This course combines an in-depth look into several decades of research into online communities with exercises that aim to give students experience applying this research to the evaluation of, and hands-on participation in, online communities.

As majors of communication in the twenty-first century, I expect that students taking this course will, after graduation, work in jobs that involve communicating, working with, or managing online communities. This class seeks to inform these experiences by helping you learn how to use and contribute to online communities more effectively and how to construct, improve, or design your own online communities.

We are engaging with Wikipedia so that students can learn from the experiencing of joining, engage, contributing effectively to a large, complex, online community. Students will improve existing articles and then reflect on their experience joining the community by suggesting ways that Wikipedia might improve its own processes.