Readings and Discussion Posts

Students are expected to read and consider the assigned readings prior to class, as this supports in-class discussions which are a critical component of the course. To help prepare for and to support engaging and meaningful discussions, we assign pre-class reading reports as discussion posts.

Assigned readings will focus on research topics in HCI, typically consisting of:

A framing paper: presenting motivation, language, theory, or understanding that can contextualize the activities and contributions of additional research in a topic.
Two instance papers: each presenting more recent or specific examples of contributions, such as students might initially be expected to pursue in research.

Students are expected to read: (1) the framing paper, and (2) either of the instance papers (e.g., whichever seems more compelling or interesting to you). You may choose to read all three, but this is not required or expected.

The Calendar will link to assigned readings and will provide any day-specific revisions to this reading structure.

Discussion Posts

To help prepare for in-class discussion, we require reading reports in the form of discussion posts.

The key requirement is that discussion posts meaningfully engage with the contributions, methods, or framing of assigned readings. Beyond that requirement, posts can raise new reactions, questions, or ideas in a discussion, can respond to other insights raised in a discussion, or can do a bit of both. Posts can discuss all of the assigned readings, or can focus on a specific portion of a reading.

Reading reports are expected to be approximately 200 to 400 words. This aims to strike a balance between: (1) being enough text to convey a meaningful response, and (2) being succinct enough to allow review before class. We expect most posts will be short and focused on specific insights or questions regarding contributions, methods, or framing. Posts that problematically exceed the upper limit will be penalized.

It is also often easy to find something to criticize in any piece of research. But focusing exclusively on potential flaws of research is often not productive (i.e., the assigned papers have been reviewed and then curated as part of inclusion in this course). You will often find it more intellectually worthwhile to focus on aspects of research that are particularly well done, new ideas and opportunities for contribution that are prompted by research, or how you might have differently approached methods in conducting the research. This will also generally lead to more meaningful discussions.

Potential topics for discussion include:

What idea, innovation, or insight enabled the contributions of this research, what additional contributions might be suggested by that idea, innovation, or insight?
What new potential contributions or research agendas are suggested by contributions of this research?
How might contributions of this research have informed contributions of some other research you have seen?
How might methods in this research suggest methods for other research?
What aspects of contributions, methods, or framing were particularly well done or effective in this research?
If you had conducted this research, how might you have differently approached aspects of contributions, methods, or framing?

We also note some papers will be presented by authors of those papers. Although we want everybody to be comfortable with candid discussion, and although we do not expect posts to be overly formal, this is another reason to be thoughtful in how you approach paper discussion.

Submission

Discussions will be coordinated using Canvas:

https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1786160/discussion_topics

We will create a discussion post for each day and a discussion thread for each paper. If your post relates to multiple papers, post it in whichever thread seems more appropriate.

Reading reports are due at 5pm the day before each class meeting. This ensures time review discussion before class. Because reading reports are intended to support preparation for in-class discussion, submissions that are significantly late are unlikely to receive credit.

Grading

Each reading report will be graded on a 2-point scale:

0: If you do not participate.
1: If a post seems weak and does not convince us you read, understood, and meaningfully considered the readings. This grade will be common for posts that provide a shallow summary of a reading, a shallow response to a reading, or a shallow response to an existing post (e.g., do not meaningfully engage with contributions, methods, or framing of assigned readings).
2: If your participation shows you read and understood the readings, then meaningfully considered the readings in terms of contributions, methods, or framing. We expect this will be the most common grade.

These criteria make clear that shallow consideration of readings will be insufficient (e.g., merely commenting on aspects of a reading that a person did or did not like, merely describing other experiences or research related to the readings). We encourage drawing upon personal insights and experiences relative to readings, but also encourage being explicit in how posts engage with contributions, methods, or framing of assigned readings.