Community Information Systems

Fall, 2002 Syllabus

The Evergreen State College - Evening and Weekend Studies

CIS Fall 2002 Schedule | CIS 2002-2003 Resources

http://www.scn.org/edu/tesc-ds/2002-2003/fall

http://www.scn.org/edu/tesc-ds/2002-2003/winter

http://www.scn.org/edu/tesc-ds/2002-2003/spring

Corrected Saturday meeting time - the 26th rather than the 25th.

Program Information

A three-quarter (fall 2002, winter 2003, spring 2003) program; 8 credits per quarter (12 may also be possible)
Faculty:
    Randy Groves (randy@scn.org; 425.868.6014)
    Doug Schuler (dschuler@evergreen.edu; 206.634.0752)
Divisional Emphasis: Scientific Inquiry and Social Science
Level: Upper Division
Class Size Limit: 50
Program Meeting Times: Wednesday evenings, 6 -10 + four 8 hour Saturday daytime sessions.
Office Hours: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM on every Wednesday when we have class.
Program e-mail list cis@scn.org

Program Description

Community Information Systems is a three-quarter half-time program that develops web-based software for a community. Some of these communities will be U.S.-based and some will be in other places in the world ( in 2000-2001 we worked with communities in the U.S., Russia, England, Mexico, Nigeria, and Australia. See the web site at http://grace.evergreen.edu/cis/). The basic themes for the program are participatory design, software development, community informatics, social networks, localism and globalism. This program resembles Student Originated Software, a full-time program that is offered every other year, especially as they both involve developing computer applications for a "real" client. We will be constraining the guidelines in this program in several ways. One constraint is that the faculty will be selecting in advance the set of "communities" from which the student groups will select. Also, all the students will be working with the same suite of public domain tools (which will include PHP, Apache, HTML, Linux and MySQL). The use of technology is not open-ended -- we will be working with those tools only.

Learning Objectives

• To understand the definition, motivation, theory, and uses of "Community Information Systems."
• To be able to work effectively with people in communities and other cultures on projects.
• To become adept in the systematic development of software.
• To be able to work effectively in groups.
• To learn organizational, research, cognitive skills that are necessary in pursuits like this.
• To become proficient with PHP and other PD web programming tools and approaches.
• To understand and be sensitive to the social issues involved with software technology (and the Internet specifically) and its role in a historical context.
• To inform and strengthen the Center for Community Partnerships.

Meeting Times

Basic Quarter Plan

Fall

• Technology: Systematic development of software, introduction to PHP, web programming, and databases
• Other content: Community Information Systems: motivation, examples, directions
• Partnership Project: Delivery of preliminary plan

Winter

• Technology: Systematic development of software, PHP, web programming, and databases
• Other content: Community and advocacy networks, globalism
• Partnership Project: Database designed and implemented; utility functions in PHP; user interface design completed.

Spring

• Technology: Application development, documentation
• Other content: movements, evaluation
• Partnership Project: Completed web application; public software fair

Readings

The schedule for completing the readings can be found on the schedule.

• New Community Networks: Wired for Change ( chapter 1, e.g.).
• Shaping the Network Society (selected chapters), proceedings of Shaping of the Network Society symposium [DIAC-02], Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Palo Alto
• PHP4: A Beginner's Guide by McCarty. Osborne/McGraw-Hill
• PHP and MySQL Web Development by Welling & Thomson; [optional for Fall - required for Winter/Spring]
• Other artlcles - we may assign additional articles from other sources and from the Web over the year.
• We will also maintain a resource page (http://www.scn.org/tesc-ds/2002-2003/resources.html) that contains other useful information.

Partnership Project

The partnership project is an important part of this program. In this project student teams will be working with communities all over the world. The list of proposed projects for this year can be found at: http://grace.evergreen.edu/~dschuler/list.php. Please also see the partnership project page (http://www.scn.org/edu/tesc-ds/2002-2003/fall/partnership_project.html) for more information. Also please see the partnership proposal form (http://www.scn.org/edu/tesc-ds/2002-2003/misc/partners-survey.html) to see the information we solicited from potential partners. The three quarter project will culminate with a "Community Information Systems Partnership Fair" in June, 2003.

Seminars

Seminars are an important part of the Evergreen educational philosophy. Everybody neeeds to be an active participant in seminars and people need also to take care to let everybody speak. It is critical for everybody to read all the readings that are expected by the time of the seminar. Beyond this, it is important to actively read the readings. This means having a dialogue with the material as you go along. Don't accept what you're reading blindly! Ask questions of the material. Mark it up. There will be a journal question (see the online schedule) that you will need to discuss in writing for each seminar. This short essay (1 - 2pages) will be turned in at the end of each of the four seminar sessions. It must be typed.

Program Covenants

Covenants are essentially social contracts. Each student must sign the student covenant and abide by it to receive credit for the program. The convenant can be found at http://www.scn.org/edu/tesc-ds/2002-2003/covenant.html