Our course invites you to make sense of the chaos of digital devices, apps, and algorithms that we confront every day. We use so many of these objects (or they are used on us), and some of them work well, but others aren’t great. We encourage you to use your enthusiasm for your favorite app or internet-of-things gadget to imagine something better. Our hope is that you gain a habit of asking four types of questions whenever you encounter a digital artifact to restore agency and power to you in a technological world that often seems out of our control. Our approach is collaborative and project-based so that you can immediately apply what you have learned and draw on the perspectives and experiences of your classmates to identify nuances,
seek solutions that work for broader communities, and be actively involved in every class. You will have a chance to demonstrate your Digital and Computational Studies (DCS) knowledge in a final project that you can opt to share outside of class.
Our publication on DCS will also provide context for how we approach our curriculum.
You can also check out a list of our course readings (subject to change) to get a sense for who and what we study during the semester.
