🗓 Weekly Assessments 50%

Since we are in a seminar, weekly participation is a core component of our experience. However, because we are initially meeting virtually on Zoom (and may have some hybrid meetings), we cannot always assume that we’ll be able to have normal in-person seminars. To manage this situation, weekly participation will be based on a combination of: attendance (whether virtually or in person); completion of assigned materials and assignments prior to class; contributions during seminar and outside of it in our Discord server, and finally curating and summarizing class content as part of our course website.

Seminar Discussion 🤝

One way to demonstrate your engagement with the weekly materials is to participate in our seminar discussions. Your contributions could be in the form of questions about confusing concepts in the readings, connections that you want to share, or feedback to peer contributions. More than simply talking as much as possible though, our goal with seminar discussions is to create a thoughtful and respectful intellectual community.

Additionally, you can also participate weekly by finding materials you think are relevant to the class and sharing them in our Discord server (though please include your rationale for sharing them).

Weekly Materials and Collective Annotations 📚

Each of our course meetings in the schedule has a list of materials that you are expected to have engaged with prior to class. These might range from reading a book chapter or article, to exploring a data visualization to listening to a podcast. The purpose of these materials is to provide you with the foundation for our discussions, as well as helping you with your final project. There may be some week’s that are of more interest to you and I have listed additional optional materials as well for your convenience.

Questions to consider will completing the weekly materials include:

What is the main argument of this piece? Is there an argument? What is interesting or evocative or infuriating?
If there is an argument, how does the author support the argument? What sorts of evidence or data did they utilize? How did they organize the structure of their piece?
If you didn’t feel there was an argument, what do you think was the author’s purpose or goal with the material (whether a project, blog post, tool, etc…)?
What is the likely audience for the material?
What connections or tensions did you identify across materials?
What did you not understand in the materials? What was confusing?
How would you connect the week’s materials to previous ones?

Ultimately, remember the goal is not to detail everything the author or creator says, but instead try to summarize in a few lines their central points and how they relate to the other materials from that week. To help us engage with these materials, we will also engage in collective annotations via Hypothesis. These annotations are a space for you to share your thoughts on the week’s materials and engage with your peers.

Coding 💻

You will also have weekly programming assignments to complete and share either via Discord or Github. Due to our differing programming backgrounds, some of our coding instruction will happen outside of class (schedules permitting) and then we will review these lessons and the assignments in our seminar either as a group or in pairs. Coding assignments should be submitted via Github, unless indicated otherwise. Most coders work collaboratively, often engaging in pair programming, a method of talking through code problems together. This course encourages you to pair program, and work together to learn from each other’s solutions. However, be aware that copying and pasting code might get you through one week, but the concepts in this course move quickly and build upon each other, so do your best to try and complete the assignments each week. Questions are encouraged both in person and online.

Curating Course Content Blog Post 📝

While initially we discussed doing weekly lab notes and reflections, to help limit your workload we will instead pivot to creating blog posts for our course website. The goal of this assignment is to introduce you to blogging in preparation for your final project and also give you a chance to reflect on the discussions and materials from our seminar meetings. In your post, rather than trying to summarize our full meeting, you should instead focus on curating and reflecting on your experiences with the materials. For example, if you were blogging in our week about humanities data, you might reflect on how the readings and discussions helped you understand what makes this type of data different from others, and quote some of your peers’ annotations to help contextualize your thoughts. You might also include outside materials that you feel are relevant to that week.

The posts will be written in Markdown and uploaded to our course website, and the instructor will provide more information on how to do both in class.

Grade Contract 📜

Contract Component	Exceeds Expectations (2 points)	Baseline Expectations (1 point)	Below Expectations (0 points)
Attendance and Punctuality	Misses no more than 2 class meetings and is on time to class.	Misses no more than 4 classes and is generally on time to classes	Misses more than 4 classes without checking-in with the instructor
Discussion	Weekly participates in class discussion with thoughtful commentary, and is respectful and encouraging towards their peers.	Participates in the majority of class discussions, and is respectful and encouraging towards their peers.	Consistently does not meaningfully participate in discussion.
Sharing Relevant Research	Shares outside materials with the class at least 4 times and explains their rationale.	Shares outside materials with the class at least twice and explains their rationale.	Does not share outside materials.
Weekly materials and annotations	Completes each assigned material with at least two annotations prior to class.	Completes majority of assigned material with annotations prior to class.	Consistently does not complete assigned materials or annotations.
Coding assignments	Submits all coding assignments prior to class and engages in supportive pair programming when assigned.	Submits and completes majority of coding assignments, and participates in pair programming.	Consistently does not submit or complete coding assignments.
Curating the Course Blog Posts	Completes at least three blog posts and submits/uploads them before the end of the course.	Completes at least one blog post and submits/uploads it before the end of the course.	Does not submit a blog post.

Each of the activities in this table are worth their stated points and it is up to you to decide how you want to spend your time for this course. The grade contract calculates as follows:

To earn an A+, earn 12 points
To earn an A, earn 11 points
To earn an A-, earn 10 points
To earn a B+, earn 9 points
To earn a B, earn 8 points
To earn a B-, earn 7 points
To earn a C+, earn 6 points
To earn a C, earn 5 points
To earn a C-, earn 4 points
To earn a D+, earn 3 points
To earn a D, earn 2 points
To earn a D-, earn 1 point
To earn an F, earn 0 point

Workload Expectations and Extensions 🎒

On average, you should plan to budget 3-5 hours for weekly readings and 2-3 hours for coding assignments. If you have concerns over the amount of assigned readings or any of the homework, please feel free to discuss them with me. If for whatever reason you need an extension, please come speak with me and we can try and arrange it depending on other assignments. I am always happy to extend due dates depending on your other commitments, but I also want to make sure that you are learning appropriate time management and project management skills.

Required Texts and Resources

Almost all the course materials will be available online through either Canvas or through direct links to the website in question, so you are not required to purchase any materials. Throughout the semester, I will highlight books that you may want to purchase but that is completely up to you. The same goes for our coding resources. You will not be required to purchase any software but you will need access to a computer, so please let me know early on if you think that will be an issue and we can try and find solutions.