There will be four forms of assessment over the quarter: class participation (20%), programming&design assignments (30%), a presentation with a video summary and learning activity (30%), and a final exam (20%). All deadlines are given in PT.
Actively participate in class: ask and answer questions, participate in activities, and attend consistently. You should expect to speak in class at least once per week for full credit.
Each student will prepare a presentation and learning activity for one paper over the quarter.
Guidance:
Submissions should be modeled on a short-form video (e.g., TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels) that would interest someone in reading the paper to learn more. Videos summaries should be no longer than 3 minutes and should cover one or two core concepts from a paper, but will not be able to cover all details. Videos may also include brief descriptions of methods or results if useful/relevant, but the focus should be on key new terms, ideas, applications, etc. An excellent example from last semester was made by Verania Salcido: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pSG5UJqx7uG_cfotibJ1846_kM98h8vU/view?usp=drive_link.
Activities should be an opportunity for all students to practice applying the new concepts/ideas they have learned. This might involve students answering questions, discussing an idea, exploring data or a tool on their own laptop, paper-based activities, moving around the classroom… the sky is the limit! For example, one student last year designed a Jeopardy-style game to review some key ideas and applications of the paper, followed by a more open-ended discussion. Activities should be interesting, fun, and engaging – think about what would make you excited to come to class. Activities should last approximately 20 minutes.
An example will be given by the instructor in Week 1.
All materials should be uploaded to drive before the start of class. Please use this naming convention for your files: Week#_Paper#_YourLastName (e.g., Week1_Paper1_Vaccaro) submission link
Sign up here: signup link
You will complete eight weekly programming and design assignments over the course of the quarter. These programming and design assignments will help you understand and apply the concepts we talk about in class.
Programming and design assignments will be due at 5PM Friday, every week. No programming and design assignments in weeks 4 or 10.
Due Week 1 Friday 11:59PM
You will explore and analyze two datasets related to intern hiring. You will design a visualization to help others understand potential bias in the data.
Due Week 2 Friday 11:59PM
You will evaluate and improve explanations Instagram provides for its Explore tab recommendations.
Due Week 3 Friday 11:59PM
You will explore data on bus arrival time predictions, and then design a bus app that can manage users’ expectations about bus arrival time predictions.
No assignment due
Due Week 5 Friday 11:59PM
You will explore a model to detect hate speech on social media, and then design for users to achieve recourse and contestability for such a model.
Due Week 6 Friday 11:59PM
You will explore how AI can assist with creative work by designing a small prototype tool that supports creators in a chosen domain.
Due Week 7 Friday 11;59PM
You will explore how interface design influences how users craft prompts for AI text generation tools.
Due Week 8 Friday 11:59PM
You will design systems to address an ethics/social justice issue of your choice.
Due Week 10 Friday 11:59PM
You will consider privacy-utility tradeoffs in “anonymized” datasets as well as the design of ed tech software like Canvas.