Online Communities and Crowds (Winter 2022)/Undergraduate sections

The undergraduate discussions sections are led by TA Sohyeon Hwang. These sections will focus on reading and viewing the weekly readings and assignments. Below you can find expectations for the sections. Please first read through the main course page and Professor Shaw's course policies, because these are all nested within those.

General discussion section expectations

The main goals for section are three-fold:

1. Review, reflect on, and discuss course materials (primarily, readings)
2. Get hands-on time to interact with assignments together
3. Cooperative learning amongst students

Section will generally (but not always) follow the following structure:

• ~35 min Structured discussion of the readings that week
• ~15 min Activity related to assignments(e.g. the Wikipedia assignment), readings, or recent news.

COVID-19

Particularly in light of the Omicron variant, we are doing our best to be flexible and adapt to circumstances while making this course engaging and interesting for students. Please feel free to let Sohyeon know if something comes up and she will work with you. Additionally, if you have COVID-19, please follow university protocols.

Attendance

I (Sohyeon) am generally following Prof. Shaw's attendance policy (which, as of Jan 3):

Attendance in synchronous (in-person or remote) class meetings is expected of all participants. If you need to miss class for any reason, please try to contact me and/or a member of the teaching team for the class ahead of time and/or as promptly as possible (email is best). Multiple unexplained absences may impact your grade. In the event of an absence, you are responsible for obtaining class notes, handouts, assignments, etc. You are also still responsible for turning in any assignments on time unless you make prior arrangements with the instructor(s).

In general, if you need to miss a class meeting I may ask you to submit a written reflection and/or response (about 500 words) to any assigned course materials. This is in addition to any assignments due in class the day of your absence. Please confirm this with me at the time of communicating about your absence.

Additional points of consideration I'm specifying here for section:

• Generally, you should be communicating about undergraduate section attendance with me.
• Each student has a one free "pass" day where you can miss, no questions asked. Just tell me that you need to take your "pass" day.
• In general, missing a section or two is no big deal, so long as you let me know; beyond that, we should probably figure out how we can make sure this course is working for you.
• For *any* missed section, we have general make-up work to make sure you are on track (500 word reflection of that week's materials). Please communicate with me about expectations for submitting this.

Participation

Because the smaller group interactions happen primarily in discussion sections, much of your participation grade (but not all) will be based on discussion section participation. Please note Prof. Shaw's guidelines for assessing participation, which I will be following. Some specific things for section that all students are expected to do that will factor into participation:

• Each week, ~2-4 students will be doing note-taking of the reading discussions during the section (sign-ups in week 1) on a shared Etherpad. At the end of section, you will copy and paste the notes into a Word Doc and submit it on the section page on Canvas. This means that students should sign up for two different weeks to take notes.
• ~2-4 students will be annotating the readings (~300 word summary per reading) on provided Google Doc and (uploaded as PDF on section Canvas by 11PM CT on the Thursday before section). This means that students should sign up for two different weeks to annotate.
• Students must attend office hours with me to discuss CA2 (we will do sign-ups as we approach CA2).

These are graded as complete/incomplete. You may coordinate with your fellow week note-takers/annotators; I encourage making this a team effort and meeting as a group. However, keep in mind that both etherpads and Google Docs show me who contributed how much, so please do hold yourselves individually accountable.

Beyond that, participation is understandably a kind of unclear thing for many students. Like Prof. Shaw, I do not assess participation in terms of how much you speak in class but rather in terms of how much you contribute to the course (please read Prof. Shaw's guidelines for assessing participation to understand what I mean by this). Here are examples of some concrete things you might do other than speaking that I consider participation:

• Creating space for your peers to speak
• Submitting and sharing thoughtful discussion questions about the week's readings(either ahead of time to me or at the beginning of section)
• Engaging in mutual aid and co-learning with your fellow students: proof reading, showing/sharing resources, helping others set up / navigate technology and other tools, doing study groups together (in line with expectations of academic honesty and integrity), etc.
• Catching up peers on sections and work that they missed
• Sharing relevant news and media on Discord or in the section

You might note that some of these things are less visible that others to instructors, particularly actions taken among students. At the end of each section, we'll take two minutes to go to this form and you can jot down things that people have done for you and things that you have done for others, and while I am that will help me keep track of some things.

Sign-ups

If you're in the 11AM section, you can sign up on the 11AM Section Page

If you're in the 1PM section, you can sign up on 1PM Section Page

Collaborative Note-taking

Notes will generally be taken on a shared etherpad. Etherpad is a lightweight collaborative text editing tool that Prof. Shaw and I use a lot.

We take very seriously making the classroom a respectful and safe place to have engaging discussions. When you are taking notes, please respect the privacy of others' experiences and follow the golden rule of what's shared here, stays here: if someone shares a personal experience, you should note the lesson of that experience but any details about that experience stay in the classroom. Furthermore, the notes shouldn't specify who said what. The idea of the notes is to capture the flow of the main points of discussion as a summary of what was discussed and said.

Communication

You can find the office hours information for me on the course page. There are three main ways to talk to me:

• E-mail. I try to be pretty responsive, but please don't hesitate to send me a follow-up to make sure I've seen your message if I don't respond in 48 hours (please do not take it personally; it usually means I'm trying to catch-up with things). If it's urgent, a different means of contact might be better.
• The course Discord, which I will generally be active on during "business hours".
• Office hours.
  • If the regularly scheduled times do not work for you and you need to speak with me, please don't hesitate to reach out.
  • I realize that office hours can be intimidating and nebulous, so I just want to note that you're welcome to ask about any/various course and school-related concerns that you think I might be helpful with (which is to say, office hours definitely do not mean you are in trouble! instead, they are resources that students should take advantage of, e.g. when I was in undergrad I went to office hours with a professor to ask about the phd program they graduated from); I will do my best to help or direct you to the right places.

If you'd like to speak with Prof. Shaw, he has office hours set up and his own expectations/protocols for communication and emails. Please check out his page and course policies for that.