Assignment 14


From "Home Alone" to Collaborative and Organizational Learning


source: Chapter 3 "Home Alone" in Brown, J. S. & Duguid, P. (2000) The Social Life of Information, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA

Important: with this assignment we split the members of the class into:
  1. producers (students giving answers)
  2. analyzers and summarizers (students evaluating the answers from the other students)

analyzers and summarizers:
  1. Eric Minick
  2. Dipti Mandalia
The analyzers and summarizers can do their work individually or jointly!

due: Monday, March 18
  1. producers: please submit by 10:00am to the class website please be on time, so the "analyzers and summarizers" can do their work!
  2. analyzers/summarizers: please submit by 2:00pm to the class website

Briefly discuss the following issues:

  1. what did you find
    1. interesting about the article?
    2. not interesting about the article?
  2. what do you consider the main message of the article?
  3. think of a couple of persons (maybe family members or friends) who are in a position to use computer by being "home alone"! Characterize the major problems that these persons have!
  4. Describe briefly some new innovative technologies that you can think of which would address these problems!