Assignments

 

Wiki

Grade Weight: 36% (including 4% participation grade)
Due: To be finalized by December 4

Each student registered in IDST 1106 will generate two wiki articles of approximately 1000 words on a variety of topics germane to the study of print, media, and digital culture. Students enrolled in subsequent offerings of this course or in other courses on book history, print culture, multimedia or digital culture will benefit from the articles posted by this class, and they will build on the knowledge base with articles of their own. Specifically, this means you will be preparing your articles not merely for the professor to see, nor even only your own classmates; the wiki should serve a constituency beyond Acadia University, it should serve all who study the topics we will touch on in the first term of this course.

Wiki articles are essentially collaborative. While each student will generate and post her/his own articles to the site by assigned dates, all students in IDST 1106 are expected to read all articles, making suggestions for changes where appropriate. Your participation grade in the class will be determined in large part by your collaboration on wiki entries. If you are the kind of student who is quiet in class and who suffers from low participation grades, here is a unique opportunity to boost participation grades.

You cannot write Wiki articles without conducting scholarly research of some sort. While you are welcome to begin your research by searching the web, do not end there. You will have to use the library's resources to conduct your research, at times making use of interlibrary loans. So get started early! Feel free to use multimedia in your articles (pictures, sounds, film clips), but make sure you credit all your sources in a Works Cited list following strict MLA format. You might also want to include a list of suggested readings.

Every student must give a brief presentation on her/his wiki articles on assigned dates. (Please do not confuse these presentations with the larger presentation about your hypermedia project which you'll give at the end of term.) Under no circumstances will your wiki presentations be allowed to go over 5 minutes, and I will be quite merciless about keeping you to the allotted time. These presentations should summarize your findings and might even show how your entry is useful to the text we are reading at the time. Feel free to talk about the process of creating your wiki article as part of your presentation. Anything that might help future contributors to avoid difficulties would be particularly useful.

For more about Wikis, what they are, and how they work, see the Wikipedia article on Wikis. You might also want to visit the main page of Wiki Ganesha and read a few basic articles to get a sense of the style of a wiki entry. Wiki Ganesha is the result of student work in one of last year’s HHC courses.

You are required to provide a list of references (a.k.a. a bibliography) you consulted as you prepared to write and wrote your wiki articles. This list will conform to MLA rules.

Click here for an MLA Style and Citation guide.

A (hopefully unnecessary) word about Plagiarism:

Don't do it. The open and honest exchange of ideas is the coin of the academic realm. Anytime you offer someone else's ideas as your own you are as guilty of a serious offence as if you'd counterfeited dollar bills. Most academics, and I would certainly count myself among them, would consider plagiarism to be a much worse offence than the counterfeiting of mere money. So be warned: the wages of plagiarism can be academic death. The penalties far outweigh any potential benefit that might accrue from the act of plagiarizing, so just don't do it. Click here to read Acadia's Academic Calendar's section on plagiarism.

 

Hypermedia Project

Grade Weight: 40%
Due: To be finished by December 4

Since it is our position that "thinking through" (Rockwell & Mactavish) hypermedia produces effects different from those produces by thinking through linear prose or other by-now familiar and conventional aids to thought, we want you to take this opportunity to think in new ways.

The hypermedia project should be seen, first of all, as an opportunity to play with new media.

This project is worth 40% of your first term grade, and you will receive instruction in hypermedia composition throughout the term, so we expect you to start your project early and work on it all term.

You should identify your own topic, but must clear it with Michael and Richard. You may be able to use a topic from another course, provided you get permission from the professor of your other course and from Richard. If you need help generating a topic, feel free to consult Erin, Michael, or Richard.

The W3Consortium definition of hypermedia holds that hypermedia is not constrained to text. It also includes graphics, video, and / or sound, so we will expect your electronic submission to be more than simply a digitized essay.

As we will investigate during the section on hypermedia, some people speculate that hypertext enables new modes of thought, not merely new modes of expressing thoughts. Play with this idea by starting to compose your project early enough that the composition process has an opportunity to influence your thinking on whatever topic you choose.

You are welcome to collaborate on your hypermedia project with a partner, or as part of a group. In early print shops it took more than one person to create a book; in our early hypermedia environment it is arguably more reasonable to work together than separately.

 

Meta Wiki

Grade Weight: 20%
Due: To be finished by November 24

In addition to contributing content to the class wiki, we would like you to consider the very concept of "wiki" and its place in digital culture by looking closely at Wikipedia, by far the most well-known wiki and one of the most visited websites on the Internet. Specifically, we ask you to choose one aspect of Wikipedia or one issue associated with Wikipedia, research that aspect or issue, and create a PowerPoint show to share your findings and opinions with the rest of the class in a brief presentation. You are encouraged to come up with a topic that interests you, but you are also welcome to choose from these examples:

Wikipedia and vandalism: What is it? Why does it happen? How much does it happen? Are certain topics more targeted than others? How does it affect Wikipedia's credibility as a source of information? Is one person's vandalism another person's truth? How does Wikipedia handle vandalism? Can policing and correcting vandalism constitute censorship?
Wikipedia vs Encyclopædia Britannica: What is the substance of the debate? What are the issues under discussion? What are the strengths and flaws in each party's argument? Is Wikipedia a threat to Britannica - to its status, to its sales, to its sustainability?
Wikipedia and authority: Is Wikipedia authoritative? Can authority and anonymity coexist? Does authority still matter? How is authority established among Wikipedians? How does it differ from the way authority has traditionally been established in print culture? Is it better or worse, and why?
Wikipedia and governance: Who owns Wikipedia? Who runs it? Who calls the shots? Who has power? Where does the money come from? Are there "strings attached"?
⇒the future of Wikipedia: Is Wikipedia sustainable in its current form? What are the threats to its continued existence? What are the implications of its dominance? What are its possibilities for good?

(Consider the preceding questions mere springboards into your topic. They do not have to be answered, and answering them should by no means be the extent of your investigations.)

If you wish, you may work in pairs.

Your presentation should be no more than 10 minutes. The last slide in your PowerPoint show must be a bibliography, in proper MLA style, of the websites and articles you consulted while researching your topic.

 

Class Contribution

Grade Weight: 4%

Ask not what the class can do for you, ask what you can do for the class. When you are absent, or when you are silent, the rest of the class suffers the want of your insight. I expect people to come to class not because if they are absent they might miss something, but because if they are absent or if they decline to speak up the rest of the class misses an opportunity to hear a fresh perspective or a new idea.