Activities
General Instructions
Activities are small hands-on activities you can do to experience security and privacy first-hand and potentially discuss it with other people within and outside of the course. They are intended to be short hopefully taking only 5-10 minutes to complete, but with the opportunity to explore more if you are interested in doing so.
Groups You are welcome and even encouraged to complete activities in groups. Self-reflections (see below) should be completed on your own. But feel free to complete the activity with others and discuss it with them. Only one person in a group needs to do the steps, provided that everyone can see what is happening.
Turn in Each student should complete a self reflection paragraph addressing the stated questions after completing each activity. This self-reflection should be individually written by each student.
Self reflection
The purpose of a self-reflection is to think critically about a topic. Communicating through writing or speaking forces the brain to convert information stored in a non-linear form into a linear sentence structure form. Communication therefore forces you to think about the information a bit differently than you would if you were simply working alone.
For self reflection we are asking you to think about the activity you did and how it relates to you. Each activity has a set of guiding questions, but you are not limited to the list. You are welcome to talk about past experiences, how the activity changed your view, or even how you already knew all this information.
At minimum a self reflection must:
- Have three sentences
- Sound like the student engaged with the activity
- Show thought and reflection about the activity
Self-reflections are each worth one point and are essentially pass fail. The first few reflections will be graded very lightly with feedback given if we feel the refleciton is not detailed enough or has other issues.
Early completion
You are very welcome to complete all the activities early. No advanced knowledge is needed to complete activities, though it may be helpful in fully understanding them. You may submit your self-reflection as often as you would like up till the deadline.
Based on in-class questions and engagement, we may modify the “other things to try” and “learn more” sections at any time. These sections are for additional learning and you are not required to engage with them.
We may also add new activities based on student interest. Any new activities added after the start of the course will be clearly marked as optional and will not be graded.
Opinions about activity content
Several activities include lists of suggested sites to try, things to read, or things to try next. If you have a good suggestion about other things that should be on theses lists, feel free to post on Piazza under the activities. If appropriate, we may add your suggestions into the activity.
Extra activities
Extra activities start with an “E:” on the sidebar or “Extra:” in the activity title. These activities are there for your personal learning but are not graded. You are not required to complete them.
Extra activities are usually added after the class has already started in response to questions the instructor is getting. So even though they are not graded or required, it is recommended that you complete extra activities on topics that you find confusing.