Social Networking: The New Computer Fluency?

Social Networking: The New Computer Fluency? Tarsem S. Purewal Jr. Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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ABSTRACT

this rekindled interest and incorporate them into introductory computer science courses. In addition to engaging students, this can give them a context or framework for further studies in the discipline. The second problem, of course, appears more challenging. It is well-known that females often have developed certain attitudes towards computer science by the time they reach college although the mechanism behind this is not completely clear. This makes it difficult to even get them through the door of any computer science class, much less a course designed around object-oriented programming. It has been argued that – again – by framing the discipline in a more relevant context might assist in drawing more diversity to the discipline [10]. In my view, one of the best current topics to provide this context in order to address both issues is online social networks. This was also advocated quite clearly in a recent paper by several faculty members from Duke University [2], where the authors argue that social networks can provide relevant context and broaden participation in computing. They give a convincing argument that this is indeed the case, and they describe the potential of such a course in very general terms. They also outline three content modules that might be used in such a course. In this paper, I describe my implementation of a course centered around online social networks. The contribution beyond [2] is twofold. First, I explicitly describe how my course can meet traditional CS0 course objectives. Second, I outline the topics and the flow of the course in detail. Furthermore, the majority of the topics and course content that I present here are not described in [2]. This particular course has evolved over the years at the College of Charleston from a course called “Communications Technologies and the Internet.” During the Spring 2009 semester, it was renamed and advertised as “Social Networking.” Two sections were taught, servicing approximately 47 undergraduate students from varied majors. No prerequisites were enforced, but recommended skills included keyboarding and experience with e-mail.

This paper describes a course in online social networking that is flexible enough to meet the needs of most CS0 courses. Two sections of the course were taught at the College of Charleston during the Spring 2009 semester. We describe our experiences, we outline the topics and we offer suggestions on how the topics can meet the objectives of more traditional CS0 offerings.

Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.2 [COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION]: Computer and Information Science Education

General Terms Human Factors

Keywords Social Networks, Computer Science Education, CS0

1.

INTRODUCTION

Hooray! Shout it from the rooftops! Undergraduate enrollments in Computer Science have bottomed out, and in many instances have started to increase [21, 17]! As we cautiously enjoy increased enrollments and a renewed interest in our field, it’s important not to lose sight of two looming problems. First, the increased interest might be short-lived, particularly if we don’t find ways of making the discipline more relevant to those who may have discovered it through what some of us might refer to as unconventional means – their Facebook account, for instance. Second, the news is not entirely good; the Taulbee Survey indicates that diversity in our discipline has not increased along with this recent resurgence in interest [21]. The first problem has a relatively straight-forward solution. All one has to do is find the topics that have sparked

2. TRADITIONAL MODELS FOR CS0 There are no explicit models for a CS0 course that are recommended or documented by the ACM/IEEE curricular guidelines [1], but these courses are offered by many Computer Science departments at institutions ranging from small liberal arts colleges to major research universities. The current objectives for such courses generally fall into three categories:

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Objective 1: A service course that teaches some practical computing knowledge and/or meets a general education requirement at the institution [6].

then this clearly fixes this topic – at least partially – in the domain of computer science. Furthermore, the need for a public that is well-informed in these areas is beginning to be more important now that organizations and corporations are finding ways of compromising first amendment rights on the web [4] and politicians are working to further extend intellectual property laws in ways that may impede the progress of the public arts [13]. A well-informed populace has always been one of the goals of higher education; these days being well-informed in the basics of technology is essential to the preservation of our freedom and our democracy. In a previous paper, I’ve also argued that the third and fourth objective are not mutually exclusive [16].

Objective 2: A course that improves retention and success in subsequent CS courses, particularly CS1 [7, 8]. Objective 3: A course that is designed to recruit a more diverse group of students to the major [3, 15]. Topics and course materials vary depending on the instructor and which of these objectives that the course is meeting. For example, at an institution that requires a basic computer course as part of the general education requirement, there may be some expectation that the use of a word processor, a spreadsheet, and presentation software are covered since students may be expected to use these tools in future classes. A CS0 course at this type of institution would thus be designed to meet the first objective. In terms of the second objective, it appears that several institutions are moving towards a CS0 course that covers algorithmic thinking using tools such as Randy Pausch’s Alice language1 , MIT’s Scratch2 , and Processing3 . Recent papers demonstrate some level of success using these tools as a gentler introduction to programming and show that they do meet this objective – they seem to improve student success in subsequent programming courses [8]. Topics meeting the third objective can vary substantially, but one of the major underlying themes has been to make computing fun and more relevant to a new generation of students [11]. I am aware of CS courses taught as part of a freshmen first year experience program, for example, in topics ranging from Computer Graphics in Films, Computers Music and Art, and Robotics. These three objectives seem to encompass the general thinking when it comes to designing a CS0 course with no pre-requisites, but I’d argue that there is one more objective that should be considered in designing any course that we hope would appeal to a more general population than our usual clientele. That is the broader impact of the technical topics we are covering.

3. MEETING THESE OBJECTIVES During the Spring 2009 semester, I offered two sections of a course entitled ’Social Networking.’ This offering subsumed a course that had traditionally been called ’Communications Technology and the Internet.’ In the past, the catalog description has been: An introduction to digital communications technology. Topics include networking concepts, Internet and intranet tools, protocols and security. Also included are the infrastructure and governance of the Internet, with emphasis on personal, business, social, legal and ethical implications. Recommended skills are keyboarding and experience with e-mail and web browser software. This description lends itself well to the study of online social networks, since every topic in the description can be discussed or described in that context. My syllabus description for this particular offering of the course reads as follows: This course will examine the phenomenon of the Internet through the lens of social networking and social media. We’ll primarily focus on Social Networks, including social, legal and ethical implications. Along the way we’ll experiment with various social networks and social media technologies.

Objective 4: A course that prepares students to analyze and address the current ethical, social and legal implications of the growing ubiquity of and increased reliance on technology.

After the course description was solidified, the topics flowed fairly quickly. Below I describe eight topic sections that were covered roughly in order, and also a brief description of the term project that the students were required to complete.

The case for a course that covers social, ethical and legal issues for computer science majors has been argued numerous times before, and now appears as part of the ACM/IEEE curricular guidelines [1]. In addition to this, however, I believe that it is also essential that courses that cover these topics be offered to a wider audience and that such courses should include faculty who understand the technology itself. In the book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig argues that computer code can, in fact, be a social regulator for good and for bad, in the same way that government legislation can [12]. If one agrees with his arguments,

Overview of Online Social Networks The core of the course was designed around online social networks, so we began by examining an article by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison that covers, in some detail, the history of online social networks, their defining characteristics, recent research and lingering questions [5]. This article laid the groundwork of the entire course for us, with the exception of some of the more technical and entrepreneurial topics. The real beauty of this article, however, is that it illustrates that something so familiar and prevalent in a college student’s life (their Facebook account) can be examined from an academic perspective. The relevance of this topic, one that students may not often associate with computer science or even technology in general, along with the

1

www.alice.org scratch.mit.edu 3 processing.org 2

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Networks, Technology and the Cloud Next we moved on to technology. In particular, we discussed the TCP/IP protocol suite and how the Internet works at a fairly abstract level. Furthermore we discussed cloud computing in general, and how Facebook and Google Docs can be thought of as programs that live on the web in the application layer. We contrasted this with traditional software models, and described how developing non-cloud online social networking software would be challenging. This topic can meet the first two objectives quite nicely, depending on the depth and approach to the coverage. Several textbooks used for courses focused on computer literacy have chapters that cover these topics very well.

academic tone of the article can easily assist in meeting the third objective. Practical Uses of Web 2.0 Technologies For the second topic, we switched from the academic to the more practical. We examined Facebook and Twitter, exploring their uses beyond simply keeping up with friends. We asked whether they could be effectively used for advertising a business or professional networking in a job search, for example. We also discussed the differences between using the technology for broadcasting versus using the technology for communication. Next we moved on to discussing Google Docs. While not a Web 2.0 technology or website in the strictest definition, the fact that Google Docs allows students to more effectively collaborate on assignments made it a useful addition to the course. This is the same week that the first parts of the term project were assigned, so students immediately began using Google Docs to collaborate on the assignment. This also led into a discussion of building collaborative knowledge using sites like Wikipedia. Discussions focused on the reliability of collaborative knowledge tools as references in the context of the Stephen Colbert Wikiality incident [20] and the widespread belief that Wikipedia should never be used as a primary source4 . The course content in this section, particularly the use of Google Docs, can be expanded to meet the needs of courses that need to teach word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software meeting the first objective.

Security and Privacy Online At the end of our discussion of network technology, we talked very generally about wireless networks and how easy it is to intercept unencrypted transmissions. I briefly touched on the WEP and WPA encryption protocols in very practical terms (e.g. how to turn them on in your home wireless router) and made it known that WEP is a very weak protocol. Further topics for discussion included phishing attacks, and how both MySpace and Facebook leave open the possibility for online trackers to be installed in a user’s profile (meaning that a MySpace user can record your IP address when you visit their profile). Last, but not least, we discussed the importance of picking good passwords not only for your own security and privacy, but for your online ’friends’ as well. In particular I illustrated how a dictionary attack can be used to crack passwords. This dovetailed nicely into a discussion of computational thinking.

Mathematical Models of Social Networks Approaching this topic from the perspective of the ’sixdegrees of separation’ or the ’small-world’ hypothesis was described in [2]. I had two objectives in introducing this hypothesis. First, I wanted to give the students a concrete example of modeling complex phenomena using graphs, since graphs were later discussed in the context of computational thinking. Second I wanted the students to observe, differentiate and be critical of experimental evidence, mathematical evidence, and anecdotal evidence for hypotheses. In this case, the small-world hypothesis has been tested experimentally in the physical world by Stanley Milgram [14]; these experiments were later repeated in the digital world by Duncan Watts at Columbia University. Both of these experiments have shortcomings and we examined them critically [18]. Mathematically, one can argue that the six-degrees of separation hypothesis holds by making a couple of assumptions that seem rather implausible in the real world. I showed them the argument, which illustrates both trees and exponential growth, and we examined the assumptions critically. In terms of anecdotal evidence, it was fairly easy to pair up the students in the class and have them attempt to find a connection using their Facebook profiles. Several pairs of students were able to demonstrate a connection without too much work, and several others had interesting personal stories to share. We discussed whether or not it was appropriate to draw more general conclusions from anecdotal evidence such as this. This topic can meet the second objective if the discrete mathematics is emphasized, or it can meet the third objective if the sociological and experimental aspects of the hypothesis are studied in more detail. 4

Computational Thinking I developed a simple one-way “encryption”scheme to demonstrate a dictionary attack. Each letter of the alphabet is assigned a number, and the encrypted version of a password is the sum of these numbers multiplied by the product of these numbers. Developing an algorithm that computes this is a straightforward exercise even for students not familiar with programming. Using this encryption scheme, one can illustrate an algorithm for a dictionary attack with ease. After letting the students complete a worksheet where they discovered that they were able to crack passwords using their computational method by hand, I generalized their approach to a true dictionary attack, and showed them an implementation in the Python language. Following that we played with MIT’s Scratch software, where the students learned how it could be used to construct a program that computed the encrypted value for each password. Facebook has a wealth of interesting aspects that illustrate various aspects of computational thinking. In our class, one of the features of Facebook that we spent quite a bit of time discussing is the “People You May Know” tool. This tool generates suggestions for people you may know by analyzing local aspects of your social network graph. The simplest way that Facebook’s tool might work would be to make attempts to ’complete the clique5 .’ As Facebook collects its data about its network, it can look for very dense sub-graphs and add people that are not connected in those very dense sub-graphs to their ’people who likely 5 In a graph, a clique is a complete sub-graph – a set of vertices for which every pair of vertices contains an edge.

the irony is intentional

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Lessig’s book Free Culture [13], and discussions centered around the debate over whether current intellectual property laws are outdated in the age of the Internet. This is particularly interesting in the context of websites that contain user-generated content – who owns and controls your Facebook status updates?

know each other’ list. This is certainly an oversimplification of the real approach that is used, but discussing this opens up a tremendous number of interesting computational topics. Specifically the problem of counting the number of edges in a clique opens up recurrence relations, and the problem of finding a clique opens up NP-completeness. The former problem was discussed in some depth; the latter topic was discussed briefly. In general, this topic area is flexible enough to be expanded to meet the second objective.

Term Project Much of the out-of-class work for the course was based around the open-ended term project. In this project, the students worked in groups to develop an idea for a Web 2.0 application or website. The goal was to brainstorm the idea in the context of business models, web technologies, and user-interface design. Furthermore, they had to give two presentations – a midterm presentation on their idea, their research and their design. The final presentation was a more formal “investor presentation” that described the business model behind the idea and demonstrated a mock-up in front of an “investor” – a local expert in youth entrepreneurship. The learning objective of this activity was to get the students to think about developing a web-application at a very high level. It was my intention that this would inspire some of the students to take further Computer Science courses so that they could learn how to actually build their applications.

Modern Web Entrepreneurship An underlying theme of the course involved questioning how one can create useful technologies in order to start businesses. This was reflected in the term project assignment but we also spent some amount of class time discussing them. Serendipitously, the Economist magazine published an articles [19] on this topic right around the time we reached it in class. One of the articles asked if the Web 2.0 craze could lead to a second dotcom crash, and another described the difficulty in creating online business models based around advertisements. All of these topics were discussed, along with current approaches to making money through Internet businesses (micro-transactions for example). Most importantly, we discussed how technology shapes businesses and industries, and how fighting technology in order to hold onto outdated business models often fails. The perfect case study for this is the Recording Industry Association of America’s strong-armed approach to fighting digital copyright infringement. In doing so they created the perfect opportunity for Apple, a computer company, to succesfully corner the digital music market. This topic was chosen in an effort to meet the third objective.

4. REFLECTION Overall, I was pleased with the outcome of the course. Though I was initially afraid that the topics were too disparate to form a cohesive structure, I ended up very happy with the course flow. The most exciting aspect of the course, for me, was the fact that I was reading relevant articles in the news on a daily basis that I could bring in and share with the class. In fact, many of the required readings weren’t even written before the course began! In a field like computer science, where we often make the statement “technology changes so quickly,” you would expect this to be the case in many of our classes. Perhaps tellingly, I had never had that experience in computer science before teaching this course. Comments and ratings on the aggregated student evaluations and voluntary course surveys demonstrate that there was a substantial amount of enthusiasm for the topics, the projects and the course in general. The primary complaint from students seemed to involve the more challenging technical and mathematical content, which is to be expected in an introductory CS course that is designed for non-majors. Surprising to me, however, these complaints were very minimal. Forty-two of the 47 students completed the final course evaluation. All of them agreed with the statement “I would give this course a positive rating,” and 32 of them agreed strongly. Likewise, all of them agreed with the statement “This course stimulates critical thinking,” and 31 of them agreed strongly. If I were to teach this course again, I would likely make the term project a much more formal, structured endeavor, perhaps teaching tools such as Photoshop that would allow the students to create a professional mock-up of their idea. I would also be interested in pairing this course with a seniorlevel software engineering or web programming course. The senior-level computer science students would presumably have the skills to build the technologies that were designed by the

Social, Legal and Ethical Issues The bulk of the last third of the semester was spent discussing social and ethical issues that arise in social networks and through technology in general. This portion of the class was devoted to meeting the fourth objective. One of the most interesting incidents to happen in online social networking while I was teaching the course was Facebook’s change in its terms of service. In March of 2009, Facebook quietly altered their terms of service so that its users no longer retained full control or ownership of any content posted on its site. Interestingly, it took a week before this information reached news outlets. At this point there was an uproar and Facebook changed the terms of service back to the way they were originally [9]. This framed an interesting discussion over website terms of service, and whether or not they can and should be enforced. Another major topic was the Megan Meier case. Megan Meier was a twelve year old girl who was harassed by an adult posing as a twelve year old boy on MySpace. She committed suicide, and the case made national headlines, particularly when the adult was only found guilty of violating MySpace’s terms of service. This, of course, furthered the discussion of the enforceability of terms of service agreements and opened up discussions about cyberbullying. It framed debates about online behavior and whether it is ever appropriate to pretend you’re someone else on the Internet. The last major topic of the course was the debate over intellectual property laws. Readings were taken from Lawrence

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[2] C. Alt, O. Astrachan, J. Forbes, R. Lucic, and S. Rodger. Social Networks Generate Interest in Computer Science. SIGCSE 2006. 438-442. [3] K. Anewalt. Making CS0 fun: an active learning approach using toys, games and Alice. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges. Volume 23, Issue 3. 98-105. 2008. [4] Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. www.chillingeffects.org Retrieved September 10, 2009. [5] d. boyd and N. Ellison. Social network sites: Definition, history and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1), article 11. 2007. [6] D. Cliburn. A CS0 course for the liberal arts. SIGCSE 2006. 77-81 [7] C. Cook. A computer science freshmen orientation course. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin. Volume 28, Issue 2, June 1996. [8] C. Dierbach, B. Taylor, H. Zhou, and I. Zimand. Experiences with a CS0 course targeted for CS1 success. SIGCSE 2005. 317-320. [9] Facebook Yields to User Outrage: Reverts to Old TOS. PC World. February 18, 2009. http: //www.pcworld.com/article/159720/facebook_ yields_to_user_outrage_reverts_to_old_tos.html Retrieved September 10, 2009. [10] A. Fisher, J. Margolis, and F. Miller. Undergraduate women in computer science: Experience, motivation and culture. SIGCSE 1997. 106-110. [11] D. Garcia, R. Cutler, Z. Dodds, E. Roberts, and A. Young. Rediscovering the passion, beauty, joy, and awe: making computing fun again, continued. SIGCSE 2009. 65-66 [12] L. Lessig. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0. Basic Books. 2006. [13] L. Lessig. Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. Penguin. 2005. [14] S. Milgram. “An experimental study of the Small World Problem.” Sociometry, Vol 32, No 4, pp. 425-443. 1969. [15] J. Pearce and M. Nakazawa. The funnel that grew our CIS major in the CS desert. SIGCSE 2008. 503-507. [16] T. Purewal Jr, C. Bennett, and F. Maier. Embracing the Social Relevance – Computing, Ethics and the Community. SIGCSE 2007. [17] S. Reges. CS Intro Data. http://www.cs.washington. edu/homes/reges/sigcse/intro.html Retrieved September 10, 2009. [18] S. Schnettler. “A small world on feet of clay? A comparison of empirical small-world studies against best-practice criteria.” Social Networks, 31(3), pp. 179-189. 2009. [19] Six years in the Valley. The Economist Magazine. May 19th, 2009. [20] Wikipedia in Culture. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Wikipedia_in_culture\#Wikiality Retrieved September 10, 2009. [21] S. Zweben. 2007-2008 Taulbee Survey. Computing Research News, Volume 21, Number 3. May 2009.

social networking students. This type of collaboration experience might benefit both groups. According to [2] topics relating to social networks could generate more interest in computing-based careers among females. Of the 47 students that signed up for my course last Spring, 16 were females. While this made the course more diverse than most computer science courses in which I’ve been involved, it certainly leaves a little to be desired. This may, however, be an anomaly – the name of the course was changed after registration began in the Fall 2008 semester, and advertising for the new topics in the course was limited to our college newspaper and word of mouth. I’m positive that officially changing the course title from “Communications Technologies and the Internet” generated more student interest. Departments that are struggling with enrollments in courses called “Computer Fluency,” or something similar might see an immediate turnaround after implementing this type of change. As an interesting aside, while I was teaching this course I was also making regular trips to local and regional high schools to share with students my view of computer science and computational thinking. During the presentations I often talked a little about Facebook and other online social networks; the high school students would often speak up to interject their thoughts on the topic. When I told them that I was teaching a course about it, they were thrilled to hear that such a course existed. More generally speaking, I firmly believe the primary message of this article: framing CS0 in the context of online social networking can re-energize the course while still meeting all of the necessary objectives. The beauty of the topic lies in its flexibility, its relevance, and its draw. I’m hopeful that exploring how traditional computing topics closely relate might propel otherwise uninterested students further along in the discipline, but I don’t currently have any data to support that. On a longer time-line, however, I will admit that online social networking phenomenon may prove to be a fad and therefore it may not always be suitable for an introductory computer science course. That doesn’t change the fact that it is a good topic now, and that now is when we need it the most. So while we’re enjoying our time teaching these social networking topics we can also be on the lookout for the next technology that will capture the public’s imagination. At that point we’ll need to start figuring out how to frame our introductory topics in that context. After all, the fact that things change so rapidly in our discipline is part of the fun of computer science, right?

5.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the CS Department at the College of Charleston for allowing me to teach this course while I was visiting. Also thanks to Brian Giarrocco, a student at CofC, for several discussions on social networks and entrepreneurship which sparked ideas for the course. Finally, thanks to several anonymous reviewers for very helpful feedback.

6.

REFERENCES

[1] Computer Science Curriculum 2008: An Interim Revision of CS 2001; Report from the Interim Review Task Force. http://www.acm.org/education/ curricula/ComputerScience2008.pdf Retrieved December 6, 2009.

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