ICS 491 and 691 Sections & Modified Courses

In order to reduce duplication and reduce the chance of inconsistencies, we have removed our own listing of ICS courses and refer you to the UH Manoa Catalog page for ICS courses.  But since each ICS 491 and 691 section is different for each instance offered, brief descriptions will be provided below. Some courses are modified from their catalog description and are listed below.

Spring 2009

  Social computing is an umbrella term for technologies and virtual spaces that allow users to create, describe and share content, and for the communities that arise around them.  The goal of this course is to survey examples of social computing such as blogs, social bookmarking, classification and recommendation systems, compare them with traditional professional equivalents, and evaluate how the two perspectives can inform one another.
 

  Digital government is the application of information and communication technologies to the operation of government systems and the participation of citizens in government and civic activities. In this course we will explore e-Government, e-Participation, and e-Citizenship. We will survey e-Government systems in many countries and consider what is working and what is not.  We will look at trends in user acceptance, growth, and new directions such as Web 2.0. and distributed/mobile systems.  We will consider the usability challenges of systems  that must be universally accessible. We will examine how new media impacts existing organizations (e.g. libraries). This  course should be taken by students interested in information provision and organization in the domain of politics, politics and new media, HCI, social trends and activism, and computers and society. The course will be taught in a seminar format utilizing current readings from the research literature. We will develop a “Citizen Participation” prototype using new media and help President Obama figure out what to do with his Facebook site.
See: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~scottpr/Flyer_ICS691.pdf 

ICS 491, Section 3: Computers in Medecine - Prof. Patriarche - CRN 88877
(Friday 12PM-2:40PM)  
The purpose of this course is to provide the student with a broad foundation regarding the role of computers in health-care.  The course will begin with a brief introduction to the history of medicine in society, and how it has evolved into the current western model.  The course will discuss specific technical and scientific innovations which have shaped this history.  A broad range of contemporary computer based medical technologies will be discussed, both in clinical practice, research, as well as outside of traditional practice.  This will provide the student with an exposure to the many roles of computers in contemporary western medicine.  Looking to the future, expected advancements in computers will be discussed in connection with the demands of society for improved length and quality of life, and a level of health care which exceeds what unassisted humans are able to provide.  The course will be describe how these forces inevitably will lead to the imbuement of health-care with computers, which will lead to a complete change in what health-care is.

Fall 2008

(Wednesday/Friday 4:30-5:15pm, KUY 302)     

ICS 491, Section 3: Social Informatics: Technology for Collaboration & Online Communities - Prof. Suthers - CRN 78169
(Tuesday/Thursday 1:30-2:45, HOLM 248)

    Interested in recent developments in “Web 2.0,” social networking, and/or massively multiplayer online games? Whether and how thousands of people collaborating informally can produce a valuable resource such as Wikipedia?  How identity and trust are formed online? Or how new technologies might support learning and work in ways that both augment and improve on collaborating in person?
    In the first half of this course, we will survey the foundations of information and computer technologies for supporting people learning, playing and working together. In the second half, we will survey current research (the past several years) on topics chosen by class members.  Previous topics have included blogging, collaborative gaming, collaborative work, community design patterns, cultural issues, distributed and online learning, distributed work teams, identity and trust online, interaction in virtual worlds, knowledge management, mobile social computing, online communities, social networks, and wikis.
    If you are interested in the use of information and communication technologies to support people learning, working, or playing together, then enroll in ICS 491, section 3 this fall.  There is no prerequisite other than interest in reading and discussing papers in this diverse area. Contact Dan Suthers, POST 309B, 956-3890 or suthers@hawaii.edu for further information. 

ICS 691, Section 2: Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction in Space Exploration - Prof. Binsted - CRN 77811
(Online)
    Space exploration presents unique challenges for human psychology and physiology. If long-term space expeditions to Mars and permanently occupied stations on the Moon are to become reality, we must anticipate and avoid (or at least mitigate) as many of these problems as possible.
    In this course, we will read and discuss online a series of current scientific articles relating directly to this topic. Students will be expected to lead the discussion on at least one paper, and to contribute significantly to all discussions. The final grade will be based on the quality of participation (20%) and on two term papers (40% each).

ICS 691, Section 3: Advanced Computer Vision - Prof. Baek - CRN 78824
(Monday/Wednesday 9:00-10:15am, KUY 309)

    ** If the class is small (with less than 5 students), this course will be taught as an independent project course. Students will choose the project topic either by their own or from the list provided by the instructor, and have meeting with the instructor regularly during the semester.

    ** If the class size is larger than 4, this course will be a regular lecture-based one following the course description below.

    Computer vision, the study of extracting information from images and enabling machines to understand images, is a broad-based, interdisciplinary and applied field in computer science, and has generated many exciting results that increase our understanding of the complex and remarkable task of interpreting the world around us from visual information. This course will introduce fundamental problems of computer vision, core concepts and principles, and algorithms of computer vision. During the class, advanced topics on both the theory and practice in the field will also be presented via discussing recent articles published in journals and conferences.