INSTRUCTIONAL DEVELOPMENT FUND PROPOSAL: Practical Projects on Social Issues in Computing

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Support is sought for practical projects in Soc1485, Computers and Society. This course is an Arts and Sciences Core Curriculum Category VI class required for computer science juniors and open to upperclass students in other colleges who have programming experience. At the urging of students Professor Perrolle began a project a year ago to put the course materials on the Worldwide Web and include practical computer-mediated communications projects. The goal of the course home page (http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/perrolle/) was to involve students in the production of educational materials and to engage them in thinking about design issues in online instruction. It was intended to be a "do- it-yourself" project rather than a professionally produced information presentation device. At the end of the year we had two virtual pizza parlors to use for group decision-making exercises, a virtual office, an online textbook, syllabus, and readings. We had tried web discussions with students studying internet law at Suffolk university and working out how to set our own "community standards of decency" for class web pages. But the course was still pretty much made by the instructor for the students. Again at student urging, at the end of October, 1997 Prof. Perrolle converted her desktop computer into a linux webserver and student projects machine and bought a laptop for classroom use.

We received support from the Division of Academic Computing (which provided a new hard drive for the server, a second ethernet port for the laptop, and domain name service for both machines) and from the College of Computer Science (which supports TCP/IP connections to the CCS network). During November, 1997, students installed the Linux operating system and a web server and began work on student-defined projects in the area of security issues in electronic commerce and computer-mediated communication. We have working (or almost working - some students took incompletes or decided to go on with their projects after completing the course) a secure webserver, network printer access, an experimental java server, PGP encryption, a secure shell remote login system, and a secure system for user defined server side cgi. A project in multilingual email using unicode has been researched, a web based virtual community is being built by two students already active in InfoCity (the College of Computer Science's student run, text-based virtual community), and several student webpage "termpapers" are being added to an archive of student work on social issues in computing. Documentation for the completed projects can be read at http://upaya.soc.neu.edu/

This quarter we have survived the transition to a new group of system administrators and projects. Members of the Honors Adjunct to Soc1485 have chosen to work on social and ethical issues in video streaming. [correction: This project was later changed.] Other students in the class are discussing possible topics.

At this point our server is in desparate need of an adequate backup system, a working uninterrupted power supply, and additional RAM to replace thechips borrowed from Prof. Perrolle (who would like to get them back for her home computer system). We would like to get some equipment to support the use of the laptop in the classroom and by small groups of students for computer-mediated communications exercises. Also, Prof. Perrolle needs a course release to free up more time to work with the student projects.

The rationale for this project comes from participatory action research (Gaventa, 1990; Perrolle, 1993; Whyte, 1989). Rather than study students as the subjects of systematic research in online instruction, the instructor and the students are collaborators in trial and error experimentation with what can be done with classroom computing. It is student centered, practice oriented, and community involved, which seems consistent with the goals of ACE. Policy for the machine is based on emerging norms in an informal sociotechnical setting emerging norms in an informal sociotechnical setting. This means, to borrow the title from Myles Horton and Paulo Freire's participatory action study of Latin America, "we make the road by walking". This does make formal assessment difficult. At present we discuss issues in class and among the smaller group of people actually doing the work and assess things according to how the students think things are working out. If the student ideas seems to be working out really well, we make suggestions to ACAC and DAC to see if they might be worth exploring at NU on a bigger scale.

REFERENCES

Gaventa, John 1990 "Participatory Research in North America," pages 19- in Orlando Fals Borda and Anisur Rahman, Breaking the Knowledge Monopoly. New York: New Horizons Press.

Perrolle, Judith A. 1993 " Comments from the Special Issue Editor: The Emerging Dialogue on Environmental Justice" Social Problems 40, 1 February): 1-4.

Whyte, William F. 1989 " Advancing Scientific Knowledge Through Participatory Action Research," Sociological Forum 4,3 (September): 367-385.