Course Schedule
Week-by-Week Topic and Assignment Schedule
Important Note: This schedule is provided as an overview of what I expect to cover this semester. As the semester progresses, however, I imagine that some due dates, assigned media, and daily topics will shift. The course Canvas modules will be the most precise guide to what is due when once the semester is underway.
Unit 1: Dear (My) Data
Monday, August 22
Introduction to the course and to each other
Wednesday, August 24
How does data relate to human ways of knowing?
Required Media:
- Ted Chiang, "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" (2013)
Friday, August 26
Where are the lines between benevolent and malicious data use?
Required Media:
- Naomi Kritzer, "Cat Pictures Please" Links to an external site. (2015)
- Owen Mundy & Shana Berger et al, "I Know Where Your Cat Lives" Links to an external site. (2014), browse some cats and be sure to review the about page Links to an external site.
Monday, August 29
What are the histories of data visualization?
Required Media:
- Lauren Klein, "What Data Visualization Reveals: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and the Work of Knowledge Production" Links to an external site. (2022)
- RJ Andrews and Stanford Libraries, "Data Visualization and the Modern Imagination" Links to an external site.
Wednesday, August 31
Can we imagine new possibilities for data and its visualization?
- Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec, selections from Dear Data (2016)
Pre-writing activity: Drafting "Dear (My) Data" planning documents
IMPORTANT NOTE: Draft of "Dear (My) Data" plan due by Friday, September 2
Friday, September 2
In-class activity: Peer review "Dear (My) Data" plans
Monday, September 5: No Class for Labor Day
Wednesday, September 7
What is the relationship between data and power?
Required Media:
- Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel, "Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy" Links to an external site. (2019)
- Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, "On Rational, Scientific, Objective Viewpoints from Mythical, Imaginary, Impossible Standpoints" Links to an external site. and "What Gets Counted Counts" Links to an external site. from Data Feminism Links to an external site. (2020)
IMPORTANT NOTE: Final "Dear (My) Data" assignment due by Thursday, September 22
Friday, September 9
OPEN DAY to work on your "Dear (My) Data" assignments and attend the iSchool's Networking & Career Fair
Unit 2: The Universal Encyclopedia
Monday, September 12
What is the relationship between scale, access, data, and knowledge?
Required Media:
- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" (1941)
- Browse Jonathan Basile's https://libraryofbabel.info/ Links to an external site., being sure to read the About and Theory sections
In-class prewriting: What is Wikipedia Anyway?
Wednesday, September 14
Meet at the University of Illinois Archives, Main Library Room 146
Historical research primer
Friday, September 16: Prof. Cordell Away
Guided work session with Matthew Kollmer: bring your "Dear (My) Data" visualization and/or writeup in progress, at whatever stage they are in.
Monday, September 19
What is Wikipedia, anyway?
Required Media:
- Joseph Reagle, The (Many) Reported Deaths of Wikipedia Links to an external site. from Wikipedia @ 20 (2020)
- Omer Benjakob and Stephen Harrison, "From Anarchy to Wikiality, Glaring Bias to Good Cop: Press Coverage of Wikipedia’s First Two Decades" Links to an external site. from Wikipedia @ 20 (2020)
- Wikipedia Policies Links to an external site.
In-class activity: creating Wikipedia accounts
Wednesday, September 21
Understanding Wikipedia's structure, policies, and community
Required Media:
All from Wiki Edu's training libraries Links to an external site., which are an excellent source for help if you get stuck during this unit's writing assignment.
- Sandboxes, talk pages, and watchlists Links to an external site.
- How to edit: Wikicode vs. Visual Editor Links to an external site.
- Evaluating Articles and Sources Links to an external site.
- Finding Your Article Links to an external site.
In-class activity: Choosing an Article
*Step 1 of Wikipedia Assignment, "Create WP Account & Choose Topic," due by end of day Tuesday, September 27
Friday, September 23
Understanding notability, reliability and the use of sources on Wikipedia
Required Media:
- Adding citations Links to an external site.
- Drafting in the sandbox Links to an external site.
- Plagiarism Links to an external site.
In-class activity: Finding Sources
*Step 2 of Wikipedia Assignment, "Create WP Account & Choose Topic," due by end of day Thursday, September 29
Monday, September 26
Why should information scientists care about what's in Wikipedia?
Required Media:
- Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw, "The Most Important Laboratory for Social Scientific and Computing Research in History" Links to an external site. from Wikipedia @ 20 (2020)
- Denny Vrandečić, "Collaborating on the Sum of All Knowledge Across Languages" Links to an external site. from Wikipedia @ 20 (2020)
- Adele Godoy Vrana, Anasuya Sengupta, and Siko Bouterse, "Toward a Wikipedia For and From Us All" Links to an external site. from Wikipedia @ 20 (2020)
Wednesday, September 28
In-class activity: Evaluating Existing WP articles
Friday, September 30
In-class writing workshop
Monday, October 3
Informational writing and perspective
Required Media:
- Miriam A. Cherry, "The Future Encyclopedia of Luddism" Links to an external site. (2021)
- Wikipedia, "Luddite" Links to an external site.
- Cory Doctorow, "Science Fiction is a Luddite Literature" Links to an external site. (2021)
Wednesday, October 5
In-class Activity: Peer Review of colleagues' Wikipedia articles
Friday, October 7
In-class activity: Revision workshop
Midterm Workshop Week
Monday, October 10
Open revision workshop
Wednesday, October 12: No Meeting
Work on revising your "Dear (My) Data" and "Universal Encyclopedia" articles
Friday, October 14:
Open Revision Workshop
Unit 3: Hello World!
Monday, October 17
Is programming a form of literacy?
- Kevin Brock, "The ‘FizzBuzz’ Programming Test: A Case-Based Exploration of Rhetorical Style in Code" (2016)
- Annette Vee, "Introduction: Programming as Literacy" from Coding Literacy (2017)
Wednesday, October 19
Looking at literate programming exemplars A-H
Required media:
Note: you should browse these before class, not attempt to read them in their entirety.
- Agnihotri, Apoorv, and Nipun Batra. 2020. “Exploring Bayesian Optimization.” Distill 5 (5): e26. https://doi.org/10.23915/distill.00026 Links to an external site..
- Algee-Hewitt, Mark, Katherine Bowers, Quinn Dombrowski, and Heather Froehlich. 2021. Heather Likes Principal Component Analysis. The Data-Sitters Club 10. https://datasittersclub.github.io/site/dsc10.html Links to an external site..
- Blickhan, Samantha, Will Granger, Shaun A. Noordin, and Becky Rother. 2021. “‘Strangers in the Landscape’: On Research Development and Making Things for Making.” Startwords, no. 2 (December). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5750679 Links to an external site..
- Bowers, Katherine, Quinn Dombrowski, and Roopika Risam. 2021. The DSC and the New Programming Language. The Data-Sitters Club 12. https://datasittersclub.github.io/site/dsc12.html Links to an external site..
- brennen. 2018. “A Book about the Command Line for Humans.” Userland. July 2018. https://p1k3.com/userland-book/ Links to an external site..
- Broussard, Meredith. 2018. “Machine Learning: The DL on ML.” In Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The MIT Press. https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/ebooks/8555186/8555265.pdf?bkn=8555186&pdfType=chapter.
- Carter, Shan, and Michael Nielsen. 2017. “Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment Human Intelligence.” Distill 2 (12): e9. https://doi.org/10.23915/distill.00009 Links to an external site..
- Case, Nicky. 2018. “The Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds.” April 2018. http://ncase.me/crowds/ Links to an external site..
- Dombrowski, Quinn. 2020. Text-Comparison-Algorithm-Crazy Quinn. The Data-Sitters Club 8. https://datasittersclub.github.io/site/dsc8.html Links to an external site..
- Hart, Vi, and Nicky Case. n.d. “Parable of the Polygons.” Parable of the Polygons. Accessed July 7, 2022. http://ncase.me/polygons Links to an external site..
In-class activity: Developing guidelines for effective literate programming
Friday, October 21
Looking at literate programming exemplars K-W
Required media:
Note: you should browse these before class, not attempt to read them in their entirety.
- Kane, Maeve. 2022. “The Capacious Sacrament of Necessity: Ethnic and Racial Formation in Early American Baptismal Networks.” Observable. February 11, 2022. https://observablehq.com/@mkane2/baptismal-network-comparison-statistics Links to an external site..
- Kashyap, Nabil. 2019. “Computational Essay.” Observable. October 4, 2019. https://observablehq.com/@bulbil/computational-essay Links to an external site..
- Kurgan, Laura, Dare Brawley, Brian House, Jia Zhang, and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun. 2019. “Homophily: The Urban History of an Algorithm - Architecture - e-Flux.” E-Flux. October 2019. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/are-friends-electric/289193/homophily-the-urban-history-of-an-algorithm/ Links to an external site..
- Mitchell, Margaret, Simone Wu, Andrew Zaldivar, Parker Barnes, Lucy Vasserman, Ben Hutchinson, Elena Spitzer, Inioluwa Deborah Raji, and Timnit Gebru. 2019. “Model Cards for Model Reporting.” In Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 220–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287560.3287596 Links to an external site..
- Moore, Nathanael. 2022. “The Brain Is Deeper Than the Sea: Sea and Spar Between, Computational Stuplimity, and Fragmentation.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 16 (1). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/16/1/000599/000599.html Links to an external site..
- ———. n.d. “The Brain Is Deeper Than the Sea: Sea and Spar Between, Computational Stuplimity, and Fragmentation.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 016 (1). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/16/1/000599/000599.html Links to an external site..
- Peter, Norvig. 2016. “How to Write a Spelling Corrector.” Peter@Norvig.Com. August 2016. https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html Links to an external site..
- Quigley, Stephen J. 2022. “Basic Coding.” Kairos 26 (2). https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/26.2/disputatio/quigley/index.html Links to an external site..
- Vane, Olivia. n.d. “Waterlines Collection.” Observable. Accessed August 8, 2022. https://observablehq.com/collection/@oliviafvane/watermarks Links to an external site..
- Whalen, Zach. 2020. “Code Critique / Book Review: Travesty Generator by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram.” CCS Working Group 2020 (blog). February 2020. http://wg20.criticalcodestudies.com/index.php?p=/discussion/99/code-critique-book-review-travesty-generator-by-lillian-yvonne-bertram Links to an external site..
In-class activity: Developing guidelines for effective literate programming
Monday, October 24
"Hello World!" assignment discussion & prep, including Google Colab discussion
Wednesday, October 26
Can we speak with (and back to) data?
Required Media:
- John R. Gallagher, "Writing for Algorithmic Audiences" Links to an external site. (2017)
- Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, "The Numbers Don't Speak for Themselves" Links to an external site. from Data Feminism Links to an external site. (2020)
Friday, October 28
"Hello World!" writing workshop
Monday, October 31
How do human choices shape user experiences?
Required Media:
- Safiya Umoja Noble, "A Society, Searching" from Algorithms of Oppression (2018)
- Lauren Michelle Jackson, "We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs" Links to an external site. (2017)
Wednesday, November 2
In-class activity: "Hello World!" peer review workshop
Friday, November 4
In-class activity: revision workshop
Unit 4: The Wondrous Writing Automaton
Monday, November 7
Can programs be literate?
Required Media:
- Katherine Elkins and Jon Chun, "Can GPT-3 Pass a Writer's Turing Test?" Links to an external site. (2020)
- Almira Osmanovic Thunström, "We Asked GPT-3 to Write an Academic Paper about Itself—Then We Tried to Get It Published" Links to an external site. (2022)
Wednesday, November 9
What are the limits of large language models?
Required Media:
-
- Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜” Links to an external site. (2021)
- Lauren Klein, "Are Large Language Models Our Limit Case?" Links to an external site. (2022)
Friday, November 11
In-class prep: writing with AI
Monday, November 14
How might AI collaborate with human creativity?
Required Media:
- Janelle Shane, "The Danger of AI Is Weirder Than You Think" Links to an external site. (2019)
- Ted Underwood, "Mapping the Latent Spaces of Culture" Links to an external site. (2021)
Wednesday, November 16
How might play intersect with AI research?
Required Media:
- play AI Dungeon Links to an external site.
- Minh Hua and Rita Raley, "Playing With Unicorns: AI Dungeon and Citizen NLP" Links to an external site. (2020)
Friday, November 18
In-class writing workshop
November 19-27: No Class for Fall Break
Closing Exercises
Monday, November 28
Required Media:
- John Bois, "What Football Will Look Like in the Future" Links to an external site. (2017). Note: this is a longer reading assignment so plan accordingly!
Wednesday, November 30
Required Media:
- John Bois, "What Football Will Look Like in the Future" Links to an external site. (2017). Note: this is a longer reading assignment so plan accordingly!
Friday, December 2
In-class activity: Automaton paper peer review workshop
End-term Workshop Week
Monday, December 5
Open Revision Workshop
Wednesday, December 7
Wrap-up discussion and workshop