Course structure

Participation

This course applies an activity based learning model which relies heavily on your active participation in the classroom. You are expected to complete the assigned readings and come prepared to engage the class in meaningful conversation and activities. You are encouraged to use your knowledge and experiences to build, test, and modify your own concepts through dialogues with the instructor and fellow students. Much of your learning will occur as you prepare for and participation in discussions about the course material. The course material has been carefully chosen to bring the real world into class discussion while also illustrating fundamental concepts.

Preparation for class

Complete all of the assigned reading. There will be no study guides created by the instructor. Instead, week by week, students are strongly encouraged to create their own study guide which they will use during both in-class discussions and in preparation for exams. Please download the following document:

Build Your Own Study Guide

This document includes links to each of your weekly readings. As you complete your readings add your own personal notes to this document. In addition, answer the following questions:

What are three key points you took away from each assigned reading?
What are three important details?
A few fill in the blank questions to be filled in as you complete the readings.

As we begin discussing topics in class, students will be called upon at random to share what they have captured in their study guide. In addition, shortly before each exam, students will work on activities where they will share information from their study guides (no pictures permitted) with classmates and discuss what they took away from each of the assigned readings.

Class

Class will be a mixture of class discussions and class activities. Do not expect to be taught the material in the assigned readings. We will assume that you have completed the assigned readings and are prepared to discuss the readings intelligently. Through this discussion you will gain a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the core concepts. If you do not complete the assigned readings you will have trouble following along with the class discussion; you will not get as much out of class and you may find the exams more challenging. In-class activities provide the core of our activity based learning model. These activities are designed to be completed in 50 minutes or less and help a student develop a more genuine understanding of the class materials. Each activity has a corresponding worksheet. Each student must hand in a completed worksheet to receive credit for completing the activity. Worksheets are graded based on displaying due diligence. If the student hands in a completed worksheet and has clearly been engaged in the activity they receive full credit. If a student is absent from class, does not hand in a worksheet or clearly had not done their due diligence, they receive zero credit for the activity.

Participation outside of class

To facilitate on-going learning of course material, we will also discuss course material on the class site. You should plan on commenting on the posts on the main class site.

The site is public and the above activities provide you with a forum to demonstrate your insights and ideas to the rest of the world and to learn from others.

Suggestions for commenting

The comments should focus on professional topics (only). Typical comments are about a few sentences to a small paragraph. The focus should be on quality and not on quantity.

Ideas for comments include:

Examples of technologies or issues that demonstrate a concept we discussed in class
Reacting to a post and providing a reasoned disagreement
Providing insights on how to solve class related problems
Providing new ways of thinking about the strategic role of technology
Adding additional insights to an existing post/comment

Comments that are NOT acceptable include:

Agreeing (or disagreeing) without providing a reason
Simply listing a topic without providing an explanation
Posting copyrighted material (it is acceptable to paraphrase the material and link to the original source)
Using unprofessional or disrespectful language
Material that does not fit the course goal