SYLLABUS AND COURSE POLICIES

Contact Information

Instructor: David Barndollar
Class Meetings: MW 3:30-5:00p PAR 6
Office Hours: MW 2:30-3:30p in FAC 17 (Science, Technology & Society office), T 5:00-6:00p in PAR 102, or by appointment
Email: dpbarndollar@mail.utexas.edu

Course Summary

This is a course that explores information technology both past and present from the perspective of the humanities, with particular emphasis on its social effects and consequences. The major strands of work in this course are:

• information technology
• communication and social systems
• critical reading and research
• collaboration and service

Specifically, this is an intensive reading course at the introductory level. We will look at both contemporary technologies and issues as well as historical ones, both to gain a better sense of the trajectory that has led us where we are as well as to recognize recurring patterns that inform and influence the present. We will first examine (briefly) ancient and early-modern information technologies before looking closely at modern developments, by which we mean 19th-century and after. At all times we will be concerned not only with the technologies themselves but also with the human elements of IT use: e.g., personal, social, economic, legal, political, ecological, and artistic concerns.

We will also engage in practical work with IT as the basis for discussion and inquiry. Some of this will be with computers, since communications have been profoundly affected by developments in computer technology. Some will take place within the context of an academic service-learning project, in which we will be working with Austin Free-Net to develop community connections in East Austin using information technologies of various kinds. And some will involve student presentations requiring research into IT topics as well as presentation methods.

Because the course asks students to engage in many different kinds of work, both individual and collaborative, we will utilize the Learning Record Online for evaluation and assessment. The LRO is a portfolio system of assessment, designed to take stock of your learning in ways that traditional grading systems typically do not.

In short, this is a course that will stretch you in unfamiliar ways, and thus is a quite demanding course. The key to success will be sincere and full engagement with the various class activities; surely you will learn a lot this semester if you simply do what is asked of you. What you get from the class will depend entirely on what you put into the activities; what that turns out to be will differ from student to student. Please contact the instructor when you need support in completing these activities; the instructor's job is to support your learning and create an effective environment for it.

Assignments

Students are expected to arrive at class having completed all reading assignments listed for that day, and to bring any printed texts to class for reference. The service-learning component of this course will require a number of hours to be spent in work outside of class, in addition to the required class meetings. And much of the work you do for the course will be accessed, written, or submitted electronically, so you will need access to a computer with internet access. As a student in the Computer Writing & Research Lab (CWRL), you have access to the computers in PAR 102 during its open hours this semester. All UT students have access to the computers in the Student Microcomputer Facility (SMF) in the Flawn Academic Center (FAC) (see the SMF site for their schedule). Students may also have access to other computing facilities at the University: a partial list can be found on the IT Computing Resources page.

The reading schedule is dynamic, in that it will change slightly as the course progresses, depending on our pace of work and on current events that may command our attention from time to time. Therefore, the web version of the schedule will change on occasion, and you should expect such changes. I will send notices of changes to the class email list; however, you should check the schedule online for the most current version at any given time. In other words, please do not print out the syllabus once in August and expect it to remain static until December.

Accounts

In addition to your UT EID, you will need to sign up for several electronic accounts for this course, at least one of which you probably already have. The first is an email account: it is strongly preferred that you use a University (UMBS) email address, since you will be subscribed to a class email list (sts319-barndollar@lists.cwrl.utexas.edu), and some email account providers (e.g., Yahoo and Hotmail) may block legitimate email list traffic as spam. You may sign up for a UMBS account at http://www.utexas.edu/its/umbs.

After you obtain your email account and subscribe to the class list, you will need to check your email regularly, at least as often as the morning of each class. You can use Webmail or your own web portal for this, or you can use an email client such as Outlook Express, Entourage, Eudora, or Pine. Whatever method you choose, be sure to check consistently so that you won’t miss important information about assignments and class meetings. You should plan to use the list for continuing class discussions or coordinating projects with other class participants.

You should also activate your UT Webspace account, which allows you to publish web pages and store private documents on a remote server, which can be useful for backing up coursework or transporting files from a campus lab to your home computer and vice versa. (If you have public server space elsewhere, that will suffice for this need.)

From time to time you will need to log in to sites such as the UT Libraries’ eRes service and the course's wiki so please keep track of your passwords for these sites. And of course, never give out your login information to anyone else, especially not your UT EID password.

Assessment and Grading

Student evaluation in this course will take place using the Learning Record Online (LRO), an electronic portfolio system of assessment. Please see the LRO assignment page for more details.

Attendance

Attendance at class is required, since our sessions will run the gamut from brief lectures and seminar discussions to collaborative small-group work, and full participation is essential. You may be absent up to four times, for any reason, without penalty. (Officially excused absences from the University, such as athletic competitions or religious holidays, are exempt from the count—please submit your list of known holidays or conflicts no later than the third class meeting.) Upon the fifth absence, you will fail the course. There are no exceptions to this policy.

Since late arrivals and early departures (“partial absences”) are distracting to other students, they are accounted for as follows: you may have two partial absences without penalty, but the third and every subsequent partial absence will count as one-half an absence, to be penalized as described in the preceding paragraph.

Academic Integrity

All students are expected to be familiar with the University’s policy on plagiarism and academic integrity. In short, all work completed for credit in this course is expected to be your own. Submitting any plagiarized work for credit will result in a major course penalty, usually failure for the course. Please ask if you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism on any given assignment.

Students with Disabilities

The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact the Office of the Dean of Students at 471-6259, 471-4641 TTY or go to http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/ssd/.

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