Hosei Spring 2022: Information and Society

When I applied for a job at Hosei University, I delivered a mock lecture for a course that I am developing titled Information and Society. While I did not successfully get the job, I was offered a part-time position to teach this course. 

One of my slides for Week 1 of the Information and Society course

I originally envisioned this to be a third-year course, hoping that the students had already taken other IT courses and that this course can help them refocus on the effects of information in society. I was requested to create a 100-level course though, which ended up being a nice opportunity to develop a breadth course. I hope the students had gained important skills for meaningful information processing and that they developed interests that they would explore further in their other courses. For more details on the course itself, check out the syllabus available on this link.

Outline and Objectives:

Information is now a fundamental feature of the human experience: we consume, produce, and use it to make important decisions. In this course, we will be approaching information studies from the lens of human-computer interaction, data visualization, and analytics. We will be introducing the students to various aspects of information and society: our changing views, how we utilize it, the effects of technological advancements, and our responsibility.

Goal:

At the end of this course, the students are expected to apply critical thinking to exercise responsible digital citizenship. They should be able to discuss how information affects them as individuals and as a society, evaluate information credibility, and exercise caution in presenting information.