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LIB 4900 - Francoeur - Spring 2018

22 May 2018

Final exam

  1. Make a copy of this Google Doc of the final exam and share it back with Prof. Francoeur

14 May 2018

Group presentations on research projects

8 May 2018

Literature review assignment

  • Due by 11:59 pm tonight
  • Questions
  • Time to work on it

Best meeting time for this course

The future of our course blog

Free time for work on group project

Course evaluations

1 May 2018

Practice final exam

  1. Make a copy of this Google Doc with the exam questions and work on it on your own until 12:45 pm
  2. Share it back to Prof. Francoeur when you are done

Discussion of practice final exam and course review

24 April 2018

Freewriting

  • In a Google Doc, share with me your answer to this question
    • What have you learned so far in this class that might help you in other classes? Or alternatively, what have you learned that might help you at work?

Background Data on the Social, Organizational, Institutional Aspects

Feedback on Bibliographies

17 April 2018

Team Presentations

  • For each team, you will have:
    • 5 minutes to set up
    • 10 minutes to present
    • 5 minutes to take questions from the audience
    • 5 minutes for your classmates to provide feedback via the oral presentation rubric

10 April 2018

Freewriting

  • Think of an app that you use on your phone. In a Google Doc that you'll share with Prof. Francoeur, write about that app and how specific values and norms shape the way that you use it.

Reading for today

27 March 2018

​Research Methods

Background sources
  • As described in the lesson plan from the Baruch College Writing Center, "Using Sources Strategically" (.pdf)
    • What It Is
      • A background source generates context by providing factual, generally undebatable
        information like dates and definitions."
    • What It Does
      • Allows writers to narrate/describe context or background
      • Lends concrete, specific evidence
      • Two competing background sources might raise a question or paradox
  • What kinds of basic info do you need to know before you begin doing your research?
    • when did this ICT first come into existence?
    • how did the ICT evolve over time?
    • when did libraries start using this ICT?
  • How to find background info
  • ACTIVITY
    • Find background info that is directly relevant to your research question
    • Summarize that info in your team's project page (and cite your sources)

Social, institutional, and organizational aspects of ICT use: norms and values

  • ACTIVITY
    • Each team will make one copy of this Google Docs worksheet, work on it together, and then submit it to the professor at the end of class

20 March 2018

Announcements

  • Sign up for midterm consultations (1/2 hour appointments) if you haven't already
  • Due dates for assignments in 2nd half of the class
  • Late blog posts lose 1 point per day

ACTIVITY: Peer feedback on blog posts

  1. Each student draws the random names of two classmates
  2. Each student finds one blog post by each classmate and provides the following feedback:
    1. Comments pointing out something specific that the blog post author did
    2. Comments pointing out something specific that the blog post author could have done better

Literature reviews

  • Watch video from NCSU Libraries in class: https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/litreview/
  • DISCUSSION
    • What is "the literature"
    • How do individual works in the literature connect to each other?
    • How can you organize the works you found into a literature review?
  • ACTIVITY
    1. Working in their group project teams, students will review the bibliographies of some of the articles they found and look for at least 3 sources cited in those articles that look like ones they might use for the group project.
    2. Each team will add those three sources to their group project worksheet in Google Docs
    3. One member of the team will write a blog post with citations for the three articles and a note for each article indicating whether the library has the full text (if so, where is it found)

Thinking about the social context of ICT use

  • ACTIVITY
    • Each team will use MindMeister.com or a sheet of poster paper to do a mind map that will help you brainstorm about some (but not all) of the social aspects of ICT use
    • The map should have as its central node the ICT use you are studying
      • 2nd level nodes should include ones for:
        • history of the ICT
        • history of other ICT and technologies that the ICT is connected to or dependent on
        • economic aspects
          • costs to the users
            • how have costs constrained users?
            • how have costs encouraged or freed up users?
          • costs to the institution
            • how have costs constrained the instutition?
            • how have costs encouraged or freed up the instiitution
          • costs to the vendor(s) or companies that make or produce the ICT

 

13 March 2018

Parts of a Journal Article

  • ACTIVITY: Identifying journal sections in an article
    • Students will meet up with their teams to work on the reading for today:
      • Arora, Payal. "Digital Gods: The Making Of A Medical Fact For Rural Diagnostic Software." Information Society 26.1 (2010): 70-79. Library & Information Science Source.
    • Each team will make one copy of this Google Doc worksheet and share it with the professor
    • Each team will answer the questions on the first page of the Google Doc (we will work on the second page later in the day)

Mapping ICT Use

  • Three key parts of the social informatics perspective on ICT use
    • The ICT
      • the technology of the ICT (including the technologies that it connects to)
      • the nature of the information that the ICT handles
      • the actions that the ICT enables (functions of the ICT)
    • The people using the ICT
    • The Social, institutional, and organizational aspects of the ICT use
  • Map template
  • Sample map: graduate student use of headphones in the library to ensure a quieter study experience
  • ACTIVITY: Identifying aspects of social informatics perspective addressed in the Arora Payal article
    • Each group works on the 2nd page of the Google Doc worksheet and makes a mind map showing the social informatics elements in the article

For Next Week

  • Homework due: two blog posts from each person about two different peer-reviewed journal articles that might be part of the literature review for their team's group project
  • No assigned reading due

6 March 2018

Technological change and the New York Times

Farewell - ETAOIN SHRDLU - 1978 from Linotype: The Film on Vimeo.

Research topics and research questions

 

Parts of a journal article

  • ACTIVITY
    • ​Each team work will meet up and collectively agree on answers to each of these three questions:
      • In what part of a journal article will the reader be able to find basic, introductory information about the topic?
      • Where will the reader find a discussion of what other researchers have to say about the topic?
      • In a journal article, what is the methodology section about?
    • Each team will report back their answers

Focus group on how students use the library home page

  • ACTIVITY 1
    • Each student will get a printed screenshot of the library home page
    • Each student will closely examine the page and put a circle around the items or elements that they personally use or care about
    • Each student wll put an X through items they don't think are necessary or important to them
    • Each student will write in the margins or use post-it notes to explain more about why they crossed out or circled items on the page
    • A focus group discussion will allow us to learn in greater depth why people made the choices they did on the screenshot
  • ACTIVITY 2
    • Each team will examine two different mockups of redesigned content on the home page
    • Each team will express its preference for one of the design options

 

27 February 2018

​Reading for today

  • QUIZ
  • DISCUSSION
    • Sawyer, Steve. "Social Informatics: Overview, Principles and Opportunities." Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 31.5 (2005): 9-12. ABI/Inform Global. Web. 3 Sep. 2015.
    • Mackenzie, Donald and Judy Wajcman. “Introductory Essay: The Social Shaping of Technology.” The Social Shaping of Technology, edited by Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman, McGraw-Hill Education/Open University, 1999, pp. 3-27.

 

Team Projects

  • Class will be divided into 2- and 3-person teams
  • Your team should try to answer a question that directly relates to the use of an ICT and the library
  • ACTIVITY
    • One person from each team should make a copy of the "Group Project Workbook" and work with the other team members to fill out the section listing team members and contact info. When complete, share with Prof. Francoeur.
    • Each team should have a preliminary discussion about topics.
    • After 15 minutes, one member of the team will write a blog post listing the idea (or top ideas) that their team came up with and what questions they might try to answer about that topic


Scholarly communication and discourse

  • What is scholarship?
  • How do scholars share their work?
  • ACTIVITY
    • Assigning relevance to sources found

For next week

  • Reading
  • Each team ready to discuss what topic area they'll do research in

13 February 2018

Free-writing activity

  • What things do you find frustrating about using information and communication technology for academic work at Baruch?

Quiz results from 6 February 2018

Reading by Smale and Regalado

  • QUIZ

    • Share a Google Doc with Prof. Francoeur at stephen.francoeur@gmail.com in which you answer this question:

      Smale and Regalado described a variety of different ICT that CUNY students use. Describe what the authors said they learned about how students use at least one of those ICT.

      Allotted time for this quiz will be 10 minutes.

  • ACTIVITY: locating sources cited by the authors
    • Class splits up into 2-person teams
    • One person for the team will make a copy of this Google Doc worksheet and then share it with Prof. Francoeur after the team completes it
  • DISCUSSION

Group projects

 

Library website

  • ACTIVITY
    • ​Each student will write a post on the course blog
      • Add a title to your post
      • In the body of your blog post, answer these questions without taking a look at our library website (work from memory and your own preferences).
        • What do I assume I will be able to do at the library website? Please list all the things you would expect to find there and you could do as a Baruch student.
        • Given that not everything can be on the library home page, what things in your opinion should definitely be on the home page?
      • After you publish your post, read the posts by your classmates. Then go back to your blog post and add a comment to it in which you tell me how your answer has changed (if at all all) based on your reading of what your classmates had to say.

For next class (Feb. 27)

  • Two things to read: an article from a journal and a chapter from a book (this is on e-reserve for the class)

6 February 2018

Free writing activity

  • In a Google Doc that you share with me, describe two situations where you have to use your phone in different ways because of the setting. Pick two or more of these settings and compare and contrast the ways you use your phone there: at a meal with family, at a meal with friends, on the subway, on the bus, in a classroom, in a movie theater, in a house of worship, when getting rung up at a cash register in a store, etc.) What formal or informal rules might come into play in shaping that behavior?

Reading quiz

Reading discussion

  • Kling, Rob. "What Is Social Informatics and Why Does It Matter?" Information Society23.4 (2007): 205-220. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Sept. 2015.
  • Rosenbaum, Howard. "Social Informatics." Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. Ed. William Sims Bainbridge. Vol. 2. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing, 2004. 633-637. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 21 Aug. 2015.

Mind mapping

  • What a mind map is for and why it can be useful
  • ACTIVITY
    1. Think of an ICT you use (e.g., your phone, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a certain app or software program) and create a detailed mind map as follows:
      1. Central node: short sentence or phrase about the example
      2. Add the following second-level nodes:
        1. social and organization aspects (how the social/organizational context shapes your use of that ICT)
        2. ICT (what are the components of the ICT)
        3. people (aspects about you that may affect your use of the ICT)
      3. For each of the second-level nodes, add third-level nodes that provide details
  • Photo of sample mind map drawn on the whiteboard about use of mobile phones at the dinner table of Prof. Francoeur

Library terminology

  • Part-to-whole relationships
    • A book contains chapters
    • A magazine publishes an issue each month; each issue has articles in it
    • A newspaper publishes an issue each day; each issue has articles in it
    • A scholarly journal publishes an issue each quarter; each issue has articles in it
    • A year's worth of issues for a magazine or a scholarly journal are assigned a volume number

Scholarly Journal by Stephen Francoeur

 

Introduction to Group Projects

  • Three-person teams will be assigned next week
  • Topics limited to ICTs that are related to Baruch's library services and resources

About our next class

  • Read Smale and Regalado's article, "Commuter Students Using Technology" that was published in EDUCAUSE Review (September 15, 2014)

 

30 January 2018

Who's who in the classroom

Course overview

  • What is social informatics
  • What's on the course website
  • Learning goals for the course
  • Assignments
  • Grading
  • Guidelines and policies

10-minute break

Activity: defining common terms

  1. Open this worksheet in Google Docs 
  2. Save a copy of your own version
  3. Add your name to the copy you saved
  4. Without looking anything up, please offer definitions of the following terms in your words.
  5. Share this document to stephen.francoeur@gmail.com

Activity: writing for the course blog

  • Log in to the course blog
  • Write a blog post in which you describe a favorite food
  • Write a comment on someone else's blog post
  • Write a comment on my blog post about whether we want to make this blog public or private

How to find the course readings for next week's class (Feb. 6)

  • Go to Course Outline page and use citations to track down materials to be read (all online)
  • Some items are found in library databases, others on the open web

 

Subject Guide

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Stephen Francoeur
he / him / his
Contact:
Newman Library
Room 421
Baruch College
151 E. 25th Street
New York, NY 10010

(646) 312-1620