SJSU SLIS LIBR287 Updated 01/23/2005

IA Information Architecture
 Syllabus  / Schedule /  1st assignment  /  Study Modules  /  Projects  / Blackboard
 course description, components, outcomes, responsibilities, evaluation, greetings from the professor
course logistics /  text & readings   / site outline 
technology  / rigor and time investment  /  assumptions about information  / intelligent information s/places

Much about how this class will be conducted was included on the syllabus, in the greetings from your professor section. 

Here you will find specific information about expectations regarding technology, how "time" is invested in this class, and calculated, and some assumptions about information with a definition of "intelligent information s/places. 

This class functions more like a collegial laboratory than a lecture hall. There will be lots of "experiments" going on and things might seem "noisy" to you, at first. All participants are expected to show up regularly and consistently throughout the semester, and to reach out to each other, each making our presence known by cultivating an "online personae" as part of our group...in other words, each one of us must speak up and engage the class.  

It is up to YOU to call attention to yourself, and your work, and to do it in a professional and collegial way.  If you are the type of person who likes to sit in the back of the room and hold your tongue and observe: this is not the class for you.  
We have no back of the room, and there are no silent observers quartered here.   

We will have no time-based meetings.  You  must be comfortable interacting virtually and collaboratively using distributed email, web spaces, blackboards, net-based audio/video telecommunications, and any other tech-based communication and information sharing platforms we might conjure. 

To succeed, you must be self-motivated and comfortable working independently on multiple simultaneous and intertwined things (the modules, the project, the workbook, your readings) while also working as a group in virtual collaboration (serving as colleague and consultant on each other's projects, and sustaining online discussions.)  Each of us must work with fellow participants in an advisory/consultant professional capacity, and also seek the advise and consultation (rather than the approval) of your colleagues.   Tolerance for ambiguity and chaos are necessary. There is no set of rules for how to be.   It is best to suspend all assumptions and judgment, and to jump in, fingers first, take risks, and have a play...
But remember: along with your considerable professional and creative freedom you have attendant responsibility.

  

 

 

 

technology

Students are responsible for all aspects of their personal technology.  This class is not a tutorial or a training course on how to use technology, although we should expect to help each other out with technology, when appropriate. Configuring and troubleshooting your personal technology to enable participation is not included in the required 30 contact hours.

 

 

rigor and time investment requirement

In lieu of traditional, "meatspace" classroom time together,  each participant is expected to engage in a minimum of 30 contact hours with fellow students and/or the professor.  Contact hours for this class are tabulated as virtual presence, or engagement in or availablity through the blackboard.  

In addition, students should expect to invest three to six  times that amount of time in preparation time outside of class.  

You might find these "time requirements" get
  blurred  
or an online class, since time and (physical) space disconnect.
  

A "contact hour" is  an hour spent in contact with (or available to) the class.  You might ALSO be riding the bus, stirring the beans, doing the laundry, jibbing the sails, etc....but it doesn't mean just logging on and walking away!  Contact can either be asynchronous (one way, as on forums or via email) or synchronous (two way, as with virtual chat, teleconference, etc.) Contact time is action potential for interaction with the professor and/or the class.   Content time is NOT simply engagement with the content of the blackboard, anymore than contact time via telephone is engageement with the telephone.  We seek contact among the CREATORS of the content.

The contact hours must be fully invested by the class end date, and must be accumulated gradually.  You cannot "bank" contact hours ahead of time to take a mid-semester vacation, or make up for lost time or opportunity.  In other words, you must show up, and show up regularly, consistently and without fail for the entire semester.  But, quaNtity time is not sufficient!  Its quaLity time we're after. So, even if you log the "right" number of hours, but just sit there passively reading everyone else's stuff, that is, if you're not actively engaged and interacting, then the numbers won't count.  

This class is designed to be rigorous and demanding for an entire semester and cannot be completed in "short order" or in the 11th hour.  You can't "go back" to an earlier time and "catch up" by posting, because the class will have moved on.... This class is about process, not product, although product is expected. We should all be working at about the same pace, on about the same tasks (else how are we going to discuss?)  WE...as a group... will set the pace....or, better yet, we'll all stay patient and sensitive, and let our pace emerge.  The schedule I have provided is a suggestion, and flexible. 

No incompletes will be granted except where mandated by university policy.  Late withdrawals are strictly governed by university policy and are never granted for fear of failure, or lack of attendance.   Participants must complete the course requirements before the official semester end date.  No extensions will be granted.   

Think of assignments as "work product."  Your work product will be incremental and progressive, and must be completed in the specified order, in harmony with the rest of the participants, since we will be discussing them, rather than "grading" them.   There are no traditional examinations for this class, and no paper is required...just like the real life work of the professional IA.   In addition to the work products associated with the six web-based study modules, participants will conceive, execute, document a prototype information architecture project.  This project is a prototype, not a finished, functional project.  There is more information about this on the projects page.  Projects may be individual or collaborative, and must be negotiated with professor before they are launched. This negotiation will take place in the projects blackboard discussion forums, in the "brainstorming" thread. 

Students will be granted full access to full Blackboard functionality (at professor level) and are expected to help architect and maintain the course blackboard; at the same time students are expected to respect and understand that this level of access means each of us is in a position to totally eliminate all the content of the blackboard...and so, we must first cultivate the discipline of careful thought, and avoid cavalier clicking.....which we will do in our 1st assignment shortly.

 
Creativity and daring 
are expected

 Innovation and risk taking 
are encouraged  

A willingness to 
"fail spectacularly" 
is rewarded

 

Now, to get us thinking together: 

 

Here are our basic assumptions about information :

If these assumptions are foreign to you, you will learn more about them during the 1st Assignment, particularly when you visit the "collaboration" links provided.  But, do not rush ahead...stay with us....


What is an "intelligent information s/place?"

An intelligent information s/place helps humans create understanding. 
Understanding is a s/place-based interactive process and exchange potential. 
Architecting information s/places is an interpretive, diagnostic, and prescriptive activity conducted on behalf of others, by intermediaries, prior to and simultaneous with 
design, implementation, and evaluation of s/place.

Hold your questions...

 if you are comfortably oriented, let's move on to the Texts & Readings

IA Information Architecture
 Syllabus  /  Schedule  /  1st Assignment  /  Study Modules  /  Projects  /  Blackboard


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