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, information science, and social psychology. 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 social computing systems, get experience with social data analyses and focus on design, and evaluation of a social software as their final project for the course.
COURSE FORMAT:
To address the pandemic circumstance, this course is designed following the flipped classroom model; i.e. lectures are going to be recorded and available online for you to watch. Every week we will meet for about one hour during the class time for discussion of concepts in the lectures and interaction around activities, assignments, and the project. The recorded lectures will be broken down into smaller topics to reduce the size of the recording to about 15 minutes. You can attend the synchronous component of the class online but there is also a physical room dedicated to this class for those who would like to attend in-person. As the instructor, I will be joining the class online through zoom. Lecture recordings will include activities that we will discuss during the class time.
PREREQUISITES:
This course does not assume any particular prerequisites. However, this is a graduate course which assumes critical thinking, desire to learn and being challenged with new topics, and hard work.
TEXT:
We will be reading excerpts from a large number of books and articles. Links to electronic copies are provided.
GRADING:
- Participation activities [15 points]: Leading at least 8 breakout sessions in at least 5 different classes
- 2 Quizzes [15 points]: Distributed collaboration, Social network analysis, social capital, Collective Intelligence, Recommender systems
- Literature review assignment [15 points]: this is an individual assignment and involves reading articles relevant to your final project topic, synthesize them and provide a summary of the papers as a short presentation
- Social data analysis assignment [15 points]: this is a group assignment
- Final project [35 points]: Idea generation (4 points), Proposal (4 points), Mid-semester progress (7 points), Final presentation and Final report (20 points)
- Extra points: There will be opportunities throughout the class to earn extra points to make up for points you have lost on other assignments and activities
OFFICE HOUR:
Email or online meetings by appointment:
- Instructor email: rfarzan at pitt dot edu
- TA email (Ben Stein): ben dot s dot stein at gmail.com
TOPICS TO BE COVERED:
- Social software
- Connecting people through technology
- Social computing technologies
- Social information processing
- Human computation and collective intelligence
- Social capital
- Design of Online communities: Socialization of newcomers; Encouraging participation
- Social Computing Research Methodologies
- Visualization and sense making
- Social computing and crisis
- Social computing ethics
SYLLABUS:
# | Date | Topic | Details | Activities |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2021-01-20 | Introduction and overview | Course logistics and requirements Overview of what social computing is about and what you will learn in this course | IntroductionWhat is Social Computing?Collective Wisdon |
2 | 2021-01-27 | Connecting people through technology: social software | What is social software? What are examples of social software? What should we know about social software | Carousel problemDesigning a blog softwareWe Feel FineWhy does Twitter work as it works? |
3 | 2021-02-03 | Distributed collaboration | Computer supported collaboration tools Content sharing Open source software development Project ideas due | |
4 | 2021-02-10 | Project topic and team formation | Instructor and TA will provide feedback for each team on the general idea, methods, and plan of their project | In-class break out room discussions of project ideas |
5 | 2021-02-17 | Social Networks and Social Network Analysis | Networks: definition, metrics Social networks: Design, Technology, Features, and Impacts Social networks: Why and How Submitting list of papers for literature review | |
6 | 2021-02-24 | Designing online communities: challenges and solutions | under-contribution problem Encouraging contributions to online communities Quiz 1: Distributed collaboration and Social network analysis | |
7 | 2021-03-03 | Social computing research methods and research ethics | Data collection Data analysis Usability studies Conducting research on the Internet Privacy IRB Literature review due | |
8 | 2021-03-10 | Social data analysis | Visualization Sense-making | |
9 | 2021-03-17 | Project progress report | In-class presentation of developed project idea, progress report, and feedback on your projects | |
10 | 2021-03-24 | No class | Student self-care day |