All lecture material and interactive assignments are online in this course. The course provides UC unit credit toward graduation, as well as GE at UCD, UCR, UCSC, UCSD. Please check with your department for credit approval. The mid-term and final exam can be taken in person at UC Davis, or through an approved proctoring center at a (national or international) location of your choice (for more on this option see instructions below).

 

The two main concepts of the course are social change and technological change by digital means. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is not only an essential building block of a society, but currently also the driving force behind social evolution. Our generation has the luck to live through –and the responsibility to shape– an era in which mediated information and communication have become the catalyst of human progress. We will deepen our understanding on how social and technological revolutions go hand in hand.

We will contemplate about what technology actually is and how it evolves. Armed with the powerful conceptual frameworks of innovation theory we ask how societies co-evolve with technology. We then look at the current social transformations and ask about what happens when information and communication is digitalized? Digitalization comes with certain characteristics that can trigger political revolutions; create unprecedented richness as well as new dimensions of poverty; redefine our understanding of friendships, culture and entertainment; transform education, health care and business; and lead to both visions of future scenarios of global democracy and informational dictatorship. While doing this, a global perspective will be essential, as is the fact that not everybody has equal access to the digital age.

Digital technology is the most powerful and also the most tangible tool we currently have available to exploit the ensuing opportunities for social change. This course tackles the big picture of the digital age and we are not afraid of asking the big questions that arise from the incredibly complex dynamic of ongoing digitalization (one that all of us already live in day by day…).

 

Course Objectives

By the end of the course you will:

• Make better sense of personal experiences and global trends of the digital age by learning adequate formal theoretical frameworks;
• Apply the learned concepts to real-world examples of your own choice, making them meaningful to you;
• Have a more structured understanding about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and imminent threats of the digital age;
• Develop a basic appreciation of the complexities of human development during times of fast-paced technological change;
• Gain insights into how companies and governments manage the disruptive social change of digitalization.

 

Office Hours and class interaction:

• For content questions: use Piazza (see navigation bar left "Piazza"). It is important that you sign up for Piazza and regularly check it. Otherwise you will miss much of the ongoing conversation in the class.
  
• For personal questions: write me an Email (see "Inbox" in the navigation bar).
• We can always set up a video-conference / or a personal meeting at my office in Davis.
• I make regular "Announcements" (see navigation bar), including video messages.

 

Evaluation

Final grades are based on a 100-point system as follows:

Grade Component	Points	Weight	Be aware that Canvas shows you two grades throughout the course: one based on graded assignments, and one for your total performance. This allows you to calculate "what-if" scenarios. Final grades are calculated on basis of 100 total points.
Interactive Assignments	30	30%
Midterm Exam	30	30%
Final Exam	40	40%
TOTAL	100	100%

 

Midterm (30 %) and Final Examination (40 %)

Study Orientation: Exams consist of some 50 multiple choice questions. There are three kinds of questions on the exams:  (1) application of learned concepts; (2) how well you paid attention / took notes during lectures; (3) if worked through readings / assignments: Sample Mid-term Exam Questions. Here some recommendations on how to efficiently and effectively study for exams, starting on day 1: Exam study orientation

Exam Format. There will be exams on UC Davis campus, or, alternatively, you can set up proctoring arrangements at an off-campus proctoring facility (library, other university, etc).

Dates for on-campus exams (face-to-face): Midterm: Monday October 24, 8.15pm - 10.15pm; SciLec 123. Final: Saturday December 3, 9am - 11am, SciLec 123. If you have a scheduling conflict with these times, please opt for the "Proctored exams" option below. For on-campus exams bring a Scantron Form 2000, pencils and eraser. During the exam you cannot leave the room before handing in both your exam and the exam booklet.

Proctored exams (online exam): Instead of showing up to the face-to-face exam, you can take the exam at a proctoring facility. It will be your responsibility to look for a proctoring service and to secure a spot there, as well as to cover all involved costs. Sometimes proctoring facilities are already booked out, so you want to get going quickly.  You do so in five simple steps:

1. Look for a potential proctoring facility and make sure that it is available 2 days before or after the face-to-face exam dates (as announced) for a computer-based online exam (not paper-based!). To find an approved proctoring center, you can look at NCTA's list, Community College Campuses, California State Universities, Sylvan Learning Centers, or UCD Extension or the UCD Testing Center. If there is none of those centers near you, UCOP can approve hand-picked proctoring facilities proposed by you, so contact established former teachers or professors, universities and public libraries in any country (U.S. or foreign) or other testing facilities near you.
2. Once you have a location and are sure that it'll be operational, please send this information to <crossenroll@universityofcalifornia.edu> from the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) at least ONE WEEK BEFORE the exam date. UCOP will review the proposed facility and (hopefully) approve it. If not, go back to step (1). The email has to include: (a) The Students phone number; (b) Proposed date and time of the appointment; (c) The name and location of the proctor; (d) Contact information for the proctor.
3. Once the facility is approved, it is your responsibility to arrange for a specific 2 hour period with the proctoring facility within two days before or after the face-to-face exam date. I will set up a timed online multiple choice exam here in Canvas for everyone who's on the approved list. 
4. Important: on the day before your exam, contact your proctor to assure they received all instructions from UCOP. This will reduce unnecessary stress for you during the exam. In the past we found instructions deviated by spam filters, etc.
5. Take your exam under supervision of a proctor. You can change your answers before submission, but only submit it once and cannot change it after pressing the submit button. You'll do perfectly and walk away with an A+ (..hopefully!)

Academic Integrity. Any student found using or even holding an electronic device during an exam (incl. audio player, etc.) will be assumed to be cheating and will be referred to Student Judicial Affairs. Cheating, plagiarism, and other misconduct are serious violations of your contract as a student and you are expected to know and follow the existing University's policies. Please make sure you are familiar with them: http://sja.ucdavis.edu/scs.html . Ignorance is not an acceptable excuse.

 

Interactive Assignment Participation (30 %)

Interactive assignments include Reading Questions (multiple choice) aimed at guiding you through the reading and pointing you to important concepts; as well as Online Discussion questions that allow you to apply learned concepts to concrete real-world examples of your choice. Discussion questions also ask you explicitly to comment on the contribution of at least one fellow students, and you are always encouraged to comment on more.

Contributions are usually due Sundays at 8:59pm Pacific Time and have to be registered before the indicated deadline. Later contributions to the Online Discussions are still welcome until the day before the final exam (if no other deadline is announced), but will maximally receive half points. IMPORTANT: MAKE SURE to set your time zone in Canvas to "Pacific Time": see guide here. Otherwise your contributions will be registered at the wrong time (as the system thinks you are at the different time zone). This is an important lesson when working in a digital setting that doesn't know geographical borders: time zones can confuse you so be aware to double check! You can check for discrepancies by hovering over the deadline:

The Reading Questions aim at guiding you through the reading by pointing to some of the important aspects. The exams will test if you fully understood these concepts. My suggestion is to work on the reading questions by yourself. You only have one attempt to answer them, but as much time as you want, before the indicated deadline. Reconfirming your findings in Study Groups can be helpful to clarify questions, but experience shows that simply copying answers from others is counterproductive, as this does not help you to understand the concepts and will cost you more (easy) points in the exams than it brings you through the homework assignments.

For open ended written answers to Online Discussion questions, the following table gives you an overview of the applied grading scheme:

Rating	Grading Rubrics
Full Points	The author responds to all aspects of the assigned question in a consistently forceful manner that is not only thoughtful, but also thought-provoking. The post is focused and coherently integrates innovative examples with formal concepts. The author does not leave any doubt on how the judiciously-chosen examples relate to the concepts treated by the question. The post demonstrates that the author understands the concepts and is able to negotiate their complexities in a provocative, controlled and insightful manner. The author considers multiple perspectives when appropriate. The entry reflects in-depth engagement with the topic. The comment is written eloquently, does not contain grammatical errors or typos, and is written in an engaging way that opens up new substantial discussions and collective conversation.
Points discounted	The author does not display maturity in sentence variety, grammar, spelling and surface errors are common, which distracts the reader from following the argument. The post does not respond fully to all aspects of the question. The author mentions examples, but does not explain how they relate to the concepts treated by the question. Connections between ideas are suggested rather than explained in an illustrative manner. The post simply rehashes previous comments or comments made elsewhere, and displays no evidence of active and creative engagement with the topic.

 As in any good online social network: inappropriate online behavior will be penalized (within the class and/or through official university channels). This protects the rights of everybody involved. So please watch your words and be a respectful cyber-discussant. Please let me know if you feel there is inappropriate behavior of anybody in our online discussions.

Please make sure that you understand and avoid PLAGIARISM

Avoid Plagiarism (1:50min)

Plagiarism, Quoting & Paraphrasing (4:25min)

 

FAQs (please read!)

1. Will the test cover mostly class material or reading material? Answer: Tests draw from both sources of information. Some questions will be based on both lectures, and reading material.
2. If I just read the material, participate in the online forums and to the assignments, do I need to watch the lectures? Answer: We do not have a textbook for this class. This is simply because I don't know of any adequate textbook out there and I haven't written one myself because the content is changing quickly, so I rather record what I know and tell it to you directly. Therefore, the content of the video lectures is the core of this class. Exams will include “video attendance questions” which ask for specific content from video lectures. These are questions that you would be unlikely to answer correctly if you haven't watched the video lectures, but often easy points if you did.
3. How should I prepare for the examination? Answer: The best way is to do watch lectures in the week they are assigned, do all readings and assignments when they are assigned. Do not procrastinate! ...past experience has shown that students who "binge watch" lectures before exams get utterly confused and do not do well (the exams test for a deeper understanding, not for memorization). For more, check out this video here: "Study orientation, learning recommendations, and course philosophy". Also check out the Exam Study Orientation
4. Will there be questions that require any extra skills like a math background or statistics? Answer: No, no prerequisites required. If you pay attention and do the readings, there is absolutely no reason why not to achieve an A+. This class does not test “how smart you are” (we take your smartness for granted), but if you spent time thinking about and dealing with the issues we discuss.
5. Are we required to watch lectures through the Proposit interface or can we simply watch them directly from YouTube instead? Only Proposit provides you with all content. Technically, I use Proposit as an editing tool, and pull content from my lectures (which I had previously uploaded on YouTube), but also from other online sources. For example, this segment from week 2 contains only 3:38 min of me lecturing on YouTube, but on Proposit the segment is 7:42 min: 2.9: Man vs. Machine (3 parts: 7:42). This is because I integrated a TEDxTalk video. I do this so you get exposed directly to the source of some of these insights (why should I repeat what other have said much better before me...?). That's a benefit of digitalization (stemming from the particularities of digitalization, as we'll learn in week 5-6...). So stick to Proposit!
6. I have anxiety during exams, especially during multiple choice tests. What can I do? This is a serious disadvantage, but one you have to learn to confront. I encourage you to visit the Student Academic Success Center or the equivalent at other UC campuses.  They offer workshops and individual training on taking exams.  Additionally, they can provide instruction on note taking in lecture classes.  You can find out more about their services on their website: http://success.ucdavis.edu/ .
7. Will the final exam be accumulative (cover material from the first part of the course)? Answer: The final exam will only treat concepts and issues that came up during the second part of the course. Some concepts will follow us around during the entire course, in the first and second parts. Naturally, the final exam will cover those. But the final exam will not ask about issues that did not come up (again) after the mid-term.
8. Can we collaborate with others in homework reading quizzes? Answer: I'm a big fan of Study Groups and studying digital communication I'm of course also aware that there are a myriad of forms to collaborate online in real-time... Therefore, I designed the grade distribution in a way that that students who rely too much on the work of others in these "collaborations" will receive a double penalty during the exams due to a lack of understanding of context. In other words: while you might get some quick points now, you won't win overall in the course by copying the work of others. The reading questions guide you through and point you to some of the important aspects of the readings. They show you what to pay attention to. The reading-related questions on the exams won't repeat them literally, but will test if you read and if you understood these aspects. In this sense, collaboration is always good to check your understanding and to clarify doubts. However, they are counterproductive when they are abused.

 

About the instructor:

Before joining UC Davis, Prof. Hilbert created and coordinated the Information Society Program of the United Nations Secretariat for Latin America and the Caribbean (http://www.cepal.org/SocInfo). In his 15 years as United Nations Economic Affairs Officer he has provided hands-on technical assistance in the field of digital development to Presidents, government experts, legislators, diplomats, NGOs, and companies in over 20 countries. Policy makers from the highest political levels have officially recognized the impact of these projects in public declarations. In combination with this practical experience he has written five books about digital technology for international development and has published in academic journals in the fields of communication, economic development, information science, psychology, political science, complexity, women’s studies, and forecasting. His findings have been featured in popular outlets like Scientific American, PBS, Discovery, NatGeo, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Economist, NPR, BBC, Die Welt, Correio Braziliense, La Repubblica, El Pais, among others. International perspectives are no mere theoretical work obligation to Prof. Hilbert, as he speaks five languages and has traveled to over 70 countries. More: http://www.martinhilbert.net