Your performance in weekly assessments constitutes half of your final grade. These assessments include engaging with assigned materials through in-class discussions and asynchronous annotations of the materials, or through coding assignments and peer reviewing one another’s code, all of which is detailed below. Weekly assessments are not graded individually, but instead you will receive a final grade at the end of the semester that considers not only whether you completed the assessments, but also your degree of engagement and creativity, as well as the growth you demonstrated throughout the semester.

Weekly Seminar Discussion and Asynchronous Annotations 25%Permalink

Before each class, you’re expected to engage with assigned materials, ranging from reading a book chapter or article, to exploring a data visualization to listening to a podcast. These materials lay the groundwork for our class discussions, as well as helping you with your semester long project. There may be some weeks that are of more interest to you, and I encourage you to explore the additional listed materials, though these are optional.

Questions to consider when engaging with 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?

Overall, 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.

One way to demonstrate your engagement with the weekly materials is to participate in our weekly seminar discussions. Your contributions could be in the form of questions about complex or confusing concepts in the readings, connections that you want to share across the assigned materials, or feedback and responding 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.

The other way to demonstrate engagement is through asynchronous annotations. We will be using the Hypothesis annotation platform, with an introductory session in the first week of class. These annotations are a space for you to share your thoughts on the week’s materials and engage with your peers, and you will occasionally be asked to expand on your annotations during our discussions. You can sign up for Hypothesis here https://web.hypothes.is/start/ and join our collective group at the link in our syllabus or via Canvas. You will need to install the Hypothesis Browser Extension for your preferred browser as well.

Weekly Coding Assignments 25%Permalink

You will also have weekly programming assignments to complete and share 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, I would encourage you to do your best to not only try and complete the assignments each week, but to ensure that you are understanding the core concepts.. Questions are encouraged both in person and online, and we will be discussing more about best coding practices during our first week.

Workload Expectations and ExtensionsPermalink

On average, you should plan for approximately 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 the Instructor. If for whatever reason you need an extension, please contact the Instructor 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 ResourcesPermalink

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.

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