This is your Final Exam. Your exam is due by 11:59 pm on Thur May 8.  Late submissions are allowed on Fri May 9 but will be assessed a penalty as described in Late Work on syllabus. No submissions will be accepted after Fri May 9.

The exam is primarily based on More Than a Glitch (MTAG) by Meredith Broussard. You may consult this text and other resources, but please do not discuss the exam with other human beings. The only exception to this is you may consult with the UMD Writer's Workshop in preparing your exam. Your answers must be expressed in your own words so please continue to follow our policy on not using AI writing tools in any way (as described in our syllabus and reproduced below).

Please prepare your exam answers in the same way you have been preparing your personal essays - compose your answers entirely in a single Google Doc  and then submit a single URL when the exam is finished. Make sure that you have the Doc set so that anyone with the link is an editor. Your version history must show the complete evolution of all your answers from start to finish, so please do not start your answers somewhere else and then cut and paste them. 

If you have questions about the exam, please ask those in class when we go over the exam, or thereafter post those to this thread on the discussion list on Canvas so that  everyone gets the same information about the exam. Please allow up to 12 hours for a response to questions in the discussion list.

There are four exam questions, each of which asks for a Personal Essay as a response. This means each response should be a minimum of 500 words and you should not provide an introductory paragraph or summarizing conclusion. Also make sure to follow our other guidelines for Personal Essays. 

Please make sure to number your responses in your Google Doc. You do not need to copy the question into your response although you can if you find that helpful. Do not of course include the questions in any word counts.

Start of Final Exam Questions

1. [5 points] Please listen to your podcast. Try to forget what you know about it already and listen with a fresh perspective, without distractions, and at 1x speed.  Write a personal essay that includes a summary of the issues discussed, and your own reactions to your scenarios and the comments of your guests. If time was not a constraint, what additional questions or follow ups should you have asked, and why? What is your general reaction to your podcast? How do you feel you did in the role of moderator? What would you do differently knowing what you know now? 

2. [5 points] The Markup is an online publication that investigates technology and carries out external audits. These sometimes address issues that are closely connected to topics from MTAG.  Please select an investigation from the Markup that you believe is connected to a topic that was raised in MTAG, and write a Personal Essay that summarizes the Markup investigation in your own words, and then connect that to MTAG. Please be specific in making these connections, and make sure to provide chapter and page numbers from MTAG for the related topic/s. Make sure to discuss how The Markup investigation affects your understanding of what you read in MTAG, and what is similar or different between what is discussed in The Markup as compared to MTAG. 

3. [5 points] There were many stories of different individuals told in The 1619 Podcast and More Than a Glitch. By story I mean an account of something that happened to a specific named individual rather than a more abstract or general idea. Some of these stories were ongoing at the time of publication. In this Personal Essay I'd like you to identify two such stories. Re-tell each story in your own words, and how it connects to the larger themes found in More Than a Glitch. For each story, do some investigating to find out what happened to each individual after publication, and include that in your essay in your own words. Make sure to mention where these stories come from via episode numbers from The 1619 Podcast and/or chapter and page numbers from More Than A Glitch. After your essay include links for the sources you used to find out what happened.

4. [5 points] Chapters 10 and 11 of More Than A Glitch mentions various pieces of pending or proposed legislation (at the time of the publication) as well as numerous community organizing or research groups. In this Personal Essay I'd like you to pick out one piece of legislation and one such group and do a little investigating. Describe the goals of the legislation in your own words, and then find out and describe the current status of that legislation. What is your view of the need for this legislation (whether it is still under consideration or not)? How does this legislation connect to issues raised in MTAG? Then, describe the overall goals of whatever group you select and some information about their recent activities. What is your view of the need for what this group aspires to accomplish? How does this group connect to issues raised in MTAG? Please indicate the page numbers where your legislation and group are mentioned. After your essay include links for the sources you used to find out what happened. Note that community and research groups do not include private companies (eg. Facebook, Amazon, Google, ProctorU, …)

End of Final Exam Questions

No Use of AI Writing Tools (from our syllabus)

Please do not use automated writing tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, CoPilot, etc. at any point in developing work for this class. This includes our Personal Essays, any take home Exams, and your Podcast. Do not use them for brainstorming ideas, do not use them for writing, and do not use them for polishing or correcting your work. 

All of your written work should be composed entirely in Google Docs. You may use the spelling and grammar checking tools provided in the standard version of Google Docs but do not use or add-on anything beyond that for any of our assignments.  

Why such a strict policy? I read all of your essays and exams. I listen to your podcasts. I do not offload the grading of your work on to a teaching assistant or an automated AI tool. I read what you submit carefully, and I would like to hear your own unique voice come through in the work you do for this class. I genuinely enjoy this experience. These tools obscure your voice and restrict your imagination. They make you sound more generic and less like the unique individual that you are. 

Any work that you submit in this class must be uniquely and exclusively written by you. This means no AI Writing Tools, it also means no cutting and pasting or overly close paraphrasing from other sources (which is essentially what these AI tools do, just in a very fancy and elaborate way). If you submit work that you did not uniquely and exclusively create, you may receive a 0 on that assignment.