In-class participation (15pts)

Each class will involve a substantial amount of discussion. Your role is to come to class prepared to engage with this discussion, and to provide thoughtful commentary. The responses you make on the course discussion forum are a way of helping you to do this.

Online participation (15pts)

For each class in the schedule marked with an (R), this means that there is a reading, and that I expect you to post a response to the reading. This response should be posted by 11:59pm the evening before the day of the class on the course D2L discussion page under the appropriate topic (if I haven't created the topic yet, feel free to create it yourself). This is not just a summary, but a critical reflection on what you read. What is the main idea being proposed in this reading, and what are its central points? What terms, concepts, ideas, techniques or arguments are unclear? What does this make you think of in your own life? If you had one question to ask the authors, what would you ask? [Addressing three or four of these points will earn a full grade.]

Topic presentation (10pts)

Students will be assigned to lead a discussion about a course topic (i.e. a paper). Your role will be to summarize the reading for the class on that day in a 20 minute presentation.

Note: there is an advance due date for the presentation slide deck itself (so I can vet it and provide feedback). Once you have approval from Tony, you can post these slides to the appropriate discussion topic. See the course schedule for more details.

Topic summary & literature review (10pts)

You are also expected to provide a two page report (in SIGCHI template) that: (a) summarizes the paper at hand, and also (b) provides a brief overview of related literature. I expect you to cover at least three related pieces of work. These can be collected by studying the "References" section of the assigned paper, by using Google Scholar, or by asking me.

Assignments (10pts)

There are two assignments -- each of which is focused on helping you how to use and develop distributed, network systems. In both cases, we will make use of the node.js platform.

Project (40pts) (details)

Play is a central part of human experience -- not just in a "game" form, but in our everyday interactions. When you make a joke, or play a prank on your friends... these are different forms of play. We are interested in play as a concept in this class because many kinds of play are affected by technology -- if technology is not designed right, then play devolves into something less interesting, or it does not allow for the right kinds of play.

Your project can involve some kind of play, or multiple types of play. There are two fundamental types of projects for this course: study project and design project. A study project involves examining one context of play, and understanding it -- this means conducting user research to understand the nature of play in that context. This type of project would generally involve exploring a particular type of game and how it is played. A design project involves actually designing or building a simple game.

Deliverables for this project include: (a) a project mini-proposal; (b) a project proposal; (b) a literature review; (c) a final presentation/demo, and (d) a final paper. Raw materials (code, data, etc.), should be handed in with the project paper.