Grading Policy |
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| a. Assignments 30% b. Class attendance & participation 20% c. Course project 50% Each assignment will consist of three parts. (1) Choosing a research topic (2) Researching that topic and writing a 1 blog post on it, and (3) Preparing 1-2 slides summarizing your research that will be presented in 1-2 minutes in class Each assignment will be evaluated for the content and research quality as well as timeliness for submission. This is a project oriented graduate class and we're more concerned about the quality of your work, your input during class discussion as well as the final course project. We will help you along the way. Permissions to miss a lecture or for a time extension can be sought for genuine reasons from the course instructor. There will be a 25% reduction for an assignment grade for every 5 hours of delay in submission. Presentations submitted after the deadline won't be included for the class. |
Class Date | Assignments & Deadlines |
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| 2/7/2014 | (1) Register Please fill out the student information form here. Please register before Sunday 2/10 5pm.You will get an email by 9pm same night registering you as a contributor to the blog to give you posting permissions. (2) Assignment 1 Your assignment this week will be to find some sleep research, sleep tools or sleep technologies, pick 1 or 2 interesting papers/studies/products and review them. The goal of this whole exercise is for your fellow class members (& the instructors) to learn something new & interesting. You will write a one page blog entry and describe: - what is your chosen sleep research/paper/talk/book/product (provide link)? - provide a brief summary of the ideas/functionality? - what can the class learn from this paper/book/technology? - give a critical assessment of the paper/product? How well does it work? - how could this lead to some interesting class projects/prototypes, if so, how? (a) Please sign up for a topic by Sunday 2/9 9pm here (b) Post your one pager online by Wednesday 2/12 before noon. You would have received an email giving you a contributor account so that you can post on the blog. To post, visit this link. Go to 'Post' on the dashboard on the left and say 'Add New'. You will get an editor where you can type / paste your post. Add the tag 'Sleep' to your post on the right hand side prior to posting. To publish your post, press 'Publish' on the right hand side. (c) Finally prepare 1 or two slides for a 2 minute presentation of your findings in the class on Friday 2/14 afternoon. Name your file with the following rule - sleepResearch-lastName.ppt. For example, my ppt file would be named sleepResearch-Dinakar.ppt. Upload your slides file here. We have provided some example topics you can choose from or you can add/find your own. (1) Review paper Strengthening Individual Memories by Reactivating Them During Sleep (2) Review paper Sleep-dependent memory triage (3) Review talk review Russell Foster's work on sleep: Russell Foster Ted Talk (4) Blue light has been shown to impact sleep, but its also interesting in that blue light which adversely affects sleep patterns is found helpful to stay alert and avoiding fatigue: Diurnal Spectral Sensitivity of the Acute Alerting Effects of Light (5) Flu.x, an app for Macbook which automatically cuts off blue light from your monitor after sunset so that you can sleep better. (6) Try and review 1 or more Sleep trackers: - fitbit - sleep as android - jawbone - sleepcycle - sleepbot (7) Research good sleep habits in reliable sources, example this nice article. |
| 2/14/2014 | Assignment 2 Your assignment for this week will be to research 1-2 topics on mindfulness and neurofeedback. The goal of this whole exercise is for your fellow class members (& the instructors) to learn something new & interesting. You will write a one page blog entry and describe: - what is your chosen mindfulness research/paper/talk/book/product (provide link)? - provide a brief summary of the ideas/functionality? - what can the class learn from this paper/book/technology? - give a critical assessment of the paper/product? How well does it work? - how could this lead to some interesting class projects/prototypes, if so, how? (a) Please sign up for a topic by Sunday 2/16 9pm here. (b) Post your one pager online by Wednesday 2/19 before noon. You would have received an email giving you a contributor account so that you can post on the blog. To post, visit this link. Go to 'Post' on the dashboard on the left and say 'Add New'. You will get an editor where you can type / paste your post. Add the tag 'Mindfulness' to your post on the right hand side prior to posting. To publish your post, press 'Publish' on the right hand side. (c) Finally prepare 1 or two slides for a 2 minute presentation of your findings in the class on Friday 2/21 12pm. Name your file with the following rule - mindfulnessResearch-lastName.ppt. For example, my ppt file would be named mindfulnessResearch-Dinakar.ppt. Upload your slides file here. We have provided some example topics you can choose from or you can add/find your own. (1) Review paper on mindfulness in the context of Drug & Alcohol Addiction (2) Review papers on mindfulness, neurofeedback and attention paper #1, paper #2. (3) Review talk by Catherine Kerr on how mindfulness begins with body awareness. (4) Review recent research showing how meditation can help modulate pain (think of bereavement, treating injuries, rejection, pain management during therapy etc.,) (5) Review Sara Lazar -- effect of meditation on the brain also TED talk. (6) Review Ellen Langer of Harvard U.’s work: several of her experiments with elderly and cancer patients show how people expectations and self image greatly influence health outcomes) (7) Power of mind & expectations - recent Placebo study results (also podcast PBS) (8) Review Contemplative Science by Alan Wallace and video #1 and video #2 (9) Review Richard Davidson's research on Healthy Minds (9) Review some of these tools and apps for mindfulness: The Mindfulness iPhone App: This app has guided meditations on it from many well known meditation teachers The Headspace iPhone App: contains guided meditations. Calendar planning. The Mental workout mindfulness meditation iphone app: Also contains guided meditations. Calendar planning. The Pranayama iphone app: helps you count inhales and exhales using sound The Destressify app The Insight Timer: uses tibetan bell sounds to help time your meditations, has guided meditations. Interestingly, it tells you how many people have meditated at the same time as you at the end of your meditation 2. Other products Neurosky MyndPlay: uses EEG neurofeedback for meditation. Actually there are quite a few meditation applications in the neurosky store that I believe all use the "attention", "meditation", and other measures from the neurosky Noumic device: biofeedback device device for meditation using GSR Emobowl and Emobracelet: devices to notify people of heightened emotional arousal using GSR heartsync: media lab alum project, syncs heart rates during meditation Mindfulness apps |
| 2/21/2014 | Assignment 3 Your assignment for this week will be to research 1-2 topics on self-tracking devices. The goal of this whole exercise is for your fellow class members (& the instructors) to learn something new & interesting. You will write a one page blog entry and describe: - what is your chosen self-tracking/quantified self research/paper/talk/book/product (provide link)? - provide a brief summary of the ideas/functionality? - what can the class learn from this paper/book/technology? - give a critical assessment of the paper/product? How well does it work? - how could this lead to some interesting class projects/prototypes, if so, how? (a) Please sign up for a topic by Monday 2/24 9pm here. (b) Post your one pager online by Wednesday 2/26 before noon. You would have received an email giving you a contributor account so that you can post on the blog. To post, visit this link. Go to 'Post' on the dashboard on the left and say 'Add New'. You will get an editor where you can type / paste your post. Add the tag 'Mindfulness' to your post on the right hand side prior to posting. To publish your post, press 'Publish' on the right hand side. (c) Finally prepare 1 or two slides for a 2 minute presentation of your findings in the class on Friday 2/28 12pm. Name your file with the following rule - selfTrackingResearch-lastName.ppt. For example, my ppt file would be named selfTrackingResearch-Dinakar.ppt. Upload your slides file here here. We have provided some example topics you can choose from or you can add/find your own. (1) Review work on self-tracking (Accounts of the practice) Taking my measure (Forbes) The Body Data Craze (Newsweek) The Quantified Self: Data Gone Wild? (video) This One Does Not go up to Eleven: The Quanified Self Movement as an Alternative Big Data Practice (an anthropological account) (2) Review work on the promise / potential of self-racking (Self-tracking as a way to wellness) The Perfected Self (The Atlantic) The Data-Driven Life (New York Times). (3) Review the perils of self-tracking (Critiques of self-tracking) NY Times reader responses to Gary Wolf's article, The Data-Driven Life There's an App for that: An Overexamined Life Natasha Schüll interviews Evgeny Morozov on the folly of technological solutionism The Year we Quantified Everything and Learned... Anything? (Slate) (4) Review 'show and tell' (Video footage of short Quantified Self presentations) http://vimeo.com/85851222 http://vimeo.com/62746426 (4) Review "Track your happiness" app by Matt Killingsworth of Harvard University (5) Review any of the products that track fitness, calories and/or sleep: - Nike fuelband - Lifewatcher (can recognize meals & count calories and more) - Fitbit - Jawbone - Philips Directlife (sets personalized goals, tracks activity level) - Zeo (sleep) - Heartmath - http://www.lumobodytech.com/lumoback/ measures posture & nudges you to correct - Work from Roz Picard's group & others on measuring affect & stress from the Affective Computing Group here at the Media Lab - Systems for "life recording" (eg Gordon Bell's "Total Recall" work at Microsoft) |
| 2/28/2014 | Project Proposal Preparation |
| 3/7/2014 | Assignment 4 (1) Your first assignment this week is to read Marko’s short background essay “Ruska - Leading the Creative Self” (15 minutes). Then, take 15 uninterrupted calm minutes to reflect on one of the following three topics: - your typical week, how you structure your time - your energy levels, how you feel during the day - your habits, related to working with your close colleagues After a 5 minute break, take another uninterrupted 15 minutes to write a short blog post on your findings and to use this as a basis of a two-minute presentation to the class. You must upload your presentation decks (humanPerformance-lastname.ppt) and upload them here. (2) Critique 2 project proposals from your peers. You can read about the proposals here. Enter your critique choices here so that every proposal gets at least 1 critique. Prepare 1 slide with a summary of both your critiques. You can add this slide along with the slides from above. The deadline for both parts of this assignment is noon Friday 3/14. |
| 3/14/2014 | Assignment 5 Your assignment for this week will be to research 1-2 topics on diet and well being. The goal of this whole exercise is for your fellow class members (& the instructors) to learn something new & interesting. You will write a one page blog entry and describe: - what is your chosen diet and food research/paper/talk/book/product ? - provide a brief summary of the ideas/functionality? - what can the class learn from this paper/book/technology? - give a critical assessment of the paper/product? How well does it work? - how could this lead to some interesting class projects/prototypes, if so, how? (a) Please sign up for a topic here. (b) Post your one pager online by Friday 3/21 before noon. To post, visit this link. Go to 'Post' on the dashboard on the left and say 'Add New'. You will get an editor where you can type / paste your post. Add the tag 'Diet Research' to your post on the right hand side prior to posting. To publish your post, press 'Publish' on the right hand side. (c) Finally prepare 1 or two slides for a 2 minute presentation of your findings in the class on Friday 3/21 12pm. Name your file with the following rule - dietResearch-lastName.ppt. For example, my ppt file would be nameddietResearch-Dinakar.ppt. Upload your slides file here here. We have provided some example topics you can choose from or you can add/find your own. (1) Review the paper on the role of the environment and how genetic makeup is not all Paper #1 (2) Review work on whole body interventions, health and autism. Paper #2 (3) Review paper on everyday epigenetics (how we might alter expression of genes through our lifestyle Paper #3 (4) Review article on healthy eating habits with smart scales and forks Article (4) Review New England Journal article on snacking for better health Article (5) Review WSJ article on the pros and cons of a vegan diet Article (6) Review article on gut flora and health (there has been an explosion of studies on gut flora and disease management / prevention) Article (7) Review any of the products that track diet, for example MyFitnessPal Superfoods |
| 3/21/2014 | Spring break. Take a breather. |
| 3/28/2014 | Interim Project Presentations For the class on 4/4, you should come prepared give a 5 minute summary of where you are at with your project using slides. We will use another 5 minutes per project for discussion. We suggest you cover: * what is the goal of the project? * why is it interesting/novel/relevant? * what have you done so far? * what do you still plan to do? * what do you need help with? (open questions, etc) You should upload your ppt files after naming them appropriately (interimProjectUpdate-lastName.ppt) here. The deadline as usual is Friday 4/4 noon. |
| 4/4/2014 | Assignment 6 As an introduction to next week's topic of behavior change, you should watch this very short video: http://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit/ And read this article: The Transtheoretical Model of Health Behavior Change James O. Prochaska and Wayne F. Velicer http://www.ajhpcontents.org/doi/abs/10.4278/0890-1171-12.1.38 Finally, you should do the tiny habits exercise and write up a 1p reflection about these 3 combined and post it on the blog. The tiny habits exercise from BJ Fogg can be found here: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/tiny-habits-april-7-11-with-bj-fogg-registration-11130592903 You don't need to make any presentations for this assignment. The deadline for the blog post is Saturday 4/12 5pm. |
| 4/11/2014 | Assignment 7 For this week's homework, we'd like you to spend some time reading about Cognitive Training and/or Brain Fitness. Think about some of the following questions: + Does brain fitness work? Is there scientific evidence? +Can games improve our memory and executive functioning? +Can brain games keep our aging brains young? You can start by looking at the summaries in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_fitness and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_training or with some of the popular press articles, for example http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/do-brain-workouts-work-science-isnt-sure/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/disruptions-using-addictive-games-to-build-better-brains/?src=rechp but continue by picking one scientific article (either a research paper or an article in some science magazine) and summarize that article in your 2 minute presentation on Friday, 4/18. Upload your slides here. |
| 4/18/2014 | No homework. |
| 4/25/2014 | No homework - Please consult project coaches on your project. |
| 5/2/2014 | Assignment 8 For this week's homework, we would like you to think about the social dimension of health. Please start by watching these two short TED talks by Nicholas Christakis: (1) http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks (2) http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_how_social_networks_predict_epidemics Then choose one piece of research that is related to the theme of the social dimension of health (an article, a talk, a project, a product, etc) and prepare a couple of slides to report on this research and why it is interesting to the class on Friday. Below are some possible topics, but feel free to cover something that is not listed here, as long as it relates to the social dimension of health. Please list the paper/topic that you will report on ASAP at this google doc, so we do not have duplicates: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XxmLK4-dtwO35dJhkfaCpYPZZvt4USjINYwp7ZtBp44/edit?usp=sharing Here are a few possible topics to cover: (1) Additional research by Christakis and his colleague/collaborator James Fowler: http://www.nicholaschristakis.net/ (2) Lisa Berkman' s work at the Harvard school public health on social isolation and its effect on health: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2424091/ (3) Loniless is bad for you readings: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-how-isolation-can-kill-you http://www.psmag.com/health/the-social-life-of-genes-64616/ http://www.economist.com/node/18226813 (4) Our need to connect to others is basic: http://www.amazon.com/Social-Why-Brains-Wired-Connect/dp/0307889092 TED talk by Matthew Lieberman, neuroscientist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNhk3owF7RQ An app for increasing your social influence: https://www.tilt365.com/ Please upload your files here by noon Friday 5/2: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzpVtRDhyq4_U2JXV3BGdEp5VHM&usp=sharing |
| 5/9/2014 | Final Student Project Presentations |