I'm Pam Mack, a history professor at Clemson.  I've been teaching HIST 122 for about 10 years--I developed it originally at the request of the engineering school as a course for freshman engineers.  Now that it meets the STS requirement, I get a different group of students, and I have changed the books and the organization of the course, but it is still a course about technology and how it affects our lives.  This is my second time teaching the course on-line course, so let me know as we go along what is working for you and what isn't working.

I'm a historian of technology--I have researched and written about the history of the U.S. space program, the history of women in astronomy and engineering, and the history of the Forest Service.  I'm also coordinator of the Science and Technology in Society program at Clemson.

The five most important things to keep in mind about this course: Five weeks is a short time to cover a semester's worth of material--keep up with the reading and assignments and ask questions right away if you don't understand something or don't know how to do it. Instead of spending time in class, there are a variety of different kinds of assignments to give you an opportunity to think through and and work with the material.  You are responsible for keeping track of getting all of those done.  I am not going to send you reminders. This is not a course that teaches you facts but rather a course that teaches you how to analyze in a more sophisticated way the two-way relationship between technology and society. I expect you to care about how technology is affecting your life and our world. At the end of this course I hope you will know more about what historians do and also be a better citizen, able to come to useful opinions about controversial issues about science and technology.

How to fnd your way around this course:

• To keep track of the assignments, go to the syllabus.  Make sure to look for:
• what to read in the required books
• links to web pages and audio files (MP3s) covering class material posted by the professor.
  
• when quizzes and discussion board postings are due
• a large multi step assignment-- the argument project--that you will need to start on well in advance of when the paper is due
• field experience assignments which will be posted the first week (with more added later)--you will need to pick 5 of these to do and not leave them all until the last minute
  
• the schedule of tests--make sure you will be able to take the tests sometime on the day it is due (or the day before)
  
• To find the discussion board and quizzes and to hand in your tests and argument project, go to Blackboard.
• If you have questions either email me or post your questions on the appropriate discussion board.

Goals of this course:

• To give you a sense of what historians do, in particular that history is not just the collection of facts.
• To give you tools (ideas) to understand how science and technology change our lives
• To improve your ability to analyze and make arguments about controversial issues

I've put more thoughts about these goals in an audio file: What is STS (audio)  In most cases if you click on the link it will simply play on your computer (if you don't have the volume muted), but you can download it to an MP3 player if you want.