Making connections

With more than 3,700 classes on offer at Dalhousie, it's hard to keep track of changes in the course calendar. This week, we take a look at classes added recently to the undergraduate calendar.

Are you on Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? Great! There’s an app—er, course—for that. In fact, if you’re actively engaging in society at all, CSCI 1107 might do you good. That’s Social Computing – a computer science course taught by professors Gabriella Mosquera and Bonnie MacKay, now in its sophomore year.

The class examines unprecedented forms of communication which have sprung up within the last few years, like the aforementioned Facebook. More relevant than the databases and web servers themselves, however, is their audience.

“What we think is really important to this is that we look at users,” says Dr. MacKay, for whom the social aspects of computing have long been a passion.

Interdisciplinary

Social Computing, like Animated Computing (also a new course), fulfills the lab credit required of computer science students. And, like CSCI 1106, it’s open to students university-wide. That’s one of the course’s key aspects. “We’re going to have different disciplines coming in with different perspectives,” enthuses Dr. MacKay. “It’s no longer just computer scientists sitting down and writing a bunch of code.”

To effectively teach this relatively new field, Social Computing hosts guest speakers and conducts case studies (Facebook, Youtube and Twitter are all on the menu.) Grading for the course breaks down into a term-long group project worth 50 per cent, an exam, and individual work. The hefty percentage assigned to the group project isn’t as intimidating it seems, since the project is broken down into smaller components. Students pick an existing digital social outlet, then either create a prototype for an improvement or conduct a study on the users of said media. “Last year one group came up with a new way of editing Wikipedia pages… we had a group looking at gender groups using Facebook.” For those who choose to create rather than observe, their “improvements” will be tested, in turn, by a small audience. Realism and applicability is paramount.

Savvy in social situations, as mediated through technology, has never been more important. Google’s recent purchase of Youtube and its subsequent enforcement of copyright law, not to mention recent controversy over Facebook’s opaque privacy settings, beg a venue for academic discourse. When the class studies Youtube, “We talk a little bit about the viral aspect,” says Dr. MacKay. “That’s a great example of something that never happened before Youtube came out. It’s a marketer’s dreamland.”

Things get more complicated when the class upgrades to Facebook. “How much information should be out there? Do you want everyone to see everything in the world?” It’s not just a rhetorical question, since her students will attempt to answer just that. They will also peer into the murky waters of cyber bullying and Facebook “creeping.”

Surprising

Partly, a course of this kind is possible because the range and depth of social computing has reached unprecedented heights, providing surprising insights into how people interact with their PCs. “People are not going to do what you think they’re going to do,” says Dr. MacKay. She cites an impromptu survey of last year’s class—what did students use their mobile phones for? Only two suggested it was to call people. Other applications ranged from texting to planning. “It’s not even considered a phone anymore.”

Dr. MacKay hopes computer science students will leave the course with a renewed appreciation for the real-life aspects computer science, once only addressed in the third year and above. “Computers are not just about writing code. You need to consider the user.” She’s also looking forward to teaching students from other faculties, since computer science courses are not always so accessible. “It’s a very interactive class… It’s on social computing, so it’s got to be a social course.”

Neo-Luddites may take heart. Technology is examined, yes, but Dr. MacKay promises “It’s such a high overview—it’s just giving definitions and structure to the technology behind it. We’re not expecting them to be database experts.”

In other words, if you’ve wasted time on Farmville, if you’re praying for an “unlike” button, if you’ve gnashed your teeth over the Old Spice Guy – this just might be your course.