Assignments

Each student will pick a major assignment early in the semester.

684 students have three options for the major assignment:

1. Pick one existing on-line community to observe and write a case study of that community, applying all the concepts from the course.
2. Pick a type of information that you've seen displayed in user profiles, or that you think could be displayed in user profiles, and write about its implications for the functioning of the community, applying all the concepts from the course.
3. Join the team of students who are implementing an open-source drupal module with all the user profile features that students who choose option 2 are writing about.

Students choosing option 1 or 2 will have three short papers due during the semester, and a cumulative term paper that incorporates revised versions of the three short papers. Students choosing option 3 will release code early and often, and will provide documentation as well as code as their final project.

For 884 students, your assignment will be to write a research proposal for conducting research on an on-line community. You will be expected to employ a research method that you have already learned about in some other class: software application design; qualitative or quantitative case study or comparison across communities; field or lab experiment.

All students are responsible for making blog entries about reading assignments, as described elsewhere in this document. Students are also responsible for commenting on/critiquing each other's short papers.