MarcFriedenberg.com

Fall 2004

Organization and Design of Information Systems: User and System Principles (IST 331)

Credits: 3

Instructor: Chris Hoadley

Registrar’s Description

Interdisciplinary survey of topics related to the use and usability of information systems.

My thoughts: It was almost unfair to have this count as a required class for me - the topic is too much fun to be called work. I’ve been interested in interaction design for some time, and this class presented an overview of it from the ground up. Far from being a traditional textbook-driven course, we spent the majority of our time working on several projects which forced us to 1. make design decisions; and 2. justify those decisions. A lot of people take for granted the amount of work that goes into (or at least should go into) making the products we use every day.

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Legal and Regulatory Environment of Information Science and Technology (IST 432)

Credits: 3

Instructor: John Bagby

Registrar’s Description

Legal environment of information technology, constitutional/political issues, intellectual property, management, e-commerce, privacy, access, computer contracting, cyberspace regulation.

My thoughts: I had been looking forward to taking this class for some time, and I think it was worth the wait. Of course we all know about the important questions that the Internet brings to the legal world, and this class served to provide history and perspectives on potential answers. If I ever do go to law school, I think this class will have served an excellent introduction.

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Integrative Theories and Methods of the Information Sciences and Technology (IST 501)

Credits: 3

Instructor: Steve Sawyer

Registrar’s Description

An integrative treatment of the research and theories on how technologies are used to meet information needs at multiple levels of analysis.

My thoughts: This class was a lot of work, plain and simple. Every week focused on a particular topic, and we were given a list of relevant scholarly articles to read. I don’t think I was expecting the type of work that I would have to do in graduate-level classes, so this course was something of a shock. Besides the weekly readings and discussion, I was charged with writing an area paper (”mapping the intellectual geography of the field”) and a project paper akin to a literature review of 20 articles. I also took part in a poster presentation where everyone in the class showcased their work. From what I hear, this class serves as the best preparation for further graduate study, and I don’t have a hard time believing that.

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Information Management: Information and Technology (IST 511)

Credits: 3

Instructor: Lee Giles

Registrar’s Description

Introducton to theoretical, computational, and practical issues involved in managing textual, spatial, temporal, and multimedia information in a computerized system.

My thoughts: This class was far more lecture-based than IST 501; it even had a final exam on the topics we studied, such as search and knowledge management. I also worked in a group that designed a niche search engine focusing only on material from the Beatles’ movies. For this, we used the open-source Nutch tool. Unfortunately, the site is unavailable outside of the IST Building, or to those without access to Penn State’s network via a VPN. Regardless, this class presented both a high-level overview of the KM area as well as a hands-on project which I think could have some real value for me.

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