Assignments:

Grading in this class will be based on the following criteria:

Active and informed participation in class discussions: 40%
Short assignments: 30%
Final project: 30%

Each week, we'll discuss issues related to changing our practices, at home, at work, throughout the university. We'll also look at a number of models for change and factors to consider in making choices about change. As the semester progresses, our discussions will move from discussion to brainstorming and researching possible solutions, considering roadblocks, and finally to implementing our ideas.

Participation

Most of our in-class time will be spent in discussion, It won't work without your active participation in class, and out of class. I will be providing references for further reading and research, as will your classmates. Make it a habit to follow the various blogs, books, articles, and other references that come up in our discussion, and to offer your own sources of information where you've got them. If a link or reference is mentioned for discussion in the next class, read it in advance. Ask questions via email on the SMIT list, or here in the wiki before class if you want, or let me know that you'd like to dedicate class time to it. I'll add it wherever it's most useful for the whole class.

Reports and Research

Over the course of the semester, you'll gather lots of knowledge about the specific topics that are of interest to you, and ideas for new solutions. Keep a page on this wiki, or a link to your own pages, about what you learn. With every new piece of information, ask yourself what you can do as a result of knowing it. Which of your own patterns will it change? Who do you know who could make most use of the information? If it's not clear how to act on it, how can you make it clear? Your notes should provide fodder not only for your own projects, but for anyone reading you as well.

Reading

We'll be reading a number of articles and chapters of books in this class, to fuel the discussion. Anything that's not online will be handed out in class. Readings are listed one week in advance: the readings from one week are to set the tone for the next week's discussion. These may change as the semester proceeds, depending on the direction of the class. Please check the syllabus schedule for updates, and keep up with the reading.

In addition to the assigned reading, you'll find it useful to keep up with some of the more popular blogs on the subject at hand. WorldChanging, Grist, Treehugger, and Sustainable Style are a good start, all of which are agggregated on the Feeds page. If you have others, please add them to the discussion.

Class Project

You'll be responsible for a semester-long project in this class. You should work in groups of three or more for this project. You may pick your own groups, but anyone not in a group by week 6 will be assigned to one. Your project should focus on an existing practice or behavior, examining its environmental impact, and suggesting ways to change that practice for the better. You can pick a project in the workplace, the home, or daily city life. Ideally, it should be an activity that you or someone you know is involved in. Study the behavior in question, make notes on how it's done, and by whom. Note what goes into it, in terms of materials, energy, and labor, and what comes out of it, in terms of products and wastes. Consider what happens to the products when they're no longer used. Suggest or make changes.

Many attempts at changing people's behavior in this realm fail because of two assumptions:

they assume that the information needed to change one's habits is readily available
they assume that people already have the desire to change.

Both of these are often false assumptions. In your work, you should assume the opposite. First, assume that the information is not at hand. Find ways to make it easily available. Second, assume that people are happy with the way they're doing things. Look for ways to make them prefer the alternative.

A few sample ideas for projects:

Come up with a new Product Service System to change the flow of material resources for a given product. Describe what the service is and how it contributes to a more sustainable environment. Research the materials and energy flows for the product in question, and propose how the exchange of those products could be converted to a service, in which the materials used are re-used or reclaimed by a participant in the system. Research the amounts of materials and energy used to make it happen, and assess the impact of your service in terms of materials or energy reused or diverted from the waste stream.
Develop an interactive exhibit to explain a given process related to this subject. For example, you may want to come up with an exhibit to explain the flow of goods or energy in a given industry, or an exhibit to make carbon sequestration comprehensible to the general public. In your exhibit, make it clear where the viewer or participant fits into the system, and how her actions affect the system.
Design a visualization, interactive or otherwise, to promote awareness of environmental dynamics that has otherwise remained hidden. You might consider building a tool for visualizing weather data in realtime, or energy consumption over a long period, or some other representation of a real environmental data set. Consider submitting your work for Eyebeam's Ecovisualization Challenge
Develop a guide for helping businesses change a specific practice. You might learn that the energy used by commercial ISPs is a significant resource drain, investigate alternative power sources and the ISPs that already use them, and come up with a guide for web development shops on how to switch painlessly to green providers.
You can choose to continue the work started in the previous semesters. Many of the projects from Fall 2006 made good observations and suggestions, but did not get time to see their suggestions through long-term, or to test their hypotheses. If one or more of these projects appeals to you, talk to me about it.

In some cases, the projects will be beyond the time scale or the budget you have to work with. Do not shy away for these reasons. If you can formulate and document a great plan, maybe even write a grant to get it funded or negotiate thrhough the institution to get it approved, you'll have done great work to either pass on to someone else next semester or to take up as a thesis yourself. The key to a good project is that it include a concrete and clear plan for action, and a timetable (and perhaps a budget, if appropriate) for realizing the project's goal. You may work at at a small or a large a scale.

There are three milestones laid out in the course schedule for your project:

In-class presentation - this will be the first time you present your project to the class for feedback. There may be many details missing, but provide enough of a description so that your classmates understand why you'd do the project, what is to be learned from it, and can make suggestions on how to implement it.
Abstract - prepare a one-page summary of the project, including a short summary of the practice you want to address, the effects that practice has, and the change you envision. Think of this as the explanation you give when asked on the spot for a one-minute intro to your project. This milestone comes first, so you know from the beginning what you're working on and why.
Initial presentation to guests - this is detailed presentation of your project, including
- the background,
- a summary of your approach,
- the roadblocks you see in realzing the project,
- the assumptions underlying your approach,
- the people and resources needed to realize the project,
- the hoped-for results

There may be details missing at this stage. For example, you may not have worked out a budget, or there may be technical knowledge you need in order to go further. Make sure you state what's not known as well. The unknowns are action items. We'll hopefully have some outside guests available for these presentations to provide critique and advice, so plan the presentation accordingly.

Final presentation - in some cases, this will be a full presentation of the project, including all of the above, plus what you did and what the results were. In other cases, you may be only at the beginning of a larger project. If the latter is true, present the project so far, and explain the road ahead for it. Lay out the next milestones, explain the costs and benefits, and document it all well and clearly so that you or someone else can take the project further in the future. This is a formal presentation, and should be planned in advance with your collaborators. We'll hopefully have some outside guests available for these presentations to provide critique and advice.
Final Report - document your project on the web, either on this wiki or on your own site separate from any blog entries on the project. This should be a formal, clear summary of the work that can stand alone as a report on your work. Readers from outside ITP should be able to get the full scope of your project from this report.