“Music Speaks”: Designing Lyrically Based Prompts for Discussion Topics in a Human Futures & Technology Course

Hans Christian Anderson once said “when words fail, music speaks’’. Discussion prompts can be an important part of many computing courses, however, online discussions can often feel less than engaging for students and less than exciting to create for instructors. This experience report explores the design approach to discussion posts within a newly developed computer science course centering how technology impacts human futures. Each discussion post for the course is centered around a song, with several prompts that are written in direct relation to chosen lyrics. The experience of creatively approaching the discussion post design was somewhat difficult, but prompted more evocative and engaging questions for students to explore each week. This challenging design process was also fun, allowing art and music to be centered and shared in a course exploring human futures alongside technology. Given that discussing human-technology impacts can be deeply personal in many cases, this personal element in prompt design may also have created a more comfortable and open space for sharing and reflecting.