25%, Individual. All semester.

Participation

Participation here is five concrete things you do, each with its own weight. It is graded on showing up prepared with something real, not on who talks the most.

Attendance and discussion (5%)

This course happens in the room, in the spectrum-line votes, the debates where your assigned side is deliberately your unassigned view, and the labs that produce the deliverables on the Relay Wall. Being present and prepared, arguing the side you’re given, and doing the lab work with your group is the whole requirement. Absence logistics and accommodations live on the Policies page.

Problem Inventory (10%)

The inventory is a shared, running record of real service problems you have seen with your own eyes: at a placement, a job, a volunteer role, or while navigating these systems yourself or with family. It opens in Week 2, in the last few minutes of that week’s lab, and lives as a shared document linked on Canvas for the rest of the term.

Entries log situations. The four fields below ask what happened, who it affected, why it persists, and whether technology fits, in that order; there is no field for a proposed fix, and “tech seems irrelevant here” is a complete, welcome answer.

Entry format

Each entry has four fields, plus a rough domain tag:

1. The situation. What happens, concretely. A specific scene beats a general complaint: “new clients tell their full story three separate times during intake” beats “intake is inefficient.”
2. Who is affected. Name the people who carry the weight: clients, frontline staff, supervisors, the organization, funders.
3. What makes it hard. Why the problem persists: workload, funding rules, old systems, policy, habit, turnover, or nobody owning it.
4. Is tech relevant? Yes, no, or unsure, with one line of reasoning. “No, this is a staffing problem” is one of the most useful entries the inventory can hold.

Requirement and grading

Five entries across the semester: at least two by Week 6, and at least two more after Week 9, once partner fieldwork begins and groups start seeing partner problems firsthand. Entries are graded on quality, not volume: a specific scene, a specific who, an honest account of why the problem persists, and reasoned tech relevance. The Week 8 check looks for at least two entries in, with feedback and no separate grade.

Norms

• No client-identifying details. No names, and no combination of details that could identify a person, even without a name.
• Org names optional. Name your placement or partner only if you’re comfortable and the entry says nothing they’d consider a confidence.
• Firsthand preferred, secondhand labeled. If you heard it from a colleague rather than saw it, say so.
• No blame entries. Describe the system: “notes get thinner as caseloads grow” is an entry, “my supervisor is lazy about notes” is not.
• Lived experience counts. Navigating a benefits system for yourself or family is direct observation, and logging it carries no pressure to disclose more than the entry needs.
• Nobody’s entry gets fixed at them. Logging a problem is not volunteering to have the class solve it.

Uses across the course

Entries feed the Ethics Case (case picks and mitigation reality-checks), the Strategy Pitch (problem definitions at partner intake), and the two Debate Labs, where inventory entries stand in for hypotheticals.

Audio reflection journal (3%)

Every week opens and closes with a vote on the proposition, and the journal is where you account for your own two votes. Within a week of each session, record a 2-to-3-minute audio memo covering three things: where you stood on the proposition before class, where you stood at the revote, and what moved you or failed to move you. Close with one connection to your own practice: a placement, a job, a system you have navigated yourself, or your partner project once fieldwork starts.

Record and submit directly in the Canvas assignment for that week; the Canvas recorder works in a phone or laptop browser, so no software is needed. A phone voice memo uploaded as a file works too. If you want a warm-up first, the reflection coach walks you through the questions and runs a practice take that never leaves your device. Speaking is the format on purpose: two unrehearsed minutes of talking through why you changed your mind, or why the other side’s best argument still did not land, is closer to how you will defend judgments in practice than a polished paragraph.

Memos are graded complete or incomplete. A memo is complete when it takes a position on both votes and makes a real connection; there is no penalty for having voted with the losing side, for changing your mind, or for refusing to change it. The best 10 of your weekly memos count, so you can miss weeks without asking. The Week 14 memo, on the closing proposition, is due by the end of finals week.

No transcript is required, and the memos are heard only by the instructor. If speaking is not accessible to you, a written entry of similar length substitutes; see the Policies page for accommodations.

Guest-speaker responses (4%)

For at least three of the four guest sessions, submit a three-bullet response:

1. One insight you took from the session.
2. One question or disagreement. Submitted before the session; the instructor curates the best into the live Q&A, so a sharp question becomes part of the class.
3. One application to your own work, naming your partner project or a specific case-bank case.

Any of these formats works: a three-bullet card, an annotated screenshot, or a 60-second voice memo.

Design Walls (3%)

Three shared class boards run all semester: the Wall of Shame (design that excludes), the Wall of Curb Cuts (design aimed at one group that ended up helping everyone), and In the Wild This Week (tech-for-good news you spot as it happens). At least four substantive posts across the semester, spread over at least two walls.

The walls live online in the course discussion board, one category per wall, alongside the physical wall that runs in the classroom. Post online so the walls keep growing between sessions; the best finds get pinned to the physical wall in class.

A post is an image or link plus one sentence naming the design decision and who it includes or excludes. The sentence is the graded part. Three examples of the sentence:

• Wall of Shame: “This state benefits portal logs you out after 15 idle minutes and deletes the half-finished application, a session-timeout decision that excludes anyone applying on a shared phone, between shifts, or with a screen reader that moves slower than the timer.”
• Wall of Curb Cuts: “OXO’s Good Grips peeler was designed for one woman with arthritis, and the fat rubber handle decision now includes anyone with wet, cold, or tired hands.”
• In the Wild This Week: “My county library now lends wifi hotspots for weeks at a time, a circulation-policy decision that includes households who lost home broadband when the Affordable Connectivity Program ended.”

Each sentence names a decision (a timeout setting, a handle spec, a lending policy) instead of just a product, and it says who is in and who is out.

In Week 14 the class votes the Curb-Cut of the Semester and the Most Instructive Failure. Strong posts get harvested as case seeds for the Ethics Case and as examples for the Strategy Pitch, so the walls compound into the graded work instead of sitting beside it.

Event reflections (bonus, up to 3 points)

The instructor shares relevant events on Canvas through the semester: talks, webinars, conferences, and community events. Attend one and post a short reflection or summary to the Canvas discussion within a week of the event, and it earns one bonus point toward your participation grade. Up to three events count. Bonus points can make up for points lost elsewhere in participation; they do not raise the participation total past its 25 percent.