DESCRIPTION:
This course focuses on how social groups form and evolve, how members of these groups interact with each other, and how these groups are supported and augmented with computer systems. The course is interdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of computer science, psychology, and sociology. It covers key theories and technologies of social computing in terms of (1) computer systems supporting social behavior and (2) socially intelligent computing carried out by groups. Students will have a chance to explore several social computing systems and focus on design, implementation, and evaluation of a social web system as their final project for the course.
PREREQUISITES:
This course does not assume any particular prerequisites. However, having programming knowledge, especially web programming is a plus.
TEXT:
Various course notes and papers will be made available.
GRADING:
- Class participation [10 points]
- Weekly readings [30 points]
- One homework assignment [10 points]
- Show and tell [10 points]
- Final project [40 points]
TOPICS TO BE COVERED:
- Social software
- Social computing technologies
- Social information processing
- Crowdsourcing
- Social capital
- Social roles
- Online communities
- Socialization of newcomers
- Encouraging contribution
- Diversity, conflict and coordination
- Evaluation methodologies
- Visualization and sense making
- Research ethics
SYLLABUS:
| # | Date | Topic | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sep 1, 2011 | Introduction and overview | programming quiz social computing quiz introduction to course students' introduction |
| 2 | Sep 8, 2011 | Social software[1] | Blogging and microblogging: what are blogs? Who blogs? Twitter Social bookmarking: what is social bookmarking Content sharing: photos, videos, ... |
| 3 | Sep 15, 2011 | Social software[2] | Wikis and Wikipedia Social networking sites, Facebook and beyond |
| 4 | Sep 22, 2011 | Social computing technologies | Interactive web: Ajax APIs: FB API, Wikipedia API,... Mashups |
| 5 | Sep 29, 2011 | Social information processing | Tagging Social navigation Social search Collaborative filtering |
| 6 | Oct 6, 2011 | Crowdsourcing | Concept Mechanical turk Purposeful games New directions of crowdsourcing |
| 7 | Oct 13, 2011 | Social capital, online communities, and social roles | Bonding and Identity social capital What are online communities? Social roles in online communities |
| 8 | Oct 20, 2011 | Socialization of newcomers | Membership lifecycles Dealing with newcomers Socialization |
| 9 | Oct 27, 2011 | Encouraging contribution | under-contribution problem Encouraging contributions to online communities Strategies supported by social science theories |
| 10 | Nov 3, 2011 | Midterm | Presenting final project ideas |
| 11 | Nov 10, 2011 | Diversity, conflict, and coordination | Diversity in online communities Regulating behavior Conflict and coordination in Wikipedia Promoting norms and rules Encouraging cooperation |
| 12 | Nov 17, 2011 | Evaluation methodologies | Data collection Data analysis Usability studies |
| 13 | Nov 24, 2011 | No class | Thanksgiving break |
| 14 | Dec 1, 2011 | Visualization and sense making | Social sense making Social visualization Information cascades |
| 15 | Dec 8, 2011 | Research ethics | Conducting research on the Internet Privacy IRB |
| 16 | Dec 15, 2011 | Final project | Final project presentation |