Syllabus

Interactive Technology and Pedagogy I: History and Theory

FINDING & USING THE COURSE!

• Our course can only be accessed by registered users of the Commons whom the instructors invite to view and participate.
• Our course Resource page is password protected to support academic integrity policies for use of sources: we will email you the password individually once you join the site Instructors.

CUNY Graduate Center Catalog Course Description

Students will examine the economic, social, and intellectual history of the design and use of technology. The course focuses on the mutual shaping of technology and academic teaching, learning and research—how people and ideas have shaped classroom and research interactions in the past, and how they are transforming knowledge production in the present. By examining the use and design of technologies inside and outside of the university, students reflect on what it means to be human in a world increasingly mediated by technology.

The course also highlights the theoretical and practical possibilities of digital media for teaching, research, reading, writing, activism, collaborative knowledge production, and play. Assignments for the course ask students to leverage new, multimodal approaches for creating scholarship, including a publishable final paper or project that contributes to the discourse around the use of technology in their discipline as well as considers the growth of fields of academic inquiry such as Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and the Digital Humanities. This course includes a two-hour non-credit bearing lab that takes place on the same day as class, directly afterwards.

Our Take on This Iteration of the Course

How have technologies and pedagogies shaped higher education in the United States? In this course, we will examine the economic, social, and intellectual histories of the design and use of technology and pedagogy and the expression of these in current higher education  practices in the United States. Through shared readings, viewings, and discussion, we will focus on the interdependence of technology and academic teaching, learning, in particular on questions regarding how systemic oppressions have shaped higher education and how the struggles between and among identities and historical injustice are transforming knowledge production in the present. By examining the use and design of technologies inside and outside of the university, we will reflect on the increasing hybridization of humans and technology, both individually and collectively, and we will examine our own roles and choices as technological humans and human(e) technologies.

Through our in person and online interactions, we will explore the theoretical and practical possibilities of digital media for teaching, research, reading, writing, activism, collaborative knowledge production, and gaming. We will invite each other to leverage new, multimodal approaches for creating scholarship by identifying potential collaborators and audiences for research and publication in addition to designing and testing prototypes towards scholarly contributions in our disciplinary fields as well as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. While traditional papers for publication may be submitted, we encourage the ideation and creation of multimedia, digital projects for audiences whose needs are not currently being inside or outside the university.

As a means towards developing further skills and knowledge, we include a two-hour non-credit bearing lab that takes place on the same day as class, directly after our meeting times. Please note that lab guidance is provided for us by different instructors than for our regular course.

Course Learning Goals

• Students will be able to contextualize the design and use of technology within economic, social, and intellectual history.
• Students will learn to analyze and connect principles of social justice pedagogies to technologies used for teaching and scholarship in their disciplines.
• Students will learn how to identify and use relevant technologies to design and create projects (pedagogical and/or scholarly) that support social justice principles and practices best suited to teaching and scholarship in their disciplines.

Course Questions

We will interrogate approaches to technology and pedagogy that have served to shape and critique our present technological world to explore questions such as

• What is the history of technology under capitalism and systemic oppression?       
• What are the reciprocal and conflicting influences of labor and technology in relation to U.S. higher education? How have conceptions of teaching, learning, and scholarship transformed in connection with demands of labor and technology? 
• What are the obligations, expectations, and roles of an educator?  What changes when we view knowledge as co-creation rather than labor production? What new and different questions do changes in technology and education urge us to generate?

Course Materials 

This is a low cost materials course (meaning we are limiting your required resource costs to $25 or less). Please plan to buy Michelle MIller’s Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology: Teaching, Learning, and the Science of Memory in a Wired World (2022), available in paperback and Kindle versions (also can be requested through CUNY college interlibrary loans; however, there are limited copies in our area, and we encourage EARLY library requests to ensure you have a copy).

All other materials are available at zero cost and electronically on the course Commons site.

Online Tools We Will Use

CUNY Academic Commons: A web-based, open source academic network for members of the City University of New York. Its users can create websites, discussions groups, and wikis. We will use the Commons to host our course site (visible only to authorized users) and to post comments responding to readings that cannot be made available through Perusall. Commons’ accessibility features: https://help.commons.gc.cuny.edu/making-your-course-accessible/ and its privacy policy: https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/about/privacy/

Google Tools:  A web-based office suite designed for content creation, sharing, and collaboration. Of the suite, we will use Docs (word processing), Forms (surveys), and Jamboard (whiteboard).

Perusall: A FERPA-compliant, web-based social annotation tool created to promote active, collaborative reading. Participants in a Perusall space can annotate multiple types of content from text documents to podcasts. We will use Perusall for close readings of texts, group coordination, and peer feedback on the final project. For more on Perusall’s design features, including accessibility, as well as its privacy policy, see: https://www.perusall.com/features

Zoom Meetings: A videotelephony program widely used for remote work and education since the start of the pandemic. We will use Zoom for asynchronous sessions as well as for student-instructor communications and consultations when in-person meetings are not possible. Zoom’s accessibility features: https://explore.zoom.us/en/accessibility/ and privacy policy: https://explore.zoom.us/en/privacy/ .

Course Policies and Expectations

We invite the participants of this seminar to collaborate in the creation of our learning environment beyond what is dictated by CUNY’s Policy on Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination, its Policy on Academic Integrity, and its Policy on Reasonable Accommodations and Academic Adjustments. We will take time during our first meeting together to sketch ideas of how we want to engage one another and what we consider to be preferable/suitable policies on attendance, participation, class etiquette (food in class, laptop/smartphone use, etc.), class communications, and late work. 

CUNY required policies and student support resources can be found here. Assessment, social, and restorative justice policies will be co-created by our learning community and discussed during our first class sessions.

Course Assignments

1. ONGOING ENGAGEMENT 

Your questions and observations on the texts and activities of the course will help drive our work. Actions considered engagement include

1. Close reading of class materials in Perusall (e.g. clarification of a passage, asking others for help with clarification of a passage, connecting a passage to content in or outside the class, sharing links to materials that help the clarification or extension of ideas in a passage, discussing the implications of the whole or parts of the material)
2. Responses to class material on CUNY Commons 
3. “Divide and conquer” discussions where a group instructs another group on material they have not covered and the latter responds in kind 
4. Active listening that follows the Core Principles of Active Listening
5. Asking questions and giving feedback to peers on their work
6. Asking questions and giving feedback to guest speakers

1. FINAL COURSE PROJECT 

Learning Objectives

1. To identify a project design question that we can address through the inclusion of concepts, methodologies, or thinkers from our course materials, from your discipline, and from the larger technology and pedagogy community.
2. To identify the optimal audiences to experience and respond to our projects.
3. To engage in reciprocal peer review of our work with other participants in the course and synthesize relevant feedback into improving and deepening our projects.

Description

The course project is an examination of at least one specific technological practice, piece of software, program, or course website in your discipline that uses digital technology to help teach and/or do research and publication. The main questions your project must answer are

1. For whom is/are these tool(s), practice(s), program(s) or website(s) designed? How do you know?
2.  In what specific ways is/are these tool(s), practice(s), program(s) or website(s) effective?
3.  In what ways might it/they be strengthened, expanded, updated, or reconceptualized?
4. Why does it matter that these practices or artifacts are strengthened, expanded, updated, or reconceptualized? Who will benefit from these changes?

Note: Co-authored course projects are allowed with permission.

Requirements

Besides answering the guiding questions above, your examination must

1. Make reference to the conceptual and pedagogical models and approaches described in at least three (3) of our readings this semester.
2. Couch your analysis in a broader discussion of the state of technology usage in your academic field. How does the subject of your examination compare to trends of technology use in the field? Which scholars and teachers in your field are pushing the edge of the envelope in their use of academic technology to teach and/or do research, and what makes their work with technology cutting edge? Also, what insights might be drawn from the uses of technology in other disciplines to help reshape the use of technology in your field?

Recommended Additional Sources

Consider supplementing your analysis with references to the growing body of scholarship of teaching and learning and technology in order to assess the ways in which your field might benefit from new, imaginative uses of technology in research and/or inside and outside of the classroom. Online and print journals that you might consider consulting include, but are not limited to: Computers and Composition, Computers and Education, Educause Quarterly, The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy, The Journal of Scholarship on Teaching and Learning, Kairos, Pedagogy, and Radical Teacher, as well as numerous academic blogs and educational websites. The latter tend to be more current and useful than the formal journals (even the online ones), so feel free to mix and match what you use to help bolster your analysis.

Reflection: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Your completed course project will be accompanied by a reflective piece that discusses the following:

• How did this examination deepen your engagement with our course learning goals?

From what you have learned from our course project,

1. What is the question or problem you wish to engage with in Core 2?
2. What is your purpose in engaging with this question or problem?
3. Who will benefit from your engagement with this question or problem? Who may become disadvantaged?
4. Who do you envision as your ideal audience for your Core 2 project?
5. Who do you envision as your ideal mentors for creating your Core 2 project?
6. What media do you think would be best to include in your Core 2 project as primary and secondary elements?
7. What other resources do you anticipate will be useful for your Core 2 project?
8. What time management and organization tools do you plan to use to manage Your Core 2 project?

Project Scaffolding Stages

Stage One

• Explore technological practices or artifacts in your discipline that use digital technology to help teach and/or do research and publication.
• By October 24: Complete an in-person or Zoom consultation with either Ximena or Gina

Stage Two

• By November 21: Submit a summary of your final project in text, visual, or other media to the this Google doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bgYh5gDj_OB1qGMuEbalGkgcTMfwl4wkz8fjrrTfcvc/edit?usp=sharing 
• By November 21: Complete an in-person or Zoom with either Gina or Ximena, the instructor whom you have not yet met

Stage Three

• By December 2: Submit a nearly-final draft to our Google folder
• By December 11: In the Google folder, receive and offer peer feedback on the nearly-final draft to those in your letter group 
• By December 19: Revise your draft and write the reflection. Submit both pieces to the course’s Google Folder for instructor assessment  

III. OPEN PEDAGOGY STUDENT-DESIGNED AND FACILITATED FINAL CLASS SESSION

Our final in person class session will be co-designed by our students. This session will include 2-4 attributes of Open Pedagogy as we focus on further developing the theme of Labor that has been infused throughout our readings and discussions this term. We will co-design expectations for this session as well as the content and strategies in the second half of the term.

Student work on the final Open Pedagogy session will be assessed on their individual and group contributions to the final session as well as their feedback to the instructors and the group after the session (due before the final day of exams). This feedback will help us close the loop on the activity as well as prepare us to transfer our skills to the next courses and projects in the ITP Program.

Labs, Workshops, and Support

Students must take six labs per semester as part of the ITP certificate requirements. The majority of these should be ITP skills labs, but you are welcome to supplement with other tech workshops offered by the GC Digital Fellows, the Teaching & Learning Center (TLC), or the GC Library to fill this requirement.

We will update the list below with details as these become available.

• View the ITP Lab Schedule and register to attend through Eventbrite.
• GCDI Workshop Schedule | Digital Fellows Office Hours
• TLC Workshop Schedule | TLC Staff Office Hours
• GC Library Workshop Schedule

The GC Events and Workshops calendar and GCDI’s Events Calendar on the Commons list tech workshops being offered by programs throughout the GC. These calendars are updated regularly during the semester.