HtH Curriculum Resources for Sharing - Sociotechnical Curriculum

Overview to Sociotechnical Curriculum

Hack the Hood’s curriculum framework has four components: technical content, intersectional tech identity development, practical skill demonstration and social justice & community. The social justice and community components make Hack the Hood unique - we focus our educational approach on social justice tech solutions that are for and by the community. The sociotechnical curriculum content provides an introduction to social justice topics that arise within the tech industry and positions learners to take informed action. The curriculum provides a contextual framework to understand some of the technical content within the full curriculum and contributes to the intersectional tech identity development component of the framework. The aim of this component within the curriculum is meant to provide an intentional and conscious introduction to challenges within the tech industry that Black and Brown learners are likely to encounter, and helps them apply a social justice perspective to design, development and deconstruction of technical solutions along with strategies for careering in tech. The primary program level learning outcome of this curriculum component is: Apply a social justice perspective to the design, development and deconstruction of technical solutions. Each unit will have its own lesson-level learning objectives. To learn more about our educational philosophy, visit this medium post. Visit this link to view a demo of one of our modules, Technical Benevolence? Social Entrepreneurship in Marginalized Communities. Also, take a look at our introductory module slides - Using Tech for Social Justice.

2022 - Sociotechnical Themes

In 2022, we will focus our sociotechnical curriculum into themes for a more comprehensive learner experience and to strengthen learning outcomes in a clear domain. The first themes will be:

Jim Code: Dr. Ruha Benjamin coined the phrase The New Jim Code in the subtitle of her bestselling and foundational tech ethics book Race After Technology. This theme in our curriculum provides learners an overview of some of the examples and use cases in Race After Technology. Learners will be exposed to some of the technologies that have been strategically used to disadvantage communities of color and will deconstruct these technologies from both a social and technical perspective.
Data Activism: Leveraging data and data skills to address social justice issues and concerns is a skill that learners will begin to develop in this series of modules in our sociotechnical curriculum. Learners will be exposed to many examples of technologists and activists have gathered, analyzed or amplified data to address a topic of community concern.
Healthcare and health data: Access to and quality of healthcare is an issue that is important to everyone. In this theme we will look at the ways that technology has an influence in healthcare, examine health data and health disparities, and the ways that we can use technology to improve healthcare for Black, Latinx, Indigenous and AAPI communities.
Speculative fiction: The imaginary often inspires the possible. Speculative fiction can give us interesting, scary, and creative ideas and inspiration for technology possibilities. Afrofuturism, Asian futurisms, futuros alternos (Latinx), Indigenous futurism and queer futurism are broadening forms of art that people of color have used to imagine our own futures and recreate our pasts. These modules will explore the art of speculative fiction and its possible role in developing new technology.

Sociotechnical Curriculum - Content Sheet