Course Review

In many ways, this course has been seriously helpful as a budding technoscientist.  There are so many things I can praise this course for and only a few things I can criticize.  Overall, I rated this course well in course evaluations, however there are a few problems with it.  Luckily, the problems are super easy to fix, and they aren't with the course content.  However, there are a few things that have been relatively ineffective.  We can make this course better through a few minor changes.

First, this course has been extremely effective as a catalyst of productive thought and intelligent inquiry into how technology affects society.  Our textbook, although criticized by many as simply Breyman selling his friend's book, has been extremely well written and generally really insightful.  I never once picked it up and thought, "Why are we reading this garbage."  Which is much more than can be said about other textbooks.  However, it's more than just tolerable.  It's actually good.  I could go to it for clarity on specific topics.  I could reference it in discussions.  Woodhouse may be off in his own world from time to time but the bulk of the text is fantastic and the ideas and tools for thought are elegant and well described.  That said, it is still a textbook.  Even with the multitude of real-world examples and applications Woodhouse brings up, it still cannot deliver all of the content we need to make this course as helpful and as driven and moving as necessary.  That's where the readings come in and we arrive at our first change.

The readings are overall very good, however they need some reworking on some topics.  Articles and shorter pieces of media are king in today's society of taking in information as quick and as efficiently as possible.  I think here we can draw from another portion of the course that I can absolutely praise.  We should use more video and non-text media in the weekly at-home assignments.  Any assigned reading above two pages simply did not get read.  Do not throw 20 page papers at undergraduate students and expect them to even remotely tolerate them.  As soon as undergrads see an academic paper and they see the page length, they tune out.  Frankly, it is hard to blame them.  There are so many other forms of media out there that are more pleasant to ingest.  Why would they read a 20 page paper when they can watch a 10 minute video with diagrams to show them what they need to know and explain a topic.  Offer supplemental readings and take some videos like the ones we watched in class, and assign those instead.  In no way and at no time is it reasonable to expect undergraduates to read a research paper when they could simply type the topic into google and learn just as much or more in a much more enjoyable manor.

Back to praise, the readings that were not lengthy were generally very good.  They are provocative and writing about them was not terribly hard after I became adjusted to the course and the type of writing expected.  On top of that, my TA was so fantastic in communicating expectations that after about one grading period I had adjusted my reading and writing style to that which is expected of me for the course.  For a course meant to teach good reading and writing skills alongside regular material, this is paramount.  I personally feel I have become a better reader from taking this course.  Granted that it is not due to the longer readings, which I will admit that I read very little of, for reasons described earlier.

I will move now to the most important part of my suggested reforms.  Eliminate required in-class note-taking from the course.  Required note-taking in class is pointless when the slides are distributed.  I would get more out of lecture if I could just listen to Breyman, as he is a great speaker in my opinion, instead of having to clack away at my keyboard while I miss important points and examples which develop understanding outside of the readings.  As for note-taking on readings, I believe it should also not be required, however on this I am willing to compromise.  Notes from readings deliver the same content as do our blogs.  However, they are very helpful to most who want to write better blogs, as they allow all the best points to be summarized, almost like an outline sometimes.  So with that said, the notes should not be graded, but could be required.  That is, people would turn them in, however the content of those notes should not be judged, because poor notes generally lead to a poor blog if there is a real issue and currently we are being hit twice for a problem that should only be punished once.  We are hit once for the notes and then once for the blog made from the notes.  Instead, just grade blogs and as a critique suggest better note-taking.  This only subtracts from one grade but allows students who benefit from better note-taking to benefit while not infringing upon those who do fine without taking notes, but instead referencing the article itself.  If any note-taking turn in is required, use a cloud-based platform like Evernote.  That way note turn-in is as easy as typing your TA's email and hitting send.  These specific critiques on the note-taking should be regarded as the most important issue I present.

The wikipedia project has been a positive learning experience overall, but only with immense effort from our TA to explain how we should be doing things.  With higher clarity in the instructions, this exercise teaches research skills and good reading and writing techniques for research which is relevant to so many of us.  Specifically, I would suggest better pruned resources, supplied by more than just one person and with more time.  I would also suggest a more refined process to the workflow, articulating to students the phases required to process information into a summarized piece of media.  For example, phase one might be dividing work among the group and two could be digesting and notating the research materials, summarizing and connecting with outside sources (read: googling the topics).  This kind of a layout of the project would have made things less confusing and allowed more groups to deliver better results more of the time.

Overall, for a class attempting to teach new technoscientists to view technology differently from how literally every other course would have them look at it, this class accomplishes its goals with flying colors.  I feel that this class has communicated different views of technology in so many articulate and sensical ways that have never been presented to the students by other sources.  The actual content of the course needs very little work, but the student experience needs a good bit of help.  I have outlined for you exactly how to fix the problems faced by students in the course.  I really enjoyed the class and overall think it was a great experience and I hope this will help to shape an equally good, if not better, experience for people in the future.