The Spring 2015 semester in the School of Information brings two new classes to students.

Social and Organizational Analytics with Warren Allen introduces students to the concept of analytics, the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data, and to the knowledge and tools necessary to apply analytics to fields like IT, Business, Communications, Sociology and Education. Students can take those analytical concepts and apply them to identification, enumeration and analysis of domain-specific problems, and apply theoretical concepts through hands-on exercises using contemporary tools and techniques for applied social network analysis, trace data analysis, big data analysis, cluster analysis, and topic modeling.

Innovating with IT (LIS4930) with Rienne Saludo is a ‘special topics course’ designed as an exploratory and open ended elective.  The instructor will be providing students with an environment to learn about their own processes towards IT innovation.  A student’s success is dependent on goal setting and reflection of their work through critical writing and presentation with the intent to produce an IT related deliverable.  The student is given an opportunity to learn new technology skills and evaluate their own method of staying on the cutting edge. 

The primary objectives of the course are:

·      Demonstrate knowledge of existing literature detailing current or recent projects related to their topics;

·      Review existing tools and systems to determine what free or open source options exist to move their ideas forward;

·      Develop a proposal describing the goals of their projects, and detailing what tools they will use to accomplish their tasks; and

·      Complete and document a prototype project using their chosen innovative, information technologies.