Foundations

SI 609 (School of Information)
University of Michigan

SI 609 -- Frequently Asked Questions

Last Revised: 15 November 96 by jmm

1. What is SI 609, Foundations?

A new (Fall 1996) core sequence for students pursuing degrees in the School of Information. We will focus on principles and methods drawn from a number of different disciplines, with an emphasis on synergy and integration. For 1996, this is an experimental course, open only by application to the instructors.

2. Where can we get more information?
   
   There is a course home page at http://www.si.umich.edu/SI_609/. Up-to-date information (schedule, readings, assignments, project materials, &c.) will be available there. We also intend to maintain a complete set of on-line course lecture notes (cumulatively).
   
   
3. How many credit hours is SI 609?

The Fall 1996 version will be for 9 credits. This may change in future years. This means there will generally be 9 classroom hours each week, plus a corresponding amount of additional time for preparation, lab work, group projects, etc.


4. What is the purpose of this course?
   
   Unprecedented change in the use of information is reshaping our personal activities, our community and organizational practices, and our national and global institutions. In managing these transformations, our society too often focuses narrowly either on extending technology or on revising social policies. We need more: an integrated understanding of human needs and their relationships to information systems and social structures. We need unifying principles that illuminate the role of information in both computation and cognition, in both communication and community. We need information professionals who can apply these principles to synthesize human-centered and technological perspectives. The University of Michigan School of Information will pioneer the development and application of the principles and will educate professionals to lead in the information age.
   
   
   The "Foundations" course has been created to prepare students for this synergistic, integrated approach to working in the information age. This new offering is a bold experiment to introduce students in both the Master's and Ph.D. programs to a broad but disciplined set of principles necessary for an integrated understanding of human, information and social systems. The material will be drawn from several fields, including librarianship, psychology, computer science, and economics. However, we will not teach traditional, "stovepipe" courses, one focused on each discipline. Rather, the material will be integrated both in presentation and in practice.
   
   
   
5. What will we do in the course?
   
   To provide an integrated set of foundational principles and methods, we will implement some novel features. The course is offered as a complete, 9 credit hour core. There will be four primary faculty, all of whom will attend most class sessions. Principles and methods will often be taught through a problem solving approach, rather than a methodological approach. That is, we will consider an information problem, and then develop the tools needed to solve it -- those tools will come from some combination of the several fields represented. For example, a problem in pricing electronic journal subscriptions may require tools from economics, computer science, human-computer interaction, and information retrieval and access.
   
   Class time will be a mix of lecture, discussion and presentation; students will spend substantial time working singly and in groups on labs, problem sets and projects.
   
   During weeks 2 - 5 there will be a programming module to teach the fundamentals of C++. This will be taught by Sandy Bartlett. She will instruct in the Media Union instructional lab (3rd floor) on Thursday evenings, 6:30p - 9:30p, and she will be present to provide assistance on assignments during lab hours of 9a-12p on Saturday and Sunday of those weeks.
   
   
6. Who may take the class?

The class is open by application to graduate students enrolled in any School or College at the University of Michigan. Preference will be given to students enrolled in the School of Information. We are enrolling both Master's and Ph.D. students.


7. How does one get permission to take the class?

You must fill out an application. We will notify applicants on a rolling basis. As of 2 Sept 96, we have no remaining slots, but if you are still interested you should attend the first class because some people may have changed their mind..



8. What will be the teaching style?

The course is being designed around a term-long master project that will be undertaken by the entire class, working in teams. We place high value on project-centered, inquiry-based education, in which the students learn proactively through developing and implementing the several stages of a real-world information system. At the same time, much of the foundational material will be initially conveyed through lecture-discussions during class time.


9. When and where do we meet?
   

	Time		Location		Notes
M	9:30a-11:30a		409 W. Hall		Class
	1:00p-3:00p		311 W. Hall		Class
T	9:30a-11:30		409 W. Hall		Class
Th	9:30a-12:30a		412 W. Hall		Class
	6:30p-9:30p		3rd Fl Media Union		Programming; Weeks 2-5
Sa	9:30a-12:30p		3rd Fl Media Union		Lab; Weeks 2-5
Su	9:30a-12:30p		3rd Fl Media Union		Lab; Weeks 2-5





10. Who are the faculty and staff and how do we contact them?
    

	E-mail	Phone	Office	Office Hours	Notes
Instructors
Sandy Bartlett	bartlett@umich.edu	936-1564	176 ATL		Programming
Bill Birmingham	wpb@umich.edu	764-8058 936-1590	3082 W. Hall	By appt.
Tim Darr	timd@umich.edu		4006 Shapiro Library	Th 1:30p-2:30p
Karen Drabenstott	ylime@umich.edu	763-3581	303D W. Hall	M 3p-4p
Jeff MacKie-Mason	jmm@umich.edu	647-4856 764-7438	301C W. Hall	Th 12:30p-1:30p
Judy Olson	jsolson@umich.edu	763-0164 647-4606	403B W. Hall	T 1:30p-2:30p
Teaching Assistants
Eileen Fenton	egfenton@umich.edu.	763-3581	303D W. Hall	By appt.	LIS
John Metzler	johnmetz@umich.edu	769-9110	117 Lorch	T Th 1p-2:30p	Economics
					CS/AI
Programmers
Jonathan Cruz	jeruz@umich.edu




11. What are the grading and due date policies?
    
    
1. Grading.
   
   
• This is a single, integrated course. You will receive one grade for all nine credits. You will be evaluated primarily on three components, with the following weights:
  
• project 50%
• assignments 40%
• class participation 10%
  
  
• You will receive three grades for the project, one for each project phase (or subproject). Your final project grade will be a simple average of the three phase grades. All members of a team will, in most cases, receive the same grade for each phase. However, at the end of the semester you will submit evaluations of both your own work and the work of your team colleagues. In exceptional cases we will use these evaluations to adjust individual grades.
  
  
• Class participation is an essential feature of the class. Evaluation depends more on the quality, creativity and synergism of your participation than on the quantity. For quality we will be looking for curiousity, thoughtfulness, constructiveness, and effort to integrate ideas from the various components of the course. This does not mean that we are only interested in dazzling, correct arguments with unassailable conclusions. In fact, we are more interested in cogent questions that provoke us and your classmates to think about an interesting problem and learn something from that thinking.
  
  
• You are responsible for doing the assigned readings before class. Readings are marked as Primary and Secondary. Primary readings are essential; Secondary readings are strongly recommended.
  
  
• English is not the first language for some of you. We will take this into account when evaluating class participation. This is not, however, an excuse to not participate. Speakers of many languages need to learn to communicate with each other. This is a two-way problem that all of us should work on in the class.
  
  
2. Grading Clarification (Updated 11/15/96)
   
   
• Your final grade is figured as:
  
  
• 40% the combined assignments and
• 50% the final project, and
• 10% class participation.
  
  
• By the end of the semester, you will have had 16 assignments. We will drop your lowest grade and figure the assignment portion from the remaining.
  
  
• For the 50% portion for the project, 10% is for the first report, 10% for the second report, and 30% for the final report (both oral and written). We will ask you for an evaluation of the effort level of the various members of your group, and weigh the project grade accordingly.
  
  
• Class participation is figured from a combination of attendance and attention, pithy comments in class, attendance at the programming portion (if you were not a programmer to begin with), etc.
  
  
• Grades for Masters and Ph.D. level students range from A to B-, for passing grades, and a C for failure. At this point in the course, no one is failing. This means that if the progress to the end of the semester is projected from current performance (this assumes you perform on the rest of the assignment and the project as you have been soon far), no one will get below a B-.
  
  
  
3. Due Dates.
   
   
• Assignments and project phases will be graded on a scale of 1 to 4 (4 being the highest). All assignments and project reports are due at the beginning of the (first) class on the assigned date. Late submissions will be penalized at the rate of one number grade per day.
  
  
12. What assignments do we have to turn in?
    
    
• The major assignment for the semester is the class project. The class as a whole will build a single information system. You will be assigned to teams for this project. There are three phases; each team will submit a work product for each of the phases. Due dates are on the course schedule. See the course home page for the schedule and a detailed description of the project. There will be a handout providing more details for each phase.
  
  
• There will be a number of class assignments during the semester. Handouts will be provided; due dates are on the course schedule. Unless instructed otherwise, you may work in groups of three or fewer on the assignments (these can be different groups than your project teams), but each individual must turn in a separate document for the assignment.
  
  
13. How does this "experimental core" interact with the LIS core requirements?

The answer is not firm. For students seeking the ALA-certified LIS degree, there is a required LIS core in addition to SI609. This will be offered in Fall 96 as 10 credits (five 2-credit classes). Obviously, a regular student could take at most 1 or 2 of these two-credit classes concurrently with SI609. It is not certain whether the classes will be offered again in the same form in Winter '97. What is currently planned for Winter '97 is a revamped LIS core. This will be offered in the form of 6-9 credit hours of initial courses, followed by 6-9 credit hours of courses required but taken later. Therefore, it seems that an LIS student interested in SI609 would most likely wait to start the LIS core in Winter '97. It is possible that some part of the LIS core may be waived for SI609 students, but that has not been determined. Check back here for updated information, or contact Karen Drabenstott or Amy Warner.


14. How does SI609 interact with the HCI curriculum?

SI609 is required for the HCI speciality. There are no scheduling or other conflicts with Fall 96 HCI courses. There will be three follow-on HCI courses (Situation/Task Analysis Methods, Building User Interfaces, Methods for Usability/Usefulness), and possibly a two-semester programming course. For further information contact Judy Olson.


15. Do any later courses require SI609?

Not yet. When the FSA (Future Systems Architecture) curriculum is offered, it is expected that SI609 will be required. LIS (Library and Information Studies) is currently redesigning its requirements; the new design will be final by Fall 1997. No requirements will be changed retroactively for enrolled students.


16. I'm buying a computer. What kind should I get?
    
    You are not required to own a personal computer, though nearly all graduate students at the School of Information do. The University provides excellent workstation facilities. We do not require that you use a particular flavor of computer, either. However, most of the faculty primarily use a Macintosh