Online Communities (UW COM481 Fall 2024)

From CommunityData
COM481A: Online Communities - Department of Communication
Instructors:
Course Meetings: 1:30–3:20p, M/W in CMU 120
Course Websites:
Course Catalog Description of Topics:
Communities formed through digital communication networks and social media. How people build communities, engage in collaboration and conflict, and also develop communities in online environments. Involves study and use of online communities.

Overview and Learning Objectives

Today, online communities are central parts of each of our daily lives and have an important impact on our cultural, social, and economic experience of the world and each other. This course combines an in-depth look into several decades of research into online communities with exercises that aim to give students experience applying this research to the evaluation of and hands-on participation in online communities.

As students of communication in the twenty-first century, I expect that many of you taking this course will, after graduation, work in jobs that involve communicating in, working with, or managing online communities. This class seeks to inform these experiences by helping you learn how to use and contribute to online communities more effectively and construct, improve, or design your online communities.

I will consider the course a complete success if every student can do all of these things at the end of the quarter:

  • Write and speak fluently about the rules and norms of the Wikipedia community and demonstrate this fluency through successful contributions to Wikipedia and clear reflections on these issues.
  • Recall, compare, and give examples of key theories that seek to explain why some online communities grow and attract participants while others do not.
  • Demonstrate an ability to critically apply the theories from the course to evaluate a real online community and a real challenge or set of challenges of your choice.
  • Engage with the course material and compellingly present your ideas and reflections in writing and orally.

Finally, I want your work in this class to help you in concrete ways. This might be having a great answer in a job interview when it's time to convince the interviewer that you have much to offer. Maybe it's having a piece of work you can share with others. Maybe it's applying ideas from this class to a new assignment at work. Maybe it's seeing your world in a new way that helps you solve a problem. Or maybe it's just having an answer when someone asks skeptical questions about what you got from studying Communication. Although it's not possible to evaluate this objective, and it won't be reflected in your grade, it's the thing I care most about and the reason I'm excited about teaching—both this class and in general.

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Class format and structure

In general, the organization of the course adopts a "flipped" approach where you consume instructional materials on your own or in groups and the teaching team uses synchronous meetings to answer questions, address challenges or concerns, work through solutions, and hold semi-structured discussions in the form of cases—discussed in detail below.

The asynchronous elements of this course include two parts:

  1. All readings, recorded lectures/slides, tutorials, and assignments.
  2. Conversation and discussion that happens in the group Discord server over the course of the week.

I expect you to finish all readings and watch all lectures outside of our class meeting times before the class sessions on which they are assigned. Please note that this means I will not almost never deliver lectures during our class meetings. Please also note that this means you are fully responsible for reading all readings and watching all recorded lecture material before you come to the associated synchronous part of the class.

I expect you to check in and participate in the Discord discussion—if not daily, then at least 3-4 times a week. I plan to check and respond to conversations daily throughout the quarter.

The synchronous elements of the course will be two weekly class meetings and one section meeting on Friday. Class meetings will happen at the normal time and in the normal place unless I communicate otherwise.

The synchronous sections will be conducted as described in the synchronous class setup section of the syllabus. Each session is scheduled to run for a maximum of 110 minutes, although I plan to frequently not use the full class period. I'll try to work in at least one short break if we use the entire time.

  1. Conduct each day's case study discussion involving an instructor-mediated conversation using input from each of you.
  2. Discuss and work through any questions or challenges in the materials assigned for that day.
  3. Discuss and/or answer questions about assignments that have come up.

You also selected a timeslot to attend a quiz section. Your TA will lead section meetings. Section meetings will include:

  1. Short presentations and walk through related to assignments
  2. Time for you to ask your questions
  3. Time to work on your assignments with immediate help at hand

Websites and Technology Expectations

There are a number of expectations that you will be able to connect to certain websites. In order to complete this class, I expect you to be able to access and use the following web resources:

  • wiki.communitydata.science — This website will host the syllabus for the course. I expect you to be able to visit it regularly. If you're reading this, you have access.
  • UW's Canvas — We'll be using Canvas for posting announcements, uploading course-restricted files, turning in assignments, and distributing grades, comments, and similar.
  • UW Library Proxy — I'm going to expect that you can use the UW Libraries proxy to access material that UW subscribes to from off campus. You'll need to use it to get material to read for class.
  • Discord — We'll use Discord for synchronous communication around the class. When you've got a question about an assignment, this is almost certainly going to be the fastest and best way to get my attention. One benefit of asking a question on Discord is that others in the class will be able to see our answer to you! Instructions on joining the Discord server are in the Class Setup Checklist. You'll see that we've created a few channels. If you don't see an obvious place to ask your question, go ahead and ask it in the #general-discussion channel.
  • Panopto — UW uses the video hosting service Panopto, which I will use to share all the lectures and recorded parts for this course.
  • English Wikipedia — Assignments for this course involve contributing to Wikipedia. This means that you will need to have access to Wikipedia.
  • Google Docs — I'll be using Google Docs to host web forms. This includes the form you'll need to fill out to tell me that you're going to miss class. You will need to be able to access Google to use this.
  • Various other websites that will likely include Reddit, Stack Exchange, Twitch, TikTok, ChatGPT, and more — We will analyze these communities as part of our case study discussion, and you will be required to visit, create accounts, and spend time on these websites.

These websites, in turn, use various hosting providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft. As a result, participation in this course requires students to access Internet resources that may not be accessible directly in some places outside of the UW campus. Anybody taking the class must ensure they can access all Internet resources required for this course reliably and safely. For students who are off-campus temporarily and are in a situation where direct access to these required resources is not possible, UW-IT recommends that students use the official UW VPN, called Husky OnNet VPN. UW-IT advises students to use the VPN with the “All Internet Traffic” option enabled (see the UW Libraries instructions and UW-IT’s FAQs). Doing so will route all incoming and outgoing Internet through UW servers while it is enabled.

Students who travel outside the US should be aware that they may be subject to laws, policies, and/or technological systems that restrict the use of VPNs. UW does not guarantee students’ access to UW resources when students are off-campus, and students are responsible for their own compliance with all laws regarding the use of Husky OnNet and all other UW resources. Because this course is in-person, I don't expect this to be a big issue.

Note about this Syllabus

You should expect this syllabus to be a dynamic document (not a 'contract'). Although the core expectations for this class are fixed, the details of readings and assignments will shift based on how the class goes, guest speakers that I arrange, my own readings in this area, etc. As a result, there are three important things to keep in mind:

  • Although details on this syllabus will change, I will try to ensure that I never change readings more than six days before they are due. This means that if I don't fill in a reading marked "[To Be Decided]" six days before it's due, it is dropped. If I don't change something marked "[Tentative]" before the deadline, then it is assigned. This also means that if you plan to read more than six days ahead, contact me first.
  • Because this syllabus is a wiki, you will be able to track every change by clicking the history button on this page when I make changes. I will summarize these changes in the weekly announcement on Canvas sent that will be emailed to everybody in the class. Closely monitor your email or the announcements section on the course website on Canvas to make sure you don't miss these announcements.
  • I will ask the class for voluntary anonymous feedback frequently — especially toward the beginning of the quarter. Please let me know what is working and what can be improved. In the past, I have made many adjustments to courses that I teach while the quarter progressed based on this feedback.
  • Many readings are marked as "[Available through UW libraries]". Most of these will be accessible to anybody who connects from the UW network. This means that if you're on campus, it will likely work. Although you can go through the UW libraries website to get most of these, the easiest way to get things using the UW library proxy bookmarklet. This is a little button you can drag-and-drop onto your bookmarks toolbar on your browser. When you press the button, it will ask you to log in using your UW NetID and then will automatically send your traffic through UW libraries. You can also use the other tools on this UW libraries webpage.

Organization

This course is organized into two components that roughly span the first and second "halves" of the quarter.

Component 1: The Theory and Practice of Online Communities

After an introductory session, most of the class (through Week 7) will be focused on helping you learn fundamental social scientific ideas that drive our understanding of online communities and questions about how and why online communities thrive or flounder, succeed or fail, and grow or shrink.

To do this, the course is organized to introduce you to a range of social scientific work. Because this body of work is vast, I'm dividing it into three major "levels" of analysis. We'll focus on each level for about two weeks:

  • Micro-level (personal, individual) — Why do individuals participate in online communities? How do they build relationships with each other and communities? How do online communities incentivize participation?
  • Meso (group, organization) — How do groups build group identities, construct norms, create rules, and govern themselves? How do communities socialize newcomers?
  • Macro (ecosystem, culture, society) — How do online communities create niches? How do they affect or interact with other online communities? How do cultures, politics, and societies shape online communities?

The bulk of the reading in the course—and most of the most difficult material—will be front-loaded in this first six-week period. The goal is to make sure that you have a strong set of analytical tools and understand the theories you'll need by Week 7 so that you can use this material to focus on your projects.

Component 2: Examples and Challenges

In the second part of the course, I will focus less on theory and more on examples of online communities and applications, examples, and associated challenges.

Our reading during the second part of the quarter will focus on case studies. We will focus on in-class discussions and exercises that prompt critical consideration of how online communities occur in different domains and the challenges associated with using online communities. I will try to help you all build an ability to critically understand these communities using the theory we covered earlier.

In general, readings during these weeks will be on the lighter side, and there will be no weekly assignments other than preparing for case discussions. The readings are lighter during this component because I'm expecting you to be spending time outside of class working on your final projects.

Readings

Because I understand and remember the financial challenges of being a student, I've structured this course so there is no textbook for this class. There is nothing you will need to purchase. Everything we'll read in this class will either be freely available online or available through UW libraries.

That said, we will end up reading a big chunk of this book: Kraut et al.'s Building Successful Online Communities which I will refer to as “BSOC” in the syllabus. Here is the citation:

Kraut, Robert E., and Paul Resnick. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. The MIT Press, 2012. [Available from UW libraries]

A digital version of the book is available to UW students through UW libraries and ProQuest Ebook Central.

If you would like a paper copy, MIT Press sells the book for $35 as a paperback. Amazon has a limited number of hardcover copies available, starting at $13 as of December 2021. They also have paperbacks starting at $15 and the Kindle version is $26. Wikipedia has this long list of possible book sources.

Assignments

The assignments in this class are designed to give you an opportunity to try your hand at using the conceptual material taught in the class. There will be no exams or quizzes.

Unless otherwise noted, all assignments are due at the end of the day (i.e., 11:59pm on the day they are listed as being due). All times given are local time in Seattle.

Case discussion

The course relies heavily on the case study method which describes a particular form of instructor-mediated discussion. A standard "case" usually involves reading an example—perhaps up to 20-35 pages of background about an organization or group facing an ambiguous or difficult challenge. I will mark certain readings as "[Case]" in the syllabus, and I expect you to read them particularly closely. It is important to realize that I will not summarize case material in class, and I will not cover it in the lectures. I expect you all to have read it, and we will jump in and start discussing it.

Cases ask students to put themselves in the positions of individuals facing difficult situations to tease out the tensions and forces at play in the case and to construct — through group discussion — the broader lessons and takeaways. Cases are a wonderful way to connect the sometimes abstract concepts taught in many academic courses to real examples of the type of ambiguous situations that you will likely encounter in your career. Generally speaking, there are no right or wrong answers in cases.

Cold Calling

Cases rely roughly on the socratic method where instructors teaching cases cold call on students—i.e., instructors call on people without asking for volunteers first. I will be doing this for the majority of our class sessions.

Because I understand that cold calling can be terrifying for some students, I will be circulating a list of questions (labeled "Reading Note" in the syllabus) that describe the kinds of questions I am likely to ask each week along with the weekly announcements (i.e., at least 6 days in advance). Although it is a very good idea to take notes guided by these questions or to write out answers to these questions in advance, we will not be collecting these answers. You are welcome to work with other students to brainstorm possible answers. Although I will also ask questions I do not distribute ahead of time, these questions will give you a good sense of where to focus your reading and note-taking.

I have written a computer program that will generate a random list of students each day, and I will use this list to randomly cold call students in the class. To try to maintain participation balance, the program will try to ensure that everybody is cold called a similar number of times during the quarter. Although there is always some chance that you will called upon next, you will become less likely to be called upon relative to your classmates each time you are called upon.

Assessment for case study discussion

I have placed detailed information on case study-based discussion on the case discussion section of my assessment page. This describes both the rubrics I will use to assess your case discussion and how I will compute the final grades in the course.

Papers

You will hand in two papers in this class. In both cases, I will ask you to connect something you have experience or knowledge about to course material. The "Writing Rubric" section of the detailed page on assessment gives the rubric I will use to evaluate these papers.

Project 1: Contributing to Wikipedia

Because this course is going to cover an enormous number of different online communities, I've found that it's helpful to have one online community that can serve as a sort of common object to think about and engage with. In this course, that community is going to be Wikipedia.

In the first component of the class, you will be asked to learn about Wikipedia, its norms, rules, and processes. With this knowledge, you will all be asked to research and substantially extend an encyclopedia article on Wikipedia. To do this, I will use material from the Wiki Education Foundation (WikiEdu) to help you learn how to participate in Wikipedia. As part of this process, you will interact with other community members who are not part of the class.

You will need to participate in Wikipedia each week during the first compontent of the class. The teaching team will be able to see this activity and help you.

Every Friday during this first component of this class, there will be an assignment due that corresponds to one step in the process of getting involved in Wikipedia. Most weeks, this will involve completing learning modules and assignments on a website put together by WikiEdu. These Wikipedia participation assignments won't be synced up with the theory, but they will provide you with lots of opportunities to reflect on the theoretical work we are covering.

I plan to take time to discuss our progress and experience with Wikipedia and to connect it explicitly to the theoretical concepts we are covering. As we finish the micro, meso, and macro sections of the first component of the course, we will read about Wikipedia and have three case discussions about it.

Finally, as a dress rehearsal for the final project, I will ask you all to think through a major problem facing Wikipedia.

Although this means we'll be spending a lot of time talking about Wikipedia, the goal here is to build and apply critical skills about online communities in general. Wikipedia's incredible openness and impact make it an excellent place to learn and explore the ideas of the course, but the goal is always to engage with the broader principles and underlying concepts and practice their applications.

Wikipedia Task #1

Task
Get started on Wikipedia!
Due
Friday September 27
Deliverables
Following the instructions in the training, make contributions in Wikipedia and the class WikiEdu dashboard
  • Complete the WikiEdu trainings for Week 1.
  • During this training, you will create an account. After you have created an account, you must enroll in the course so that your account on Wikipedia is associated with the course and so that I can track your activity on Wikipedia. click this link and then click "Join" to enroll in the course. If you are asked for a passcode, you can enter cwsalkib.
  • Once you are enrolled in the course, you should begin the training modules and complete the first two, Wikipedia policies and Sandboxes, talk pages, and watchlists, and Communicating with others on Wikipedia.
  • Finally, practice communicating on Wikipedia by introducing yourself to a member of the teaching team and at least one classmate on Wikipedia (it can be anybody) using their talk page (not your own talk page!). Ellie's username is Roller steaks and I am Benjamin Mako Hill. You can find a list of all of your classmates on the WikiEdu class page.
Tips
The biggest pitfall in the past has been failing to enroll in the course. Make sure that you have created an account on https://en.wikipedia.org/ and are logged in. Then follow this link and click "Join".

Wikipedia Task #2

Tasks
Choose and evaluate an article
Due Date
Friday October 4
Deliverables
Make contributions in Wikipedia and the class WikiEdu dashboard

(1) First, complete the online training topics for Week 2 in the the class WikiEdu dashboard.

(2) Second, choose 3-5 possible articles in Wikipedia that you would like to significantly expand and improve. The WikiEdu module will walk you through sketching some brief notes on changes you might make; the next step will have you dig more deeply into a single article.

Choose articles that are as short and simple as possible and I strongly recommend that you choose a stub article on Wikipedia. Because some people are going to start with articles that are better than others, we're going to assess you on the amount to which you can improve the article—not on the final state of the article.

You can find a list of stub articles arranged by topic here (there are literally millions):

  • List of Stubs — This is an extremely long list of articles that are currently stubs and which is also sorted into categories and then subcategories. It might be a little bit out of date so be sure to click through before you decide on an article.

When you're done looking at possible articles, you'll see that there is a "Choose your article" exercise on the WikiEdu dashboard that will end with you being prompted to fill out a page on Wikipedia with a list of articles you want to work on. The page will ask for "Evaluation" and "Sources" -- jot down a few thoughts here. You'll do a comprehensive evaluation of one article in the next part of this task.

(3) Third, you should evaluate an article. I recommend that you evaluate an article you plan to improve! After following the tutorial material on WikiEd about how to do an evaluation, you'll see that there is a corresponding exercise called "Evaluate Wikipedia" in the WikiEdu dashboard that you should complete.

If you run into any trouble, find the teaching team in the Discord well in advance of the deadline!

Note: When you do the WikiEd tasks, you will be asked to fill out two pages/forms in Wikipedia: (i) choose an article, and (ii) evaluate an article. When you do the first one on choosing an article, you can skip the part of the "choose an article" form that asks for an "article evaluation" of each potential article since you will come back do a more thorough version of the same task in the next part of this assignment.

Wikipedia Task #3

Task
Compile research and start editing
Due Date
Friday October 11
Deliverables
Make contributions in Wikipedia and the class WikiEdu dashboard
  1. Complete online trainings for Week 3
  2. Finalize your topic/article.
  3. Make a small edit to Wikipedia (e.g., by adding citations).
  4. Gather notes and links into an informal bibliography of relevant research.

In order to do these, you will need to make sure you have assigned your article to yourself in the dashboard. If you have not don this yet, you'll have to do it before you can proceed. You can do so by (a) going to the WikiEdu course homepage, (b) finding the section entitled My Articles, (c) clicking on Assign myself an article, and (d) entering the article title as shown in Wikipedia and click Assign.

Once you have selected an article to work on, the "My Articles" section will show you a number of steps and links. The two links to focus on right now are collecting your bibliography notes and editing your article in your sandbox, which correspond to the two key tasks above. You will need to:

Add the sources that you've found to the bibliography page which will be created when you click on the "bibliography" link. These are your notes about sources. As a reminder, while academic sources are the "gold standard", match your citations with the content. If your article is about a movie star, you will likely be citing interviews that were published in magazines or on the radio. Try to vary the types of sources and select the more notable ones. Additionally, if you are having difficulty finding sources, reach out to a reference librarian. they are a great resource!

In general, you should refer to the WikiEd Foundation's guide to editing which I've found extremely useful.

Wikipedia Task #4

Task
Finish the bulk of your edits
Due Date
Friday October 18
Deliverables
Make contributions in Wikipedia and the class WikiEdu dashboard
  1. Complete online trainings for Week 4
  2. Make the bulk of the changes you hope to make to you articles. In general, I expect a minimum of 2-3 new paragraphs of content with a range of new references although the nature and the extent of the changes will depending on the state of your article. Remember that the goal here is to increase the quality of the article you have selected by one quality class according to the Wikipedia content assessment scale. For example, from stub to start, from start to C, and so on.


Wikipedia Task #5

Task
Conduct peer reviews
Due Date
Friday October 25
Deliverables
Make contributions in Wikipedia and the class WikiEdu dashboard
  • Select two classmates’ articles that you will peer review and copy-edit. To sign up, you can mark this in the dashboard by using the Assign a review button. Try to pick articles that other students are not yet reviewing and please don't pick an article that two other people already reviewing.
  • Peer review two of your classmates’ articles and produce a written peer review. If you click on the "Peer review" link next to the assigned review article on your student page in the WikiEd dashboard, you'll see that it pops up a template that will create a sub-page on your classmate's sandbox and prompts you with a bunch of questions. If you do fill out that template, be sure to leave a message on the users talk page so that they know you created the sub-page with your peer review! Using that template will probably be useful but it's not required. What's important is that you engage in the peer review and get your classmate useful feedback. I don't care too much about how you do it.
  • Improve and copy-edit the two reviewed articles by editing them directly to help fix issues, improve sourcing, create a more neutral or encyclopedic tone, etc. Where you see an opportunity to help out, be bold!

Wikipedia Task #6

Task
Incorporate changes based on peer reviews and polish article
Due Date
Friday November 1
Deliverables
Make contributions in Wikipedia and the class WikiEdu dashboard
  • Complete online trainings for Week 6
  • Respond to your peer review. Consider their suggestions and decide whether they make your work more accurate and complete.
  • Continue improving your article. Refine your text, do more research, make sure things are well organized, think about adding images, infoboxes, and templates. If you add images be sure to complete the WikiEd material on images and media.
  • Polish your article, it should be ready for public consumption. There are some general suggestions on polishing in /Wikipedia task 6 [Forthcoming].

Wikipedia Task #7-A

Task
Finalize your article
Due Date
Sunday Novemer 8
Deliverables
Make contributions in Wikipedia
  1. Read the material in the class WikiEdu dashboard and make final checks on your article.
  2. Check to ensure that the changes you've made match our expectations.
  3. ...otherwise, that should be it!

Assessment: Wikipedia Assignment

I will use the following criteria as a rubric for assessing your work on the contributions made to Wikipedia:

  1. Substantial new article text shows fluency in Wikipedia norms — A student fluent in Wikipedia norms will have created an substantial article or brought an existing article at least one quality class to a higher one in the eyes of most Wikipedia members by adding new encyclopedic text, adhering to policies on tone, adding references for statements from reliable third party sources, and so on.
  2. Peer reviews of other student were thoughtful, critical, and constructive.
  3. Deadlines for tasks #1-7 were met in a way that allowed for the interactive and collaborative aspects of the class (e.g., draft was published to allow for reviews, peer reviews were made on time, article was published live on time, and so on).

Wikipedia Task #7-B

Task
Turn in your Wikipedia advising report
Due Date
Sunday Novemer 8
Deliverables
  • Turn in report as subpage of your Wikipedia userpage and turn in the URL in Canvas.
  • Maximum length for report: 1000 words (~4 pages double spaced)

Turn your report into a subpage of your user page. For example, I would create mine with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Benjamin_Mako_Hill/Report as the URL. Of course, you should replace "Benjamin_Mako_Hill" with your Wikipedia username. You can also go to your user page by clicking on your username on Wikipedia and then adding "/Report" at the end of the URL. When you go to that page, it will say Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name. You can create a new page by just clicking the "Create" tab on that page. When you're done, you can paste the URL into Canvas.

Details on the report and how we will handle assessment are included on the /Wikipedia Advising Report subpage.

Project 2: Community Advising Project

For the final assignment, I want you to take what you've learned in the class and apply it to a community you have observed or participated in. In the assignment, you are invited to serve as an expert advisor to the leaders and members of an online community and to provide evidence-based insights into how to better address a specific challenge they face. This project will involve two written assignments and a presentation.

Community & Challenge Identification

Due Date
November 15
Deliverables
Turn in through Canvas
Maximum Length
300 words (~1 page double spaced)

In this assignment, you should identify a community you are interested in and the challenge you hope to address in your final project and report. I encourage you to choose a community in which you are a member or leader and where you could, even if only in theory, deliver your recommendations to other members/leaders and have some chance of seeing the recommendations debated or adopted. I expect you to draw on sources and evidence from the course and any additional materials you deem relevant or useful.

For this initial assignment, I am asking you to write 1-2 paragraphs explaining what community you want to study, why you care about it, and to identify a challenge you think the community is facing or could be facing. If relevant or possible, it might be useful to also provide a link.

I hope each of you will pick a community that you are intellectually committed to and invested in your personal or work life. You should also remember that you will be presenting this publicly to the class. You will be successful in this assignment if you identify a community and clearly explain why you think it would be a useful community to study, if you identify a challenge that the community is facing, and if you outline why you think the conceptual tools taught in the class will give you an angle on this challenge.

The teaching team will give you feedback on these write-ups and will let you each know if I think you have identified a project that might be too ambitious, too trivial, too broad, too narrow, etc.

Final Deliverables

Final (Virtual) Presentation Dates
Monday December 2 and Wednesday December 6
Paper Due Date
Wednesday December 11 @ 11:59pm
Maximum paper length
2,000 words
Deliverables
  • Details on final presentations including due dates, instructions, and dropboxes will be posted to /Final presentations [Forthcoming]
  • Turn in a copy of the paper in Canvas

For your final project, I expect students to build on the community identification assignment to describe what they have done and found. I'll expect every student to give both:

  • A final presentation (see instructions on /Final presentations) [Forthcoming]
  • A final report that is not more than 2,000 words.

Each project should include: (a) the description of the community and challenge you have identified (you are welcome to borrow from your Community & Challenge Identification assignment), (b) a description of how you would use the course concepts to address the challenge in question.

You will be evaluated on the degree to which you have demonstrated that you understand and have engaged with the course material and not on specifics of your community. Your audience is people who are interested in the community and the general public. A successful project will tell a compelling story and will engage with and improve upon the course material to teach all of us—that is, an audience that includes me, your classmates, and students taking this class in future years, how to take advantage of online communities more effectively. The very best papers will give us all a new understanding of some aspect of course material and change how I teach some portion of this course in the future.

Grading

  • Case discussion: 30%
  • Wikipedia assignments: 15%
  • Wikipedia advising report: 10%
  • Community & challenge identification: 5%
  • Final presentation: 10%
  • Final report: 30%

Schedule

Wednesday September 25: Introduction to the Course and to Online Communities

Goals for the day:

  • Provide an introduction and some context for the course (and hopefully get you excited about the rest of the quarter).
  • Review the course objectives and requirements.
  • Answer your questions about the class.
  • Work through any issues with the setup checklist (if there's time).

Resources:

Optional Readings:

  • Oldenburg, Ray. 1989. The great good place: Cafés, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get you through the day. Paragon House Publishers. Chapter 1 ("The Problem of Place in America") and Chapter 2 ("The Character of Third Places"). [Available in Canvas]
  • Bruckman, Amy. 2006. "A new perspective on ‘community’ and its implications for computer-mediated communication systems." In Extended Abstracts of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 616-621. [Available free online]

Friday September 27: DUE: Class Checklist & Wikipedia Task #1

Required Tasks:

  1. Complete #Wikipedia Task #1
  2. Complete the class setup checklist

I won't mention this each week but, as a reminder, you must complete these tasks by 11:59pm Seattle time.

Monday September 30: CLASS CANCELLED

Wednesday October 2: Micro: Motivation and Incentives (Day 1/2)

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

Required Reading: (read before class)

Optional Reading:

Friday October 4: DUE: Wikipedia Task #2

Details are on the section of this page describing the assignment.

Monday October 7: Micro: Motivation and Incentives (Day 2/2)

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

Required Reading: (read before class)

  • BSOC, Chapter 2, pg 41-70 (§4-7)

For the case, we're going to talk about Twitch:

Optional Readings:

Wednesday October 9: Micro: Commitment

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

Required Reading: (read before class)

  • BSOC, Chapter 3, pg 77-112 (§1-3)

We're going to be doing our first Wikipedia case. To do so, we'll be looking at five different "WikiProject" communities within English Wikipedia. In some of these cases, there is an enormous amount of material on the pages and subpages. Poke around for 10 minutes or so on each until you get a sense for who is participating and how and why people build commitment to the WikiProject such that you will be comfortable answering the questions in the reading note. Please do not try to post or disrupt on the project for the purposes of this assignment in any way. We're guests in their communities and you only need to look:

Optional Readings:

  • [Case] Jemielniak, Dariusz, Agnieszka Rychwalska, Szymon Talaga, and Karolina Ziembowicz. 2021. “Wikiproject Tropical Cyclones: The Most Successful Crowd-Sourced Knowledge Project with near Real-Time Coverage of Extreme Weather Phenomena.” Weather and Climate Extremes 33 (September):100354. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2021.100354. [Available free online]
  • [Case] Morgan, Jonathan T., Michael Gilbert, David W. McDonald, and Mark Zachry. 2013. “Project Talk: Coordination Work and Group Membership in WikiProjects.” In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, 1–10. WikiSym ’13. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/2491055.2491058. [Available from UW libraries]

Friday October 11: DUE: Wikipedia Task #3

Details are on the section of this page describing the assignment.

Monday October 14: Micro: Commitment and Lock-in

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

Required Reading: (read before class)

Optional Readings:

Wednesday October 16: Meso: Norms and Rules

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

Required Readings:

Optional Readings:

  • Hwang, Sohyeon, and Aaron Shaw. 2022. “Rules and Rule-Making in the Five Largest Wikipedias.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 16 (May):347–57. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Cialdini, Robert B., Carl A. Kallgren, and Raymond R. Reno. 1991. “A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct: A Theoretical Refinement and Reevaluation of the Role of Norms in Human Behavior.” In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, edited by Mark P. Zanna, 24:201–34. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60330-5. [Available free online]
  • Frey, Seth, P. M. Krafft, and Brian C. Keegan. 2019. “‘This Place Does What It Was Built For’: Designing Digital Institutions for Participatory Change.” Proceedings ACM Human-Computer Interaction. 3 (CSCW): 32:1-32:31. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359134. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Matias, J. Nathan. 2019. “Preventing Harassment and Increasing Group Participation through Social Norms in 2,190 Online Science Discussions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (20): 9785–89. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1813486116. [Available from UW libraries]

Friday October 18: DUE: Wikipedia Task #4

Details are on the section of this page describing the assignment.

Monday October 21: Meso: Managing Norm Violations

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

Required Readings:

Optional Readings:

Wednesday October 23: Meso: Attracting and Socializing Newcomers

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

Required Readings:

  • BSOC, Chapter 5, pg 179-194, 211-217 (§1,4)
  • [Case] Morgan, Jonathan T., and Aaron Halfaker. 2018. “Evaluating the Impact of the Wikipedia Teahouse on Newcomer Socialization and Retention.” In Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, 20:1–20:7. OpenSym ’18. New York, NY: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3233391.3233544. [Available from UW libraries]
  • [Case] Narayan, Sneha, Jake Orlowitz, Jonathan Morgan, Benjamin Mako Hill, and Aaron Shaw. 2017. “The Wikipedia Adventure: Field Evaluation of an Interactive Tutorial for New Users.” In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 1785–1799. CSCW ’17. New York, NY: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998307. [Available from UW libraries]

Optional Readings:

  • Huang, Shih-Wen, Minhyang (Mia) Suh, Benjamin Mako Hill, and Gary Hsieh. 2015. “How Activists Are Both Born and Made: An Analysis of Users on Change.Org.” In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15), 211–20. New York, New York: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702559. [Available from UW libraries]
  • Kiene, Charles, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2018. “Managing Organizational Culture in Online Group Mergers.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2 (CSCW): 89:1-89–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274358. [Available from UW libraries]
  • [Case] Morgan, Jonathan T., Siko Bouterse, Heather Walls, and Sarah Stierch. 2013. “Tea and Sympathy: Crafting Positive New User Experiences on Wikipedia.” In Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 839–848. CSCW ’13. New York, NY: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2441776.2441871. [Available from UW libraries]
  • [Case] Li, Ang, Zheng Yao, Diyi Yang, Chinmay Kulkarni, Rosta Farzan, and Robert E. Kraut. 2020. “Successful Online Socialization: Lessons from the Wikipedia Education Program.” Proceedings of the ACM: Human-Computer Interaction 4 (CSCW1): 50:1-50:24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3392857. [Available from UW libraries]

Friday October 25: DUE: Wikipedia Task #5

Details are on the section of this page describing the assignment.

Monday October 28: Meso: Managing Harm from Newcomers

Resources:

Required Readings:

Optional Readings:

  • Halfaker, Aaron, R. Stuart Geiger, Jonathan T. Morgan, and John Riedl. 2013. “The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its Decline.” American Behavioral Scientist 57 (5): 664–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764212469365. [Available from UW libraries]
  • TeBlunthuis, Nathan, Aaron Shaw, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2018. “Revisiting ‘The Rise and Decline’ in a Population of Peer Production Projects.” In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18), 355:1-355:7. New York, New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173929. [Available from UW libraries]

Wednesday October 30: Macro: Size and Scope

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

Required Readings:

Friday November 1: DUE: Wikipedia Task #6

Details are on the section of this page describing the assignment.

Monday November 4: Macro: Ecology

Lectures: (watch before class)

Resources:

  • Reading Note #11 (Requires Canvas access)
  • Lecture Slides (Requires Canvas access)
  • [ Case Boards] (Requires Canvas access) [Forthcoming]
  • [ Class Video Recording] (Requires Canvas access) [Forthcoming]

Required Readings:

Optional Readings:

  • Zhu, Haiyi, Jilin Chen, Tara Matthews, Aditya Pal, Hernan Badenes, and Robert E. Kraut. 2014. “Selecting an Effective Niche: An Ecological View of the Success of Online Communities.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’14), 301–10. New York, New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557348. [Available from UW libraries]

Wednesday November 6: Macro: Migration and deplatforming

Details, readings, slides, lecture videos, and so on are [Forthcoming].

Required Readings:

Friday November 8: DUE: Wikipedia Tasks #7-A and #7-B

Monday November 11: NO CLASS (Veterans Day)

Monday November 11 is Veterans Day. It is a university holiday which means that no classes at UW will be in session.

Wednesday November 13: Challenges and Frontiers: Hackers [Tentative]

Details, readings, slides, lecture videos, and so on are [Forthcoming].

Friday November 15: DUE: Community & Challenge Indentification

Details on the assignent are in the #Community & Challenge Identification section of this syllabus.

Monday November 18: Challenges and Frontiers: AI and Online Communities

Details, readings, slides, lecture videos, and so on are [Forthcoming].

Wednesday November 20: Challenges and Frontiers: Federation and Self-Governance

Details, readings, slides, lecture videos, and so on are [Forthcoming].

Monday November 25: Challenges and Frontiers: [Forthcoming]

Details, readings, slides, lecture videos, and so on, are [Forthcoming].

Wednesday November 27: Challenges and Frontiers: [Forthcoming]

Details, readings, slides, lecture videos, and so on, are [Forthcoming].

Monday December 2: NO CLASS (Spend Time Watching and Giving Feedback on Presentations)

Resources:

  • The /Final presentations page contains details on the final presentation sessions including due dates/times, instructions, and so on. [Forthcoming]
  • The poster content should be an overview and preview of your final project. Details on the expectations for the final project are on #Project 2: Community Advising Project section of the syllabus.

No readings. The final classes will be devoted entirely to presentations.

Wednesday December 4: NO CLASS (Spend Time Watching and Giving Feedback on Presentations)

Resources:

  • The /Final presentations page contains details on the final presentation sessions including due dates/times, instructions, and so on. [Forthcoming]
  • The poster content should be an overview and preview of your final project. Details on the expectations for the final project are on #Project 2: Community Advising Project section of the syllabus.

No readings. The final classes will be devoted entirely to presentations.

Wednesday December 11: DUE: Final Projects

Details are on the #Project 2: Community Advising Project section of this page.

Administrative Notes

Your Presence in Class

There are many students who have eagerly requested to join the class, but there are not enough seats. I want to include as many students in the class as possible, we will automatically drop anyone who misses the first two class sessions and try to replace them with unenrolled students who do attend. This is consistent with college policy and with the course description in the catalog.

As detailed in section on case studies and in my detailed page on assessment, your homework in the class is to prepare for cases and case discussion is an important way that I will assess learning. Obviously, you must be in class in order to participate. If you need to miss class for any reason, please fill out the case opt-out form so that we know you are not coming and will not include you in our cold call list.

In the event of an absence, you are responsible for obtaining class notes, handouts, assignments, etc.

Devices in Class

Electronic devices (e.g., phones, tablets, laptops) are not permitted in class. If you have a documented need to use a device, please contact me ahead of time to let me know. If you do get permission to use a device, I will ask you to sit in the very back of the classroom.

The goal of this policy is to help you stay focused and avoid distractions for yourself and your peers in the classroom. This is really important and turns out to be much more difficult in the presence of powerful computing devices with brightly glowing screens and fast connections to the Internet. For more on the rationale behind this policy, please read Clay Shirky’s thoughtful discussion of his approach to this issue.

Of course, we will discuss assignments and topics that involve referring to things online. Toward that end, you might find it convenient to bring a laptop or tablet to class or section. If you want to look something up on your device outside of a time I clearly point out as device-allowed, please ask me. I will always point out explicitly in class if it's OK to use devices.

Except during parts of class when I explicitly invite device usage—I ask that you refrain from using your laptops, tablets, phones, and pretty much any (digital) device with a screen.

Office Hours

The best way to get in touch with me about issues in class will in the Discord server via asynchronous messages sent to one of the text channels. This is preferable because any questions you have can be answered in a way that is visible to others in the class.

We will hold synchronous, in-person office hours once a week:

Ellie's office hour: BY APPOINTMENT ONLY the hour after class on Wednesdays in CMU 333 (i.e., If the class ends at 3:20p as scheduled, it will be from ~3:20-4:20p. However, if the class ends early at 2:45, it will be from ~2:45-3:45p)
Mako's office hour: Fridays 9-10am in the “Office Hours” voice channel on Discord

If my planned office hours do not work for you, please contact a member of the teaching team in the Discord server or over email to arrange a meeting at another time.

Religious Accommodations

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

Student Conduct

The University of Washington Student Conduct Code (WAC 478-121) defines prohibited academic and behavioral conduct and describes how the University holds students accountable as they pursue their academic goals. Allegations of misconduct by students may be referred to the appropriate campus office for investigation and resolution. More information can be found online at https://www.washington.edu/studentconduct/ Safety

Call SafeCampus at 206-685-7233 anytime–no matter where you work or study–to anonymously discuss safety and well-being concerns for yourself or others. SafeCampus’s team of caring professionals will provide individualized support, while discussing short- and long-term solutions and connecting you with additional resources when requested.

Use of AI Tools

Unless otherwise noted, work submitted for this course must be your own. Unless otherwise specified, any use of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, when working on assignments is forbidden. The use of generative AI outside of specified tasks will be considered academic misconduct and subject to investigation.

The assignments in this class have been designed to challenge you to develop creativity, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills. Using AI technology will limit your capacity to develop these skills and to meet the learning goals of this course.

If you have any questions about what constitutes academic integrity in this course or at the University of Washington, please feel free to contact me to discuss your concerns.

Please note that I do not consider grammar/spellchecking to be a prohibited use of AI.

Text adapted from: UW sample syllabus statements.

Academic Dishonesty

This includes: cheating on assignments, plagiarizing (misrepresenting work by another author as your own, paraphrasing or quoting sources without acknowledging the original author, or using information from the internet without proper citation), and submitting the same or similar paper to meet the requirements of more than one course without instructor approval. Academic dishonesty in any part of this course is grounds for failure and further disciplinary action. The first incident of plagiarism will result in the student’s receiving a zero on the plagiarized assignment. The second incident of plagiarism will result in the student’s receiving a zero in the class.

Disability Resources

If you have already established accommodations with Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please communicate your approved accommodations through their processes at your earliest convenience so we can discuss your needs in this course.

If you have not yet established services through DRS, but have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodations (conditions include but not limited to; mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts), you are welcome to contact DRS at 206-543-8924 or uwdrs@uw.edu or disability.uw.edu. DRS offers resources and coordinates reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities and/or temporary health conditions. Reasonable accommodations are established through an interactive process between you, your instructor(s) and DRS. It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create inclusive and accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law.

Mental Health

Your mental health is important. If you are feeling distressed, anxious, depressed, or in any way struggling with your emotional and psychological wellness, please know that you are not alone. College can be a profoundly difficult time for many of us.

Resources are available for you:

Other Student Support

Any student who has difficulty affording groceries or accessing sufficient food to eat every day, or who lacks a safe and stable place to live, and believes this may affect their performance in the course, is urged to contact the graduate program advisor for support. Furthermore, please notify the professors if you are comfortable in doing so. This will enable us to provide any resources that we may possess (adapted from Sara Goldrick-Rab). Please also note the student food pantry, Any Hungry Husky at the ECC.

Teaching and learning after COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on all of us. Many of you may have gone to college expecting the classic face-to-face experience with a mix of classes and fun with new friends, only to find yourself in lockdown and online classes. We may have lost people we care about. We may be struggling to recover our own mental and physical health. For many of us life is still not back to “normal” and instead we are developing a sense of a “new normal.”

Many of us have experienced elevated levels of exhaustion, stress, uncertainty and distraction. We may have needed to provide additional support to others. I have personally experienced all of these things at various times over the past four years and I expect that some of you have too. We may find that our personal energy and emotional resilience is lower than it used to be. It has been and still is a difficult time.

I believe it is important to acknowledge these realities of the situation and create the space to discuss and process them in the context of our class throughout the quarter. As your instructor and colleague, I commit to do my best to approach the course in an adaptive, generous, and empathetic way. I ask that you try to extend a similar attitude towards everyone in the course. When you have questions, feedback, or concerns, please try to share them in an appropriate way. If you require accommodations of any kind at any time, please contact me.

Credit and Notes

This will be the ninth time this course has been taught at UW in its current form. This syllabuses draws heavily from these previous versions. Syllabuses from earlier classes can be found online at:

This syllabus was inspired by, and borrowed heavily with permission from, other classes on online communities taught by young academics whose teaching I admire and respect:


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