Information Course Schedule fall 2012

Lower-Division

Two hours of web-based lecture and one hour of web-based discussion per week. This lower-division survey course will provide an introduction to the study of information, an interdisciplinary science that draws on aspects of computer science, sociology, economics, business, law, library studies, cognitive science, psychology, and communication. The course is organized into modules that may cover topics such as social bookmarking, networks and web security, human-computer interaction, interface design, technology and poverty, law and policy, business models, and entrepreneurship.

DIS Sec. 1 F 10-11, DIS Sec. 2 F 11-12, Dis Sec. 3 F 1-2, and DIS Sec, 4 F 2-3 — online
Instructor(s): Brian Carver

Three hours of lecture per week. Must be taken on a passed/not passed basis. An introduction to high-level computer programming languages covering their basis in mathematics and logic. This course will guide students through the elements that compose any programming language including expressions, control of flow, data structures, and modularity via functions and/or objects. Covers traditional contemporary programming paradigms including sequential, event-based, and object-oriented programming; multi-person programming projects and debugging strategies.

TuTh 2-3:30 — 202 South Hall
Instructor(s): Paul Laskowski

Upper-Division

Specific topics, hours and credit may vary from section to section, year to year. May be repeated for credit with change in content.

Section 1
TuTh 2-3:30 — 210 South Hall
Instructor(s): Marti Hearst

A weekly two-and-a-half-hour hands-on workshop overviewing some of the foundations of visual design. We'll bring the demos on design tools, you bring your laptop and come ready with trial packages downloaded. This is a studio-style course which will impart basic knowledge of design history and guidelines for you to then pursue your own design projects.

Classes will entail a mix of lectures, demonstrations, studio time, and critiquing session. There will be short exercises as well as large final project.

Section 2
Tu 5-7:30 — 205 South Hall
Instructor(s): Jennifer Wang, Tapan Parikh

Graduate

15 weeks; 3 hours of lecture per week. This course introduces the intellectual foundations of information organization and retrieval: conceptual modeling, semantic representation, vocabulary and metadata design, classification, and standardization, as well as information retrieval practices, technology, and applications, including computational processes for analyzing information in both textual and non-textual formats.

TuTh 9:30-11 (DIS: Tu 11-12, Tu 12:30-1:30, Tu 2-3, W 9-10, W 1-2, or W 2-3) — 110 Barrows
Instructor(s): Robert Glushko

This course uses examples from various commercial domains — retail, health, credit, entertainment, social media, and biosensing/quantified self — to explore legal and ethical issues including freedom of expression, privacy, research ethics, consumer protection, information and cybersecurity, and copyright. The class emphasizes how existing legal and policy frameworks constrain, inform, and enable the architecture, interfaces, data practices, and consumer facing policies and documentation of such offerings; and, fosters reflection on the ethical impact of information and communication technologies and the role of information professionals in legal and ethical work.

M 10-12 — 170 Barrows
Instructor(s): Deirdre Mulligan
Discussion Section 101
W 2-3 — 202 South Hall
Discussion Section 102
W 3-4 — 202 South Hall

This course will provide an introduction to the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Students will learn to apply design thinking to user experience (UX) design, prototyping, & evaluation. The course will also cover special topic areas within HCI.

TuTh 11-12:30 — 210 South Hall
Instructor(s): Tapan Parikh

Three hours of lecture per week. Policy and technical issues related to insuring the accuracy and privacy of information. Encoding and decoding techniques including public and private key encryption. Survey of security problems in networked information environment including viruses, worms, trojan horses, Internet address spoofing.

MW 2-3:30 — 205 South Hall
Instructor(s): Doug Tygar

Three hours of lecture per week. The philosophical, legal, historical, and economic analysis of the need for and uses of laws protecting intellectual property. Topics include types of intellectual property (copyright, patent, trade secrecy), the interaction between law and technology, various approaches (including compulsory licensing), and the relationship between intellectual property and compatibility standards.

MW 10:30- 12 — 202 South Hall
Instructor(s): Brian Carver

This course is a survey of technologies that power the user interfaces of web applications on a variety of devices today, including desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. This course will delve into some of the core front-end languages and frameworks (HTML/CSS/JavaScript/React/Redux), as well as the underlying technologies that enable web applications (HTTP, URI, JSON). The goal of this course is to provide an overview of the technical issues surrounding user interfaces powered by the web today, and to provide a solid and comprehensive perspective of the web’s constantly evolving landscape.

F 2-5 — 210 South Hall
Instructor(s): Jim Blomo

Three hours of lecture per week. Introduction to relational, hierarchical, network, and object-oriented database management systems. Database design concepts, query languages for database applications (such as SQL), concurrency control, recovery techniques, database security. Issues in the management of databases. Use of report writers, application generators, high level interface generators.

TuTh 12:30-2 — 202 South Hall
Instructor(s): Ray Larson

Three hours of lecture per week. Introduction to many different types of quantitative research methods, with an emphasis on linking quantitative statistical techniques to real-world research methods. Introductory and intermediate topics include: defining research problems, theory testing, causal inference, probability and univariate statistics. Research design and methodology topics include: primary/secondary survey data analysis, experimental designs, and coding qualitative data for quantitative analysis. No prerequisites, though an introductory course in statistics is recommended.

TuTh 3:30-5 — 210 South Hall
Instructor(s): Coye Cheshire

Three hours of lecture per week. Theory and practice of naturalistic inquiry. Grounded theory. Ethnographic methods including interviews, focus groups, naturalistic observation. Case studies. Analysis of qualitative data. Issues of validity and generalizability in qualitative research.

TuTh 12:30-2 — 205 South Hall
Instructor(s): Jenna Burrell

Three hours of seminar per week.  This seminar reviews current literature and debates regarding Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD). This is an interdisciplinary and practice-oriented field that draws on insights from economics, sociology, engineering, computer science, management, public health, etc.

M 2-5 — 107 South Hall
Instructor(s): Isha Ray

Specific topics, hours and credit may vary from section to section, year to year. May be repeated for credit with change in content.

Section 10
W 11-12 — 205 South Hall
Instructor(s): Neha Kumar, Tapan Parikh

Visual and multi-modal media are central to much of what we do in the I School and related disciplines. Data collection, reports, and presentations, face-to-face and distant, online and off, often rely heavily on visual and audio media. Because we are a media-literate society, with accessible hardware and software plus easy online distribution, it seems that everyone “knows" how to make and critique such media. However, our knowledge about how to effectively make, use, and present these media trails far behind our ability to create hours and gigabytes of content. Furthermore, it’s useful to consider how these resources are changing not just professional and research practice.

In this seminar, we will address both theoretical and practical issues of capturing and creating narratives with video, audio, and still images. We will draw on photojournalism, visual narrative, visual anthropology, visual studies, and related areas. We will get hands-on experience creating and editing our own media. This is not a technical course; nor is it a media production how-to. But you will get experience with media technologies while we reflect on them with the help of theoreticians and scholars in relevant areas.

This course is relevant to students in professional schools and to doctoral students interested in and qualitative research, including user experience research; technology designers who produce video scenarios and concept videos; and anyone concerned with collecting and presenting information via multiple media.

No prior experience is necessary, but students who are already grappling with visual (and audio) media will find this course especially useful. I School students are likely to find this course useful for the doing and presenting of final projects.

Section 2
TuTh 11-12:30 — 205 South Hall
Instructor(s): Nancy Van House

Specific topics, hours and credit may vary from section to section, year to year. May be repeated for credit with change in content.

Section 1
TuTh 2-3:30 — 210 South Hall
Instructor(s): Marti Hearst

This is a hands on course that will address two major challenges associated with the current shift from text-based to e-books: making them more engaging and informative through use of the capabilities of the medium, and identifying and analyzing the issues surrounding the collaborative authoring and usage of e-books in an educational context.

Course may be repeated for credit, as new issues will be explored.

(In Fall 2012, this course was offered for 1 unit.)

Section 5
W 10-11 — 205 South Hall
Instructor(s): Robert Glushko

The mobile landscape is constantly changing — new devices, new operating systems, new applications. Even seasoned designers are overwhelmed by the chaos, sometimes creating less than optimal designs that are soon outdated. But the successful designs, the ones that surprise and delight their users, look beyond the here and now.

Designing Mobile Experiences will start with an overview of current device and OS differences, featuring guest lecturers with deep Android and iOS expertise. The second part of the course will lay the foundation to create mobile application designs that can truly stand the test of time. Some of the topics we’ll cover include: exploratory mobile research, gesture design, and touch design. The latter part of the course will introduce ways to bring apps to life through animation, sound, and prototyping.

Course material will be covered through lectures, in class activities, readings, and a group project. Early in the semester students will pitch mobile application ideas; they will spend the rest of the term iteratively designing the app with their teammates. Ongoing design critiques will be provided by the instructor, classmates, and industry leaders.

Priority for attending this class is given to I School students. Programming mobile applications will not be covered in the course.

Section 4
Th 3:30-5:30 — 205 South Hall
Instructor(s): Suzanne Ginsburg

Course may be repeated for credit. One and one-half to two hours of lecture per week for eight weeks. Two hours of lecture per week for six weeks. Three hours of lecture per week for five weeks.

Section 2
F 1-3 (September 7 - October 26) — 202 South Hall
Instructor(s): Scott Young

In this course, we will discuss theories that explain why some individuals and teams within companies accomplish great things and succeed, while others don't. The core theme is that work is "social," meaning that individuals and teams that accomplish great things navigate well the social context of work. This explanation complements or contradicts views that hold that individual smarts and luck explain success. It is an applied course, looking at practical steps to increase the odds of success.

Section 4
F 9:30- 12:30 (October 26 - December 7) — 210 South Hall
Instructor(s): Morten Hansen

Course may be repeated for credit. Three hours of lecture per week for five weeks.

Section 1
M 3:30-6:30 (August 27 - October 1) — 210 South Hall
Instructor(s): Quentin Hardy

Course may be repeated for credit. Three hours of lecture per week for five weeks.

Section 3
M 3:30-6:30 (August 27 - October 1) — 202 South Hall
Instructor(s): Andreas Weigend

It takes critical thinking, outstanding leadership, and a little magic to be a successful project manager. Come and learn not only the essential building blocks of project management, but the tricks to managing a variety of complex projects. We will have a combination of interactive lectures, guest speakers, and case studies discussions to cover globally recognized standards, best practices and tools that successful project managers use.

Th 6-8 — 210 South Hall
Instructor(s): Anne Walker

Students will build tools to explore and apply theories of information organization and retrieval. Students will implement various concepts covered in the concurrent 202 course through small projects on topics like controlled vocabularies, the semantic web, and corpus analysis. We will also experiment with topics suggested by students during the course. Students will develop skills in rapid prototyping of web-based projects using Python, XML, and jQuery.

MW 12:30-2 — 210 South Hall

One hour colloquium per week. Must be taken on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis. Prerequisites: Ph.D. standing in the School of Information. Colloquia, discussion, and readings designed to introduce students to the range of interests of the school.

M 12:30-2 — 205 South Hall
Instructor(s): Jenna Burrell

Topics in information management and systems and related fields. Specific topics vary from year to year. May be repeated for credit, with change of content. May be offered as a two semester sequence.

Section 1
F 3-5 — 107 South Hall