19 February 2008
Today's Topic: Bad Behavior Online
What happens when things go wrong online, as they're often wont to do?
We'll look at classic descriptions of online behavior gone bad, including A Rape in Cyberspace, and Lessons Learned from Lucasfims' Habitat.
12 February 2008
Today's Topic: Politics and Money
This week we'll delve into online rules, governance, and economics.
5 February 2008
Today's Topic: Online Competition and Collaboration
How do online environment encourage people to work together to collaborate in new ways? How do they create and encourage competition? Can the two coexist?
29 January 2008
Today's Topic: Designing for Community
We'll look at the points of view of a number of successful online community developers, including AJ Kim and Derek Powazek. We'll also read scholarly works assessing the characteristics of successful online communities, notably Peter Kollock and Jenny Preece.
22 January 2008
Today's Topic: Online Communities: Case Studies
We'll look at a number of online community settings, including World of Warcraft, Facebook/MySpace, Club Penguin, and older environments like Usenet and Netville.
17 January 2008
Today's Topic: Applying "Old School" Community Theory to Online Communities
The reason I have you read so many sociological theorists (Dunbar, Putnam, Oldenburg, etc) is that their ideas recur in many discussions of current-day online commnities. Today we'll talk about how those theories can be applied to today's online social networking tools and virtual communities.
15 January 2008
Online Community
We'll discuss how online communities are the same as, or different from, "real world" communities. Readings will include Howard Rheingold, Marc Smith, Barry Wellman, and others.
10 January 2008
Changing Community Patterns
Robert Putnam's Bowling Aloneexamines the social and political habits of Americans in the 20th century. Ray Oldenburg's The Great Good Place defined the role of "third places" (not-office, not-home) in American communities. How relevant are his observations as we move into the 21st century? How have online communities reflected, replaced, or changed community behavior?
8 January 2008
Today's Topic: Understanding Community
This week we'll take a look at some of the foundational concepts of community from sociology and anthropology.
20 December 2007
Today's Topic: Identity Management: Implementation Issues
Today we'll have Fred Stutzman, a doctoral student and instructor at UNC-Chapel Hill and a founder of OpenID provider ClaimID, guest lecturing remotely on the topic of identity.
18 December 2007
Today's Topic: Technical Approaches to Managing Identity
We'll discuss a variety of approaches to online identity management, from Microsoft's Passport to the open source OpenID--from both a technical and a social standpoint.
13 December 2007
Today's Topic: Presentation of Self Online: Case Studies
We'll talk about some specific public cases having to do with identity online, and then also talk about our own experiences with online identity and authenticity.
11 December 2007
Today's Topic: Online Identity
Is who we are online an accurate representation of our "real life" selves? Do we have one online identity or many? If many, is that a good thing or a bad thing? We'll discuss avatars, "real" identities, federated identity, and faceted identity.
(We may have a guest speaker today...)
6 December 2007
Today's Topic: Introduction to Identity Concepts
Identity is a complicated concept, one that has roots in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and even computer science. This week we'll talk about what identity means in various contexts, and about why it's important to understand identity when dealing with online systems and environments.
4 December 2007
Course Overview and Expectations
We'll review the course web site, including the syllabus and the course outline. We'll also do introductions, and talk about my expectations of students in this class.
27 November 2007
Welcome!
This will be where I post readings, assignments, and information about the class. I will use myCourses only for posting copyrighted files for readings, and for the gradebook.
Use the menu at the top to navigate to specific sections (like the syllabus and the course outline), and the calendar on the left to find materials related to a specific class meeting date.