Examination: Social Media Technologies, socmed09

Home exam (24 hours), date to be announce

A home exam with around 8 questions and a maximum of 25 points will be handed out after the course finishes (mid-December). I am personally flexible about the date of the exam and will organize a vote using the web-based "social scheduling" service Doodle (www.doodl.com). You will be able to download the exam from Bilda at the designated time and there will be a folder/dropbox where you can upload your exam before the deadline (there will also be a folder where you can drop your exam if you hand it in late).

Seminar assignments (5 times)

Each seminar assignments can be regarded as a (tough) exam questions that is done in advance of the final exam. Each seminar assignment is worth a maximum of 7 points. Points will be awarded as follows:
1-4 points depending on quality of seminar assignment
+1 TrueBonus(tm) point for an excellently written seminar assignment
+2 point for attendance at the seminar
-1 point for submitting the assignment late

Your seminar assignment will be awarded one, two, three or four points. I expect the most common outcome on each assignments to be either 2 or 3 points for the assignment + 2 point for attendance. I will try to take active participation at the seminars into account, i.e. the fact that you have contributed a lot (talked, asked questions and answered questions posed by others) at the seminars might make a difference if your final grade for the course hinges right in-between two different grades.

To get a TrueBonus point on a seminar assignment will be unusual and will require an excellently written seminar assignment. A TrueBonus point really is a bonus in the sense that it makes it possible to surpass the maximum amount of points in the course (but only a few were awarded at each seminar last year).

Seminar assignment texts will be graded based on:

Quality/uniqueness of ideas (25%)

Are interesting insights and reflections presented? Does the student go beyond repeating what is written in the course literature in an attempt to apply it?

Quality of analysis, reflection and execution (25%)

To define, explain, exemplify and quote is fine. To also be able to analyze and reflect by (for example) identifying, categorizing, relating, differentiating, contrasting, combining, modifying and concluding is even better.
Are ideas and insights presented in a coherent way, are the steps in the underlying reasoning process logical and clear (or are there blanks that need to be filled)?

(Relevant) use of course literature and other sources (25%)

Is the course literature and other sources (including own/personal experiences) integrated and skillfully used in the text?

Quality of language (25%)

Does the text flow effortlessly? Is the text easy to understand and with few linguistic errors, or does it require effort to understand the underlying ideas?

Comment: My experience from last year's course is that Swedish students on average got more points for their seminar assignments than students from most other countries. I am not exactly sure why that is, perhaps they are better at interpreting what a Swedish teacher (me) expects someone to write when they get a relatively free and open task to write about?

In any case, my suggestion for foreign students it to try to use your experiences of social media in another context, i.e. the context of your home country, in order to try to find an interesting and perhaps even unique perspective on the seminar assignments. Do attempt to apply the theories from the texts we read to the situation and to phenomena in your home country, and analyze if these theories make sense or if they fail to explain social media phenomena. Also Swedish students can do the same, taking into account that the book is written in an American context, and by an American author.

There are many students taking the course, quite a few more than we expected, and I will not be able to grade all 70+ weekly seminar assignments during the course. I aim for at least grading assignments from one, hopefully two and in a (probably unrealistic) best-case scenario all three seminar groups every week. If I grade groups A and B one week, I will continue with group C the next week.

You will thus not get grades and feedback on all of your assignments until after the course finishes. Assignments that are handed in late will have the lowest priority and will be graded after the course finishes.

Group assignment (last seminar)

The group assignment will be handed out after you have been divided into groups at seminar 2. You will present your work together as a group through a poster, a short talk and a short report (4-6 pages).

The group assignment is less formal and you will be free to brainstorm and even be slightly whimsical (the sky is the limit). Aim also for entertaining the other participants with far-out ideas (that are still not totally unrealistic). The group assignment will not be graded, but it is compulsory and you have to deliver in order to pass the course.

Lecture attendance

You are free to choose if you want to attend the ordinary lectures in the course (by Daniel Pargman). The lecture notes will on the one hand always be uploaded to Bilda, but it might be beneficial to your results on the home exam if you attend the lectures. You will probably also get help in interpreting the course literature if you attend the lectures and you might also learn something new that is not in the literature.

To encourage you to attend the guest lectures (one per week), even those that are scheduled at 8 in the morning, you will get one point per lecture for attendance (5 points altogether).

Grading

Some acivities are compulsory in the course and you need to fulfill them to be able to pass the course:

Preparing a poster, a short tallk and a short report for the group assignment.

Other activities are optional but counts towards your grade:

Home exam (25 points)
Seminar assignments (30 points (+ TrueBonus(tm) points))
Guest lecture attendance (5 points)

The maximum number of points you can get in the course is 60 (excluding TrueBonus(tm) poins). Grades will be awarded as follows:

Points	Grade
60-54	A
53-48	B
47-42	C
41-36	D
35-30	E
29-	F

Examination of this 7.5 credit course formally (according to the course description) consists of two parts; 5-credit examination part and a 2.5-credit “other” (seminars) part. The seminar assignments can be seen as questions on home exam that are done in advance (one per week throughout the course) and grading of those assignments are subsumed with the home exam to form a single grade for the whole course (A, B, C, D, E, FX, F). You will formally (in your transcript of the course) always get the same grade on both parts of the course. You need to fulfill the compulsore parts of the course in order to pass the 2.5-credit "other" (seminars) part of the course.