DraftVersion of Committee's Final Deliverable
From Curriculum Advisory Committee
To: Dean Allen Smith
From: The Associate Dean’s Curriculum Advisory Committee
Re: LIS 488 Course Review – Final Recommendations
Date: May 9, 2007
The Associate Dean's Curriculum Advisory Committee was formed in September 2006 to provide GSLIS students with an opportunity to give the Associate Dean input on the curriculum. The committee initially convened in response to student concerns about LIS 488, based on anecdotal evidence that the course had low relevance, unclear objectives, and was not LIS-specific. Some students questioned the value and purpose of LIS 488, especially as a required core course. The Curriculum Advisory Committee set out to address student concerns and to propose remedial action.
Since the fall of 2006, the full committee has met approximately ten times, while using informal lunch gatherings and a committee wiki to continue our conversation between formal meetings. The committee examined the syllabus of each instructor currently teaching LIS 488, and interviewed Professor Rong Tang in order to generate additional ideas. Based on almost eight months of study and deliberation, the committee has generated a series of recommendations, which are as follows.
LIS 488 should:
- Remain a required course, and serve as a gateway to other technology-based courses in the GSLIS curriculum.
- Focus on technology issues specific to LIS applications and situations. The committee strongly believes that LIS 488 should be "a course that you could only take at library school."
- Have a standard base curriculum, such that everyone who completes the course can be assumed to possess a common base of knowledge and a common set of LIS technology skills.
- Not assume that students have acquired any particular technology skills simply because they have completed the Technology Orientation Requirement (TOR). The committee is concerned that GSLIS instructors sometimes overestimate students' technology skills, assuming that students have "learned" certain skills from the TOR and not realizing that the TOR provides little more than basic, superficial exposure to these topics.
- Give students with a strong and relevant background in LIS-oriented technologies the option to place out of the course, perhaps substituting a more advanced technology course instead.
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Proposed Course Description
This course provides students with the conceptual foundation to understand and use digital technologies in information-intensive professions. The course provides an overview of the interplay between LIS functions and technologies, and it gives students hands-on experience using LIS technological tools. Emphasis is placed upon terminology and concepts that drive current issues in the profession. This course does not replace the Technology Orientation Requirement (TOR) and assumes a basic familiarity with popular desktop applications.
Prerequisites
None
Level
Masters and Doctoral
Student Learning Outcomes
The current course description indicates that the GSLIS student learning outcomes for LIS 488 are:
:4. Analyze, synthesize, and communicate information and knowledge in a variety of formats.
:10. Analyze information problems and develop solutions drawing from a wide range of information technology tools and practices.
We recommend adding the following learning outcomes:
:2. Demonstrate knowledge of print and electronic information retrieval procedures.
:6. Assess, create, and evaluate systems for managing content.
:7. Apply relevant research studies to tasks requiring problem solving and critical thinking.
All course assignments should be aligned with, and evaluate a student's measurable progress toward, these outcomes. Furthermore, the committee encourages instructors to review ALA's Information Literacy Competency Standards in order to generate a list of competencies that students who complete LIS 488 should be able to demonstrate.
Curriculum and Instruction
The curriculum for LIS 488 should be concerned with a student's ability to synthesize technology issues and to situate that knowledge within an LIS-specific framework. It should not focus on the memorization of terms and facts.
The committee strongly believes that the instructors teaching LIS 488 should coordinate their curricula in order to achieve a degree of consistency across different sections of the course. The committee believes that improved communication between instructors is essential, and we would encourage GSLIS to consider appointing a course coordinator who could facilitate communication and cooperation.
The instructors for LIS 488 should agree upon a minimum set of texts and articles that reflect a balance of landmark publications and current best practices. The committee encourages instructors to consider the readings in comparable classes at other LIS programs as they devise a required reading list for LIS 488. Furthermore, the committee strongly believes that students who have completed LIS 488 should be comfortable navigating the professional literature around information technology, and should know which key journals they need to be reading in order to stay current. Because of the dynamic nature of the course's content, LIS 488 should do more than educate students about current issues in the field; it should provide them with the skills and the conceptual framework to stay abreast of future developments.
One of the most important skills a student should acquire in LIS 488 is the ability to match technology needs and problems with appropriate technology solutions. Instructors should acknowledge that there is rarely a single, "perfect" solution to any technology problem, and should prepare students to evaluate the relative merits of different solutions in the context of different professional and cultural contexts. Instructors should acknowledge that different libraries and different user communities have different degrees of access to information technology, and should therefore prepare students to develop scalable solutions to technology problems given greater or more limited access to technology resources.
LIS 488 is not a course that should be taught exclusively through lectures; instructors should incorporate lab sessions and other hands-on activities in order to reinforce the concepts being presented and to accommodate different learning styles.
Student Deliverables
Each instructor should have the prerogative to decide on the deliverables that he or she expects from students, based on his or her assessment of the class’ background, needs, and interests. That said, all course assignments should be aligned with, and evaluate a student's measurable progress toward, previously defined learning outcomes.
Some particularly successful assignments and delivery methods that committee members have observed in action include:
- Cataloging an information object using an integrated library system (ILS)
- Conducting a case study of a local library and the ILS it uses, drawing on interviews with systems librarians
- Writing an assessment of, or an RFP for, an ILS in a particular institutional context
- Teaching oneself a new software application
- Investigating and reporting on a current topic of interest in the world of LIS applications
The Committee
Respectfully submitted by the members of the Associate Dean's Curriculum Advisory Committee:
- John Aubrey
- Sarah Heartt
- Jennifer Jubinville
- Ann Kardos
- Marcel LaFlamme
- Brenda Mitchell-Powell
- Heather Navratil
- Michael Spelman (LISSA representative)
- Abigail Thompson
- Karen Vagts
