Course Objectives

(684) At the end of this course, a student should be able to:

• identify the major social and technical elements of an online community and, drawing on relevant social science theories, understand the implications of specific design choices on the community;
• design a new on-line community or design useful new features or activities for existing communities.

(884) At the end of this course, a student should:

• have a grounding in research on online communities and some relevant underlying social science theories;
• understand who some of the key researchers are in this area, what research communities are interested in online communities, and why;
• be able to form a research question about online communities, select an appropriate method to answer that question, know who is looking into similar questions, and know where to publish the results of your research.