User Experience Research & Design
This class is a project-based introduction to qualitative user research. Students will learn about and apply a number of methodologies to extract insights from users about creating better, more human-centered technologies, which may include usability studies, ethnographic observation, interviews, and focus groups. This application will be supplemented by readings, written assignments, and oral presentations, where students will analyze technological designs in light of theory and research on ergonomics, user interfaces, urban planning/architecture, and emotional design. The semester culminates in a project in which groups of students utilize experience research methods to propose how a local technology could be redesigned to better meet the needs of a particular community of users.
Syllabus
Syllabus
The Collapse of Civilization and Its (Possible) Prevention
According to many environmental scientists, we are living in an unprecedented era of human-driven environmental change: the Anthropocene. We appear to be living through an age characterized by ever increasing economic productivity and ever increasing levels of material wealth – for some – but also heretofore unseen degrees of ecological degradation. Many are concerned about not only the challenges possible to contemporary technological civilization by climate change but also resource depletion, the dying off of a considerable portion of the planet’s species, and inequality – not to mention political instability. Is there much hope for humanity?
The goal of this course is to critically examine the sustainability of human civilization. How have previous societies failed to organize themselves within their socioecological limits? What positive lessons can be drawn from earlier human settlements regarding the political, cultural, economic, and technological causes of collapse? In addition to researching potential answers to these questions, students will explore and evaluate contemporary proposals for bringing human animals into better harmony with local and planetary ecosystems.
Syllabus
The goal of this course is to critically examine the sustainability of human civilization. How have previous societies failed to organize themselves within their socioecological limits? What positive lessons can be drawn from earlier human settlements regarding the political, cultural, economic, and technological causes of collapse? In addition to researching potential answers to these questions, students will explore and evaluate contemporary proposals for bringing human animals into better harmony with local and planetary ecosystems.
Syllabus
Science & Technology Policy
This seminar-based course provides an overview of selected topics in science and technology policy.
Students will gain an understanding of the challenges, tensions, and problems within science and technology policy issues and be introduced to crafting policy relevant documents such as op-eds, policy briefs, and longer research reports. Themes may include the proper role of experts in policy-making, the regulation of risky technologies, comparisons of democratic and expert-led decision-making, resilient environmental policy, generative justice, sustainability, forecasting and managing technological change, public and private steering of R&D funding, strategies for stimulating innovation and technological transitions, intellectual property, science and technology-based entrepreneurship, and regional and national innovation systems.
The aim of this course is to impart the basic skills and aptitudes for understanding public policy in general and to guide students toward becoming mini-policy experts in an area of science and technology policy of their choosing. Considerable course time will be dedicated to one-on-one mentoring by the professor, independent work time, and group discussions.
Syllabus
Students will gain an understanding of the challenges, tensions, and problems within science and technology policy issues and be introduced to crafting policy relevant documents such as op-eds, policy briefs, and longer research reports. Themes may include the proper role of experts in policy-making, the regulation of risky technologies, comparisons of democratic and expert-led decision-making, resilient environmental policy, generative justice, sustainability, forecasting and managing technological change, public and private steering of R&D funding, strategies for stimulating innovation and technological transitions, intellectual property, science and technology-based entrepreneurship, and regional and national innovation systems.
The aim of this course is to impart the basic skills and aptitudes for understanding public policy in general and to guide students toward becoming mini-policy experts in an area of science and technology policy of their choosing. Considerable course time will be dedicated to one-on-one mentoring by the professor, independent work time, and group discussions.
Syllabus
Unintended Consequences, Industrial Accidents and Other Anthropogenic Disasters
Examples of unintended consequences, industrial accidents, and other disasters resulting from human technological decision making are legion. Contrary to predominant techno-utopian strains of thought within Western culture, near catastrophic errors and the failure to adequately prepare for mistakes are frequently the norm rather than the exception. Managers and technical experts routinely overestimate their own knowledge and capacity for foresight, failing to either adequately account for the uncertainties and complexities of reality or subject their designs to sufficient critical scrutiny.
This course, in response, aspires to help instruct budding scientists and engineers on how to be more thoughtful and prudent through an examination of a number of cases studies of unanticipated consequences, design errors, systemic failures, and other anthropogenic (i.e., human produced) disasters. We will explore the cognitive, organizational, and technical sources of error as well as proposals developed within decision theory for more intelligently steering innovation so as to minimize harms and (hopefully) avert catastrophe. More broadly, we will evaluate different approaches to risk as political arrangements, seeing each as providing a different answer to the question: “Who shoulders which risks, when, and how?”
Syllabus
This course, in response, aspires to help instruct budding scientists and engineers on how to be more thoughtful and prudent through an examination of a number of cases studies of unanticipated consequences, design errors, systemic failures, and other anthropogenic (i.e., human produced) disasters. We will explore the cognitive, organizational, and technical sources of error as well as proposals developed within decision theory for more intelligently steering innovation so as to minimize harms and (hopefully) avert catastrophe. More broadly, we will evaluate different approaches to risk as political arrangements, seeing each as providing a different answer to the question: “Who shoulders which risks, when, and how?”
Syllabus
The Digital Age and Its Discontents
Digital technologies are routinely touted as unequivocally desirable in popular media and discourse. Yet, few other technologies evoke as much ire and lament with respect to their perceived effects on the human condition. To many citizens in advanced technological societies, digital technologies appear to be simultaneously liberators and masters. How should “we” think about contemporary networking and communication devices? Are they Faustian bargains? Akin to Frankenstein’s monster?
The aim of this course is to examine digital technologies as politically consequential things. That is, students will explore such technologies as influencing who gets what, when, and how, especially in regards to happiness and “the good life,” meaningful social relationships, economic arrangements, and the practice of democracy. Through the analysis of digital age scholarship and dystopian imaginaries, such as those presented in the British program Black Mirror, students will reflect upon the risks, double-binds, and injustices of contemporary digital technologies. Finally, students will explore possibilities for achieving more desirable digital modernities.
Syllabus
The aim of this course is to examine digital technologies as politically consequential things. That is, students will explore such technologies as influencing who gets what, when, and how, especially in regards to happiness and “the good life,” meaningful social relationships, economic arrangements, and the practice of democracy. Through the analysis of digital age scholarship and dystopian imaginaries, such as those presented in the British program Black Mirror, students will reflect upon the risks, double-binds, and injustices of contemporary digital technologies. Finally, students will explore possibilities for achieving more desirable digital modernities.
Syllabus
Understanding Technoscientific Controversies
This science and technology studies course challenges students to think more carefully and critically about technoscientific environmental problems and controversies, such as climate change, vaccine hesitancy, genetic engineering, pharmaceutical drugs, and nuclear energy. Students will examine the cognitive, cultural, economic, ethical, political, and communicative roots of disagreement, learning to recognize that these issues are not solved by presenting a “balanced view” of both sides or by simply informing “ignorant” opponents. Students will apply these thinking skills in order to develop more productive and empathic solutions to tenacious and highly polarized public conflicts.
Syllabus
Syllabus
Introduction to Science and Technology Studies
Despite the ubiquity of beliefs to the contrary, culture and politics permeate science and technology. Not only do ideas, interests, and beliefs shape the production of facts and artifacts but evolving technoscience, in turn, also helps construct new ways of living and social realities. The presence of these sociopolitical factors does not separate “good” from “junk” technoscience but rather inexorably shapes any technoscientific endeavor.
The aim of this course is to disabuse STEM students of a range of dominant cultural myths about science and technology through an introductory survey of the social scientific study of science and technology. We will explore historical cases of scientific and technical controversy, coming to recognize the complexities and uncertainties of reality glossed over in the simplistic “great man” stories pervasive in popular media. Most importantly, we will evaluate technoscientific decisions and sociotechnical changes as political phenomena, which entail winners and losers as well as often intractable disagreements about what a desirable world looks like and how “we” ought to get there.
Syllabus
The aim of this course is to disabuse STEM students of a range of dominant cultural myths about science and technology through an introductory survey of the social scientific study of science and technology. We will explore historical cases of scientific and technical controversy, coming to recognize the complexities and uncertainties of reality glossed over in the simplistic “great man” stories pervasive in popular media. Most importantly, we will evaluate technoscientific decisions and sociotechnical changes as political phenomena, which entail winners and losers as well as often intractable disagreements about what a desirable world looks like and how “we” ought to get there.
Syllabus