CS91 :: Socially Responsible Computing

Announcements

(Dec 7) We will be having a website launch party for ChesTech on Wednesday, December 9 from 1-3pm. We will be joined by some of the folks from the Chester Housing Authority and the Lang Center. Please come for a delectable lunch consisting of sushi and Taco Bell.
(Dec 4) All of you final deliverables (Journal, Final Group Report, Individual Report, Class Evaluation) is due on Wednesday December 9th at 1pm.

Introduction

Everybody knows how we can use computers to make money or waste time. But how can we use computers to do good in the world?

In this course, we will explore how computers can be used to ease suffering, reduce poverty, empower women, improve the environment, or just make life a little bit better for everyone. Topics include the technologies for the developing world, the open source software movement, access technologies for people with disabilities, computer literacy and the digital divide, reusing and recycling computers, and green computing.

Class information

Professor: Douglas Turnbull
Office: Science Center 255
Phone: (610) 597-6071
Office hours: TBA or by appointment

Room: Science Center Conference Room
Time: Wednesdays 1:15pm–4pm
Wiki: CS91 Wiki
Text: None, but lots of suggested references and weekly readings...

Schedule

WEEK	DAY	TOPIC & READING	PROJECT
1	Sep 02	Introductions & Project Planning	Individual: Read EPICS Project Documentation Slides Review EPICS Design Process Guide
2	Sep 09	Domestic Digital Divide: Network Neighborhoods, Free IT Athens Guests: Steve Fischer (Chester Housing Authority), Erica Weihermuller (Network Neighborhood), Semmy Purewals (Founder Free IT Athens, U Tennessee, Chattanooga) Network Neighbor Grant Application (Handout, Must Read) Dissecting the "Digital Divide": A Case Study in Egypt Warschauer, 2003 (Must Read) Free IT Athens Website (Read) Semmy Purewal's Talk at Southeast LinuxFest (Optional, Listen to track #18)
3	Sep 16	Field trip to Chester Rebuilding computer of CHA computer lab Please reflect on your experience in your journal.
4	Sep 23	International Digital Divide: TechBridgeWorld Guests: Prof. Bernardine Dias (TechBridgeWorld @ CMU) How Computer Science Serves the Developing World Dias and Brewer, 2009 (Must Read) TechBridgeWorld Website (Read) The TechBridgeWorld Initiative: Broadening Perspectives in Computing Technology, Education and Research Dias, Mills-Tettey and Mertz, 2005 (Read, Focus on Sections 3 & 4) Teaching Technical Creativity Through Robotics: A Case Study in Ghana" Mills-Tettey, Dias, Browing and Amanquah, 2007 (Skim) International Digital Divide: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) OLPC Website (Must Read & Watch Video) OLPC: Vision vs. Reality Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma, 2009 (Must Read) Joy of Tech OLPC cartoon by Nitrozac & Snaggy, 2007 (skim)	Individual: Hand in Notebook
5	Sep 30	Developing World Development: Mobile Telemedicine in Botswana Guests: Rachel Gormley (UPenn Med), Chris Liang (Click Diagnostics) Click Diagnostics Website (Must Read ) Mobile Teledermatology: a feasibility study of 58 Subjects using Mobile Phones Ebner et al., 2008 (Must Read) Cervical Cancer Screening in Botswana: A Role of Telemedicine Gormley et al., 2009 (Must Read) The use of mobile telemedicine for remote diagnosis in HIV infected patients in Botswana Kovarik, Gormley et al., 2009 (Skim 1-page Abstract) Management of cryotherapy-ineligible women in a "Screen-and-Treat" Cervical Cancer Prevention Program Targeting HIV-infected Women in Zambia: Lessons from the Field Pfaendler et al., 2008 (Skim)	Group: Project Charter
6	Oct 07	Developing World Development: Student Presentations Each student will present one paper (see below) to the class. You will need to explore supplementary material (related papers, websites, videos) and contact the individuals involved with your project in order to prepare for your 15-minute presentation (12-14 slides). Please send me your slide stack (ppt, keynote, google doc) by 9pm on Tuesday, Oct 6. Mobile phones and paper documents: evaluating a new approach for capturing microfinance data in rural India, Parikh et al., 2006 (Nick) Designing Digital Games for Rural Children: A Study of Traditional Village Games in India, Kam et al., 2009(Kwame) Stages of Design in Technology for Global Development, Donner et al. 2008 (Maria) Deploying a Rural Wireless Telemedicine System: Experiences in Sustainability, Surana 2008 (Dan) Chile's Learning Network, Potashnik 1996 ( Joel) Content Creation and Dissemination by-and-for Users in Rural Areas, Agarwal et al. 2009 (Ivana) Evaluating the Accuracy of Data Collection on Mobile Phones: A Study of Forms, SMS, and Voice, Patnaik et al. 2009 (Emanne) Early OLPC Experiences in rural Uruguayan School, Hourcade et al. 2008 (David)
	Oct 14	October Holiday
7	Oct 21	Access Technology: Helping disabled people using technology Guest: Anne Cavender, (U Washington) Assistive and Mainstream Technologies for People with Disabilities, Field & Jette, Eds. 2007 (Hand Out, Must Read) Access for All, Aycinena, 2009 (Must Read) MobileASL: Intelligibility of sign language video over mobile phones, A. Cavender, R. Ladner, E. Riskin, 2007 (Must Read) The State of Corporate Website Accessibility, Loiacono et al., 2009 (Skim) A Blind Person's Interactions with Technology , Shinohara & Tenenberg, 2009 (Skim)	Pick Topic for Week 9-11 Presentations Please email me the paper you would like the class to read ahead of your talk.
8	Oct 28	Security and Privacy in Cyberspace Guest lecture by Charles Kelemen (newly awarded ACM Distinguished Educator) Please refer to Prof. Kelemen's reading list. You should respond to the two essay questions listed at the bottom of this list in your journal.	Group: Specification Report (Email me a copy by 5pm on Friday, Oct 30)
9	Nov 04	Student-lead Seminars Groups of students will lead a 40-minute discussion on a topic a topic of interest. You will assign one paper to the class to read before your presentation. Please email me when you have decided on your topic and paper. You may use powerpoint, videos, author interviews (via Skype), discussion questions, etc., to make the discussion fun, interesting, and interactive. Quality of Life & Environment: Student-Lead Discussions Technologies for Social and Political Change: www.barackobama.com (Nick) Master of the Internet: How Barack Obama Harnessed New Tools and Old Lessons to Connect, Communicate and Campaign his Way to the White House, Barron 2008 (Must Read) Better Healthcare: Monitoring Patients with Technology, Electronic Medical Records (Maria) Pervasive Computing in Healthcare, Borriello et al., 2007 (must read) Pervasive Computing and Autism: Assisting Caregivers of Children with Special Needs, Kientz et al. 2007 (skim) Green Technology: eWaste (Emanne) The Digital Dump, The Basel Action Network 2005 (must read pages 1-9) Electronic Waste Report , U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2008 (skim pages 1-13 of pdf) Environmental Benefits of 2008 EPEAT Purchasing, Green Electronics Council, 2008 (skim)	Individual: Hand in Notebook
10	Nov 11	Sharing Information: Student-Lead Discussions Open Information Movement: Creative Commons, Google Books (Joel) What is Open Access , Bailey (webtext, must read) Visualizing Socio-Economic Conditions (Dan) The Best Stats You've Ever Seen Hans Roslin, Ted Video, 2007 (must read)
11	Nov 18	Education: Student-Lead Discussions Educational Programming: Alice, Scratch (Ivana) Programming by Choice: Urban Youth Learning Programming with Scratch , Maloney et al., 2008 (must read) Scratch: Programming for All, Resnick et al., 2009 (optional) Educational Games: CostOfLife (Kwame) Making Sweet Music: The Educational Use of Computer Games , Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2007(must read) Designing Digital Games for Rural Children: A Study of Traditional Village Games in India, Kam et al., 2009 (Skim, also covered in Week 6) Cost of Life game (optional) FunBrain website (optional)	Group: Final Delivery Report Draft
12	Nov 25	(Humanitarian) Free Open Source Software (HFOSS): Linux, Free SaaS, GNU (David) Software as a Service, Plus: A Model that Fits the Nonprofit Community - NTEN Blog post, 2007 (must read) Rent or Buy: Why Nonprofits Need Software as a Service Promotional material from Kintera, Inc., 2007 (read) Turning Software into a Service Turner, Budgen, Brereton, 2003 (skim) Revolution OS - film in class
13	Dec 02	Computing in the Arts: Interactive Storytelling - Jon Harris Hyperscore - Tod Machover PLOrk - Perry Cook
14	Dec 09	ChesTech Website Launch Party from 1-2pm. Come join us for lunch!	Due at 1pm on Dec 9 Journal Individual Report Group Report Course Evaluation on blackboard See class email for details.

Course Material & Presentations

Each week, we will be discussing a topic that involves computing and some social topic. It is important that you read, watch or examine the documents listed before class so that we can have a meaningful and constructive discussion. A document may be a paper, a website, or a video.

I realize that as the semester progresses, there will be times that you will not be able to review each document. To this end, I have denoted each document with a Must Read, Read, and Skim designation. If you know that will be unable to read every paper, please focus on the Must Read papers first.

For every Must Read document and most of the Read document, you should prepare a 1-page summary in your class journal. The format for the summary will depend to the nature of the document, but in general you should provide:

Summary: write 2-4 sentences that describe what the paper is about. What is the problem? What is the focus of the study? What do they conclude?
Strength: a list of 2-4 strengths of the paper. What was interesting? Does the work resonate with your own interests? Is the proposed solution novel and interesting? Are the results compelling? Is the evaluation clear and illustrative? Is the paper successful?
Weaknesses: a list of 2-4 weaknesses. Are there any holes in the logic of the paper? Are the results dubious? Do the authors make any questionable assumption? What was unclear or poorly explained.
Questions and Discussion Points: a list of 2-4 (or more) things that you want to discuss in class. What didn't you understand? Why did the authors make this or that decision?

You are also encouraged to find and consume additional material (e.g., following paper references, web searching using Google Scholar, emailing the authors. Bring this information to class to share with your colleagues. (If you miss some of the document summaries for the assigned material, you can make up for it by doing summaries of additional material.) You will also be required to do two presentations in during the semester.

Developing World Development Paper Summary (Week 6, 15 minute talk): You will be assigned one paper by Week 4. You will present the findings of this paper to your class in a 15 presentation. This will require that you explore the supplementary material (references, websites, videos) as well as contact the author, write some code, etc.
Student-lead Topic Seminar (Weeks 9-11, 1 hour discussion): First, you (and up to 1 partner) will pick a topic of interest by Week 6. You will then pick a paper to share with the class by Week 7. Then, sometime between Week 9 and Week 11, you will be given 1-hour to lead a discussion based on your topic. While your classmates will have read your assigned paper, you should plan to read and summarize 3-5 additional references. You may also want to contact authors or other leaders involve with this topic. Lastly, you should design a 1-hour discussion seminar about you topic. Try to be as interactive as possible: pose interesting discussion questions, design interactive exercises, invite leaders to speak with the class, etc. Be creative and informative.

Community-based Learning Project

We will be working with the Chester Housing Authority (CHA) on their Neighborhood Networks project to improve computer literacy and computer access for low-income residence in Chester, PA.

The first step will be to learn about the social, economic, and cultural context of Chester and the residents of the housing authority. Group of students will then design, develop and deploy a project that meets the goals of the Neighborhood Networks initiative. The development cycle with involve a close collaborative relationship with both the administrators and residence of the Chester Housing Authority. We will be following the EPICS Design Process: Problem Identification, Specification Development, Conceptual Design, Detail Design, Production, Service & Maintenance, Redesign or Retirement. The EPICS process stresses the importance of understanding the context of the problem, close collaboration with a community partner, and rigorous documentation for organization and sustainability.

Each student will required to maintain a journal to document their individual work: observations, thoughts, ideas, reviews of relate research material, meeting notes, contact information, informal and formal experiment (include hypothesis, setup, data, results, conclusions), and other information that is relevant to the project. Please see the EPICS Documentation Slides for details on formatting journal entries. The journals will be collect for grading three times during the semester (Week 4, 9, and 13).

In addition to the individual journals, each group of student will be required to submit various documents based on the EPICS Design Process. Please refer to the schedule above for the due dates of these project reports.

Grading

This course is structured like a seminar course where each student will be graded based on his or her contribution to both the seminar and the community project.

Seminar	50%
Reading Summaries Week 4	5%
Reading Summaries Week 9	5%
Reading Summaries Week 13	5%
Paper Presentation Week 6	10%
Topic Presentation Weeks 9-11	15%
In-class Contribution	10%

Project	50%
Journal Week 4	3%
Journal Week 9	3%
Journal Week 13	4%
Project Charter	4%
Specification Report	8%
Final Presentation	8%
Final Delivery Report & User Manual	16%
Peer Reviews	4%

CS91: Socially Responsible Computing