Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a mark of '0' (zero) will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted.

Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11.55pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical issue.

This late penalty will apply to non-time sensitive assessment (incl. essays, reports, posters, portfolios, journals, recordings etc). Late submission of time sensitive tasks (such as tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, scheduled practical assessments/labs etc) will only be addressed by the unit convenor in a Special Consideration application. Special Consideration outcome may result in a new question or topic.

Looking for Unit Description and Calendar ? You can find these under  "Unit Schedule" below.

Unit Start Date: Week 2

Please note: We begin classes at the start of Week 2. That’s the week of March 3, 2025.

Class Format: Lectorial

This year, we will use what the university calls a ‘lectorial’ format.  This means that rather than registering for separate lecture and tutorial sections, students will register for a lecture section ONLY,  attending ONE class per week.  This class will run as a TWO-HOUR block (e.g. from 9am-11am).  During that time, we will mix lecture material, assessment-related workshops, and class conversation.   All lectorial sessions will be run by the unit convenor, Terri Senft.

Attendance & Participation (Expected, Ungraded)

While class attendance and participation WILL  be expected, they will NOT be graded.

Students who need to miss class for any reason will be expected to review the lectorial recording and complete their weekly Assessment Progress Form (more on these, below), which will show they are up to speed with their classmates.

Assessment Progress Form (Expected, Ungraded)

During the last few minutes of each class, students will be asked to complete and submit an Assessment Progress Form for the week (the form is online.)  We will discuss these forms at length during our first class. A short explanation is that they are an accountability measure designed to encourage you to you tackle assessments by breaking them into small chunks, decisions, and questions to answer.

Students who submit the form will be noted as participating in class for the week, whether they were physically there or were absent that day. Students who do attend class that week but do not submit the form will be noted as non-participating.  

Please note: The forms themselves will NOT be graded, but might be referenced in conversations about the assessment and/or questions about final marks. 

Need to Miss Class? Here is what to Do.

Students who need to miss class for any reason will be expected to review the lectorial recording and complete their weekly Assessment Progress Form, which will show they are up to speed with their classmates.

How can you access the recording? At present, we have one online offering of this unit over Zoom. Our plan is to record the proceedings of that class (muting any direct student conversations to protect participants). We will create a link to the recording each week, and make that available to all students, so that anyone who missed class for illness or any other reason can view what happened on their own.  Information on how to access the “catch up recording” and the Assessment Progress form will be on iLearn and will be emailed to all students each week.

How About Office Hours?

Office hours will be delivered by Zoom in a group setting. Please see iLearn for more information.

Policy Regarding Private Meets with Terri

 This class is exceptionally large for a Level 3 unit, and the only personal meetings we can have with students are those relating to personal issues: illness, disability accommodations, domestic hardship issues, foreign student difficulty accessing materials, etc.

Students desiring to "have a quick chat" about their assessment ideas will be directed to bring their questions/rough drafts to Terri's group office hour session.  Please note that office hours for this unit are held once weekly in group format over Zoom, where we will work on issues as a cohort. This is because there really are no assessment-related questions that so unique and personal that the everyone wouldn't benefit from working through them as a group. 

UNIT CALENDAR & SCHEDULE

You can see a copy of our schedule with class meets, lecture topics, and assessment dates here:

https://z9bcp7k.sharing.bublup.com/ui/landing_page?item_id=001-i-6caa8495-71cd-4c00-8709-4b28e3b28856

UNIT DESCRIPTION

Social Media: People, Platforms, Processes

This is a class devoted to social media culture: the personal, social, political and economic ramifications of living in a time dominated by social media.  Although we love students from areas like marketing, public relations, advertising, law, and/or computing, in this unit, we will focus on a distinctly humanist question, namely:  What are the best ways to learn, advocate, create, love and protect ourselves, when “putting yourself out there” online offers as much threat as promise?

To approach this question, we’ve subtitled this unit, "People, Platforms, Processes." On social media, these simple words can unravel quickly. Take, for instance, “people.” Have you ever thought you were dealing with a human online, only to later realize you were interacting with a non-human user like a bot? Do you sometimes feel pressured to adopt a particular persona while functioning in more ‘professional’ environments online? In spite of your best intentions, do you sometimes find yourself using social media metrics such as ‘likes’ to gauge the impact of your connections? And what about those other people online? How do you perceive them—as friends, as community, as a crowd, as a market segment, as a mob, as a bit of all of these?  

Now let’s turn to social media platforms. We tend to associate these with names like Facebook, YouTube, WeChat and Little Red Book, but social functionality is also built in to travel platforms like TripAdvisor, shopping platforms like Amazon, gaming resource platforms like Steam, shop/gaming hybrids like Temu, streaming platforms like Spotify, live-casting platforms like Twitch, fitness platforms like FitBit—the list goes on. In our unit, we understand the notion of social media platforms broadly to accommodate these realities.

One reason platforms can be can be hard to socialize on (let alone govern) is because conceptually speaking, the term is all over the place. Sometimes we think of platforms as tools we use (to access resources, for monetization); other times we speak of them as places we visit (like when we say we are ‘on’ Instagram when really, we are on our chair.) Still other times, we associate them (or their users) with values we trust--or don’t. 

Most of us intellectually ‘get’ that social media platforms are owned by companies, designed for profit, and are vulnerable to things like political regimes, economic climates, environmental forces, etc. Yet in everyday experience, platforms can feel more like invisible infrastructure, humming away unnoticed the background, until it breaks down. When that happens, we can abruptly find ourselves compromised—sometimes in ways that put us at serious emotional, social, financial, informational, political and/or physical risk.

To talk about the promises of social media as well as its ‘breakdown’ moments, this unit will center discussions on two types of process: psycho-social and techno-social. Psycho-social processes include psychological dynamics like cognition, learning, instinct, habit, impulse, and emotions. They also include sociological dynamics like trust, bonding, intimacy, cooperation, conflict, authority, norms, values, influence, and group behaviors.  Techno-social processes are especially important to discussions of  social media phenomena like virality, fame, meme communication, online challenges, blame and shame cycles,  ‘cancel culture’ and online vigilantism. These include but are not limited to:

• Platform interfaces designed to turn conscious choices into unconscious habits. These tend to be adopted because at first they make our time online easier, more fun, more profitable, etc. Sometimes these reasons continue to be sound; other times, not.   
• User profile systems that often demand our disclosure (of name, of photo, of location, of contacts, etc.) and compliance before offering opportunities for participation. These are often adopted because they offer the promise of safety, trustworthiness and authentic interaction with others. Sometimes this stays the case; other times, it does not.  
• Algorithmic decision making processes about which sorts of content should receive more ‘push weight’ online and which should not. These tend to be platform-specific and proprietary, leading to the rise of an ‘algorithmic imaginary,’ in which users speculate about what the platform does and does not want, and at times find themselves modify behavior accordingly.  
•  Platform business models almost entirely reliant on advertising revenues, which require companies to monitor, evaluate, and package online user data into market segments, which is sold to interested 'third parties.' This data is later re-presented by platforms to  users  as personalized ‘for you’ findings, which can be helpful, but can also lead us into so-called filter bubble/echo chamber arrangements online.