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Course Syllabus

Course website

http://lis9763.net/2009-winter

Course Instructor

Amanda Etches-Johnson
e-mail & GTalk: etchesjohnson @ gmail.com

Course Prerequisite

Certificate of Achievement in Basic HTML Coding or the equivalent.

Course Description

The term "social software" has been applied to Web-based software tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, and network/community-building. This course explores the affordances of social software applications such as blogs, tagging, and online social networks in libraries and discusses questions such as: does social software have a place in library service provision and what social software applications can be harnessed by information organizations? The focus of this course is on social software fluency and provides students with opportunities to create and use social media tools and examine the implications and applications of these tools in libraries.

Course Objectives

Students who take this course will:

  1. with hands-on experience, develop proficiency in creating and maintaining social software tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, tagging, media sharing, and online social networking tools;
  2. explore the impact of social software and social media on library services and examine the range of their use in libraries and information organizations;
  3. develop the capacity to critically evaluate social software tools within the context of an institution's needs;
  4. gain an understanding of social software and social media principles, including the impact these principles have on online interactions and user experience.

Class Chat (a.k.a office hours)

In lieu of "office hours", we'll have a weekly chat for an hour every week (we'll determine the best time for everyone during the first week of class). All students are invited to the chat and we'll use the time to talk about the topics of the week and anything else that comes up. These chats will take place in the chat rooms on this site (accessible from the navigation area on the right once you've logged into the site). If you have something you'd like to discuss privately with me, your best bet is to send me an email or ping me on IM. Note: the class chat rooms are not accessible to anyone who is not logged into the site.

Topics & Schedule

  • Week 1: Intro
  • Week 2: What is social software/ social media?
  • Week 3: Blogs & blogging
  • Week 4: RSS
  • Week 5: Wikis
  • Week 6: Reading Week
  • Week 7: Social bookmarking & tagging
  • Week 9: Folksonomies
  • Week 10: Online social networks
  • Week 11: Gaming & virtual worlds
  • Week 12: Media sharing
  • Week 13: Lessons from Web 2.0
  • Week 14: Wrap-up

Course Communication

This site serves as the primary method of communication for the course. All course content is posted here and all students will have a blog here as well. We'll also be using an online social bookmarking space to gather links that pertain to the course topics (more on that later).

All course content has already been posted to the site via the links on the left ("weekly content"). Every week (usually on Saturday), I will put up a blog post that will include a couple of "talking points" or things to think about when reading the articles and reviewing the case studies for the. Students will be expected to do the reading and spend some time exploring the tools and technologies, after which they will blog about their thoughts, reactions and discoveries on their own blogs. Students are also expected to comment on their classmates' posts. As well, students will be reading other related works that they find during the course of their own social media explorations, and tagging these readings in delicious (the tag we will use is "lis9763"). The content posted to the "lis9763" tag in delicious will become a collection of resources that we will all read and draw upon during the course of term.

In this course, I place a great deal of importance on the notion of "community" and hope that over the course of our term together, we will become a focused research community that is engaged with the broader community of librarians and social software researchers. To that end, our communication tools (blogs, RSS, delicious) are open and readily accessible on the Web. As such, students are encouraged to contact me directly (via email or IM) to discuss personal or sensitive issues, otherwise all communication will be done via the blogs on this site and our weekly chat.

Assignments

 

Style Guide & References

You are free to use whatever style guide you are most comfortable with for your submitted assignments, just remember to apply it consistently. For the weekly blogging, I do not expect you to formally cite every source you refer to, a simple link in-text is fine.

Submitting Assignments

All assignments should be submitted using Google Docs (please no email attachments). If you don't already have an account on Google Docs, set one up and upload your paper there. Then add me (etchesjohnson AT gmail.com) as a collaborator so I can post comments to your proposal online. Finally, please send me an email letting me know that you've shared a document with me so I know to look for it. NOTE that this procedure should be followed only for submitted assignments. If your submission is online (as is the case with the group projects and some final projects, depending on the topic you choose), a simple email with a link to your submission will suffice.

Weekly Blogging

  • Worth 30% of final mark
  • Due weekly, by 9 am Friday

Think of the weekly blogging as the online equivalent of "class discussion". Since this is a distance ed course, we will be using our blogs to discuss the content of the course. In the interest of clarity, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you blog for this course:

  • Tell us what you think: please don't summarize the readings for the week in your blog -- instead, tell us what you think about them! I'd like to read your impressions, reactions, and opinions on the readings, rather than a summary of what they covered. Also, while I do expect you to do all the readings, I don't expect you to blog about every article every week. Pick a couple that resonate with you and blog about those.
  • Keep the discussion going: since our blogs stand in for class discussion, you will be expected to comment on your classmates' blog posts. At least a couple of comments per week to keep the conversation going! 
  • Quality not quantity: don’t feel like you need to post 10 times a week; it’s more important for you to spend your time doing the readings, completing the week’s exercises, exploring the case studies, and engaging in a discussion with your classmates (via comments to their blogs). Your blog posts should reflect upon all of these activities, but it makes no difference to me whether it’s all in a single post or if it’s broken up into multiple posts. The choice is yours! Also, I prefer not to provide a word-count requirement for your weekly posts because I find word-counts force artificial limits on such an informal medium. You are free to write as much or as little as you want, but keep in mind that this is a graduate course, so I do expect a certain level of engagement with the readings. Also, if I think you're not on the right track with your blog posts (regarding content and/or length), I'll let you know early on.
  • A blog is a blog: those of you who are familiar with blogs are well aware that they tend to be less formal, and that’s fine for this course. I don’t expect you to formulate complete essays, and I certainly don’t expect proper citation (see "Style Guide & References" above). Having said that, if you are uncomfortable with less formal writing, please feel free to use the tone and structure that works for you. The blogging we’re doing in this class is an attempt to get you thinking about and responding to the ideas we’re being introduced to, I am far less concerned with traditional assignment formalities.
  • Case studies: as I mentioned in the syllabus, the weekly case studies are intended to provide real-life library examples of the technologies we’re exploring. Spend some time on each of the case studies (beyond the main page) and blog your thoughts & response. Honest evaluations and constructive criticism are encouraged.
  • Best practices: as you do the readings for the course and explore the case studies provided, I’d like you to think about “best practices” for the technologies we’re exploring. During our final two weeks, you will be blogging about what you've observed as best practices for the use of social software in libraries, so it’s a good idea to start thinking about them early and continue to flesh them out as we move from topic to topic. Feel free to blog about the best practices you observe from week-to-week as well.
  • Feedback: each of you will receive a blogging "progress report" from me early in the term (week 6). The report is simply intended to provide some helpful feedback on how you’re doing with your blogging and will include a grade for your blogging thus far in the term.
  • "Blog Holiday": you will soon come to realize that this is a busy course - there’s a lot to learn, many tools to try, case studies to explore, and articles to read. I realize that you all have lives beyond school, and many of you are working full-time on co-op as well, therefore I’m allowing a 2-week "blog holiday". The blog holiday allows you to take 2 weeks off of blogging/commenting/tagging during term, which means that your grade for this weekly assignment (which accounts for 35% of your final mark) will be based on 11 weeks of blogging/commenting/tagging rather than 13 weeks. As grad students, I’m sure you realize the importance of keeping up with the course content for your own personal edification, so I won’t preach about the difference between not blogging versus not doing the work (sorry, I think I just preached). But I do acknowledge the rigourous pace of the course, which is the reason why I’m offering this 2-week blog holiday. You are free to take your 2 weeks off in succession or split them up over term. For the 2 weeks that you do decide to take off, please put up a post on your blog letting us know that you plan to be off that week.

Group Project

  • Worth 25% of final mark 
  • Due: weeks 4-11 (by 9 am on the Friday of your topic week) - check the Important Dates page for a breakdown of due dates by topic 

Groups will works with 6 major topics: RSS Feeds, wikis, social bookmarking & tagging, online social networks, gaming & virtual worlds, media sharing. The main deliverables of the group project are a working model or prototype of a library service built using 2.0 tools, and a blog post that explains the service, what software was used to build it, who the target audience is, etc. (there is no particular word-count for the blog post, just make sure that you've communicated all the important aspects of your project). I'm looking for a few things with this assignment: creativity, usefulness of the service, and evidence that you've thought through a particular "problem" and provided a meaningful solution with your prototype. To get you started, here are a few suggestions for projects (these are just ideas and you should not feel limited to choosing one of these):

  • a library portal built using RSS and a personalized home page tool like NetVibes or iGoogle
  • a subject guide or pathfinder built on RSS tools
  • a library website or staff intranet built using wiki software
  • a subject guide using a social bookmarking tool
  • a social network for kids/teens using online social networking software
  • a treasure hunt in Second Life
  • a information literacy module in Second Life
  • a tour of a library space in Second Life
  • a library plugin built using LibX
  • a screencast describing the use of a library resource
  • a library tour using Flickr
  • a library promotional video on YouTube

Each group should run their idea by me -- I'd like to make sure you're on the right track before you put too much work into your project. I'll put out a call to sign up for groups during week 2, so keep your eyes open for it. Groups should have no more than 4 students and each group will receive a single assessment which will account for 25% of your overall mark.

Proposal for final project

  • Worth 15% of final mark
  • Due: Midnight, Friday, March 6 (week 8)

This assigment is simple - write a one-page outline of what you'd like to accomplish with your final project. Don't put too much work into the Final Project until you've received feedback from me on your Proposal. More details on the final project below.

Final Project

  • Worth 25% of final mark
  • Due: Midnight, Wednesday April 15 (week 14)

The final project is wide open for possibilities and I encourage you to use your imaginations! Some ideas to get you started (again, these are just ideas, you don't have to choose one of these):

  • write an essay on a 2.0 topic or technology of interest to you. The essay can be theoretical or it can explore the use of the tool/technology in libraries, or some combination of the two.
  • write a proposal for the implementation of a social software tool in a specific library. If you're on co-op this term, this might be a good assignment to tie into your work.
  • perform a needs assessment of a library and write a project proposal with your recommendations for the implementation of social software tools at that library. Again, for those of you on co-op this term, this project might tie in well with the work you're doing at your placement organization.
  • build a prototype of a library service for a particular library or user group (see suggestions for the Group Project, above). You may choose to build upon the work done by your group for the Group Project, or you may choose to build something new.
  • edit a number of Wikipedia articles and write a paper outlining the experience.
  • create a blog for a particular library or user group.

If you choose to write an essay or proposal, your paper should be between 1500-2000 words long. If you decide on one of the other projects, you should have some supporting documentation outlining the project. This documentation can take the form of a submitted paper, a wiki, a blog post, or any other format that makes sense to you. There is no specific word-count for this supporting documentation. As you can tell, you have a lot of lattitude with this project, so I expect you to have some fun with it!

Tagging

  • Worth 5% of final mark
  • There is no weekly deadline for the tagging exercise -- your 5% will account for the tagging you do over the course of the term.

As part of the course, you are encouraged to read related works that you find during the course of your own social media explorations, and tag these readings in delicious (using the tag "lis9763"). When you tag something in delicious, you are given the option to add a description of the item you've added -- it's a good idea to do this. It provides a bit of context and helps the rest of us understand why the item was tagged. The point of the tagging exercise is threefold:

  • it gives you the opportunity to use one of the technologies we will be exploring in the course (social bookmarking) and allow you to become familiar with an important and growing trend in the evolution of web 2.0 and social media (tagging and folksonomies).
  • you will find, over the course of the term and your readings for this class, that we're dealing with topics that are "hyperlinked" in many ways. When you read an article or blog post for this class, you will probably find yourself following links in those articles/blog posts to other sites and content that will broaden your grasp of the topic. The tagging exercise is an attempt to capture those collective web meanderings and identify members of this class as a "community of interest": by the end of the course, everything tagged with "lis9763" in delicious will become a collection of resources that we can all read and draw upon.
  • my hope is that this exercise will get you in the habit of reading within and beyond our professional literature, since this practice should become an important part of your lives as professional librarians.

Policy on Late Assignments

While I recognize that one of the advantages of distance education is to allow students flexibility in completing the course content, it’s important for students in this course to complete assignments in a timely manner so that our online conversations are productive and topics are tackled as a group. This doesn’t preclude students from blogging about a topic well after that module has been completed, but it’s also important to address the topic when the rest of the class is tackling it. That said, if a student has a valid reason (serious illness, family emergency, etc.) for requesting an extension on an assignment, he/she may contact me. For obvious reasons, extensions will not be granted on the weekly blogging/commenting/tagging assignment and on the Group Analysis & Presentation. Assignments handed in late without permission will be penalized as follows:

  • 1-7 days late: 30% reduction in mark
  • 8-14 days late: 50% reduction in mark
  • more than 14 days late: zero on the assignment

Statement on Plagiarism

Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see the Scholastic Offence Policy Section 10 in the Faculty of Graduate Studies Academic Calendar).