Syllabus

Instructors

Prof. Paul Schacht
SUNY Geneseo, schacht-at-geneseo.edu

Prof. Debra Schleef
University of Mary Washington, dschleef-at-umw.edu
Intentional Sociology (blog)

Class sessions

Monday and Wednesday, 1:00-2:15 EST

Office hours (Zoom)

Prof. Schacht: Monday/Wednesday 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. EST and by appointment. Either way, you should reserve a time slot for our meeting.

Prof. Schleef: Monday/Wednesday, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. EST and by appointment

What we’ll study

In this course, we’ll try to understand contemporary intentional communities — what drives them, how they work, what obstacles they must overcome — not only by reading about them but by looking at specific communities in depth. We’ll also work to develop digital skills necessary Each pair of students will locate an intentional community near where they live, make contact with its members, and learn about its history, values, accomplishments, and challenges. In pairs, you’ll build individual project websites that chronicle what you learn.

What you’ll learn

In this course, you’ll demonstrate:

• The ability to use digital tools effectively for research, data analysis, document preservation, visualization, collaboration, and communication
• The ability to think critically and convey the results of critical thinking through written and oral presentation
• Historical and critical understanding of community as a concept, including an understanding of how community happens in both physical and online settings, including our own setting as an online course
• Historical and critical understanding of the examined life as it relates to environmental and community sustainability

What we’ll read

There’s only one text you need to buy for this course: Erik Reece’s Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America’s Most Radical Idea, which you can purchase in a print or Kindle edition from Amazon. Other required readings are available online and appear in the syllabus as assignments.

In addition to the required readings, we recommend you look at Kat Kinkade, Is it Utopia Yet?, Douglas Stevenson, Out to Change the World: The Evolution of the Farm, and the variety of books and other resources available through the Fellowship of Intentional Communities.

Tools you’ll need

To participate in this course, you’ll need to have a computer — laptop or desktop — in good working order. It’s your responsibility to keep it working and to make timely repairs or find a replacement as necessary. Your phone and a tablet are helpful additions but won’t take the place of an actual computer.

In addition, you’ll need to run a few software applications (Zoom for video conferencing, Slack for class communications), blog using WordPress, and sign up with the services and platforms below:

• The Readers’ Thoreau
• Google Drive
• Hypothes.is

Depending on the nature of your project, you may need to using other types of software and sign up for other accounts.

What’s expected of you

You’re expected to:

• Attend all class sessions or view recordings of sessions that you miss
• Meet with your instructors online as needed/required, read all assigned texts, and participate in class
• Work collaboratively, cooperatively, responsibly, and respectfully with your project partner
• Treat your fellow students and your instructors with empathy and respect
• Read all assigned material before each class
• Participate actively in face-to-face and online discussions
• Complete all assignments, including blog posts, project drafts, and your final project, by their due dates
• Develop self-reliance in finding answers to questions, but ask for help if the answers elude you
• Monitor the class communication channels (Slack, email, blogs) and be timely in responding to communications from your instructors and peers
• Keep your computer in good working order and your software up to date

A word about WordPress

Website-building and blogging lie at the heart of this course, so you should invest some time in understanding the relationship among the several different sites we’ll use and how they’re architected by WordPress, the open-source website-building and blogging platform.

You’re reading this syllabus on our course website at http://woods.coplacdigital.org/course. Our course website will be the hub for all our interactions this semester and the world’s window into our activity. It’s public. Anyone in the world with a computer and an internet connection can read it. (Unless, of course, a government or other entity has blocked it).

We also have a separate project website, http://woods.coplacdigital.org. This site will be the hub through which the world will access your finished projects.

Each of your projects will live on a site at the address http://woods.coplacdigital.org/<your_institution_name>. Visitors will be able to reach it through our project website.

Finally, each of you will blog in real time about your discoveries, insights, breakthroughs, and technological achievements as well as your disappointments, failures, frustrations (with the course material and tools – not each other, please!) and dead ends at a site with the address http://woods.coplacdigital.org/<your_last_name>. Visitors will be able to reach your personal blog through the course website, which will aggregate snippets from everyone’s posts on a single page, with links to “read more” on your personal blogs themselves.

It’s a bit dizzying, but it will all make sense once the course is underway, and you’ll get lots of help! (Getting stuck and unstuck with WordPress is one thing you can blog about.) As you work in the two sites under your own control, remember two things: (1) Presenting research on the web requires you to think hard about how you organize your information and guide visitors through it, and (2) Writing for the web requires you to think hard about who your audience is and what tone to adopt in speaking to them.

Your project

You and your team partner will use your project website at http://woods.coplacdigital.org/<your_institution_name> to present the research you’ll do on either a physical intentional community in your geographic area or an online community you’d like to investigate. Whether you investigate a physical community or an online one, you’ll be expected to gather, organize, analyze, and present information through a combination of reading and personal outreach to community members. Early in the course, your team will develop a project contract stipulating such matters as the project’s name, description, and goals; who’s responsible for what; which digital tools you’ll be using in addition to WordPress; and project milestones with completion dates.

Your team website must be completed by November 29, 2017.

Presentations and papers

Starting in Week 8, you’ll each give the class a weekly status update on your project work in our Zoom meeting. You’ll alternate between short (3-5 minute) updates and longer, more detailed ones. At the end of the semester, you’ll each give an 8-10 minute public presentation on your project.

Your final blogpost for the semester will be a comprehensive reflection on your project: the fruits of your research and your engagement with digital scholarship this semester. It should be about 500 words.

Accommodations for students with disabilities

We’re committed to making this course and related activities accessible to persons with documented disabilities. If you receive services through your Office of Disability Resources and require accommodations for this class, please speak with us as soon as possible to discuss your approved accommodation needs. We’ll need a copy of your accommodation letter. We’ll hold any information you share with us in the strictest confidence unless you give us permission to do otherwise.

Assessment

You’ll be asked to complete one survey before the beginning of the semester and another at the end. They’re for information-gathering only and will have nothing to do with your grade in the course.

Grades

• Participation (blogging, responding to classmates’ blog posts, and other interactive assignments): 50%
• Project: contract, interim steps, final project and final presentation (50%)

We want you to succeed in this course. Fulfill the spirit of it, actively engage with your instructors and your peers, complete all assignments on time, take your research seriously, and present your results carefully and thoughtfully, and you’ll do well. We are never looking to “take off points” for mistakes or omissions. But we do care about the quality of your work. And so should you.

We’ll transmit the final grade to the instructor of record for this course at your institution, and that person will enter your grade using an independent study option at your home campus.

Course Schedule

Subject to change until course launch date: August 28, 2017