ECI 719 601 DE Online Special Topics: Comp-Supp Collab Lrng: Theories, Models & Processes

Instructor of Record: Michael A. Evans

Teaching Assistant: Elena Vladimirova

Prerequisites: None

Syllabus: Available Upon Request

 

Course Overview

This course has examines selected human, social and technical issues and concepts of computer-supported

cooperative work, computer-supported collaborative learning, and social networking. Topics include:

the ways that groups work in the networked organization; analysis and design of group-support

systems; the theory, user-centered analysis and design of groupware; social-networking and

community-learning technologies; and future directions of these technologies. The course includes

theoretical and research literature on the design of social and collaborative systems.

 

When you have completed this course, you should be able to:

• Apply collaborative, cooperative and social computing concepts and techniques to analyze
• potential organizational requirements.
• Apply selected collaboration and social computing systems to meet specific application
• requirements.
• Evaluate behavioral aspects of collaborative work environments.
• Discuss research literature on social and collaboration computing.

Groupware systems are socio-technical systems, so their design must be driven by the human and

social needs of users and user communities. Accordingly, this course looks at various approaches for

studying, analyzing and evaluating system requirements—particularly, for cooperative, collaborative

and social-computing systems. Course readings cover classic papers defining the CSCW field,

examples of groupware applications for cooperation in the workplace and for collaborative learning,

and considerations for groupware evaluation.

 

This course is designed and organized to support collaborative learning; work in small groups is the

primary learning activity; the instructor’s role is primarily to structure, assess and guide the experience.

The instructor’s knowledge, experience and perspective are well represented through the readings.

Students will prepare presentations on the readings, working in online small groups. Critical, creative,

well-grounded views on the readings are encouraged. The course will focus on a group design project

that explores the leading edge of research on social and collaborative computing, allowing the

selection of current topics to follow student interests.

 

The course requires careful reading of 50-75 pages a week. It requires writing critical reviews of the

readings, collaboration on a group project with group reports (including about an hour per week of

synchronous small-group chat), and participation in online class discussion.

This one-time course offering may not be repeated in the future. The content and instructor of this

course change each time it is offered. This is an opportunity to benefit from the instructor’s own

perspective on groupware design and research.