Critique Session

by: Kim Knight

KA  -

• broad thinking about hard problems - have we thought deeply and broadly enough?
• the problem space
• herding cats
  • trying to fold problems into the proposal was a real challenge
• the project's social computing definition
  • "the deployment of network communication systems for the purpose of allowing communities of people to interact within particular domains fo knowledge for one or more goals"
    • Technologies and Methods
    • Information Credibility and Trust
    • Collective Ation
      • how do these three pillars fit together in terms of social computing?
• IGERT
  • focus on grad students within scope of research
  • interdisciplinary
  • equal focus education / research
    • how do you organize research projects into consumable student projects that can be produced in a broad variety of disciplines?
  • Education 10 point (not really) plan
    • attention to student academic path
      • build social computing as topic and then support students
      • how can we identify breadth of courses?
      • how do ideas form research projects that allow students to graduate in something like normative time?
    • consideration of post-graduation opportunities
      • distance between departments / disciplines represented here today is pretty significant
      • engineers tend to go into industry moreso than academia
        • industry anxious to bring in additional disciplines
        • understanding this is important to building the program
        • train students to understand the breadth that they have
    • diversity in thought and perspective
      • underrepresented minorities changes from discipline to discipline
        • cross-pollination
• High Level Themes from Today
  • See Slide

• LL -  pedagogical part and claims about evolution/change technology
  • pedagogical
    • going to Salzburg for ICT & Soc Network of organizations from all over the world that want to put together a summer school
      • master-class type sessions for bringing together people from different locations for different specialties
    • pedagogical models for this type of cross-pollination
  • claims of change
    • we seem to keep believing that the hurtling speed of change will continue and that there will be large, discontinuous changes
      • not so sure - in a moment of incrementalism, refinement
        • people wanting more - privacy, functionality, etc.
        • it's becoming banal
• NVH - can require a certain amount of expertise pre-admission
  • difficulty with variety of course offerings (vs. a few required courses) - does not build a cohort
  • GroupTalk - formed by students; not required; discuss work in progress; not very time intensive
    • student-driven - they return term after term
    • building a cohort 
  • We'll always be dealing with change on some level and we will never be able to predict it
    • allowing flexibility for student-driven, unpredictable change is really important
      • on her campus, students are driving focus on ludic technology
• LS - good idea to have a philosopher as part of program or to look at plan
  • he can recommend people, not suggesting himself
  • IGERT pre-proposal are a pretty philosophical document
    • the issues are often philosophical
      • Miriam and Andrew - applied epistemologists
      • who studies the nature of communities?  the deep nature?  Philosophers
        • we don't necessarily need sociological data about communities but we need to understand their basic nature
        • most disciplines in existence today came out of philosophy
        • if you are attempting to define a new field, it would help to have the attention of someone who thinks in those basic ways
        • another reason to have a philsopher is the amount of change
          • when things are changing deeply, you need someone who can think universally
      • today has been interesting although muddled at times
        • lots of interesting aphorisms, but they are aphorisms
          • characteristic of thinking about social computing / web 2.0, because we're at the very beginning of thinking about it
• JDM - research methods in the proposal; giving students skills
  • the methods and skills aren't outlined
    • focus more on basic human interaction, then you'll be teaching skills that are transferable to many domains
  • another assumption built into the proposal - only web, only large-scale groups
• AYL  - thread of which faculty need to be added could be extended - organizational theorist, philosopher, cognitive psychologist...
  • social computing is an emergent field w/o natural boundaries atm
  • no facet of the university that doesn't have some relation to the issues
• PK - desperate need for ethnographers; industry labs do deep in the field analysis of how things work / happen
• AYL - atm what you see is what you get :)
  • Transliteracies mandate to involve other campuses next year
  • will need to brainstorm natural growth for a larger, geographically distributed group
• NVH - core group of faculty created proposal that became larger
  • program became function of who created the proposal
  • who is very interested in putting in energy
    • faculty recruitment problematic because of unfamiliarity with how terms are defined and time commitments
  • domain is co-extensive within the interests of the core group
• PC - analytic or continental philosophers?
• MM - difficult to find the pre-eminent person who has a pre-existing connection to the topic or who can be convinced of their connection
• NVH - may be able to connect through students
• IBM, Microsoft hire PhD student interns
  • would be very interested in a combination of programming / ethnography skills
• IBM, Intel, Microsoft - sponsor classes
• JDM - boot camp = easy introduction to get tangible cross-pollination
  • actual skills to people