User:Theredproject/COM232

COM 232 History of Design and Digital Media
 * Thursday 12:20PM-2:15PM, Room 1P-231, Fall 2019
 * Professor Michael Mandiberg (User:Theredproject)
 * Michael[d0t]Mandiberg[a-t]csi[d*t]cuny[d*t]edu

Office Hours
 * Thursday 2:15-3:15PM (Priority given to those who schedule an appointment via email, or in person during class)
 * Office: Room 224F, ph 718-982-2555
 * Additional Office Hours by appointment on Monday & Wednesday afternoons at the CUNY Graduate Center in Midtown Manhattan (34th & 5th). Email Julie Fuller at jfuller1[A-T]gc[d0t]cuny[d0t]edu if you would like to schedule time.

Wikipedia Course website: https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/College_of_Staten_Island/History_of_Design_and_Digital_Media_(Fall_2019)

We will be using Blackboard for administration

Course description
An exploration of the work of major designers and the movements they started, from its origins in the printing press as well as the interrelationship of design and fine art. We will focus on mainstream uses of graphic design as well as countercultural/activist appropriation of design techniques.

Course Requirements
Complete projects on time Participate in class discussions, and class critique Come to class prepared: do all reading before hand Maintain an email account, and browse the web Attend field trips

Materials and Texts
Text: Meggs' History of Graphic Design, 4th Edition, Philip B. Meggs, Alston W. Purvis, Wiley, ISBN: 978-0-471-69902-6. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471699020.html

Suggested Text: Ellen Lupton, Thinking With Type, Princeton Archetectural Press, 978-1568989693. http://www.thinkingwithtype.com/

Disabilities
I seek to provide a comfortable and respectful learning environment for people with disabilities. Please contact me and the Center for Student Accessibility in 1P-101 at (718) 982.2510 or CSA@csi.cuny.edu, as soon as you can to ensure suitable arrangements and a comfortable working environment. The first day of class is ideal, but the please do so within the first two weeks.

Respect for Diversity:
The values of inclusion and respect for diversity are central to the work I do as an educator. The City University of New York's Policy on Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination states that we:

"admit and provide services for students without regard to race, color, creed, national origin, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, marital status, partnership status, disability, genetic information, alienage, citizenship, military or veteran status, status as a victim of domestic violence/stalking/sex offenses, unemployment status, or any other legally prohibited basis in accordance with federal, state and city laws."

In addition, class rosters and University data systems are provided to instructors with students' legal names and gender identifications. However, knowing that not all students use their legal names or sex/gender assigned at birth, I am happy to use the name and/or pronouns you use. We will take time during our first class together to do introductions, at which point you can share with all members of our learning community what name and pronouns you use. Additionally, if these change at any point during the semester, please let me know and we can develop a way to share this information with others in a way that is comfortable and safe for you.

Classroom Policies
Please be aware that technological failures such as printer errors, erased drives, email issues, computer crashes, network failure, viruses, etc. are not emergencies, they are facts of life. You must structure your workflow in anticipation of such scenarios. Backup, backup, backup! You have been warned.

A NOTE ON COMMUNICATION
Please consult the syllabus and/or the related assignment before posing questions that may already be addressed there (i.e. due dates, scope, deliverable, etc). I will not reply to email inquiries regarding course matters (assignment requirements, due dates, exam structure, readings, etc.) that arise from missing class (e.g. "I couldn't make it to class today, can you tell me what we covered?") or inattention to the course syllabus. I will respond to inquiries requesting clarification, though I would strongly prefer these inquiries to be made on the course talk page, blackboard forum, in class or during office hours.

If your question will take more than two minutes or two sentences to answer, it's not a question, it's a discussion topic. Please bring the topic up in class, or I would be happy to discuss it with you during my office hours.

Emails will not be answered immediately or in the depth that they would in-person. Consequently, they are not the most productive way to communicate with me for matters that require more than a sentence or two to resolve.

Read this post on Design Educator http://designeducator.info/?p=193 for more on writing a good email

Grading Criteria:
We will be covering a great deal of information at a fast pace, so attendance is a strong determinant of your grade: without attending you will not have the knowledge necessary to successfully complete your assignments, as you will have missed thematic and technical lectures, as well as the presentation of class assignments. Furthermore, College of Staten Island Attendance Policy states that after more than 8 hours of absence (15 percent of the course meeting time) you will be assigned a WU (withdrew unofficially).

Repeated tardiness will be cause for grade reduction: first tardiness is excused, all others result in a 1 point deduction. Perfect attendance will be rewarded with 3 extra credit points. If you know that you will be absent on a date that a project is due, you may submit your work before the deadline or arrange to have another student submit work for you.

Projects are due on the assigned date, at the beginning of class. Each day it is late your grade will be reduced one incremental letter grade. Assignments will not be accepted after one week from the date due without prior approval from the professor.

Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, and Cheating
Integrity is fundamental to the academic enterprise. It is violated by such acts as borrowing or purchasing assignments (including but not limited to term papers, essays, and reports) and other written assignments, using concealed notes or crib sheets during examinations, copying the work of others and submitting it as one’s own, and misappropriating the knowledge of others. The sources from which one derives one’s ideas, statements, terms, and data, including Internet sources, must be fully and specifically acknowledged in the appropriate form; failure to do so, intentionally or unintentionally, constitutes plagiarism.

Violations of academic integrity will result in failure for an assignment or failure in a course and in disciplinary actions with penalties such as suspension or dismissal from the College. More information on the CUNY policies on Academic Integrity can be found here.

Project overview
Your assignment is to choose an underdeveloped Design and Digital Media related subject to research and write about on Wikipedia. You will perform a literature search on that subject, and create a new article or expand an existing one, following any and all Wikipedia standards first and foremost. During the active project phase, you will monitor and respond to feedback on your article, and assist other students by reading and commenting on their work.

In the first 1/4 of the semester, you will choose a Design and Digital Media related article to work on. Once you have chosen your article, you will research and improve the article, adding at least 1500 words.

This assignment is worth 40 points. The grade will be based on your in progress work (e.g. Workplan, Peer Reviews, etc) as well as the final edits.

Project Timeline

 * First half of the semester: Complete Trainings, Select Article, Begin Research.
 * Oct 31, Milestone: Add at least three new sentences to your article.
 * Nov 7, Work Plan due - 5 points
 * Nov 14, No in person class, online only this week, Annotated Reliable Sources due. - 10 points
 * Nov 21, Milestone: at least 500 Words Added - 5 points
 * Nov 28, No Class, Thanksgiving. Milestone: at least 1000 Words Added - 5 points
 * Dec 5, Peer Reviews Due - 5 points
 * Dec 12,
 * Dec 19, Finals Period: Final version due - 10 points

Work Plan
Write a proposal for the work you will complete. It should be at least 500 words. For existing articles this should be based around an Article Evaluation like we did earlier in the semester. Think of it as an Article Evaluation, with concrete descriptions of what you will do to improve the article. For new articles, you should approach the evaluation rubric as a framework for how to draft your article. In either case, this should be based on your research on the subject, and the sources you know are available. Post this on the talk page of your article. If you are working on an article that doesn't exist yet, you will post on the draft:article talk page.

Annotated Reliable Sources
Research and annotate a list of at least 15 Reliable sources. You should read each of these sources and determine what claims can be made from them. You can follow two approaches to this:


 * 1) You can approach this as an annotate bibliography, where you list each source, and summarize claims made in each source. You can see examples of annotated bibliography entries here.
 * 2) You can make a list of claims, and list the sources that you can use to back these claims up. This is essentially an outline of the article/edits you will make. You can see an example of that here, and the resulting article is here.

I strongly encourage you to make an appointment to meet with one of the CSI Librarians. Mark Aaron Polger has worked with Wikipedia in the past, so I would recommend meeting with him if he is available, but really any of them will be able to help you.

Peer Reviews
TK

Wikipedia guidelines for your work
Make sure you familiarize yourself with encyclopedia-type writing before you begin. Writing for Wikipedia is very different from writing an essay, although not that far from writing a descriptive scientific paper, and you need to fit in with the proper format. You should complete all of the training modules prior to beginning your writing. Here are the guidelines those modules are based on:
 * 1) What Wikipedia is not, which summarizes what Wikipedia is, and what it is not;
 * 2) Neutral point of view, which describes Wikipedia's core approach to neutral, unbiased article-writing;
 * 3) No original research, which explains what is, and is not, valid encyclopedic information;
 * 4) Verifiability, which explains what counts as a verifiable source and how a source can be verified;
 * 5) Citing sources, which describes what kinds of sources should be cited and the manner of doing so; and
 * 6) Manual of Style, which offers a style guide.

Wikipedia maintains a high standard of writing, and has taken great pains to improve these standards. You need to follow their directions to the letter, since deviating from these standards will invite article deletion.

Length: Regarding the length of the article, quality of sources used, please see these articles from COM 232 two years ago: Ladislav Sutnar, or The Hobby Horse. For work by students from other universities written during Wikipedia focused courses: here, here or here.

Photos: Feel free to include photos, but remember that not all pictures on the web are free for the taking. Familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's Copyright Policy to ensure you are not doing anything wrong (copyright violation, in the real, world, means what plagiarism in academia). Remember that any violation will be caught and dealt with by the plethora of editors on the site (and you do not want your group article to suddenly sprout a copyvio template like this 2009 group did...).

Sources. Your article must include at least 5 academic book or journal sources. However, keep in mind that this is a minimum requirement. On Wikipedia, every sentence or paragraph that makes a claim needs to be cited. You should also include a list of external links giving the reader more information on your subject, and link to your page from other Wikipedia pages, so your page is not an orphan. To answer that question in your head: yes, you can go on someone else's article and link to your own. That's the beauty of Wiki!

Peer reviews + Talk pages
Each of you will review the draft work of one of your classmates. You have all done an article review earlier in the semester, so you know what is helpful and productive. Please make your comments constructive and useful. You will not get credit for such comments as "good article!" or "I liked it!" Suggest something that can be realistically improved, compare their article to yours and see if you have learned any tricks that can help them. Also refrain from any abusive or inappropriate language. Remember, you are part of the public face of CSI for the semester--make us proud.

Talk pages: Once you begin writing your article, you are required to respond to any comments on your article and act accordingly (make proper changes, defend your choices, etc). These comments may give you substantial feedback on your work, and allow you to make your final product better.

Term Project Grading
Here is a checklist for article quality.


 * Article is on one of the subject that was approved by the instructor
 * Article includes intro summary (lead in the Wikipedia terminology), at least 3 body paragraphs per group member, conclusion, and bibliography
 * There are no grammatical/spelling errors throughout the Article (that does include absence of spurious capitalization, like Sociology instead of sociology and so on)
 * Introduction summarizes the subject properly and does not include unique information not present in the main body of the article
 * Conclusion sums up the Article without ending abruptly
 * Article is structured logically, and there are no weird gaps (Note: "weird gaps" occur for example when you chose to write about a historical trend, but your group "forgets" to research few centuries in the middle; or when you are presenting an overview by country, but decide that few random countries are enough, because you use an arbitrary "two countries per group" member rule instead of thinking which countries are important to cover for the subject discussed)
 * Sources used are reliable
 * In-Article citations are present and used correctly according to Wikipedia format see Citing sources
 * In-Article citations are done in a consistent format, and provide all the necessary information (in brief: author's name, publication title, publisher information, page number if source has pages, URL if source is online, see ASA style for details)
 * Body of the Article explores the chosen subject in adequate detail. (Note: “adequate detail” means I shouldn’t be able to do a quick literature search and find information not included in the Article. I want you to search current and past literature, books, newsArticles, websites, etc. and summarize all the information you find into an easy-to-read and understand Article. If you are missing major bits of information, or have included incorrect information without citations to back up your findings, you will lose major points here).
 * Article should conform to Wikipedia writing standards (Neutral point of view, No original research)

I will grade your activity based on two primary factors:
 * Whether you contributed to your Article on a regular basis (every few days) or not
 * Whether you were active on the article's talk page. This means that I see that attempted to address and fix any and all comments/suggestions given by me, your colleagues, the reviewer and the Wikipedia community. If the change was not made, adequate explanation was given (which did not include "this is for an research assignment, so leave us alone")

How to fail the assignment:
 * plagiarism, or extensive quotations
 * missing deadlines
 * logging in an editing only at the very end of the course, where you discover you are not sure how to edit Wikipedia, and that your contribution does not really fit the articles your other members were working on
 * not participating in the talk page discussions

Reflective paper
Write a short (3-5 page) reflective essay on your experiences using Wikipedia. This paper can reference your journaling (you could, for example, quote/summarize some key sections), but it is a distinct and separate text. Some of the questions you may choose to reflect upon include:


 * The ways in which writing for Wikipedia is different from writing regular papers for class.
 * What you learned about Wikipedia.
 * This could be a reflection on the technical or social aspects of editing. This could include a discussion of:
 * the Discussion page
 * the History page
 * the role of users
 * the role of collaboration.
 * Wikipedia's rules (which are slightly different than the rules of writing course papers)
 * Has your relationship to Wikipedia changed?
 * Do you see it differently?
 * Do you trust it more or less?
 * Did you learn new research methods in this course?
 * Did you put methods you already knew to use?
 * Was there more or less research involved for this Wikipedia entry then for your other writing assignments?
 * Did working on Wikipedia, with its insistence on citing every source, make it easier or harder to insure that your writing was well researched?
 * Will this assignment change the way you complete other writing, and if so, how?
 * How do you feel knowing that the words you wrote are likely to be one of the very top search results for the person you were writing about?
 * How do you feel knowing that these words could be modified or rewritten by the next person to come along (with the hope that they would be making them better)?