CIS3810:Principles of New Media, M. Gershovich, Fall 2012
Required Texts: 1) Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations ; 2) Michael Mandiberg, Ed, The Social Media Reader; 3) Additional required and supplemental reading will be available via e-reserve and/or download in PDF format from the course site.
Also Required: For this course you will need your own WordPress blog on Blogs@Baruch and Twitter account. You may also wish to have your own YouTube, Soundcloud and Flickr accounts.
Blogs: You will need to create an account and a WordPress site on Blogs@Baruch (https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu). We will discuss the steps for doing this in class, but it is fairly easy to do so please feel free to strike out on your own and create your blog, choose a template, and to experiment with the customization options our installation of WordPress offers. You will be required to post to your blog regularly and your posts will be syndicated to the main course blog. See “Requirement and Grades” below for more on blogging in this class.
Twitter: We will hold an ongoing conversation about our ideas of social media in contemporary culture on Twitter. You may either use your current Twitter username or create one specifically for this course. Tweets should be personal thoughts/insights/questions, responses to readings or lectures, and/or links to relevant material on the web, and should include the course hashtag (#cis3810). You will be required to post at least 20 tweets throughout the semester (a maximum of 10 of these may be links).
Course Policy
According to the Baruch College ATTENDANCE policy (Undergraduate Bulletin, p. 41), “All students are required to attend every session of their courses. If a freshman or sophomore is absent in excess of twice the number of class sessions per week, the instructor must give the student a WU grade, which counts as an F. The instructor may give a junior or senior a WU grade (the equivalent of an F) for excessive absences. The WU grade may be given by the instructor at any time.”
Absences should only be for illnesses and family emergencies. Please come to class on time. Late arrivals are disruptive and distracting – don’t bother coming to class if you are going to be more than 20 minutes late.
Please put your cell phones away during class. Texting in class will adversely affect your participation grade. Laptops can be used for note taking only and I may ask to see your notes after class.
I expect everyone to have completed ALL of the assigned READING and viewing by the start of each class session, and to be prepared to discuss it in class. For a schedule of readings, consult the course calendar (below). This class is relatively reading-heavy, particularly early in the semester, so make sure that you can handle your responsibilities. We can only have interesting, engaging, and productive class sessions if everyone doe the required reading. Most of our reading is quite demanding and can be very difficult at times. If you don’t understand something you’ve read, it is not necessarily your fault. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about what you’ve read. Your classmates will probably thank you for it. There are no trivial or stupid questions.
The Baruch College brochure on Academic Honesty defines PLAGIARISM as follows:
Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s ideas, research or writing as your own:
- Copying another person’s actual words without the use of quotation marks and footnotes.
- Presenting another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledging them.
- Using information that is not considered common knowledge without acknowledging the source.
- Failure to acknowledge collaborators on homework and laboratory assignments.
Plagiarism on any assignment will result in an F for the course, not just the assignment. In addition, I am required by College policy to submit a report of suspected academic dishonesty (plagiarism) to the Dean of Students office. This report becomes part of your permanent file.
Familiarize yourself with methods of avoiding unintentional plagiarism when quoting or paraphrasing another’s work. We will discuss these in class. You should also take the Newman Library’s interactive tutorial on writing and avoiding plagiarism at http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/help/plagiarism/default.htm
Requirements and Grades
Your grade will be based on an in-class midterm exam, a final project, an in-class group presentation, several lower-stakes assignments, and class participation, both in-class and online (blogs, Twitter, etc.). As noted above, you will also have your own WordPress site through Blogs@Baruch (https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/) to which you will regularly (about twice a week) post reflections on readings and coursework and in response to a blogging prompts and assignments. Yours and your classmates’ posts will be aggregated on the main course blog: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/cis3810. The writing on your blog should adhere to the conventions of standard written English (we will discuss this in class) but will not be graded on surface concerns like spelling and grammar – I am more concerned with the thoughtfulness of your posts than with surface issues.
PRESENTATIONS: Each presentation should be between 20-30 minutes in length and will serve as an introduction to that session’s reading and key ideas. The presentations should engage the issues raised by the reading and will, depending on the particular topic, offer more detailed analyses of the topic at hand. The most successful presentations will be well planned and thoroughly researched, and will include handouts or another sort of visual aid. The group presenting will be responsible leading the discussion on the day of the presentation. A Communication Fellow from the Schwartz Communication Institute will be available to help you plan and rehearse your presentations. You and your group are required to meet with the Fellow at least once in preparing for your presentation.
Make sure that you know the people with whom you will be presenting and be sure to work closely with them. Your grade for the presentation will be a group grade — that is, the all of the group members will receive the same grade. The grade they receive will depend on the quality of the presentation as a whole. Each member’s presence and participation is crucial to the entire group. If you don’t know who’s in your group or when and on what you are presenting, be sure to ask me. Remember also that presentations are required and cannot be made up. If you are absent on the day of your presentation, you will unnecessarily burden your groupmates and will more than likely not pass the course.
Both the MIDTERM EXAM and the FINAL PROJECT are required and cannot be made up. If you are absent on the day of the exam or do not hand the final project in on time, you will not pass the course.
Your final grade will be calculated according to the following percentages:
Midterm exam (5-7pp): 20%
Final project (multimedia + 7-10pp paper): 25%
Group Presentation : 20%
Other assignments (in-class and otherwise): 15%
Participation (in class and on online): 20%