Assignments 2016 – Data Driven Cultures

ASSIGNMENTS & GRADING

This class is a project-based, collaborative learning experience. For most of the semester there will be regular class readings that culminate in lab projects of data visualizations and brief data analysis that you will post to our course blog. You will be assigned to work groups and comment on your peers’ visualizations and analysis. You will also secure a dataset of your own choosing to analyze in class. A mid-term and final exam will be based on course readings and labs. These assignments will prepare you for the capstone of the course: a final in-class presentation of summary findings as well as posting your final presentation in the form of a short video on the course website. Any absence requires a note in advance to the professor; three absences will result in a failure.

Details about labs and the following blog posts and comments will be handed out in class. Posts and comments are due by Friday at 5 p.m. to the course blog. All written assignments will be posted to the course website (http://commons.trincoll.edu/amst-queer-america/).

Participation & Attendance 20%
Post & Comments 20%
Mid-term Exam 15%
Final Exam 20%
Final Presentation 10%
Final Video Presentation 15%

HOW TO COMMENT

While the focus of each post is revealed and hones in our in-class labs, the content and focus of the comments on these posts remains constant. You will only comment on each of your hashtag teammates’ posts each week. After carefully reading your teammate’s post, use the following questions to write one to two paragraphs (max) in response:

What strikes you as insightful or thoughtful in this post?
What else should the author look into or consider in their analysis?
How do the insights of this post make you think differently or in new ways about your post from the same week?

ASSIGNMENT CALENDAR

The course assignments will be structured around a research project involving an U.S. social justice hashtag of your choice within the areas of society, culture, politics, and economics. Each study area will be comprised of one or two working groups. Data related to your hashtag will be scraped from Twitter and you will be expected to research other data sources related to your theme. You will also secure a dataset on a related topic of your own choosing. You will use these datasets to craft statistical graphs, maps, text analysis, and network graphs during in-class labs.

Your lab write-ups will take the form of blog posts in which you will share your data visualizations and written analysis of your graphs, maps, social networks, and text analysis with your working group. Along with the lab handout, you will receive specific instructions on how to turn your findings into a blog post. You will need to make detailed use of the course readings as a lens through which to read your dataviz, so that you should be sure to read them closely and take detailed notes.
Exams will be comprised from all material from course readings and in-class conversations, as well as progress from your own and your peers’ research projects. To that end, be sure to get any missing notes from a fellow student.
Finally, you will turn the highlights from your semester-long research into a hashtag into an critical in-class presentation and video presentation in order to share your findings with the public.