your TA or I to discuss any topics in class and even topics outside of class. You can join in-person or online. By default, office hours are group conversations, but we can also have private 1 on 1 conversations as well, in case you have sensitive or private information you need to share. If online, use Ohyay's "side conversations" feature, and if person, we'll just ask other students to step outside my office.

If you're spending more than 15 hours a week on this class, talk to your TA about tips for reducing your workload. If you're spending less than 10 hours a week, you may not be putting enough effort into the class.

  Assignments

Projects

There are two major team projects in the class:

• Analyze a design
• Envision a design and Communicate it.

Both are done in small teams of 2 or 3. Each one lasts 5 weeks, and is scaffolded by lab activities and class time. Overall, you should have at up to 2 hours per week in lab and lectures to meet with your teammate(s) and coordinate your work. You may need to schedule other time outside of class to work together.

All projects are team graded.

Your teammate(s) may not consistently meet your expectations or the expectations I noted above. For example:

• A teammate disengages from class (e.g., due to crisis, disinterest)
• A teammate engages in harmful behavior (e.g., disrespectful speech, manipulation, harassment)
• A teammate is not responsive (e.g., replies weeks later, ghosts you)

In these cases, you may reach out to your TA to request that your team be disbanded. In your request, explain the behavior that is making teamwork infeasible. Your TA will privately document your request, consult with me and we will decide the best course of action (e.g., disbanding, denying the request, requiring a mediation meeting). We will also request information from the teammate, so that we have context from both parties. If we approve your request, your project submissions will be graded separately, accounting for any variation in contributions noted in what teammates have shared with us.

Readings

The readings are your primary source of knowledge in the class; my lectures, your presentations, and in-class Q&A will supplement the reading. All other activities build upon what you read. The lecture periods will review, synthesize, and build upon the ideas in the reading. It's therefore critical that you do the reading before each class.

Reading assignments involve the following:

• Read the assigned chapter. You can see which chapter we're discussing at the top of each lecture period in the course schedule. Read it the assigned chapter before class.
• Choose a second reading or podcast. Each chapter will have a list of references and possibly podcasts. You'll choose one of these to read or listen to, with the goal of connecting the ideas in the required reading to the ideas in the selected reading:
  • One of the research papers cited. You do not need to understand every word of research papers in detail; instead, your goal is to understand what question the paper posed and what answer it found. Read the introduction and conclusion first, and if you need more information to understand them, read the middle sections of the paper. The links in the chapters should work on campus; to access these off campus, use the UW Libraries off-campus proxy.
  • A chapter from one of the book's cited. You do not need to read the whole book; read the book's Introduction or the 1st chapter. To access these, you may be able to find excerpts on Google Books or the digital copies at UW Libraries; some books are freely available online if you search. Expect to do a bit of work to retrieve book text. But it's worth it! Books can be far more engaging than research papers.
  • A podcast. Many chapters include a list of relevant podcasts, most of which have transcripts. Listen to the podcast or read its transcript. All of these should be available for free, and range from 20-60 minutes in length.
  • You must choose a paper, chapter, or podcast cited in the chapter. 
• Submit a reflection to Canvas. Your reflection should include four short paragraphs, responding to these four prompts:
  • Paragraph 1. In the Foundations of Information chapter, what was an idea you found interesting, surprising, or confusing? Describe the idea and why it resulted in one or more these reactions.
  • Paragraph 2. In your selected reading or podcast, what was an idea that you found interesting, surprising, or confusing? Cite what you read (using the citation in the chapter), describe the idea and why it resulted in one or more these reactions.
  • Paragraph 3. What was one connection you observed between the required chapter and your selected reading or podcast? Describe the connection. Connections might be a similar idea, conflicting ideas, or other themes.
  • Paragraph 4. What are one or more questions you have for the teaching team that emerged from your reading? These might be asking for more depth about an idea, for clarification about a confusing idea, other other curiosities. You'll post these question in the Q&A widget during lectures and Amy and the TAs will answer and discuss them.

Reading reflections will be graded on a 2 point scale. They do not need to be long; 9-12 sentences total, across the four paragraphs, will probably be sufficient to cover the points above (though people vary in how verbose they are and how much they have to say, so don't worry too much about counting sentences). If your reflection demonstrates that you read the chapter and has a question, you will receive 1 point. If it also demonstrates that you read a selected reading or listened to a podcast, and poses a question and demonstrates analysis of the connection between it and the book chapter, you will receive another 1 point. Otherwise, you get zero points. Your TA will grade your reflections, and give feedback on reflections that do not demonstrate evidence of reading or analysis.

All readings are individual credit. See the late policy below for details on late submissions.

Extra credit. You can earn 1 extra credit point on a reading assignment if you volunteer to share with the class what you read for your selected reading (online or in-person). You only need to speak for ~1 minute to earn the credit; your summary should explain what you read or listened to, who authored it or who was interviewed, and what you learned from reading it, optionally connecting it to other ideas that I or other students have shared. During class, I will call for volunteers to come to the Ohyay stage. You can read what you wrote in your reading reflection if you wish, or prepare something specifically for presentation. You can only get credit if you attend class and present; extra credit cannot be after class. You can get extra credit up to 3 times this quarter but you can volunteer to share as many times as you like.

Labs

The purpose of the labs is to advance your project work. The first five labs will focus on guiding your analysis report, and the second half will focus on the design report, and your design communication. The labs are also where this large class gets to feel smaller: by the end of the quarter, you should know your classmates' names, have a stronger sense of class community, and perhaps even make a few friends.

The students in your lab section also form the basis of your community during the two lecture periods. Discussions and activities will be divided by lab section, and so you should have a sense of the same small group of students even during lecture periods.

All labs are individual credit, and involve submitting work from the lab's activities before the second lecture period of each week.

If you cannot attend lab (for any reason), you can read the slides and meet with your teammates at some other time, completing the lab activity described in the slides to the best of your ability, submitting to Canvas. See the late policy below for details on late submissions.

Activities

The purpose of the in-class activities is to connect the concepts in the readings to relevant skills and to the collective diversity of the students in the class. Each activity will have its own requirements and involve submission on Canvas. 

If you cannot attend class (for any reason, including illness, time zones, etc.), you can watch the recording, complete the in-class activity to the best of your ability, submitting the required content to Canvas. Some activities may require some creativity to recreate. In addition to submitting the activity, also list the question that idea that you found most interesting from the lecture, presentations, and discussion. Note: many activities involve interactions with peers; do your best to approximate those to the extent possible (including reaching out to classmates after class or using residual content from class on Discord).

All activities are individual credit. See the late policy below for details on late submissions.

Late Policy

All assignments have a deadline, noted in Canvas. However, those deadlines are there to help you keep pace with class. There is no penalty for submitting something past its stated deadline, as long as it is submitted any time before Monday of finals week (Sunday, 11:59 pm Pacific Time). If any submission is received on or after this day, you will get zero credit.

Yes, this is actual late policy. It's not too good to be true.

I have this relatively simple policy for several reasons:

• Crisis. If you're ill, have a family crisis, are managing depression, or one of a myriad other challenges in life, there are simply going to be priorities that are more important than this class. I get that. Use this to give yourself an extra few days, or even weeks, to focus on what you need.
• Privacy. You shouldn't have to tell me what's going on in your life to convince me that you deserve an extension. That's not only a violation of your privacy and an abuse of my power, but it deters anyone who has something they are scared to share from asking for what they need, which only hurts them further.
• Distraction. When the TAs and I spend time coordinating on late assignments, arguing with students over late policies, and accounting for unexpected circumstances, that's less time we are focused on your learning.

That said, keeping pace with the stated deadlines in class is important for many reasons:

• Sequencing. All of the topics in class are sequenced intentionally; if you're reading something we discussed weeks ago in class, you're likely to learn less from it and have less to contribute in class. 
• Procrastination. If you fall behind, it will be hard to catch up. Procrastinating on submissions will result in an incredibly stressful end of quarter grind and you likely will learn less well and submit poorer quality work. If you struggle with procrastination, use this as an opportunity to develop better practices around task management, time management, and motivation. Come to office hours if you need guidance.
• Teamwork. Your teammates are depending on you to responsibly, reliably, and collaboratively contribute to your project. If you stop doing work, you threaten their ability to learn and succeed. If you need to be late on something, communicate with your teammates so that they can still make progress.

Therefore, use this flexibility when you need it, not as a way to avoid or delay learning.

If you were unable to keep up with deadlines and can't catch up by the hard deadline noted above, you may write me to request an incomplete before the deadline above. You don't need to provide an explanation, just a plan for when you'll complete the work in the following quarter, and a commitment to notify me when you've submitted the missing work to Canvas. After you notify me, I will grade the late submissions and submit a change of grade request, replacing the incomplete on your record with a final grade. (If you don't submit or don't notify me, the incomplete converts to your default grade at the end of the next quarter).

Resubmission

You can resubmit any reading, activity, or lab for a regrade once, any time before the finals week grading deadline mentioned above. This can be helpful in case you overlooked a key piece of information needed for credit, or you didn't quite provide enough detail to earn full credit. These are relatively quick and easy to regrade if you want to respond to credit with an improved submission.

You cannot resubmit the analysis report, design report, or design communication projects. Grading those is more involved and would impose an infeasible amount of labor on the teaching team.

  Grading

There are 100 points in the class, detailed below. We will use the iSchool Standard Grading Scheme to convert your points to 4.0 grades. Individual means that you submit the assignment individually and are graded individually; team means you submit together with your team and all receive the same grade.

• Syllabus Feedback (1 point, individual). Tell me what's confusing about the syllabus.
• Projects
  • Analyze a design (20 points, team). Analyze an information system against several criteria.
  • Envision a design (20 points, team). Design an information system, or a revise an existing information system, describing it in terms of several criteria.
  • Communicate a design (10 points, team). Present your design to the class. Your grade will be informed by your classmates' reactions to the presentation's clarity, but ultimately selected by Amy and the TAs.
• Readings (35 points, individual). There are 18 chapters, each worth 2 points each (except the first, which is just worth 1). It is critical that you've read the readings before we discuss them in class. You may also earn extra credit by presenting a reflection in class.
• Labs (7 points, individual). There are 10 labs, each worth 1 point each. We will drop your three lowest lab scores to account for illness, scheduling conflicts, connectivity issues, and other problems. Labs are graded credit/no credit. See the section above for rules about making up labs.
• Activities (7 points, individual). In each lecture period, there will be an in-class activity that deepens your understanding of the topic for the day, and requires submission of some evidence of participation. There are 20 activities, each worth 0.5 points each. There are up to 10 points possible, so you can miss up to three activities without penalty, accounting for illness, scheduling conflicts, connectivity issues, and other problems. (The lowest three are dropped). See the section above for rules about making up in-class activities.

If you have any questions about your grades, go to your TA first: they are the ones assigning grades. They can escalate to Amy if necessary; you can escalate to me if you do not agree with their decisions.

  Resources

Student Resources
A number of challenges from a variety of directions can affect your ability to bring your optimal attention and energy to a course. Student Resources is a set of links to campus resources that UW makes available to students in trying to mitigate and cope with some of these challenges.

iSchool Technology Requirements
The iSchool has a set of technology requirements for both online and residential students. We highly recommend that students adhere to these standards which are updated annually. Students who do not meet these standards may experience technology problems throughout the course.

iSchool Learning Technologies Support Site
Knowledge base for Canvas, VoiceThread, Zoom, and other learning technologies tools.

UW Libraries
In this course you may be required to access a large number of databases through the Internet. Several of these databases are publicly available, but some are proprietary and access requires authentication through the UW Libraries. Information about logging in to use these databases is available on the Connecting to the Libraries page.

  Academic Conduct

Please review the iSchool Academic Policies which cover:

• Academic and Behavioral Misconduct
• Academic Integrity
• Copyright
• Privacy
• Concerns About a Course
• Evaluation of Student Work

 Religious Accommodation

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

The flexibility on late work and makeup work should mean that you don't need to request any accommodations.