Welcome back.
Today we will be talking about the logistics and schedule for this course.
The course is structured with 10 one-week modules, and each one of those weeks has a
variety of different elements to it.
Some of the main course elements, there will be videos that are broken down.
We have some that are like this which are lectures where one or the other of us will
be presenting some material.
Some are going to field trips and interviews, so going out and talking to world experts
or going to places that we think are interesting.
Some are going to be curated videos, things we found out in the world that we thought
would be important for you to have seen.
There are also going to be a bunch of readings.
Some are going to be from scientific journals, others will be from the popular press, and
some others are going to be online explorations of various different kinds.
These videos and readings will then lead into some other activities.
Discussion board assignments are going to be a pretty central piece of this course.
There will be some open-ended questions, but we will also be asking you then to respond
to your classmate's comments on those discussion boards.
There will be a variety of quizzes.
One of the main aspects of your grade is going to be coming out of a final project, a significant
final project that you will work on in teams, and it will be talked about more throughout
the class.
There will also be some part of your grade that comes from making a user account and
completing a couple of questionnaires.
Here we see the percentages of how this all breaks down in terms of your grade.
You will note that there is not a percentage for the videos and the readings, and that
ultimately is because those serve as a basis for the others.
You really cannot do the discussion board assignments or the quizzes or the final project
effectively if you have not watched the videos and done the readings.
Going beyond what the percentage of your grade is which is while it's important to a lot
of people it's also only one aspect of what university education is about, we feel like
there are some important learning goals that we wanted to mention about what we hope you
are going to get out of this class.
We would like you to be able to describe several different roles that information technology
currently plays in supporting well-being.
We would also like you to be able to understand the ways in which societal infrastructures
affect how people live their lives.
We would like you to be able to describe several environmental implications of current and
potential future information technology systems and also to be able to identify the processes
through which IT systems are built and by which IT innovations occur.
We would like you to develop reasonable hypotheses about the roles information technology could
play in the future of sustainable civilizations.
We would like you to engage in critical evaluation of data presentation and online information
relating to global change as well as information technology.
Finally, we would like you to contribute to the envisioning and creation of simple robust
sustainable IT-enabled infrastructures.
While we're at that, we would like to design, build and evaluate some fantastic real-world
IT systems together.
There are 10 weeks in this class.
The first week that we are currently in will be an introduction to the basic core content
of the class, as well as a lot of logistics.
In week two we will go into a little bit more depth in terms of global disruption as well
as well-being and information technology.
In the third week we will be talking about peak oil and a variety of other aspects that
descend from that.
In the fourth week we will be talking about global disruption, more specifically looking
at people who are hypothesizing global environmental collapse and various other challenges.
In week five we will be talking about why these are something called a wicked problem,
a problem that is so complex as to be intractable for humans and where you cannot even get a
handle on what the nature of the problem is a lot of times.
Taking a break from that, in week six we will have happy week.
In happy week we will be looking at a bunch of the good things that have come out of this
rather than always looking at the dark side.
Week seven is food and community week.
We will be looking at various food production processes and how communities can work better
together.
In week 8 we will be talking about the economic aspects of this problem.
In week 9 we will be talking about some alternative solutions that are present in this domain.
In week 10 we would like to offer some hope going forward helping people to think about
why this could be a hopeful situation.
Then there is finals week which is when your final projects are due.
So, over the course of the next 10 weeks if you have any questions or problems we would
like to ask you to follow the following process.
First, if you could go look at the syllabus and the course website a lot of your questions
will be answered there.
Second, if you cannot find the answer there we would like you to go look at the discussion
board.
There is going to be a sort of an "ask us anything" discussion board where you can find
the answers to lots of different questions.
If your answer is not there you are certainly welcome to e-mail TAs.
You will be assigned a TA who will be your primary point of contact on the teaching staff.
But, if you are not able to find satisfaction through any of those mechanisms you are also
of course welcome to e-mail the instructors and we will do our best to get whatever your
issue is resolved.
We look forward to working with you throughout the rest of the course.