Course description and policies

CS 195 is a discussion-intensive course about the social implications of computing. The purpose of this course is to help computer science students make informed and thoughtful choices about their careers, participation in society, and future development activities. Readings and lecture topics are drawn from a range of fields that together seek to describe our contemporary global society: sociology, philosophy, economics, public policy, etc.

Weekly Schedule

Class on Monday 3:40pm-5:00pm. Finish the weekly survey by Monday 12pm so that we know what to discuss. The survey will be released Friday night and emailed to the class via Piazza. Do the readings before class!

Surveys

Lecture topics will not be determined only by the wisdom of your instructor. Instead, you will collectively choose your own adventure through the material. A brief survey about each upcoming topic will be emailed to the class each week (probably Friday night).

Before class begins, please complete the survey, in which you can vote on the issues or questions most interesting to you. The results of these surveys will guide our discussions.

Essays

In addition, you will write three short essays (500-1000 words) that contain your original thoughts about issues from the class. Students will choose their own essay topics, and your work will be reviewed by your peers. Essay assignments will appear in the reading list and be announced in class.

This semester, you will have the option of posting and reacting to essays publicly. Those who do so will be eligible for prizes.

Grading

The course is graded P/NP. The reason for that policy is to ensure that you can feel free to express opinions different from those of the instructors, both in class meetings and in written work.

In order to receive a passing grade in CS 195, you must complete all four objectives, listed below:

• Complete 8 or more surveys (out of 12).
• Attend 8 or more lectures (out of 12).
• Submit 3 essays and receive a passing peer review grade on all of them.
• Provide peer reviews for 9 essays.

In the event that you do not earn the required number of points, we will provide an opportunity to make up extra work, though you should not count on this.

Lecture and Attendance

Lecture is going to be a mix of me talking, me playing video clips, you guys answering questions that I ask out loud, small group discussions, and class-wide debriefing.

This semester, we're not going to allow electronic device use for the bulk of lecture time, except by special permission. Those of you who request special permission will be able to use devices, but only if you're sitting in the front row.

This semester, I'm also going to call on people randomly for responses to questions. You're welcome to pass if you don't want to answer, but I'd like to at least try this out to try and get more voices talking in the room. If you do the math, we have 250 students and 12 lectures, so most likely you won't get called on.