Digital Information Associates
The Digital Information Associates Program (in 1998, now called the Graduate Student Research Assistants program) was in existence since the beginning of the Kellogg CRISTAL-ED project (and it was originally the Digital Library Associates). A faculty admissions committee selects individuals who appear to have a high probability of success in innovative, technology-based, mentoring research partnerships with faculty. Associates take the usual number of credit hours for graduation but they have more flexibility than other students do with respect to the number of courses they can select outside of the School and the number of independent study credits they can take. The focus of the experience is an ongoing research assistantship with a faculty member, which culminates in a major project or thesis which the student must complete in order to graduate. DIA incorporates several of the themes of CRISTAL-ED because it provides a pilot for innovation in an instructional program which incorporates research partnerships involving faculty mentoring, experiential and project-based learning, and a multidisciplinary focus. Students conduct a research assistantship under the supervision of a faculty mentor, participate as full partners in a research activity, generate an independent synthesis of a significant research project they have worked on, and take a wide variety of formal coursework from other units on the University of Michigan campus.
DIA has been highly successful in attracting students with good technology backgrounds and a wide variety of intellectual abilities and interests. In fact, one of the strengths of the program is that the students who take part in it are so diverse. They come from fields as widely separated as computer science, on the one hand, and art history, on the other. We have had a superb record of choosing good candidates for this program who have produced excellent thesis and project work. Their work has included the following:
- A research study of interface browsability
- A research study of stemming algorithms in information retrieval
- A web-based presentation of distance-education efforts at U-M
- A hyperlinked set of humanities texts
- Design, implementation and maintenance of Web-based resources for CRISTAL-ED-supported pilot projects, especially for the Internet Public Library, CHICO, and Flint Community Information Networking Project
All students enrolled in SI have opportunities to conduct fieldwork and/or take on internships. Some internships are connected with the School's many sponsored research projects. Internships, fieldwork, and associates programs provide students with real-life experiences in the workplace. At the present time, such programs are not mandatory; however, SI faculty have been so impressed by the results of these programs that the new educational program will require students to obtain workplace experience and integrate this experience into the total educational program.
Examples of organizations where SI students are assigned are Ann Arbor District Library, Argus Associates (an Ann Arbor firm specializing in strategy consulting and information architecture design for complex Web sites), Deloitte & Touche Consulting, Ford Motor Company's Research Library and Marketing Research Office, General Motors' Law Library and TIC Power Train Division, Michigan Historical Center, National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, and St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. A complete list of placements through the Directed Field Experience program is available.
Also, see:
Projects of the Digital Information Associates
