Welcome to OWT.326!
I’m really excited to go on this learning journey with all of you. This certainly will be an atypical term, but in many ways I think the challenges that online teaching have brought will have improved the content of this course, and multiplied your opportunities to engage.
As with all blended forms of learning, this module cannot work without your full engagement. A 15 credit undergraduate module is comprised of 150 learning hours. These are broken down into approx. 50 hours for your final assignment, and 100 hours of learning from Week 1 to Week 10 – that’s 10 hours a week (or 2 hours/day). These 10 weekly hours (on average) will be covering the following:
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- Module content can be found on this website and will be a mix of annotated papers to read, short powerpoints with voice-over and videos.
- Individual engagement will take the form of short activities that you are asked to complete to engage with the above content (quizzes, example searches) or in preparation of group meetings, as well as practice “short essays”.
- Work group meetings have been timetabled for you weekly with your learning group. You’ll be using these to discuss and accomplish activities I’ve set for you. A set of digital tools are available (Mural, Teams) for you to work together.
- Seminars (every other week) will be with me, face to face, and alternate between coursework preparation (giving you opportunities to understand the assignment and how to succeed in it) and groupwork presentations (giving you opportunities for formative feedback).
If you need a visual representation of how these things are articulated together, you can find it here.
None of these activities will result in a formal assessment and a mark. However, the module is designed so that each piece is a block that will support your successful engagement with the final assignment. For instance, the examples you’re asked to collect and ‘map out’ during group work will be a rich resource you can draw from to illustrate your arguments during the essay! Similarly the short essays you’ll be submitting and evaluating on Moodle will give you good, practical training to write a successful essay at the end of this module.
Support will be provided in various ways. Virtual Q&A sessions (via Teams) are timetabled on Weeks 2, 6 and 10 for you to ‘pop in’ and ask questions about the material. You can also reach out to me by email, or by leaving comments on this website at the bottom of a page (I’ll get a notification and respond to you via comment), or via our Teams main channel.
For every theme, you’ll get a ‘to-do’ list of tasks to accomplish, as well as indications on when this needs to be done (some tasks MUST be done before your work group meeting while others can be done at your own pace during the week). I’m also giving you a rough upper limit on how long it should take you to accomplish those tasks. You probably don’t want to spend more than an hour prepping for Seminar 1 for example.
Please let me know if those time estimates are way off base and I’ll adjust the module accordingly!
Here’s your to-do list for Intro week:
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- Watch this ‘how to’ video about the module and learn to navigate the platforms (2h)
- Go to Mural for an icebreaker to get to know your work group (1h)
- Watch this brief history of philosophy of technology (30 min)
- On Mural, during your timetabled group meeting, play a game about the nature of technology (1h)
- Watch a short video to conclude on ways to define ‘technology’ (30 min)
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Ready to get started? Go to page #2 (below).