Q1ChrisBaker

Document Q1ChrisBaker

1. Your Name

Chris Baker

2. Your field of study?

computer science

3. In which semester of study are you?

1st semester master's

4. Why are you interested in taking this course?

My area of study for my Bachelor's degree (see my answer to the next question) has led me to be very interested in how software systems interact with the social realm. Since I am new to the school I am curious to see how these issues are approached by the CUB faculty, in ways that are similar to or differ from how they are approached at UCI.

5. What courses / work activities / background knowledge do you have which might be relevant to this course?

My Bachelor's degree is in Informatics from the University of California at Irvine. Informatics is a major within the school of Computer Science that brings a human element to traditional computer science, aiming to understand software within a social context.

6. Indicate your own digital literacy / fluency:
6.1. Describe your programming experience (languages, projects)

I'm fairly fluent in Java and Python. I have a bit of experience with Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I've worked quite a bit with various web technologies (html, xml, javascript, css...)

6.2. What applications are you familiar with (e.g. Photoshop, Canvas, Dreamweaver,...)?

I mostly work with software engineering tools, too numerous to list. The Eclipse IDE is possibly worth mentioning.

7 Give a brief description of the most important book / article which you have read with respect to the topic of the course.

I read a very interesting paper called "The Zephyr Help Instance: promoting ongoing activity in a CSCW system" by Ackerman and Palen. It basically outlines an example of a online collaborative technical help forum that was hugely successful at MIT. The reason for its success is thought to be a combination of the features the system provides and the unique culture at MIT. What I took away from the paper is that there is not just one set of perfect requirements for a piece of software that will work in every case, the software must be a good match for the context it will be deployed in.

8. What do you hope and expect to learn from this course?

I'm not sure really. The area the course will cover is extremely broad, so I'm curious to see what in particular the professor chooses to expose us to.