Syllabus overview

The formal syllabus of record lives on Canvas as a document. This page is the readable version: what the course is, what you will do, and how you will be graded.

SIL 503, Technology for Social Good: Innovation and Ethics in Social Impact Leadership Fall 2026, 3 credits, In person, weekly 3-hour block, No prerequisites, Letter grades Instructor: Nari Yoo, PhD, nariyoo@umich.edu

Course description

This course examines the transformative role of technology in advancing social impact, with particular attention to current and emerging technological trends. Students will explore both the opportunities and ethical challenges posed by technology in social change work, including artificial intelligence, data systems, and digital tools for community engagement. The course emphasizes practical applications of technology in personal and organizational workflows, prompt engineering for AI tools, and understanding the community-level impacts of technological solutions. Students will develop principles for ethical use of technology that consider environmental sustainability, equitable access, and community well-being.

Social work has used data and technology from its beginning. Charity organization societies built case registries to sort families experiencing poverty. Hull House residents and W. E. B. Du Bois used maps and data portraits to document injustice. Today’s debates about AI belong to that longer history, and this course teaches both sides of it.

The course covers eight core areas: digital equity and the digital divide; technology ethics grounded in social work values; data sovereignty and privacy; algorithmic bias and fairness; human-centered design; digital storytelling; technology accessibility; and ICT for development. It runs on three commitments. First, every technology gets the same interrogation, whether it harmed people or helped them; the sociotechnical protocol is that interrogation. Second, you use the tools yourself, every week, with disclosure and verification. Third, the course holds a situated humility about technology choices: decisions are made from the situation, voice, and constraints of the community involved, and even good decisions do not guarantee control over what a technology becomes.

Learning objectives

By the end of the course you will be able to:

1. Evaluate the role of technology in social impact work through an ethical lens, identifying both opportunities and harms.
2. Explain in plain terms how AI and generative AI work, and use them responsibly, with disclosure and verification.
3. Analyze the ethical implications of emerging technologies for marginalized communities.
4. Apply digital storytelling techniques with real attention to accessibility, consent, and ethical representation.
5. Talk about technology fluently with funders, technologists, community members, and policymakers.
6. Build an actionable technology implementation plan grounded in needs assessment, ethics, accessibility, and evaluation.

Grading

Full guidance, worked examples, and rubrics live on each assignment page.

AI policy

You will use AI in this course; the labs require it. Three obligations come with that. Disclose every use (the class writes its own disclosure form together in Week 5). Verify every output before it enters your work; an unverified AI error is graded as your error. Own the analysis; AI can help you draft and test ideas, but the judgment in your submissions has to be yours. Hidden AI use is an academic integrity violation. Disclosed use carries no penalty, ever.

Reading load

Each week assigns two or three items, and every one of them is linked from that week’s page. Videos and interactive pieces are treated as lighter items. Five books come up across the semester: Eubanks’ Automating Inequality, Benjamin’s Race After Technology, D’Ignazio and Klein’s Data Feminism, Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice, and Crawford’s Atlas of AI. The course assigns excerpts from them, and Data Feminism and Design Justice are fully open access online, so none of the five needs to be purchased.

Community partners and guests

Every project group works with a real community organization, arranged through the instructor’s community partnerships. Groups are matched and the partnership announced in Week 5, well ahead of the Week 9 needs-assessment launch. Partners give one intake conversation, two to three stakeholder interviews, and receive your finished strategy plan. Treat their time as the scarce resource it is.

Four to five guest sessions run about an hour each, spanning technology in human services, community storytelling, inclusive design, and participatory design. Speakers are confirmed on Canvas before the term starts, and speaker responses count toward participation.