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The course examines underlying reasons behind the perpetual underrepresentation of people of color in computing and the broader STEM fields. Race, gender, and neurodiversity will be the primary investigative pillars. The course examines existing structures such as recruitment and retention practices, eligibility requirements, and philanthropic efforts to determine how structural operations and practices work to sustain the status quo of unequal STEM participation. This course investigates pedagogy, research, cultural underpinnings, policies, and concealed norms around potential exclusion and inclusion of STEM participation at key levels of entry, namely K-12, post-secondary education, and computing industry organizations. Students will analyze current issues affecting STEM computing participation for underrepresented populations, identify measures that lessen the perpetuation of unequal STEM participation. As a part of the course engagement, students will analyze current research on the intersections between diversity and team and/or organizational performance, and work in teams to propose solutions that create inclusive and diverse computing organizations reflective of the total population. The course will be of interest to students seeking to further social justice and equality in education and industry and students thriving to create increasingly diverse workforces for the future.

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Additional Information

Instruction Mode: In Person

Additional Information

Instruction Mode: In Person
Prerequisites: 4240 or permission or instructor. Making technology means simultaneously making politics, facilitating or impeding justice, increasing or decreasing inequality and exploitation. Every product or service is created by people – be it compiler or car, teargas or vaccine – so political and social valences are “baked in” at every step. Throughout a product design lifecycle, from specification to engineering bench work, through to Series C funding and marketing campaigns, tech remakes society and reconfigures the planet. Can a technologist consciously address this responsibility while also juggling technical requirements? DTSI-Practicum builds on the central premise of INFO/STS4240: how to make arguments about and through design. Where 4240 focuses on values, criticism, ethics, and analysis of technology, dipping into new designs, Practicum aims to help a technologist practice synthesizing ethical tech considerations mindfully and creatively, as they will have to do for the rest of their career, and combining this with an organizational mindset. Through exercises, role-playing, discussions, guest lectures from activist technologists, and wide-ranging readings, students will practice connecting broader implications of their designs with technical choices. Practicum seeks to arm students with many diverse ways of reflecting on their authorial relationship to technology, drawing from art and design to political science and anthropology. Course participants will be encouraged to focus on areas of personal interest, enumerating the social, political, and economic parameters of particular technical systems: parameters that are as important as power consumption, usability, or efficiency.

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Instruction Mode: In Person
Xenophobic speech that demonizes immigrants and other foreign nationals is a powerful part of human social and political life. It has become part of the political order of the day for established democracies, such as France (the Front National France), Austria (the FPÖ), Denmark (Danish People’s Party), and the United States (Republican Party), facilitating a staggering rise of radical nationalist politics. Xenophobic speech arose as an immediate and invidious response to the Coronavirus, fueling a flood of hate crimes against people of Asian descent. In this course, we will examine the development of automation strategies to combat xenophobic speech in social media, reading recent scholarship on NLP and online hate speech, to support a new cross-disciplinary effort to develop a Xenophobia Meter. The course will involve weekly readings, discussions, and writing.

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Instruction Mode: In Person
This experimental, collaborative and seminar-based class will explore the material ethics of computing – the ways in which computing rests upon, emerges from, and ultimately returns to the earth, with deep and sometimes negative implications for sustainability and justice in a rapidly climate-changing world. Drawing on journalistic sources and academic fields ranging from philosophy, public policy and environmental ethics to science and technology studies and human-computer interaction, the course will examine problems of computing-related extraction, consumption, and waste. Cases and examples will be drawn from near-to-hand and around the world. Assignments will include weekly reading reflections, seminar leadership, and experimental individual and group projects that students will have some hand in determining.