CS
329 Elements of Computing in Society
Elaine Rich
Fall, 2012
Class
Information
|
Unique |
Time |
Room |
|
52907 |
T, Th 11:00-12:15 |
PAI 3.14 |
Prerequisites
Computer
Science 303E or the equivalent with a grade of at least C-.
Staff
|
|
|
Office |
Office
Hours |
|
Elaine Rich
|
ACES 2.442
|
W 11:00
–12:00 and TH 3:30 – 4:30 |
|
|
Kim Houck |
By appointment |
Textbooks
·
Hal
Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, Blown
to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the
Digital Explosion. (This
book is available on the Amazon Kindle.)
·
Quinn,
Michael, Ethics
for the Information Age, 5th Edition.
·
Ford,
Martin, The Lights in the Tunnel
Flags
This course carries both the
Writing and the Ethics and Leadership flags.
Writing Flag courses are
designed to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline. In
this class, you can expect to write regularly during the semester, complete
substantial writing projects, and receive feedback from your instructor to help
you improve your writing. You will
also have the opportunity to revise one or more assignments, and to discuss
your peers’ work. You should
therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from your written
work.
Ethics and Leadership courses
are designed to equip you with skills that are necessary for making ethical
decisions in your adult and professional life. You should therefore expect a substantial
portion of your grade to come from assignments involving ethical issues and the
process of applying ethical reasoning to real-life situations.
i>Clicker
We will use the i>clicker interactive response system in class. (Click here to find out more about it.) If you don’t already have an i>clicker, you need to get one from the Coop. The i>clicker2 will give you more features, but the i>clicker1 will also work. Your i>clicker responses will form the bulk of your class participation grade. Thus it is a serious violation of our academic integrity policy to let anyone else use your i>clicker.
Piazza
Piazza is a free online
gathering place where students can ask, answer, and explore 24/7. Read more at http://www.piazza.com. We will use Piazza for important
class announcements. In addition,
you can use it for discussions with other students and with the
instructors. Once registration has
settled down, we will enroll everyone in the class Piazza forum.
Grading
We
all wish that we could have courses without grades. You hate worrying about
grades. We hate having to assign
grades. But grades are essential to insuring that your degree has the value it
deserves. So we have to have a grading system and that system has to have three
essential properties:
·
It has to motivate everyone to learn as much as
possible.
·
It has to be fair to everyone in the class.
·
It has to be a true measure of how much each student
knows about the class material.
In
this class, grades will be assigned as follows:
·
Project 42%
·
Homeworks 40%
·
News articles 5%
·
Notecards 6%
·
Class participation 7%
Project
Everyone
will choose a topic for a term project. The project will have two parts:
·
A written report.
·
A class presentation.
Homeworks
Short
homeworks will be assigned most weeks. You can see what they are and when they
are due by going to the Class
Schedule page. The following
short documents describe how we will grade the homeworks
and they offer tips for writing good papers:
·
A guide
to the structure of a good paper
·
Tips for writing a
good paper
News Articles
As
you’re reading the news, be on the lookout for articles that touch on the
issues that we are covering in class.
Every Thursday (unless otherwise announced), you should come to class
with a printout of an article that you found interesting. You should be prepared to present your
article to the class. You cannot
get credit for turning in an article if you are not present in class.
Notecards
It
is important that you come to class having done the assigned reading. To help assure that everyone has done
so, you will often be asked to turn in, at the beginning of class, one 3 x 5
card on which you have written a short description of an idea that you found
interesting as you were doing the reading.
Once you’ve chosen an idea, do a bit more research on it. Come to class prepared to present what
you have learned. I will flip
through the cards at the beginning of class and choose a few.
Students with Disabilities
Any
student with a documented disability (physical or cognitive) who requires
academic accommodations should contact the Division of Diversity and Community
Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 (voice) or
471-4641 (TTY for users who are deaf or hard of hearing) or http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd/
as soon as possible to request an official letter outlining authorized
accommodations.
Academic Integrity
You
should read carefully the class policy
on academic integrity. Cheating of any form will not be tolerated and will
result in a failing grade in the class.
Religious Holidays
By
UT Austin policy, you must notify me of your pending absence at least fourteen
days prior to the date of observance of a religious holy day. If you must miss
a class, an examination, or an assignment in order to observe a religious holy
day, you will be given an opportunity to complete the missed work within a
reasonable time after the absence.
Additional Class Policies
You
should read CS Department
Code of Conduct. The policies described there will be followed in this
class.