Due Dates

Assignment 1 Due 10/7/10

Assignment 2 Due 11/9/10

Final Assignment Due 12/13/10

 

Assignments and Grading

Class Participation (10%)

as this course will involve a significant amount of in classroom discussion and several workshop activities, your participation will matter towards your final grade.

Assignment 1 (15%) - Due 10/7/10

[assignment 1 - word version]
Field Notes. For the first half of the term we will be collaborating as a class on a study of how people interact with 'technology' in public places. You'll be keeping a field notebook. For this assignment, you will submit your typed and printed fieldnotes along with a one page analysis. The analysis should highlight a couple of main insights you gained from your observations and should also refer, in some form, to the methodological issues raised in lectures and readings in the first part of the course. I will be evaluating the notes themselves for how rich and extensive they are and how you've managed to generate (and distinguish between) descriptive and interpretive material.

Assignment 2 (20%) - Due 11/9/10

[assignment 2 - word version]
Interviews. You will conduct 2 interviews. Each interview should be at least 30 minutes in length and on a topic of your choosing. Each interview needs to be recorded and then transcribed. If you conduct interviews of longer than 30 minutes, I only require that you transcribe a 30 minute section of each interview. In the transcripts I'll be looking for the fluidity of your interview style is (i.e. the logic of how one question follows from another) and how responsive you are to your interviewees prompts. I'll also be looking to see how well you made use of probes where appropriate. Along with the transcripts please submit your interview guide and a 1-2 page analysis that includes a couple of main insights/findings. Your write up (as with the fieldnotes exercise) should refer, in some form, to the methodological issues raised in this course. I'll also be looking to see how carefully you’ve attended to the distinct language used and concepts generated by your interviewees both in your interviews and in your subsequent analysis. I also encourage you to take on the challenge of interviewing someone who: 1) you did not already know 2) is not affiliated with the UC Berkeley campus 3) is not of your ethnicity or nationality 4) is outside of your socio-economic class

Final Project (55%) - Due 12/13/10

[assignment 3 - word version]
Your final assignment is to carry out an independent research project of your own design. You may choose to build on the work we started at the beginning of the term on how people interact with technology in public places. If so, I'll be looking for how you incorporate the findings generated by the class up to this point to move forward with additional data collection and analysis. If you choose to do a series of interviews I'll expect to see 4 total and this can include the two interviews you conducted for assignment 2. Now is your chance to incorporate any additional techniques taught in the course such as projective interviewing, group interviews, or text/document/image analysis as appropriate for your project. For PhD students, you can use this as an opportunity to do some preliminary (or not so preliminary) fieldwork. Your write up should include about 1000 words on your methodological choices with reference to course readings. The rest of your analysis (around 2000 words) should be an evaluation of the data you've collected and should be written with reference to some relevant literature. I'll be looking to see how well you've integrated the various concepts introduced in this course and for the appropriateness and innovativeness of the decisions you've made about data collection and analysis.