Syllabus

Professor: Jim Brown
Meeting times: Tuesday and Thursday, 9:35am-10:55am
Meeting Place: Digital Commons, Room 102 (WWCAUD)

Prof. Brown's Office: Digital Commons, Room 104
Prof. Brown' Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00-12:00 or by appointment
Prof. Brown's Email: jim[dot]brown[at]rutgers[dot]edu

Course Website: http://courses.jamesjbrownjr.net/101_fall2025

Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this class, students will be able to:

  • demonstrate familiarity with theories of digital media and culture
  • apply a critical vocabulary for analyzing digital technologies
  • analyze, summarize, and compare arguments about digital media and culture
  • communicate challenging concepts to an audience

Required Texts

  • Students are not required to purchase any books for this class. Readings will be distributed as paper handouts.
  • You are required to have a 3-ring binder devoted to this class as well as loose leaf paper and something with which to write. Your binder will be available to you during unit tests. If you require a different way of taking notes for accessibility reasons, please see me during the first week of class.

Attendance
Attendance in this class is crucial, and it is worth 10% of your grade, which makes each day's attendance worth .357 points. That seems small, but those points add up. If you arrive more than 5 minutes late for class, you will receive half-credit for that day's attendance. If you arrive more than 10 minutes late, you will be marked absent. If there is something that regularly prevents you from arriving to class on time, please speak with me during the first week of class.

Course Work and Grades
This class is comprised of 100 points. The breakdown of those points is as follows:

  • 10: Attendance (28 class meetings, 0.357 points per meeting)
  • 40: Student-led Classroom Discussions (8 discussions, 5 points per discussion)
  • 8: Peer review of student-led discussions (peer review survey submitted at end of semester)
  • 12: Lab Reports: 12 points (4 lab reports, 3 points each)
  • 30: Unit Tests (2 tests, 15 points each)

Grades will be assigned on the following scale:

A 90-100
B+ 88-89
B 80-87
C+ 78-79
C 70-77
D 60-69
F 59 and below

Content Warnings
If we will be reading and discussing material that addresses sensitive topics, I will do my best to let you know in advance. If there are certain specific topics you would like me to provide warnings about, please let me know. I will do my best to flag content based on your requests.

Technology Policy
Unless otherwise stated, no one is ever permitted to use a phone during class (this includes the instructor). If you need access to your phone during class for an emergency reason, please let me know prior to class, but even in such cases the phone must be put away. During certain class sessions, we will not use computers at all. During other sessions, computers will be used for research and planning of our discussions. Please observe whatever rules are in place for that day's meeting.

Canvas and Course Website
This class will not make use of Canvas for many things. While I will use it to communicate with you, to share files, and to post grades, nearly all of our work will happen inside the classroom. The course website will have important information about assignments and policies. Pay close attention to the course schedule as we move through the semester. I reserve the right to move things around on our schedule as necessary, but I will always tell you well in advance if I am making changes.

Email
Please pay close attention to your email for course announcements. If you email me on a weekday, I will respond within 24 hours. If you email during the weekend, you will likely not receive a response before Monday morning.

AI Statement*
For certain assignments in this class, you will not be permitted to use AI technologies. In general, I would discourage you from using these tools at all. At the very least, I would encourage you to limit your use of them. When you do use AI in this class, you will be required to provide a detailed statement about why and how you used those tools.

We’ve all encountered poor AI outputs (often called AI Slop or "hallucinations"). Beyond AI's ineffectiveness for many tasks, it is important to recognize that AI use has significant social and environmental impacts. Avoiding unnecessary AI queries, generative AI (such as ChatGPT), and/or turning off AI-assist on search platforms (by typing “-ai” after a query) can help minimize environmental degradation, human exploitation, and improve your learning experiences.

Please consider the following before using AI:

  • Labor and learning impacts: AI depends upon biased, incomplete, and incorrect data and is unproven in teaching and learning scenarios. Accepting AI's poor outputs can negatively impact student learning and infringes on both student and instructor intellectual property rights. For your instructors, it worsens their working conditions and creates job and wage insecurity. More broadly, digital hardware supply chains often rely on extracting rare earth minerals through exploitative mining and forced labor.
  • Environmental impacts: AI depends on intense energy use, which increases greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. AI requires large quantities of water to cool hard drives to optimal data processing temperatures. As AI-invested companies are focused on continual expansion, upgrades of AI software generate immense amounts of e-waste. Unlike other forms of consumption, it is particularly difficult to recycle resources associated with AI use.

*Portions of this section of the syllabus are taken from a statement written by the Rutgers AAUP-AFT Climate Justice Committee.

University policies and resources

Academic Integrity
My assumption is that any work you turn in for this course has been completed by you. Per the AI policy stated above, any use of LLMs or other AI technology must be documented in detail, explaining why and how you used it. If you ever have questions about AI use or about proper attribution or citation, please don't hesitate to ask.

Code of Conduct
Rutgers University-Camden seeks a community that is free from violence, threats, and intimidation; that is respectful of the rights, opportunities, and welfare of students, faculty, staff, and guests of the University; and that does not threaten the physical or mental health or safety of members of the University community and includes classroom space. As a student at the University, you are expected adhere to Student Code of Conduct: https://camden.rutgers.edu/deanofstudents/community-standards

Office of Disability Services
The Office of Disability Services (ODS) provides students with confidential accommodation services in order to allow students with documented physical, mental, and learning disabilities to successfully complete their course of study at Rutgers University – Camden. The ODS provides accommodation services, which can include readers, interpreters, alternate text, special equipment, and note takers. The ODS also works with students, faculty, staff and administrators to enforce the American with Disabilities Act of 1990. https://ods.rutgers.edu/