CSC 2500: Survey of Information Science
Course Syllabus
Spring 2008
Course Description:
Brief introductions to several areas in which problems in
information use are important. Examples are business, law, biology,
medicine, electronic commerce, and libraries.
Prerequisites:
None
Textbooks:
No textbook is used for this course.
Objectives:
Establish
an understanding of information management issues in several distinct
problem domains, including business, law, medicine, electronic
commerce, and libraries.
Provide experience in the organization and delivery of
information-rich presentations.
Outcomes: On completion of this course, each student will be able
to do the following:
Cite relevant reference material related to information aspects
of a number of application areas, including business, law, medicine,
commerce, libraries and others.
Capture the significant points of a paper and represent them
using a concept map.
Discuss information-centric issues in a number of contexts,
specific to the topic areas addressed during the particular course
semester.
Contrast the needs for information access to those for
information security, relevance, and privacy.
Present a well-written and in-depth research project to
peers OR present a substantial information-related programming project
to peers.
Course Structure and Practice:
The course description lists several of the possible topic areas for us
to explore during the semester. During the first class, we will
discuss our interests and choose the topics to be presented during this
semester. We will identify a specialist in each topic that is
selected. Each week one of these specialists will visit and talk
to us about that area. One member of the class will serve as host
and discussion leader for each of our guests.
Each of our guests will provide us with one or more papers to read on
the selected topic. We will all read the paper and come prepared
to make a significant contribution to the discussion of that
work. To support careful reading and understanding of the
assigned readings, each student will prepare a concept map of that
paper. These will be collected, graded, and returned.
Each student will host one or two of our guests and will lead the
discussion
of that guest's readings. All students will read the assigned
material and will prepare a comprehensive concept map of the
reading(s). The student host is not
presenting the paper to the class, but is making sure that a good
discussion happens. That means coming with some questions
prepared in case they are needed to get the discussion started or to
restart it if it fades out. While everyone will have read the
paper and will come prepared for discussion, the student host has a
special responsibility and will need to have given extra attention to
the papers for that week. (The discussion of each week's readings
should last at least 45 minutes. It is the responsibility of the
host to be sure that the discussion continues and that everyone gets a
chance to speak. It is the responsibility of each student to
speak about each reading. If I have to call on individuals in
order to get them to enter the conversation, that will count against
the participation grade.)
Semester Project
Each student will do a semester long project. This may be a
software development project in an area related to some aspect of
information science or it may be a research paper on an appropriate
topic. We will discuss appropriate projects during the first
class. Each project, whether software development or research
paper, will be presented at the end of the semester.