Overview

When the core content of a course involves people, engagement is absolutely critical. We will be doing design exercises in class, testing new software on each other, and providing critiques of each others’ work. This portion of your grade may be higher in HCI than some of your other courses for this very reason. Coffee up! It involves:

• Showing up to class
• Actively engaging in class activities
• Actively engaging in design critique of classmates
• Submitting good questions for our visitors
• Occasional reflection on class activities

Visitors and Field Trips

HCI is a diverse field. It has computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists, historians, artists, and everything in between. Giving you one perspective (my perspective) would shed light on only a corner of an increasingly exciting field that is shaping how people engage with the world around them. As a result, we will often have an opportunity to chat with people across this broad spectrum in-person and virtually by Zoom. What you need to do:

• Submit a question on Slack for our guest by 5pm the day before their visit.
• Before 8:00am the morning of the visit, indicate which current questions on Slack you like (with emoji, a comment, whatever). We will ask the top 3-5 questions submitted each week.
• For each visitor, I will request that one student (on a volunteer basis) serve as the coordinator. You will be responsible for asking the questions of our visitor.

Slack and online presence

We use Slack in this class for communication, both with me and with each other. You will use your Davidson Domains to host your blogs. Communicating through the internet has its own set of norms, so I expect you to follow these guidelines:

• I will send communication during my working hours (8:30 AM -5:30 PM on weekdays) and will not respond outside of those hours. Usually, I will respond within 24 business hours.
• Likewise, I will respect your personal working hours and will expect a response within a similar, reasonable amount of time.
• Treat each other with respect, and err on the side of being too courteous. It is too easy to be overly casual on the internet and cause miscommunications or hurt feelings.
• You may use this Slack to communicate with each other, via individual or group messages or channels.
• If you

Grading

Each opportunity to engage, participate, or critique will be entered as a score in the gradebook out of n points, where n is commensurate with the effort level of the activity. Full credit if you partipate, none if you don’t.