Grading

Evaluation in this course will include three components:

1. Writing assignments: 45%
   1. There will be weekly writing assignments, which will be commentaries on the readings. There will be around eleven such commentaries assigned; only the top six scores will count towards a student’s grade. Students will receive regular, written feedback on their papers from one of the teaching assistants. Commentaries will have a prompt given every week at the end of class, and online in the Slack channel. They will be due every week on Thursday at 11:59 PM via the Dropbox connected to the course via LEARN.
   2. The six best commentaries or position papers submitted by a student will each count for 7.5% of the student’s final grade. Therefore, the written component of the course will account for a total of 45% of a student’s final grade. Should a student wish, they may submit any commentary to an instructor by email, in an editable word-processing format (i.e., .doc or .docx) for additional feedback (beyond that received from the teaching assistant), particularly with respect to improving their writing style.
   3. The University of Waterloo’s Writing and Communication Centre works across all faculties to help students clarify their ideas, develop their voices, and write in the styles appropriate to their disciplines. Centre staff offer one-on-one support in planning assignments and presentation, using and documenting research, organizing and structuring papers, and revising for clarity and coherence. We particularly encourage using the WCC for students whose English or writing skills are not at the level where they wish them to be.
   4. Your weekly writing assignments should be approximately two pages (1000 words) long.
2. Class participation: 20%
   1. We will assess students’ participation on thoughtfulness and quality, rather than quantity. What we are looking for is for students who can demonstrate meaningful engagement with the material, justify their arguments and respond respectfully to contrary positions presented by others. During the course of the semester, students are likely to be asked to advance or defend (either orally or in writing or both) positions that may differ from their own personal views.
   2. Suggesting articles or videos for the “From-the-News” component of the class will contribute to a student’s class participation grade, as will contributing to article discussions in the course Slack channel.
   3. Students for whom English communication is challenging may need to work especially hard for this component of the course.
3. Group project: 35%
   1. There will be a small-group project that will involve a small team comprised of two to four students. Each team will submit a joint work product that may consist of a creative project, such as the development of an online program or tool, an application, a chatbot, a website, a video presentation, or a podcast.
   2. The group projects will involve a technological issue of the sort addressed in the course, regarding a computing topic that connects to social implications of computing. Teams will identify their topic, confirm the appropriateness of the topic with the instructors, divide the labour among their team members, and accommodate different perspectives, viewpoints, and expertise of the team members.
   3. If students encounter undue challenges in the project work, they should contact the instructors promptly; in particular, please do not wait until the week before the project is due to indicate that group members have been unresponsive to their assignments.
   4. Students may, but are not required, to prepare a short presentation to give in the final class of the semester, which will contribute to their class participation grade.
   5. The submission to the project consists of:
      1. A one-page description of the project, including the group members’ names, what question is being addressed, what form the project took, and summarizing the findings. This may also include a link to code repositories, or other specific items you want to have marked.
      2. A five-minute video tour of the project and its findings. This should focus on results and demonstrating any system built.
      3. The actual project: a usable website, a finished podcast, a functional chatbot, a playable game, or whatever the final form takes. This is submitted via the course's LEARN dropbox, with the due date of 8 December at 11:59 PM.

This course has neither a midterm nor a final examination.

Rules for group work:

• The project should be work only done by your group members: in particular, nothing you submit for marking should be from anyone else. You may submit other people’s work that has been inspiration or that your project seeks to critique. The one exception to this rule is that you can use existing libraries or code bases, with proper acknowledgment; that said, the main intellectual contribution of your group project must be your own.
• For the weekly essays, they must be entirely your own writing; you may discuss your thoughts with your classmates through the lectures and in your own conversations outside class. A good rule of thumb is that if the instructor pulls you aside and asks you to explain the arguments underlying your writing, you should be able to explain what you mean by every sentence; if not, you don’t understand your own writing, which suggests that it’s not sufficiently your own.