E-SPEAIT Course Guide

Aims of the course

The course is an English-language twin to its Estonian counterpart that started in Wikiversity already in 2009 (and moved here in 2020). The goal is to provide participants with broad knowledge about connections between IT and the 'rest of the world' (topics run from ethics and laws to history, techno-culture, privacy and security). The ultimate aim is to make people think about the consequences of their activities and develop attitudes and thinking that may be beneficial in the later career.

The main learning outcomes for the e-course (note: the ones listed in the course programme are meant for the contact or face-to-face version of the course, thus they are somewhat different!) for a student areː

understands the topics of the course, is able to follow and discuss the topics as well as present them at the exam;
writes short analytical texts about course topics to a weblog, using relevant written sources.
discusses course-related topics in the course forum;
writes a group paper with 3-4 fellow students about a course-related topic;
writes a review on another group's paper and optionally on 1-2 course-related books;
is able to work in an open online environment and participate in discussions in a meaningful and civilized way.

The tools needed

a blog - an existing one can be used (in this case, a separate category or tag should be used, e.g. SPEAIT2022K) or a new one may be created. Attentionǃ The blog should support RSS for reading the posts (the two most common ones, https://www.wordpress.com and https://www.blogger.com, are fine).
an account at the course forum in Nabble.com.
e-mail - the basic rapid information interchange goes here; it is preferred over instant messaging due to being self-documenting (all the information will be stored automatically).

The names and blog addresses should be added to the Participants page. Alternatively, you can e-mail the address directly to the course supervisor, but doing so would keep others from reading - and possibly contributing to - your blog.

How do we work?

Weekly texts

There is a reading text for each week of the course (see the main page). While reading it does not give points directly, it should hopefully provide some information and ideas.

Blogging

Each weekly text has a "Study & Write" section at the end, containing a blogging task. These tasks should be written about in one's blog (each task as a separate blog post, not all togetherǃ). The approximate volume would be around one typical text page (around 500 words; depending on the topic, can be a little less as well). Each weekly post gives up to 3 points, thus it is possible to receive up to 45 points.

Attentionː blogging should be done weekly, the deadlines are Monday noons (12ː00, the first one being January 31).

Forum discussions

Participants should create an account at the course forums and make weekly at least 2 posts there - both creating a new topic and contributing to existing ones count (so it pays to check first if something similar already exists - too many topics would lose focus). For each week, up to two posts (1 point each) will count for points - it is OK to post more, but the additional ones would be 'just for fun'. You can thus receive up to 30 points. While the general deadline is the same as in blogging, it is not that strict in the forums - responding to up to two weeks old topics is acceptable (but not waking up in the last week and starting to solo in really old topicsǃ). In order to keep track and also make grading easier (some discussions could fit several weekly topics, yet points can be allocated to just one), all topics in the Course Discussions should include the week number in parentheses, e.g. "Interesting early computers (Week 1)".

The exception to the "up to two weeks later" rule in the forums is the end of the course - all the work should be done by the final day of the course, May 9 noon (experience shows that 'leaving things hanging' after that does not work well). So you can be up to one week late for the 2nd last week, and should write in time during the last one.

In addition to the Course Discussions, there is the Other Discussions sub-forum that can be used for any reasonable and civilized topic (e.g. asking about other courses or announcing a party). These posts, however, do not qualify for points. There is also the Housekeeping forum which is meant for course-related (in the organizational sense - these are not graded either) topics - most importantly, you will find the course supervisor's weekly feedback there.

Attentionː Please use either a recognizable name (full name is not mandatory, as long as it can be identified - e.g. Mr Michael Monroe could be MikeM, as long as there is no Mike Manning also taking the course). If you really need to use something cryptic/creative, let the course supervisor know (via e-mail) that it is you.

The Wiki-based Groupwork

This is a possible alternative for sitting the course exam - both of these will give up to 30 points and, when combined with steady weekly contribution, can give a good final grade. The paper should be written by a team of 4 or 5 students (finding teammates is up you you!) into a wiki (can be this one here, but other possibilities exist). The possible positive effect (besides the knowledge acquired) includes the teamwork experience over e-channels (again, you are free to choose the exact way of cooperation). Again, the groupwork is not mandatory - but, when done in time, it can reduce your end-term workload quite a lot.

Important points:

The team rosters (member lists) and topics should be e-mailed to the course supervisor within the first three weeks, or by the February 14 noon. As the work is completed, its link should be added to the course papers page.
The topic should be course-related, i.e. the choice is really wide. A rule of thumb: it should have something to do with a) IT, and b) people/society. In case the topic really does not fit (too large or too small, totally offtopic), you will be informed and can pick another one.
The approximate volume is 2-3 pages of text (~1200 words) per team member, so a team of four could write a 8-10 page paper (pure content, not counting possible title pages or large illustrations). The length will not be measured very exactly, but clearly shorter works will receive a penalty in points.
You can use the course papers page in this wiki, but using other wikis is also fine, as long as you inform the course supervisor of its location.
The work should be completed by the second last Monday, or May 2 noon - during the final week, all the nasty(?) peers can then try to review it. Completing earlier is very welcome as it would reduce the workload piling up.
The work should follow academic standards - in good English, sufficient sources and pointers to them (the referencing system can be chosen freely - e.g. Vancouver, MLA, APA, Harvard etc. - see also here). The title page is not needed, clear headings will do. Topical illustrations are welcome but not mandatory - and all material published should be legal.

Review

During the last week of the course (when the group papers have been completed), everyone should pick up a group paper from the course papers page and write a review in your blog (so both the papers and reviews will be publicǃ). Note that while the paper is a group task, the review is an individual one. The review gives up to 5 points and should be posted by Monday, May 9 noon. You could evaluate the paper's topic, viewing angle(s), thoroughness, sources/references, language/form etc.

Book review

You can pick a book relevant to the course and write a 0.5-1 page (300-500 words) review. You can either post it to your blog (preferred, as others can read it too) or send it over e-mail. The deadline is May 2 noon (the same as papers). The review will give up to 5 points.

Bonus points

To stimulate reading others' works as well, there is a possibility to award up to 3 bonus points to a fellow student. To do that, please send the course supervisor an e-mail, denoting the person and brief description (a couple sentences is OK) of what the points are given for. The deadline for this is also May 2 noon.

To avoid debalancing the course, there is a cap of 6 bonus points for everyone (from up to two people if max amount is given by each). If you award points to someone who already has reached 6 bonus points, you'll receive an e-mail about it and have a chance to reassign them to someone else (they will not go waste).

Plenty of choice - and a word of warning

As there are several ways to collect points (and none of them are mandatory as such!), different combos can work (blog-paper-exam; forums-reviews-exam etc; it is still possible to get even the max grade without exam). The main recommendation is to participate throughout the course to get the maximum knowledge effect from the course. We have enough people to benefit from the community effect, or learn from each other (as opposed to the typical Student Syndrome "I'll start studying three days before the exam - and three days after exam, I will remember nothing.") ː)

It is also appropriate to issue a warning - do not plagiarize. Even if you have all the Internet at your disposal. Firstly, this would be stealing from yourself: you will learn very little (perhaps to press Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, but you probably knew even those earlier). Secondly, a proven case (any non-trivial amount of copy-paste presented as your own work) can drop you from the course (and in some cases, from the university).

Broadcasting the points

The feedback system consists of the weekly feedback in the forum (under Housekeeping) and a password-protected PDF table containing the current standing. Details are set in the kick-off meeting/lecture (see either the broadcast or recording).

The weekly feedback will appear in the forum either by every Tuesday noon the latest, or when possible, by late Monday night.

Exam and grading

Originally, the exam was typically done in contact form (face-to-face). If circumstances (mostly the still-ongoing pandemic) allow, the exam will take place as followsː

express version - by answering 10 randomly picked questions based on weekly texts. This is the fast way, but the results vary much more, so this is recommended if you a) know the material well, or b) need just a couple of points to reach the desired grade.
essay version - by writing a 2-page essay in about 1.5 hours, the topic can be chosen from 3 randomly picked topics. It somewhat simulates the situation of your boss dropping in and saying "We need an opinion piece on X in two hours, do it!" - the point is to promote quick thinking and analytical skills (rather than proper research of the homework papers). This kind of exam is a safer bet - it is difficult to flunk but also difficult to earn the max.

The exam will add up to 30 points to the final score.

NB! As the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic is still hard to predict, the details about the exam will be announced later. If the contact exam is impossible, we will do the essay version only from the distance (in this case, details will be announced later as well).

There is a quite working way to do the written exam from the distance, so those who have to leave Tallinn before the exam (on in case of visitors, would work fully from distance) will still have an option to pass the exam. Remember to discuss the matter well in advance though. Note: if we have to do exam from distance, in principle it would also be possible to arrange the express/oral exam for a few people (over Jitsi Meet or MS Teams) - but this would take remarkably more time compared to the essay, and would therefore be limited in numbers (also, the experience shows that the essay exam is much safer in terms of point variety!).

The grading system is genericː

over 91 - 5
81-90 - 4
71-80 - 3
61-70 - 2
51-60 - 1
under 51 - 0

Course Calendar

January 24 - beginning of the e-course
January 31 - the first weekly deadline (Monday noon)
February 14 - the third weekly deadline; the deadline for group paper registration (for those who choose to write it)
May 2 - the penultimate (14th) weekly deadline; deadline for papers and book reviews
May 9 - the last (15th) weekly deadline; deadline for paper reviews and last week's blogs/forums; end of the e-course (exams will come later but are not mandatory if enough points have been collected). Note that after this date, the only points that can be added are those from the exam (other writings will not count anymore).

Exam dates

... will be announced here as they become available (and the conditions get clarified).

Back to the course page

The content of this course is distributed under the Creative Commons Attibution-ShareAlike 3.0 Estonian license (English: CC Attribution-ShareAlike, or CC BY-SA) or any newer version of the license.