For the Digital Realities Class Participants:

As you have figured out this is an online course.  Despite the fact that Chaminade bases their online materials on Canvas we are going to use Google Groups.  This wasn’t done just to mess with you—while Canvas if OK as an educational platform, you’ll never see it after university.  Google Groups has become a standard for the corporate world, especially between corporations as it is a very robust, FREE sharing platform.  It is highly likely you already use Groups in your workplace—if not this is a low-risk way to get used to it.

The key is to CHECK YOUR CUH EMAIL.  I realize for some students emails are an ancient, formal form of communication that has been almost completely replaced by texting, tweeting etc., but the reality is it is how the university communicates with you.  Since you pay them money, want grades-degrees and other cool things, play their game and use the email.  The corporate world plays by the same rules.

This course is looking at a number of different aspects of the digital ‘realm’ in 2017.  I have grouped the topics into modules which reflect much of the current opinions or points of discussion.  As we’ll see these divisions are arbitrary in many ways, and much of the course content merges.

Please look over the presentation I will send out at the start of the week—I will try to have a blog up to go over some of the content in the slides.  I think you will quickly note that much of the material presented is either data or guesstimates rather than more formal content—this area is just coming into investigation and it’s the Wild West out there in terms of What It All Means.  An example would be the post-mortems on the last U.S. elections.

This course is almost unique in U.S. universities at this time [though a version is taught in several UK universities—see Open University UK] so feel free to be on the cutting edge of current social issues research.  As far as I can tell this material is taught at the grad level elsewhere.

As such we are going to look at each module theme as a research topic.  I will present the evidence and some of the current assumptions/predictions along with several readings [many are blog posts] and video clips.  I want you to look over the material and come up with your interpretation of the social impacts and then find some material that reflects your assessment of the situation, which you will then post so that the rest of the group can see what you think.  I will give more specific guidance at the beginning of each module but I think you will find that this approach makes the material more useful, especially as you look at your colleague’s analyses.

All this is just a heads up—I will send you the details in a day or two.  For now go over the intro material sent through Google Groups to you for this course.

Aroha, RB