Every other week, when there are reading assignments (the reading assignments are numbered on the schedule page), you will participate in blogging or reviewing. You must explain and connect ALL the assigned readings. You must demonstrate a detailed understanding of the reading sets through blogging, reviewing, and class participation.

Among the goals for this assignment are for you to develop skills in reading research papers, writing them, and reviewing them.

Every other week, expect to either write or review a blog post. When you are writing, the post is due at 8pm the day before class (no exceptions). This is necessary so your post can be reviewed. When you are reviewing, you must submit by 8pm the day of class.

One fourth the class will be in the Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow groups. Within these, for each reading assignment, one group will blog and another will review. When you are blogging (¼ of the time), your will write a Reading Reflections blog entry for each reading. When you are reviewing (¼ of the time), you will be assigned (anonymously) a blogger to review for that class. You will review that person's current blog post. Your blog posts and reviews constitute an opportunity to develop critical thinking, comprehension, and synthesis skills, regarding relevant HCC literature. These active reading skills are valuable for success not just in this course, but, more generally, in graduate school and throughout your career.

Reading Reflections Blog Posts

Each reading reflections blog post will be peer-reviewed, on a scale of 1-5, based on the following criteria:

• Effective Summarization [60%]- Author a focused description of the reading. For a research paper, make sure to address each of these aspects. As part of this, consider how are these elements connected (or not), to form a convincing argument, on the whole?
  
  For other readings, adapt. For example, the design readings use real world examples, which can be considered as a form of case study [PRS 13.4].

• Research Questions: What are the primary research questions? That is, what did the researchers set out to investigate?
• Problem statement: How do the researchers argue the significance of the research questions and the validity of their approach?
• Study Methodology: How is the research performed? In particular, who are study participants? How is data / evidence gathered? How do the researchers plan to analyze the data?
• Study Findings: What data has been gathered? How is the data analyzed? What do we learn from the data analysis? In other words, what evidence has been gathered in service of investigation of the research questions?
• Discussion / Implications for Design: How are findings connected to each other and prior work, in order to distill new knowledge, which has the potential to guide the actions of future researchers and practitioners? What specific, new lessons have been learned? What are the implications for design, which give future designers concrete and novel advice about how to design systems or studies? What new theory has been developed?
• Figures + Captions: How are illustrations and diagrams used to illustrate critical aspects of the research? How are captions used to contextualize the figures? How are the figures anchored in the main text of the article?

• Insightful Synthesis [30%] - How are the readings in the set connected to each other? How are they connected to the core concerns of our course (i.e., everything that we've read and discussed so far)? Juxtapose and compare concepts and contributions.
• Contextualize the authors and time. [10%] -- Look all of them up in Google and in Google Scholar. Who are they? What field are they in? Where do they work? Consider when this was written. Contextualize.
• Application of Concepts [extra 10%] - How does the writer apply the readings in the specific contexts of projects and research of interest to themself? [Extra points]

Reviewing (not for 422)

Reviewing is an important skill for researchers. Evaluating others' writing helps you understand how to write, yourself. Good reviewing balances generosity and criticality. Ken Hinckley's piece about how to write reviews for ACM CHI is here. My own Guide to Empathetic Reviewing is here.

Each review consists of (1) four ratings (1-5), one for each of the above criteria; (2) one paragraph that summarizes the blog post, addressing the criteria specified above; (3) one+paragraph that provides feedback on the post, addressing the criteria specified above. The more specific you are in critiques, the better.

MAKE SURE your summary and critique paragraphs are substantial.

If you go to review a blog post, after its deadline, and the post has not been submitted, you must indicate this in the review form, and then, instead review the paper itself.

Your review form is here.

Blogging - How to Publish

Use substack to host your blog posts. For each blog entry, you will make a reading reflections post.

To get started on substack:

• Log in or create a new account.
• Make sure your full name is included.
• Post your substack profile page URL in this form.
• For each post

• make a thoughtful title that expresses what you think about the readings.
• include the subject of the readings in the subtitle.

• Substack affords for a mix of paragraphs, images, sounds, links, and formatting. You are encouraged to use multimedia (note: a relevant graphic (gif!?) or two is the way to a reviewer's heart). Produce creative, legible, and professional) blog posts.

Deadlines and Credit

To receive credit, you must submit each reading reflections blog post by 6 pm, the night before the class in which the readings are discussed. Late blog posts may not be accepted or graded with a penalty.

Reviews are due by 8 pm, the day of class. Reviews received in the subsequent 48 hours will be accepted only twice in the course of the semester, but may be graded with a penalty.