UCCSS (University of California Computational Social Science) is the first online course taught collectively by Professors from all 10 UC campuses. A selection of its content is also available as a certified Specialization at the Massive Open Online Course platform Coursera, where ClassCentral selected it as a top-100 "best online courses of ALL TIMES", attracting over 35,000 students in its first year.

This online course is the result of a collective effort. It would not exist without the voluntary contributions of faculty members from all 10 campuses of the University of California. The result presents insights from some of the leading experts in Computational Social Science. UCCSS is taught by:

UC Berkeley: Joshua Blumenstock, Assistant Prof. iSchool; Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering; Ash Bhat & Rohan Phadte, Computer Science undergraduate students.
UC Davis: Martin Hilbert, Prof., Dpt. of Communication & Seth Frey, Assistant Prof., Dpt. of Communication & Cynthia Gates, Director of the IRB.
UC Irvine: Lisa Pearl, Associate Prof. Cognitive Sciences.
UC Los Angeles: PJ Lamberson, Assistant Prof. Communication Studies.
UC Merced: Paul Smaldino, Assistant Prof. Cognitive and Information Sciences.
UC Riverside: Christian Shelton, Prof. Computer Science & Dena Plemmons, Director Research Ethics Education.
UC San Diego: James Fowler, Prof. Global Public Health and Political Science.
UC San Francisco: Maria Glymour, Associate Prof. School of Medicine, Social Epidemiology & Biostatistics.
UC Santa Barbara: René Weber, Prof. Dpt. of Communication & Media Neuroscience Lab (with Frederic Hopp).
UC Santa Cruz: Marilyn Walker, Prof. Computer Science, Director, Computational Media.

Thanks to Guanqing Lin and Jiangru Wu, who voluntarily helped with video editing, as well as Saifuddin Ahmed, Jayden Potter and Shao-Hung Hsiao for assistance in the development of the labs.

Special thanks to Gavin Wright, from The Cavalry FX Inc.. His amazing animation skills have not only brought us "The Amazing Spider Man 2", "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay", "Deep Water Horizon", "Fantastic 4", and "Terminator Genisys", but also the UCCSS intro animation (including UC Davis bicycles!).

Many people, including Margaret Merrill, Salima Noorani, Todd Van Zandt, Mark Wilson, and David Levin, often went beyond their duties and undertook extra efforts to open the doors for innovations in the realm of technical delivery.

Last, but not least, the fuel and guiding maps that enabled to drive this effort from start to finish came from The Innovative Learning Technology Initiative (ILTI) from the University of California Office of the President (UCOP). Special thanks to Ellen Osmundson and her amazing team for often going the extra mile to make this unique project a reality.

What do students say about the course?

"My overall impression of this was: I can't wait to use this for other stuff!!"
"I absolutely think that these tools could be used in my future jobs, or even as a personal reflection. If you scrape and analyze the comments/reactions that your business gets on Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, etc., what does their language use say about how they interact with your brand — or what your brand brings out in them?"
"Wow, this is cool and fun stuff. Even though I may not pursue anything social-science related in the near future, it is still nice to learn and get to experience all of these tools that computational social science offers and benefits in all kinds of careers and fields of study."
"I particularly enjoyed the web-scraping for some reason. It feels very advanced although its very easy. ...It seems to be a very fast and efficient way of grabbing data."
"I enjoyed playing around with machine learning! ...It was also amazing to me how quickly it was able to grasp and learn our input in seconds. It makes me wonder how much more technology will advance in these next few years... It's scary but fascinating."
"The fact that these tools are so easily usable and attainable is incredible in my mind. Not only do we have access to them like we have access to things like Facebook and Twitter, but they're FREE."
"The most interesting aspect was the fact that these tools are all free and online. In the past, only researchers at well-funded universities had access to programs like the ones we used in all of our labs. But now, even someone without much technical knowledge on complex software can use these tools."
"I am so surprised that these tools are available to anyone through a simple download, and even more so that they are very user friendly and easy to learn how to navigate. I plan on starting a clothing line company in the future and I think it will be really helpful for me to be able to analyze so much online data."
"As an Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning major, I was fascinated to learn that there is a feasible way to simulate policy implementation and impact multiple times within a short span of time."
"UCCSS has allowed me to feel more confident in my abilities with a computer and to better understand companies like Facebook or Twitter. ...these tools really are powerful but also dangerous. ...It allows powerful individuals to manipulate ideas."
"Throughout the course, the content was challenging, but when it was finally applied to the labs at the end of each module, it was really rewarding to see everything play out. It was even more rewarding when it made sense too! ... I'm really glad I took this course! It was definitely a challenge, but I'm glad I got to experience and learn about so many topics I never knew even existed."
"It was fun seeing the results of the code that I made, and I never thought that I would be doing something like this in my life. The results also showed me what the society would look like.... Social network analysis and web scraping could be the tools that I use in my future job as all the internship that I'm looking now all related to social media or digital media."
"My career aspiration is to be a digital marketing expert. These computational tools have enormous implications for the field."
"I really really loved that this class let me learn hands-on and gave me experience with tools that
have real world application and combine STEM & social science. I think that a lot of these tools are
useful far beyond homework activities."
"Best course I have taken. I wish more online courses structured like this would be offered."