Course Syllabus

The syllabus is meant to serve as an outline and guide for this course. Please note that the syllabus and course schedule may be modified with reasonable notice in order to accommodate the needs of the class. 

This course is not about designing interfaces. This course is about research and qualitative research methodology in human-centered computing. While the techniques in this class can be applied to designing human-centered systems, students who are looking for a class about learning to design and program user interfaces will be disappointed.

The format and enrollment of this course has changed from previous years. For example, this course will now have a Final Exam. As such, we expect there will be a change in the grade distribution compared to previous years.

This course is based heavily on prior courses taught by Tamara Denning with incorporated materials from others, noted in slides and assignments where they appear.

Course Details

Instructors: Professor Kate Isaacs, Warnock Engineering Building (WEB) 4660

TA: Kalina Borkiewicz, Cynthia Palmer

Office Hours: 

• Kate: Thursdays 10AM - 11AM https://utah.zoom.us/j/95141980526
• Kalina: Wednesdays 10:30AM - 11:30AM https://utah.zoom.us/j/91770046309

Final Exam: Thursday December 12th 2024 3:30 - 5:30 PM

Contacting Instructional Staff: Please make all requests as either public or private-to-instructors posts on Piazza so that all of the instructional staff can see them. We will not make decisions or policy regarding your request without a written record. We can discuss matters verbally, but no decisions or policy is made within our a written request and response. Misrepresenting what was said by instruction staff is academic misconduct.

Meetings: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3-4:20PM

Location: Warnock Engineering Building (WEB) 1230

Land Acknowledgement: We acknowledge that this land, which is named for the Ute Tribe, is the traditional and ancestral homeland of the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute Tribes. The University of Utah recognizes and respects the enduring relationship that exists between many Indigenous Peoples and their traditional homelands. We respect the sovereign relationship between tribes, states, and the federal government, and we affirm the University of Utah’s commitment to a partnership with Native Nations and Urban Indian communities through research, education, and community outreach activities.

Quick Links:

• Price College of Engineering Counseling Services
• Campus Mental Health Resources
• Identity-based Student Support Organizations

 

Overview

This course provides an introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) / Human-Centered Computing (HCC) research. The course is primarily based on a combination of:

• Reading research papers 
• Discussion & Quizzes
• Multiple small individual projects and assignments
• A large, overarching group project divided into (group) sub-assignments
• Lectures

In general we will be seeking to gain an increased understanding of HCI research contributions, methods, and focus areas. The purpose of this course is to provide a combination of practical and theoretical knowledge.

While many of the methods we will be working with in the course are applicable to both industry and academic research (e.g., think-alouds, heuristic evaluation, interviews), the focus and framing of this course is on academic research. This course is not about teaching a concrete set of steps that you can follow without thinking to give you a perfect user interface every time. Instead, this course is about a hands-on introduction to how to go about finding answers that may come up in user interface design or HCI/HCC research.

 

Course Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Comprehend, analyze, and contextualize academic publications from human-centered computing.
• Discuss strengths and limitations of a variety of methods that can be utilized for user research and their suitability for a given context.
• Apply qualitative methods to conduct user research that involve interaction with human participants.
• Constructively critique the execution of a method as applied to user research.
• Starting from creating research questions, iteratively refine the application of a research method to a specific research question.
• Communicate the process and results of research to other researchers.

 

Required Course Materials

Textbook: There is no required textbook for this course. Required readings are posted on the course Canvas web-site.

In-Class: Please bring a writing implement to class as we regularly have quizzes and activities that require one. Some classes may benefit from your bringing a laptop or tablet. You will be informed in advance for those classes.

 

Notice of Objectionable Materials

 

Participation and Class Behavior

Participation in in-class activities and discussions is required and is factored into the course grading. Canvas is set to ignore the 3 lowest participation scores. The purpose of this Canvas setting is to account for illness, emergencies, job interviews, attending conferences, and any other reasons you need to miss class during the semester. Please do not request "excused absences" as the policy exists to automatically cover such requests. If you have an emergency spanning longer than three classes, please discuss with the instructor in a Piazza post.

If you miss activities, discussion, or quizzes due to late entry to or early exit from the class, you cannot receive credit for those activities. You may always leave class on time without penalty, even when the activity is going of a few minutes over.

Many activities, including quizzes, require a writing implement. You are expected to bring one. We will not have spare writing implements available.

You may not have electronic devices within sight during quizzes or exams. Phones, headsets, earbuds, tablets, laptops, and other electronics cannot be visible to anyone during quizzes or exams.

Beyond a plain writing implement, you may not have any other materials out during quizzes and exams if not expressly stated by the instructor for that particular quiz or exam. You should not be able to access or read notes or outside materials during quizzes and exams.

During many class sections, you will be expected to participate in group discussions. These groups will be randomly assigned at the beginning of each class. You are expected to participate within your group.

We have several methods of participation in this class, including random assignment of discussion groups. We expect students to join their randomly assigned group for each activity and participate with their group members.  Attempts to circumvent participation processes and/or lying about participation is considered an academic integrity infraction. See the academic integrity section. 

All class members including students are expected to treat others, including students and course staff, in an respectful manner. We do not tolerate exclusionary or disrespectful behavior, including gatekeeping, dog whistles, or other indirect forms of disparagement on the basis of identity or area of study. Exclusionary behavior commits harm on the community and bolsters the well-being and academic performance of some at the cost of others. Exclusionary behavior will be considered a course policy academic integrity infraction. Additionally, if you engage in exclusionary behavior, you may be asked to leave and not be permitted to return. You will not be given alternative participation opportunities.

Examples:

• Gatekeeping: "You don't know virtual memory [or other piece of knowledge]??"
• Gatekeeping: "Machine learning [or other area] isn't real computer science."
• Gatekeeping: "Can I have an extension, I have homework in my Machine Learning [or other area] class." 
• Dog Whistles: "[Person]'s not qualified to speak on computer science" or "This is just not how computing is done in the real world" or "[Person] isn't a real computer scientist" 
• Gatekeeping/Dog Whistle: "[Person]'s work could have been a blog post. It didn't deserve to be published."

You may believe what you choose, but you are not permitted to voice your thoughts in a exclusionary or disrespectful manner in this class.

 

Grading

The grading breakdown in this course is as follows:

• Participation
  • Participation/Discussion (10%)
  • Pre-class turn-ins & quizzes (18%)
• Individual Project Assignments
  • CITI Training / Ethics Exercise (3%)
  • Think Aloud (requires participants) (10%)
• Group Project Assignments
  • Literature Review (10%)
  • Interviews / Interview Transcription (requires participants) (15%)
  • Crowdsourcing Project (10%)
  • Project Presentation (4%)
  • Final Report (10%)
• Final Exam (10%)

We will attempt to communicate expectations and feedback throughout the course, but it is your responsibility to communicate with us if you would like guidance in this regard.

If you believe something was graded incorrectly, please make a private post to instructors on Piazza within one week of receiving the grade. Please explain specifically what part you believe was graded incorrectly and in what way it was graded incorrectly and we will review it. These requests need to specifically explain why more credit should have been assigned. Vague requests such as "I think this should have been worth more points" will not results in changes. Grade change requests made in any other fashion than a Piazza post to all instructors will not be honored. Should a grade be changed due to any other means, it will be reverted upon discovery. You will not be given an extension on the one week deadline for grade change requests.

 

Late Policy

• Participation assignments (e.g., in-class activities, in-class turn-ins, quizzes, and reading turn-ins) will not be accepted late.
  • Reminder: Canvas is set to ignore the 3 lowest participation scores and the 3 lowest reading turn-in scores (i.e., those 3 participation scores will have no effect on your grade, those 3 missed turn-ins will have no effect on your grade). This policy is meant to cover anything that comes up during the semester such as illness, weather, interviews, conferences, events, etc. We will only consider requests for waivers after these have been exhausted.
• Other assignments, unless noted otherwise, will have 10% of the total possible points of the assignment deducted for each day they are late.
  • Additionally, these may be graded more slowly than assignments graded on-time as we cannot predict/schedule for grading late assignments.

 

Assignment & Project Overview

You will have something due before each class meeting (typically reading and pre-class turn-ins) as well as larger assignments due approximately weekly. These assignments are described below.

Reading and Pre-Class Turn-ins (individual): The purpose of these turn-ins are to prepare you for in-class discussion and activities, give you practice for larger assignments, and help you prepare for group project activities. Most class turn-ins are announced at least 5 days in advance, but unannounced reading quizzes may occur before any given class discussion.

CITI Training (individual): The purpose of this assignment is to learn about ethical treatment of human subjects by completing the CITI (Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative) Social / Behavioral Research training or a refresher exercise for those who have already completed it. The training contains fundamental information regarding the ethical treatment of human subjects and makes you eligible to participate in (IRB-approved) Social / Behavioral research at the University of Utah.

Think-Aloud Protocol (individual, requires participants): The purpose of this assignment is to get hands-on experience with the think-aloud protocol which is a useful method for uncovering (particularly first-time) interaction issues with systems. You must conduct some think-aloud sessions and complete a writeup to document your findings and reflect on the process.

Literature Review (group): The purpose of this assignment is to get hands-on experience with conducting a literature review of related work. Your group must complete a writeup after you as a group find, review, summarize, and analyze the relevance of research papers related to their topic and reflect on the process.

Conducting Interviews (group, requires participants): The purpose of this assignment is to get hands-on experience with writing interview questions, conducting interviews, and transcribing interviews. Your group will write interview questions and each group member must conduct a few interviews. Your group will turn in a writeup reflecting on the process of conducting interviews. Additionally, you will turn in a partial interview transcript of one of your interviews.

Questionnaires via Crowdsourcing (group, online participants): The purpose of this assignment is to get hands-on experience with writing questionnaire questions and with an online crowdsourcing/questionnaire platform. Your group will create a questionnaire, deploy it on an online crowdsourcing platform, and collect the results. Your group will turn in a writeup where you analyze the results and reflect on the process.

Project Presentation (group): We will be having project presentations at the end of the semester for the group projects. This is an opportunity to show off and communicate (visually and verbally) the project that your group has been working on throughout the semester. You will also be expected to provide some feedback regarding the presentations.

Final Group Project Report (group): The purpose of this assignment is to get hands-on experience with writing about research. As a group, you will construct a final report in the form of an academic paper where you present your research questions and the steps you took to answer those questions. Where appropriate, you can re-use or elaborate upon content from previous project write-ups. However, your report should demonstrate that you understand the format and norms of research papers like the ones you have been reading throughout the semester.

 

Use of Generative AI

Generative AI such as ChatGPT may not be used to generate text for this class. This includes, but is not limited to: asking tools to summarize the reading for you, asking tools to generate Perusall comments for you, asking tools to generate any assignment or quiz text that is submitted, prompting the tool with a vague concept and asking for elaboration, generation, or any creation of text.

(Edit to Clarify, 2024-08-25: You can use generative AI to help your read the papers, but you cannot turn in summaries of the reading that were created by generative AI. You are still responsible for understanding the paper, both its content and construction.)

You may use Generative AI tools to improve writing you have already done if you include the prompt and response along with the tool used. This should include the entire original text. For example, if you are answering a question on a class turn-in but are concerned about the writing, you may give your writing to these tools and ask for improved writing or grammar IF you cite that you have done so in the assignment and include the prompts you used and your original text.

You may use a spell-checking tool without citation. You may use office-product (e.g., Google Docs, MS Office, Libre Office, Open Office) grammar checkers without citation. If you use a grammar service such as Grammar.ly, please note that you have done so but you do not need to include the original prompts.

 

Grading Scheme

The following grading standards will be used in this class:

Grade	Range
A	[95, 100]
A-	[90, 95)
B+	[87, 90)
B	[83, 87)
B-	[80, 83)
C+	[77, 80)
C	[73, 77)
C-	[70, 73)
D+	[67, 70)
D	[63, 67)
D-	[60, 63)
F	[0, 60)

 

College of Engineering and University Policies

Please be aware of the College of Engineering Guidelines.

Drop/Withdrawal. Students may drop a course within the first two weeks of a given semester without any penalties. Students may officially withdraw (W) from a class or all classes after the drop deadline through the midpoint of a course. A “W” grade is recorded on the transcript and appropriate tuition/fees are assessed. The grade “W” is not used in calculating the student’s GPA. For deadlines to withdraw from full-term, first, and second session classes, see the U's Academic Calendar. 

 

Academic Integrity. This class follows the U's Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities (Links to an external site.) as well as the Kahlert School of Computing's Academic Misconduct Policy. You are expected to be aware and familiar with these policies.

It is assumed that all work submitted to your instructor is your own work. When you have used the ideas of others, you must properly indicate that you have done so. Even if you do not directly quote (e.g., if you change some of the words or paraphrase) without citation, this is plagiarism and is a serious academic integrity offense. If you are not familiar with plagiarism, please see the U library resources on plagiarism for a primer. Please also see other course policies on "Use of Generative AI" as use of these tools may also result in work that is not your own and therefore is academic misconduct.

Please do not share your individual assignments with other students. We've observed that often leads to wholesale copying. You may discuss how you approached the assignment with others, but each of you should write up your answer on your own. If you are concerned about the appearance of over-sharing, we recommend you add a note to your assignment listing who you discussed it with, what kind of discussion took place, and what topics were covered. In the past, some students have even included photos of whiteboards from these collaboration sessions.

You may not submit work to this class that was previously submitted in another class, including prior offerings of this class, without express written permission of the instructor. Even if only part of the work from the other/prior class is submitted, it is still academic misconduct, including paraphrases of previously submitted work. If permission to submit some portion of previously submitted work is granted, the re-submitted work must completely conform to the allowances made by the instructor. 

Dishonesty in reporting is another form of academic misconduct. This includes fabrication of data, such as falsifying interview or think-aloud results, misreporting participation, and lying about the work of other individuals in the course. As stated earlier in this document, attempts to circumvent participation activities, such as avoiding your assigned group, is considered falsification of your participation credit.

Unethical treatment of humans is not tolerated in this course and will be considered academic misconduct. Though we do not seek IRB approval for the assignments in this class because they are for educational purposes only, you are expected to treat participants with the same ethical standards as an IRB-approved study. Furthermore, you are expected to treat members of this class in a respectful and ethical manner. Exclusionary behavior, discussed under "Attendance and Class Behavior" is also considered academic misconduct in this course.

Misrepresenting what was said by the instructors or teaching assistants with regards to course policy, late requests, regrade requests, special exceptions, or any similar course-related manner is still misrepresentation and is academic misconduct. This includes claiming "Dr. Isaacs said it was okay" when it can be misleading. The safest way to make such requests is written on Piazza where the entire instructional staff can see what was written and agreed upon. 

Plagiarism and cheating are serious offenses and may be punished by failure on an individual assignment, and/or failure in the course. Academic misconduct, according to the University of Utah Student Code,

“...Includes, but is not limited to, cheating, misrepresenting one’s work, inappropriately collaborating, plagiarism, and fabrication or falsification of information…It also includes facilitating academic misconduct by intentionally helping or attempting to help another to commit an act of academic misconduct.”

As this is a graduate course with a research focus, integrity is paramount. The instructional staff will  recommend course failure as a sanction for any academic integrity infraction. We reserve the right to recommend lesser sanctions if the infraction is small and the student admits to and demonstrates an understanding of their misconduct. The common lesser sanction is typically a zero on the assignment and a one letter deduction in course grade.

 

Course Materials Copyright.  The Content is made available only for your personal, noncommercial educational, and scholarly use. You may not use the Content for any other purpose, or distribute, post or make the Content available to others unless you obtain any required permission from the copyright holder. Some Content may be provided via streaming or other means that restrict copying; you may not circumvent those restrictions. You may not alter or remove any copyright or other proprietary notices included in the Content. 

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The University of Utah seeks to provide equal access to its programs, services, and activities for people with disabilities. If you will need accommodations in this class, reasonable prior notice needs to be given to the Center for Disability Services, 162 Olpin Union Building, (801) 581-5020. CDS will work with you and the instructor to make arrangements for accommodations. All written information in this course can be made available in an alternative format with prior notification to the Center for Disability Services.

Given the nature of this course, attendance is required and adjustments cannot be granted to allow non-attendance. However, if you need to seek an ADA accommodation to request an exception to this attendance policy due to a disability, please contact the Center for Disability and Access (CDA). CDA will work with us to determine what, if any, ADA accommodations are reasonable and appropriate.

 

Mental Health Resources. Rates of burnout, anxiety, depression, isolation, and loneliness have noticeably increased during the pandemic. If you need help, reach out for campus mental health resources, including free counseling, trainings and other support.

Consider participating in a Mental Health First Aid or other wellness-themed training provided by our Center for Student Wellness and sharing these opportunities with your peers, teaching assistants and department colleagues.

Note the Price College of Engineering has their own dedicated mental health counseling.

 

COVID-19 Resources and Policies. For the most up-to-date information on COVID-19 protocol, please refer to https://coronavirus.utah.edu/. 

Other resources are

1. Student Guidance: What Steps to Take for a Possible or Confirmed COVID-19 Exposure
2. Registrar’s Office COVID-19 Information and FAQ’s
3. Housing & Residential Education

 

Addressing Sexual Misconduct. Title IX makes it clear that violence and harassment based on sex and gender (which Includes sexual orientation and gender identity/expression) is a civil rights offense subject to the same kinds of accountability and the same kinds of support applied to offenses against other protected categories such as race, national origin, color, religion, age, status as a person with a disability, veteran’s status or genetic information.  If you or someone you know has been harassed or assaulted, you are encouraged to report it to the Title IX Coordinator in the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, 135 Park Building, 801-581-8365, or the Office of the Dean of Students, 270 Union Building, 801-581-7066.  For support and confidential consultation, contact the Center for Student Wellness, 426 SSB, 801-581-7776.  To report to the police, contact the Department of Public Safety, 801-585-2677(COPS).

 

Undocumented Student Support Statement. Immigration is a complex phenomenon with broad impact—those who are directly affected by it, as well as those who are indirectly affected by their relationships with family members, friends, and loved ones. If your immigration status presents obstacles to engaging in specific activities or fulfilling specific course criteria, confidential arrangements may be requested from the Dream Center. Arrangements with the Dream Center will not jeopardize your student status, your financial aid, or any other part of your residence. The Dream Center offers a wide range of resources to support undocumented students (with and without DACA) as well as students from mixed-status families. To learn more, please contact the Dream Center at 801.213.3697 or visit dream.utah.edu.

 

Please see Student Support Organizations for a list of different support organizations on campus, each with specialized experience in different identities and circumstances.

 

Mandatory Reporter Notice

The instructor and teaching staff for this course are mandatory reporters. This means we must report instances of violence, harassment, and discrimination that we observe or that are reported to us. If you do not want your incident reported (or are not ready to have it reported), the University has several confidential options for talking about and receiving support for your situation:

Office of the Ombudsman | 801-213-3757 | facultyombudsman@hsc.utah.edu

University Counseling Center | 801-581-6826 | counselingcenter.utah.edu

Price College of Engineering Counseling | https://www.price.utah.edu/students/current/counseling

Victim Survivor Advocates | 801-581-7776 | advocate.wellness.utah.edu | advocate@sa.utah.edu

 

Changelog

2024-08-25: Clarify that generative AI can be used to help you read papers, but you cannot turn in paper summaries that were created by generative AI.

2024-08-25: Add office hours

2024-08-26: Removed heuristic evaluation description as this is now a activity rather than separate assignment.