CS492

Course Logistics

Grading

Here's a breakdown of how the grading will work:
  • Design project: 40%
  • Topic Presentation: 20%
  • Reading responses: 20%
  • Assignments: 10%
  • Class participation: 10%
Rubric-based grading: Most assignments and project milestones will be graded based on a set of rubrics, which are designed by course staff to best capture the learning objectives of an assignment. But please keep in mind that design work is inherently subjective.

Self and peer assessment: Metacognition is an extremely powerful way to learn, and self- and peer-assessment offer great opportunities for metacognition. You'll be asked to assess yourself, as well as your teammates after some project milestones.

Class attendance: Because this is going to be a fairly small class, we know when you're present or absent. Activity submissions will also be used in your class participation grade.

Late policy: No late submissions are allowed for the project. For individual assignments, you'll lose 10% for each late day. Submissions will be accepted until three days after the deadline. No submission automatically gets a 0.

Academic Integrity and Collaboration

You may discuss assignments with others, but you should always give credit and be intellectually honest.

For all individual assignments, you should write the solution entirely on your own. Sharing or seeing other students' solutions (written material or code) is not allowed. If you discussed the assignment with anyone, you should explicitly list them in your report.

For programming assignments, you may use third-party libraries, but you should give proper attribution. If the assignment asks you to implement a particular feature, you should create your own version.

Failure to adhere to these policies may lead to serious penalties, including an F in the course and reference to the departmental and university committee.

Design Project

A major part of the course is for you to design an interactive prototype that is carefully catered to your target users. This will be done in a team of 3-4 students.

How can I form a team?
While we want to give total freedom to students in team formation, (1) students tend to work with friends who are similar to them in terms of preferences and skillsets, and (2) students with no existing ties might find it difficult to find teammates. We will give you some freedom, but there might be some requirements enforced. More details will be announced once we have a final class roster, because we need to know the class size and composition for a smooth team formation process.
I'm worried my course grade will depend on my team members.
To some extent, yes. You'll be doing fewer and fewer things alone in your career, and working in teams and managing team dynamics is something you'll hopefully learn in this course.

Textbooks

There is no official textbook. We will mix various resources that best explain the core concepts in crowdsourcing and social computing.
This doesn't mean that there aren't great books. Here's a short selection of books we recommend:

FAQ

I'm not a CS student. Can I take the course?
Yes, we welcome students with diverse academic backgrounds! There are no official course prerequisites. But assignments and the final project will require building features of a crowdsourcing / social computing system, so programming skills are needed. Knowledge or research experience in HCI (CS374 or equivalent) or social computing is useful, but not required.
Can I audit the course?
Please talk to Prof. Kim in person during the first week of class.
What's the course load like?
This will be a course that will have reading / video materials for every class, milestones for your projects, and a few assignments throughout the semester. Please expect a continuous workload. On the positive side, since there are no big deadlines or exams, you're not likely to pull an all-nighter. Overall, we expect the total workload to be equivalent to other 3-unit courses.
The course seems to require active participation during class, but my English isn't quite good. Maybe I shouldn't take it?
We recognize that a vast majority of students won't be comfortable with speakinng English. But active participation isn't really about how good your English is. It's more about your engagement with the class material. We will also try to lower the partipation barrier for students with low English fluency.