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Interim Reports
Project Overview
The University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) proposes to develop LIS capacity in community informatics by expanding its pilot Community Informatics Corps (CIC) masters program and extending the alliance among LIS schools participating in community informatics. Central to the CI Corps is its unique collaboration with Paseo Boricua, a low-resource Latino community in Chicago. Project goals are to: further develop of the CIC masters curriculum; attract and support CIC students, especially those from underserved communities; support faculty development in CI within GSLIS; strengthen communication and capacity-building at the intersection of university and community; and pursue collaborative program development with other CI institutions.
Project Activities: July 31, 2008– January 30, 2009
Our progress during the third six-month-period of the project is outlined below, according to our stated goals and objectives.
Goal 1: Further develop the CI Corps master’s curriculum, improving its design and expanding its content
Objective 1.1. Establish a CI Corps curriculum committee made up of faculty who teach CI Corps required and elective courses, and selected others.
Meetings with core community informatics faculty were held three times in the fall of 2008. Topics of discussion included future curriculum development; the best professional conferences to attend and the most important journals in which to publish in order to further the reach of CI as an emerging field for our students.
Objective 1.2. Perform continued basic development of the CI Corps program in terms of defining and developing required and elective course sequences, non-course learning opportunities, certification, continuing education credit, appropriate means of integrating campus vs. community-based settings and face-to-face vs. technology-mediated mechanisms, and other overall program elements.
Two CIC students, Jeff Ginger and Safiya Umoja Noble, conducted a focus group with the faculty in the Community Informatics program and produced a follow up report. Questions for discussion included: How do you see the CI program at GSLIS coming together? What’s the best and worst aspect? Are we getting the students we want? Are we meeting students’ needs? Are we meeting community needs? Other comments or questions? Their follow-up report addressed areas of definition or identity of CI at GSLIS; field-defining conferences and journals; recruitment; communities; evaluation and documentation of impacts.
The students and staff working on the CI Corps grant met weekly to accomplish the objectives of the grant. Those not in town called in to join the meetings via phone.
We submitted course outlines and the proposal for a certification in community informatics for LIS students to the GSLIS Curriculum Committee. They suggested revisions, which were made and the materials were resubmitted.
An Institutional Review Board application for evaluation of the CI program has been approved and is being implemented.
Jeff Ginger developed an online survey about community informatics that is ready to be distributed to all GSLIS students.
Objective 1.3. Redesign existing required and recommended courses, based on faculty and student course evaluations along with a broader review of the changing field of CI.
Professors Chip Bruce, Kate Williams, Ann Bishop, and adjunct Taylor Willingham taught two of our three new required courses in the program. The courses, Community Informatics Concepts and Community Engagement, were offered on campus, online via LEEP, and at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago. For the final presentation in Bishop’s Community Engagement class, visitors outside of the course were invited to view the projects on the Cunningham Children's Home Archives; Books2Prisoners Zine; WILL Youth Media Project evaluation; Community iLabs software redesign; Latino Media Initiative Web portal; SOAR After School Program; Service-Learning in Africa: Student Manual; Prairienet Computer and Internet Training Manual; Amplified Librarians Community Radio Project on WRFU. Phyllis Self, dean of libraries at WesternIllinoisUniversity, listened to the project reports via phone.
Professor Abdul Alkalimat implemented a lecture series featuring six local and regional speakers as part of his recommended course “The Digital Divide.”
Professor Martin Wolske’s course on “Introduction to Network Systems” was revamped to increase student civic engagement.
Objective 1.4. Develop several new courses, after initial program review.
Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite further developed and finalized the research course for master’s students in LIS to be taught in spring 2009. This course is part of the core requirements for the CI program at GSLIS.
Professor Jon Gant and Dr. Charlie Linville taught a new course on Geographic Information Systems for the first time. This course was developed with support from this grant’s “teaching buyout” funds.
PI Bishop also developed and co-taught a new recommended course called Serving Children in Schools and Communities with a faculty member from the College of Education, which provided course credit for SOAR tutors.
Goal 2: Attract and support students, especially those from underserved communities
Objective 2.1. Provide four new assistantships for CI Corps master’s students in each of the project’s three years.
Four assistantships in fall 2008 were held by five people: Roy Saldaña, Jr., Safiya Umoja Noble, Susan Rodgers, Kristin LoDolce, and John Vincler. Four of the five students represent underserved groups. One assistantship was split in two so that we were able to support five students. These students were indispensable to progress on the grant: in-person recruiting; creation of a recruitment guide for future use by staff and other students; writing and research in support of community informatics projects in the form of web copy, newsletters, and fliers; web design and maintenance; support for grant-writing initiatives; mentoring youth in Champaign, Chicago and East St. Louis; and creation of a guide to finding CI-related internships.
Susan Rodgers developed and posted profiles of graduate assistants and fellows for the website to give a face to the students working in CI.
Objective 2.2. Provide the equivalent of five one-year fellowships for CI Corps students in each of the project’s three years.
Full fellowships for 2008-09 were provided to Amita Lonial (a community activist in Paseo Boricua), Kristin Palmer (a Latina student who came into GSLIS after working with PI Bishop in a summer undergraduate research program), Brent Walton (an African American student with a strong interest in community informatics), Natalie Marin-Sharp (a Latina student living in Los Angeles who is enrolled in the LEEP online masters program), and Navadeep Khanal (a Nepali doctoral student interested in researching community-based IT policy).
Fellowship money also was used to support several part-time students for community credit courses. These are people who are considering library and information science or are in the process of applying to GSLIS and all represent underserved groups: social services staff member Annie Clay, Chicago art teacher Migdalia Galarza, and museum registrar for Alaska State Museums, Sorrel Goodwin.
Goal 3. Support faculty development in CI
Objective 3.1. Increase faculty involvement in the Community Inquiry Research Group, a weekly gathering begun in 2006.
In lieu of the research group, faculty held an informal discussion with PhD students on the prospects of doctoral research in community informatics.
Faculty involvement also shifted to the research-oriented CI speaker series (see Objective 3.2).
In addition, Safiya Noble interviewed faculty about their research in order to put video or audio vignettes on the Community Informatics Initiative website.
Objective 3.2. Create the CI Corps Speaker Series, a monthly series with outside speakers.
The Fall 2008 Speaker Series was a success, with seven speaking events. Presenters came from across campus: Mu Xia, Assistant Professor in Business Administration; Anne Silvis, Extension Specialist, Leadership Development, U of I Extension; Jon Gant, Associate Professor, GSLIS; two Mortenson Center Visiting International Scholars, one from Colombia, another from Kenya; Michelle Wander, Associate Professor, Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, UIUC; Ruth Nicole Brown, Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies and Educational Policy, UIUC
The attendance at the events was greater than anticipated requiring use of a larger room.
Objective 3.3. Foster the growth of the annual Community as Intellectual Space national symposium, inaugurated in Paseo Boricua in 2005, which brings together faculty, students, and community activists around CI.
Initial planning for the 2009 Community as Intellectual Space symposium began with several meetings in the fall. Sharon Irish, CII Project Coordinator, gathered emails and listserv addresses for publicity purposes, as well as created a “to do” list and a timeline. The theme for June 2009 is “critical pedagogy.”
Objective 3.4. Provide two course buy-outs/year for GSLIS faculty to (re)design their courses to incorporate CI.
GSLIS professor Jon Gant is the recipient of this academic year’s course buy-outs. His IMLS funding has allowed him to develop a GIS course with a community informatics focus. Funding also supported the growth of his community technology research project, including a focus on North Lawndale, Chicago, a largely African American community that we feel will broaden our teaching and research base in Chicago.
Goal 4. Strengthen communication and capacity-building at the intersection of university and community
Objective 4.1. Hire a Service Learning and Technology Coordinator in Paseo Boricua for ten hours/week in all three years of the project.
Alejandro Luis Molina continues to be an invaluable partner in our university-community collaborations in Paseo Boricua, Chicago.
Objective 4.2. Further develop communication tools and practices to facilitate rich and reflective communication between community members and university students and faculty.
The first issue of the Community Informatics Initiative newsletter was released electronically in August of 2008. The issue spanned eight pages with pictures and articles written about various ongoing projects, announcements, and updates. The fall issue of the newsletter was put out in October with an updated design and was made available both electronically and in print. These newsletters serve to inform students across campus and online, as well as community partners and interested residents what community informatics is and how they might become involved in ongoing or new projects.
We have developed a consistent design and method for producing promotional materials. In this way the all print information being produced can be connected through one, recognizable look.
As part of Bishop’s Community Engagement class, a new tool called iLab was developed from a previous model. The new iLab is more stable in that it is part of the UI software suite of tools, so help and support are readily available. While still being beta tested, iLabs provide an interactive web space for collaborative work in courses and within the community.
One of the newest uses of iLabs is I-Powered, a campus-community group that includes members in Champaign and East St. Louis, with an interest in promoting service and engagement on the part of UI students of color. Dr. Will Patterson, associate director of the African American Cultural Center, has been instrumental in organizing students in his class as well as Champaign residents to connect with leaders in East St. Louis. An iLab and a listserv has been set up by CII Project Coordinator Sharon Irish to assist communication and resource sharing.
CI graduate assistants Susan Rodgers and Jeff Ginger continued a major overhaul of the Community Informatics Initiative website, including the development of a multimedia archive, to support university-community communication (see Objective 5.3).
PI Bishop was appointed to the Board of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, our primary partner on Paseo Boricua. In this role, she began serving on the Board’s Strategic Planning Task Force, which will complete a strategic plan, guided by a professional consultant, in summer 2009. Her participation in the planning process provides for deep reflection about the future of CI as an ongoing program affiliated with the PRCC.
Goal 5. Implement mechanisms for collaborative program development with other LIS programs
Objective 5.1. Support three “mini-sabbaticals” per year for CI faculty from other institutions to visit GSLIS and Paseo Boricua for a week to work on course design, conference programming, joint writing projects, etc.
Our first visiting scholar for a “mini-sabbatical” was Douglas Schuler from Seattle. He visited September 27-October 1, 2008. Schuler had previously spent time with GSLIS faculty and others on Paseo Boricua; thus, he visited East St. Louis, another of the CI program’s key community partners. Sharon Irish, Ann Bishop and Urban Planning professor Ken Salo drove with Schuler to East St. Louis for a day of conversations and tours, held in tandem with GSLIS instructor Martin Wolske’s networking class. He also met with Professors Alkalimat and Williams. He had a guest appearance in Williams’ Community Informatics course on Monday as well as presenting a well-attended public talk on his latest book, Liberating Voices (MIT Press, 2008).
Objective 5.2. Explore offering CI courses through Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) (http://www.wiseeducation.org/).
No new WISE offerings were introduced this semester.
Objective 5.3. Further develop web-based mechanisms to support collaboration, and to communicate and record experiences.
The website for the Community Informatics Initiative, which is one portal into the Community Informatics program at GSLIS, went through a dramatic redesign. First, the layout of information was organized so that a visitor could navigate the site based on their user group. Additionally, the design includes a browsing method for user needs based on specific topics. The content for the website was revamped including the development of many more topics and areas for information dispersal. Finally, a php content management tool was implemented so that anyone with the CI program can edit the website without having to understand web design languages.
We have been using Moodle to share documents in development, such as the internship and recruitment guides. We also post meeting minutes there as well as drafts for surveys and interview questions about the CI program.
This past semester we launched and began to populate the Community Informatics Multimedia Archive (CIMA). CIMA is an online-based archive of multimedia materials (images, videos, audio, etc) that showcases examples of community informatics and reflects the involvements and experiences of the Community Informatics Initiative. The dynamic implementation encourages researchers, students and community members (or groups) to submit materials via Flickr, Facebook, and FTP. The CIMA website then draws upon these resources, catalogs them and compiles them into a database-driven website. Visitors to CIMA can search by keyword, media type, program, date and more in order to see and hear past and present examples of community informatics both at UIUC and elsewhere. We hope to continue to add groups and materials to the site as the years progress.In an effort to create internship opportunities and illustrate the skills and knowledge of community informatics students, research assistants Kristin LoDolce and Susan Rodgers created a landing page for employers on the CII web site with information on how to recruit CI students for internship and permanent employment positions. They also created a page of CI student profiles showcasing student research and work experience. In addition, Kristin set up a virtual meeting between the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs (IIRA) and CII and GSLIS staff to discuss creating research assistantships, practicum and internship opportunities and post-graduation Americorps VISTA positions for students interested in working with rural libraries and communities. IIRA assistant director Timothy Collins, dean of libraries for Western Illinois University Phyllis Self, CII coordinator Sharon Irish, GSLIS advising coordinator Meg Edwards, GSLIS practicum coordinator Lynn Hanson and Kristin LoDolce were in attendance.
III. Significant Findings or Accomplishments
Our significant findings, accomplishments, and lessons learned so far include:
Selected Accomplishments and Dissemination Activities
CI Students
The CI Club was formed during the fall semester with a focus on providing volunteer, educational, career development and social activities for students with an interest in Community Informatics. A number of events were held including: a dinner and discussion following the Mortenson Center Distinguished Lecture (attended by approximately 20 students); a group volunteer day with U-C Books to Prisoners; a picnic at Kickapoo State Park to raise awareness about state budget cuts affecting Illinois' green spaces; a work day at the East St. Louis, Illinois, sites that house the archives of Katherine Dunham, the renowned anthropologist and dancer; and a variety of social activities. The club has drawn a diverse group of students both in and out of the field of community informatics.
We had the opportunity to talk with prospective students and currently-enrolled students at a variety of events: GSLIS Fall orientation; Orgapalooza, an event featuring student groups within the library school; open house for the Mortenson International Associates; luncheon for Latino/a community members who are involved with the New Horizons Media Initiative. As a result, we added people to our listserv and shared out informational fliers.
Roy Saldaña, Jr., an IMLS CIC student who graduated in Fall 2008, created a 26-page Recruitment Guide for future students, staff and faculty to use in reaching out to those who may want to consider applying to graduate school in library and information science, with an emphasis in community informatics. The current draft will be finalized this semester and made available to others in the library and information science school as well as in other campus offices.
Roy also presented information to the cultural houses, attended events with the division of General Studies (students undecided about their majors), and the majors/minor fair.
John Vincler, who graduated in December 2008, presented “Speaking to and through the archive: An exhibition of Puerto Rican materials at the Newberry Library curated by students from the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School in Chicago” at the 5th Prato Community Informatics & Development Informatics Conference, sponsored by the Community Informatics Research Network in Prato, Italy. John’s paper received the highest score of all the peer-reviewed submissions at the conference.
CI Staff
Sharon Irish attended a one-day Animating Democracy workshop on using the arts to promote civic engagement. She also had a 45-minute consultation with the workshop leaders on planning a mural installation by a Puerto Rican artist in Champaign or on the UI campus.
With Ann Bishop, Sharon Irish attended the Imagining America (IA) conference in Los Angeles. IA is a consortium of higher education institutions dedicated to engaging scholars and artists in public life. During that conference in Los Angeles, Sharon was able to spend time with faculty and students from UI with whom she is now collaborating more closely on East St. Louis and Champaign projects.
Paul Adams attended the CTCNet conference in Los Angeles. CTCNet is a coalition of community technology centers. As a member of the organizations national board, Paul helped lead a discussion on the future of CTCNet.
Paul Adams arranged for the three East St. Louis teens, their families and mentors to visit the UI campus for a screening of the video that the teens made during their three-week stay on the island nation of São Tomé. The video screening and personal presentations were held at GSLIS and included 40 people. Adams’ work with these teens began with one of UI’s community informatics projects in East St. Louis, Teen Tech Team.
Paul Adams received the Campus Award for Excellence in PublicEngagement. The award is given annually to recognize employees who “fulfill in exemplary ways the University’s commitment to public engagement.”
Martin Wolske attended the 5th Prato Community Informatics & Development Informatics Conference, sponsored by the Community Informatics Research Network in Prato, Italy.
CI Faculty
PI Ann Bishop, as Chair of UI’s Civic Commitment Task Force, oversaw the successful campus application for the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement, and the University of Illinois received this status in the Fall of 2008. This status affirms the work being done in community informatics to cross community-university boundaries.
In December, six CI faculty and staff members, including Paul Adams, Abdul Alkalimat, Kate Williams, Martin Wolske, and Ann Bishop, presented at the Digital Divide Symposium held by the IL Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity in Chicago. Alejandro Molina from the Puerto Rican Cultural Center and community liaison for this grant also spoke at the panel.
Contributions by Professors Kate Williams, Abdul Alkalimat, Chip Bruce and Ann Bishop to Douglas Schuler, Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (MIT Press, 2008): “Cyberpower” and “Community Inquiry”
Professor Chip Bruce traveled to Cyprus and Turkey for two weeks in September of 2008. He gave a keynote talk, “Learning at the Border,” at a conference in Cyprus. He gave a talk in Çanakkale, Turkey to the Faculty of Education, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart Üniversitesi, “Technology and education,” for the Integrating Technology into Literacy Seminar (M. Eryaman). While the trip was funded by the Fulbright Inter-country Lecturer’s Program, Chip is an informal ambassador for the community informatics program at GSLIS during his travels. Chip also presented to the Digital Literacies Group, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, and the Mortenson Center associates at UIUC,“Inquiry and information science: Learning at the border.” These presentations contributed to Bruce, B. C. (2008). Learning at the border: How young people use new media for community action and personal growth. In C. Angeli & N. Valanides (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th panhellenic conference with international participation: Information and Communication Technologies in Education (HICTE) (pp. 3-10). Nicosia, Cyprus: Department of Education, University of Cyprus.
Other publications by Chip Bruce this past fall include: Bruce, B. C. (2008). Ubiquitous learning, ubiquitous computing, and lived experience. To appear in W. Cope (ed.), Ubiquitous learning. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Also in C. Jones, M. Zenios, & A. Jesmont (eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Networked Learning 2008. Halkidiki, Greece; Bruce, B. C. (2008). From Hull House to Paseo Boricua: The theory and practice of community inquiry. In B. Dicher (ed.), Philosophy of pragmatism: Salient inquiries. Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Babes-Bolyai University.
Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite attended the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In addition to participating in a roundtable on “Rethinking Networks, Communities, and Learning,” Caroline was involved in two panels. The Community Informatics Initiative sponsored a coffee hour at the conference, which provided another venue to publicize the CI program.
Findings and Lessons:
It is very important to work closely with the Admissions Committee of GSLIS in recruiting underrepresented students. It can be counter-productive to encourage these students to apply if they are going to get turned down. We have increased our interactions with the admissions committee and the advising staff of GSLIS to make sure this does not happen. In addition, we need to integrate our efforts more fully with all the relevant GSLIS staff. GSLIS as a whole shares our goal of increased recruiting and retention of underserved students. New actions that we have introduced, like documenting the number of minority students who apply, are accepted, and graduate, or reviewing the GSLIS website with an eye to its appeal for underserved students, need to be sustained by GSLIS as regular practice after our grant runs out.
It is such a help to have the IMLS CIC resources available to support underrepresented students who might be interested in community informatics to try out some courses tuition-free as community credit students prior to or during their preparation of graduate school applications.
The Community Informatics program is interdisciplinary and requires multiple routes of access to information about its courses, projects and events. The redesigned website provides a variety of users accessible information, although we will continue to tweak it after feedback.
Job-searching, internship-seeking, and recruiting are aided by pathfinding guides that can be posted on the web, shared across campus, and updated readily with new sources, such as RSS feeds.
We need to find a different mode for including and supporting our IMLS fellowship students. Having everyone attend a weekly meeting, with no specific defined role for the fellows, is not very productive.
Interim Report: January 31, 2008– July 30, 2008
1. Project Overview
The University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) proposes to develop LIS capacity in community informatics by expanding its pilot Community Informatics Corps (CIC) masters program and extending the alliance among LIS schools participating in community informatics. Central to the CI Corps is its unique collaboration with Paseo Boricua, a low-resource Latino community in Chicago. Project goals are to: further develop of the CIC masters curriculum; attract and support CIC students, especially those from underserved communities; support faculty development in CI within GSLIS; strengthen communication and capacity-building at the intersection of university and community; and pursue collaborative program development with other CI institutions.
2. Project Activities
Our progress during the second six months of the project is outlined below, according to our stated goals and objectives.
Goal 1: Further develop the CI Corps master’s curriculum, improving its design and expanding its content
-Objective 1.1. Establish a CI Corps curriculum committee made up of faculty who teach CI Corps required and elective courses, and selected others.
The CI curriculum committee (listed below) continued its work, led by Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite. (CI curriculum committee--GSLIS faculty and instructors: Ann Bishop, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Kate Williams, Abdul Alkalimat, Jon Gant, Martin Wolske, and Bertram Bruce; and GSLIS PhD student, Ellen Knutson; GSLIS Master’s student, Noah Lenstra)
-Objective 1.2. Perform continued basic development of the CI Corps program in terms of defining and developing required and elective course sequences, non-course learning opportunities, certification, continuing education credit, appropriate means of integrating campus vs. community-based settings and face-to-face vs. technology-mediated mechanisms, and other overall program elements.
The committee and the school developed and agreed upon a new sequence of three core courses, and supported development of new CI-related offerings (see objectives below.)
CII project coordinator Sharon Irish is completing the application for a certificate in Community Informatics to be submitted in early Fall 2008.
We also sponsored a non-credit one-day workshop, “GIS for Everyone,” on April 18, 2008, for 25 people, including GSLIS faculty, students and staff and one community partner from East St. Louis.
-Objective 1.3. Redesign existing required and recommended courses, based on faculty and student course evaluations along with a broader review of the changing field of CI.
The 590CIS course, associated with the conference, “Community as Intellectual Space,” was redesigned to be only two credits and taught within a shorter timeframe. It had a much higher enrollment in June 2008 than previously (17 students.)
Professor Carol Tilley, also funded with support from this grant, revised her Media Literacy and Youth (590ML) course to include more hands-on activities and taught it this spring. Professor Anke Voss redesigned Administration and Use of Archival Materials (581A) and student Noah Lenstra did a reflective evaluation of the course; the revised archives course focused on community-based archival practices. Students conducted an initial inventory of around 100 boxes of material they rescued from the residences of Katherine Dunham (famed choreographer, dancer, anthropologist and international human rights activist), where it had lain open to the elements and vandalism.
Martin Wolske redesigned Introduction to Networked Systems (LIS451) to be a four-week hands-on class in East St. Louis, and taught it in June 2008 (19 students). The redesigned course linked GSLIS students to youth in learning how to set up computer labs in small nonprofit organizations.
Les Gasser redesigned Information Networks (590IN) to incorporate community informatics, to be taught in Fall 2008.
-Objective 1.4. Develop several new courses, after initial program review.
We designed the new core courses to be relevant and appealing to a broader segment of LIS students. Instead of a focus on community informatics research, for example, the new methods course to be taught in Spring 2009 will address how to do research as an LIS professional; at the same time, it will allow students interested in community informatics to develop a research project geared to that arena. The new community engagement course will replace 490CIC, and Community Informatics Concepts 590CO, will replace Professor Haythornthwaite’s seminar.
Professor Bishop developed a course cross listed with the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (CI260/LIS390/590) on after-school programming, to be offered in Fall 2008. This course was developed to provide more structure as well as course credit for both CI students and others across campus who are involved in the BT Washington Elementary after school program, which provides homework help, literacy, and enrichment activities to 40 at-risk youth.
Professor Jon Gant will be teaching his newly developed GIS course in Fall 2008, which is largely supported by this grant’s “teaching buyout” funds.
Goal 2: Attract and support students, especially those from underserved communities
-Objective 2.1. Provide four new assistantships for CI Corps master’s students in each of the project’s three years.
The CI assistantships were filled for the Spring semester of 2008 by John Vincler, Nick Curotto, Sharon Comstock, Syed Karim, Susan Rodgers (who replaced Syed part way through), and Kristin LoDolce. One 50% assistantship was split into two 25% assistantships, so we were able to support five students, rather than four. The jobs done by these assistants were vital to our community-university partnership programming: helping to write grants for activities with Puerto Rican youth, organizing the Community as Intellectual Space conference, mentoring youth in Chicago and Champaign, CII and IMLS project website development, exploring CI internship opportunities, and general outreach and publicity. Assistants in Champaign and Chicago continue to provide their skills and ideas to further support underserved communities and their connection with LIS.
-Objective 2.2. Provide the equivalent of five one-year fellowships for CI Corps students in each of the project’s three years.
For the past six months, we continued support for most of the Fall Fellows, but added Roy Saldaña, Jr., as a Fellow, since Anita Mechler graduated. Also Emily Barney was a Fellow for the summer, but has now completed her fellowship. The other Fellow through Spring 2008 was Emily Brown, who successfully graduated in May 2008. Fellowship money was also used to support a part-time student for a community credit course for Chicago art teacher Migdalia Galarza, and to provide “tuition differential” funding for RA Michelle Torrise, who has been working with the Pedro Albizu Campos High School in Paseo Boricua. An incoming master’s student who became acquainted with community informatics in the summer of 2007 as a McNair Scholar (a University program for minority students), Kristin Palmer, will have a fellowship for 2008-09. (Professor Bishop is working with another McNair Scholar this summer, Roselia Banuelos.) Additional incoming Latina/o and African-American students with a strong interest in community informatics funded as IMLS CIC Fellows for Fall 2008 are Natalie Marin-Sharp, Brent Walton, Jason Driver, and Annie Clay. The final two students projected as Fellows for Fall 2008 are Amita Lonial (a community activist in Paseo Boricua) and Nav Khanal (an international PhD student interested in community-based IT policy in Nepal).
Goal 3. Support faculty development in CI
-Objective 3.1. Increase faculty involvement in the Community Inquiry Research Group, a weekly gathering begun in 2006.
The Community Inquiry Research Group is led by Professor Bertram Bruce, who was in Ireland for a year-long Fulbright position, until June 2008. In his absence, all interested faculty and students were invited to attend a weekly CI research potluck supper initiated by Professors Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat.
-Objective 3.2. Create the CI Corps Speaker Series, a monthly series with outside speakers.
The CI Speaker Series was established in Fall 2007 and continued in Spring 2008. Six speakers from across campus presented their work (Taku Sugimoto, Anke Voss, Marcela Raffaeli, Chris Fennell, Barbara Ford and Susan Schnuer.) Attendance averaged 20 participants.
-Objective 3.3. Foster the growth of the annual Community as Intellectual Space national symposium, inaugurated in Paseo Boricua in 2005, which brings together faculty, students, and community activists around CI.
The 4th annual Community as Intellectual Space symposium was held in Chicago on June 13th-15th. Attendance was around 100 people, which was an increase from previous years. We raised a significant amount of funding across campus, including from the Chancellor’s office, and from other universities, to supplement the amount for the conference provided through the IMLS grant. The theme was “Aesthetics as Resistance: The Act of Community-Building” and keynote speakers included U.S. Congressman Luis Gutierrez and Dr. Margaret Burroughs, artist and founder of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African-American History.
-Objective 3.4. Provide two course buy-outs/year for GSLIS faculty to (re)design their courses to incorporate CI.
We provided two one-course buyouts for GSLIS faculty in the 2007/2008 academic year. Les Gasser designed a new course on information communities that will be taught in Fall 2008. Caroline Haythornthwaite received a course buyout in Spring 2008 to lead the curriculum redesign for the entire CI program.
Goal 4. Strengthen communication and capacity-building at the intersection of university and community
-Objective 4.1. Hire a Service Learning and Technology Coordinator in Paseo Boricua for ten hours/week in all three years of the project.
Alejandro Luis Molina was hired and has been serving in this role since the project’s inception. He is providing valuable onsite support in Chicago both for classes and student projects, as well as important insights for further development of the project.
-Objective 4.2. Further develop communication tools and practices to facilitate rich and reflective communication between community members and university students and faculty.
The Booker T. Washington After-School Program in Champaign, which, as noted above, provides homework help, literacy and enrichment activities for at-risk children, is one of the largest GSLIS projects that provides students with the type of community engagement experience so relevant to community informatics. The program is growing, attracting new university and community partners over the course of the previous semester. Three different classes at UIUC in three different units are linked to the program; the new course mentioned in Objective 1.4 is being offered in Fall 2008. We’ve also formally affiliated with the College of Education through the Center for Education in Small Urban Communities to build on the informatics activities at Washington School. Communication among all these groups includes email, listserves, and face-to-face meetings on-campus and at B.T. Washington School.
The GSLIS CII also received funding from campus for the collaborative Latino Media Initiative (LMI), which has three goals: support for continuing a radio program on Latino health and culture that disseminates university knowledge to the community; a UIUC web portal for the Latino Community; and building campus-community collaborations around Latino issues.
In the summer of 2008, the CII worked with the Urban League to host a high school intern, Jasmine Gay. With her, GSLIS students developed a blog that she used to write about what she learned about community informatics. Jasmine was active with orienting a group of young people, the Peer Ambassadors (PA), to GSLIS and community informatics, which also included improving the PA MySpace page and some editing of digital video. These activities will be documented online so that other youth can learn about blogging, website evaluation and design, and community media.
From non-IMLS funds, we provided seed grants for courses and research across campus that intersected with community organizations and needs. We have also met on campus with faculty in Urban Planning, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Anthropology, History, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, who are active in underserved Illinois communities and see a connection between community informatics and their own projects.
We co-sponsored an event on April 21, 2008, “broadCAST Madness,” on communication policies and community-based wireless projects. This culminated an upper-level/graduate class taught in the Department of Speech Communication. About 75 people attended the presentation of student papers. We also contributed funding to a research workshop held in July 2008 on Information Technology and the Black Experience, primarily funded by the National Council of Black Studies and the UIUC Department of African American Studies. This workshop, organized by Professor Abdul Alkalimat, brought 15 scholars from around the country to campus for three days of discussion about their specific projects and how to share them in an archive on the beginnings of Black Studies. Professor Ann Bishop and CII Project Coordinator Sharon Irish attended the opening session.
Goal 5. Implement mechanisms for collaborative program development with other LIS programs
-Objective 5.1. Support three “mini-sabbaticals” per year for CI faculty from other institutions to visit GSLIS and Paseo Boricua for a week to work on course design, conference programming, joint writing projects, etc.
We have not hosted visiting CI faculty for mini-sabbaticals yet. We have benefited from the visits of a number of international visitors, however:
Dr. Anita Franklin from Sheffield University (UK) attended the Community as Intellectual Space symposium in Chicago (along with faculty from De Paul University, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago, and University of Michigan School of Information).
GSLIS Visiting Scholar Taku Sugimoto (Japan) spoke as part of the CII Speaker Series, tutored at the Booker T. Washington Elementary School, and audited classes during the Spring Semester 2008.
CII hosted an afternoon in May with visiting scholars from Turkey. Dr. Mustafa Yunus Eryaman, Associate Dean of the College of Education at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, and several of his colleagues learned about community informatics at UIUC.Funded by the Center for Global Studies, we’ve begun planning a workshop on community informatics in October for the 30 Associates visiting the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs. This workshop will intersect with two sections of the new Community Concepts course as well.
-Objective 5.2. Explore offering CI courses through Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) (http://www.wiseeducation.org/).
GSLIS adjunct instructor Taylor Willingham designed a new community informatics course that was taught online, called Civic Entrepreneurship in Public Institutions. 18 students were enrolled in the course, 3 through WISE, each of them from a different institution. This is a course where students learn the skills of entrepreneurship by being thrown into an environment that requires them to use entrepreneurial skills - be self-motivated, creative, able to see or create opportunities, etc. One WISE student, who initially showed great promise and had a portfolio of entrepreneurial endeavors struggled and presented meager results for his course project. This may be due to factors outside of the course or the content - new job, new baby, etc. Another plausible explanation is that the student's knack for "doing entrepreneurship" intuitively got in the way of learning underlying theories and being strategic and intentional about the practice of entrepreneurship. The other two WISE students did extremely well. They thrived on the chaos of the course, were in frequent contact with the instructor, pursued projects aligned with their passion and produced creative ways to document their work and to tell the story of their learning experience. They have maintained contact with the instructor and are continuing the projects they initiated during the course.
-Objective 5.3. Further develop web-based mechanisms to support collaboration, and to communicate and record experiences.
We developed and launched the new website for the GSLIS Community Informatics Initiative in March 2008 (http://www.cii.uiuc.edu) and have also developed a prototype CII Media archive. We updated our IMLS project pages and linked them to the website. We also started a “Community Informatics” group on Facebook, and officially joined the Google Groups/Docs environment established by Alejandro Molina for all the programs affiliated with our partner in Paseo Boricua, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.
III. Significant Findings or Accomplishments
Our significant findings, accomplishments, and lessons learned so far include:
Selected Accomplishments and Dissemination Activities
CI Faculty:
- Professor Bishop served as Co-Chair (with Michèle Cloonan), of the 2008 Annual Conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Educators (ALISE), Philadelphia, PA, January 8-11, shaping its theme of community engagement. She also delivered two panel presentations: “Takin’ It To The Streets: Community Informatics... Relationships (not Projects); and” “Reflections on Technology and Women’s Lives,” Sponsored by the Gender SIG.
- Professor Bishop, “Building iCommunity: Technology Meets Civic Engagement.” Invited keynote at Technology Day 2008, University of Illinois, Springfield, IL, Feb. 27, 2008.
- “People Watching with a Purpose: Meeting Needs before They Need It,” video with Dr.
Nancy Kranich, GSLIS students Elizabeth Klinnert and Michelle Torrise, Soaring to Excellence program of College of DuPage, broadcast February 2, 2008
- CII hosted separate sessions by GSLIS faculty and staff (Jon Gant, Caroline Haythornthwaite and Martin Wolske) on community informatics at the spring 2008 i-school conference in Los Angeles
- eChicago 2008 symposium Thursday, April 3-4, 2008 at Dominican University in River Forest, IL, focused on “Libraries, Community Technology Centers, and Chicago” organized by Professor Kate Williams, with GSLIS presenters Professors Abdul Alkalimat, Caroline Haythornthwaite and Jon Gant
- The GSLIS CI program was awarded the “most valuable community partner” award at the 2008 Pedro Albizu Campos High School graduation ceremony in Chicago.
CI Students:
- Ph.D. student and IMLS CI Research Assistant Sharon Comstock, at ALISE, Philadelphia, January 2008, presented: “A Case Study of ‘Legitimate Literacies’: Understandings of ‘Information Literacy’ by High School Students and School Librarians”; co-presented with Linda Slusar: “Realizing the Democratic Ideal: Community College LIS Education as Transformative Experience”
- Master’s student Elizabeth Klinnert, at ALISE, presented a poster on our IMLS CIC project
- GSLIS/CI students who won awards at commencement: IMLS Fellow Michelle Torrise (GSLIS Social Justice Award), Laura Lowe (GSLIS Herbert Goldhor Award for Public Librarianship), Jake Odland (GSLIS Information Systems/Technologies Award)
- GSLIS CI student jobs after graduation: Elizabeth Andrejasich is working as the Community Prevention Programs Coordinator of the Champaign County Mental Health Center; IMLS Fellow Anita Mechler is working with the Humboldt Park Branch of the Chicago Public Library; and IMLS Research Assistant Syed Karim’s firm, IDEO, assists some non-profit organizations in their information management
- Panel discussion during a one-day conference in April 2008 organized by the UIUC Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society. This panel was comprised of CI students and they addressed how service-learning opportunities off-campus affected on-campus coursework.
- Graduate student Michelle Cruz-Santiago, “Research and Intervention Pertaining to the Psychosocial and Educational Development of Latino Children & Adolescents” symposium, Spring 2008, Midwestern Psychological Association’s annual meeting (related to Booker T. Washington After-School program)
- IMLS CI Fellow Michelle Torrise helped coordinate the curriculum-mapping project between teachers at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School and helped the science teacher develop an integrated urban agriculture curriculum.
- IMLS CI Fellow Emily Brown took courses where she learned about library instruction design, civic issues as they relate to libraries, public institutions and community-based organizations, and how librarians can be entrepreneurial in meeting the needs of communities. The outcome was a project in which she developed a 60-minute walk-through exhibit on general health information regarding obesity for African-American adults and young adults.
- IMLS CI Fellow Emily Barney wrote tutorials for Chicago Public library patrons on how to take advantage of online resources that are free through the library.
- IMLS CI Research Assistant John Vincler coordinated an exhibit on Puerto Rican history, which was curated by students from the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS) in Humboldt Park and appeared at the Newberry Library in Chicago
- IMLS CI Teaching Assistant Noah Lenstra presented to Midwest Archives Annual Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, April 17-19, 2008, on panel “From Student to Professional: What Schools Can Do to Prepare Future Archivists" with a presentation entitled "Service Learning & Archives Education”
- Professor Bishop and GSLIS CI student Vanessa Nelson presented “The Community is the Curriculum,” at Community Informatics: Prospects for Communities and Action,” at the joint Community Informatics Research Network and Inaugural and International Development Informatics Association Conference, Monash University Centre, Prato, Italy, Nov. 5-7, 2007.
Findings and Lessons:
- An October 2007 poll that CII conducted online revealed that not many GSLIS students know what “community informatics” is, but over 100 people wanted to learn more; about half had heard of CI work in East St. Louis, Sao Tome, and Champaign and were aware that it is a master’s specialization (n=169, 140 were master’s level)
- We are very pleased that we decided to hire Sharon Irish as CII Project Coordinator, rather than 2 Graduate Assistants. Sharon’s work has been invaluable for our IMLS project, lending great cohesion, intelligence, and mature and energetic leadership for our IMLS Fellows and Assistants.
- Plans are in place to convene a focus group of graduate assistants to assess Community Informatics at GSLIS to date and to make suggestions for improvement
- GSLIS student and IMLS Graduate Assistant Nick Curotto, who was working to recruit minorities into GSLIS, recommends focusing on non-professionals working in public, university and or other library settings. He found that most student organizations at the universities he contacted are too small to merit the time to connect with them and too focused on their present undergraduate experiences.
Verbatim reflections from IMLS supported CI students:
From a community building and action research perspective, this semester was invaluable. I continued to visit the community, attend meetings and build relationships in Paseo Boricua. I realized that being a librarian means so much more than providing information literacy instruction and resources. Just being in the community is an important part of my work. At last Tuesday’s Albizu Campos graduation, I said good-bye and good luck to over a dozen students that I have worked with. I really felt a part of the school at the graduation. Not because of my accomplishments in the community, but because of the relationships and connections that I made with the community.
- Michelle Torrise, Fellow
The IMLS grant continues to support my Community Informatics interests and growth. Development of the obesity health information exhibit this semester allowed me to foresee an opportunity for greater knowledge and skill development of deeper transferability and greater application of my teaching and project development skills. I’ve sharpened my ability to see how several different library information components work together to provide health information to a community. I have gained a greater understanding of learning outcomes in new ways and discovered that I needed to develop more “instructional depth” in my projects, teaching and in learning. This has equipped me to share, contribute and develop more information-based programs based on community needs to build a better society.
- Emily Brown, Fellow
Regarding my class project of cataloging the library of a Chicago church, I believe the background my community informatics courses provided helped me take on the project with an approach I felt was much more likely to succeed, starting slowly with surveys and conversations before working on some basic organization. I didn't try to approach the project through traditional library mechanisms because I'd seen clearly how a less structured, more service-oriented approach works well in less formal community libraries. Preparing a presentation for the Community as Intellectual Space conference has helped me see how much I've learned over the last year and how quickly I've been able to apply these principles to my life, both in my community and in my workplace. This summer I am taking a public services class and a Web Design for Organizations class and I know I'll be using the framework I gained through the community informatics classes to interpret the things I learn.
- Emily Barney, Fellow
As an IMLS CI graduate assistant, I helped to promote events such as the CII Speaker Series, wrote news stories about CII activities and research, helped develop CII marketing pieces and assisted with research for developing a community informatics curriculum at Illinois.
The only difficulty that I have run into in my work has been finding a way develop marketing pieces that represent the wide range of the CI research and teaching activities that are taking place at University of Illinois. While it is important to get the word out about these activities, it can be difficult to explain how they all fit together to make up what CII does and define community informatics at the same time.
My role as a graduate assistant has really enhanced my understanding of the field of community informatics. I have become more familiar with the kind of research that is happening right now and also with the literature and theory that define the field. I also feel very lucky to be part of a teaching and research center that is a leader in community informatics.
I have heard a lot of students say they have an interest in community informatics, but may not pursue the coursework because they can’t see how it fits in with their career goals or don’t know how to articulate the value of it to a future employer. In a program that can take as little as three semesters to complete, CI courses are in tight competition with other courses for students’ attention.
- Kristin LoDolce, Graduate Assistant
I finished working with Squeak (computer programming tool for kids) and the children at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center childcare this week. I really enjoyed this aspect and will miss the kids.
I am still working with Xochitl and Vero on the Saturday children's literacy workshops in Paseo Boricua. We had the first of seven last Saturday and it went very well. We had a woman from El Valor speak about the importance and methods of reading to children. Ten families attended and participants received a DVD and information packet. I will continue to help out and attend the sessions as a volunteer.
I will be in contact with Alejandro to schedule some time for me to access the library to finish cataloging the donated children's books next week.
- Nick Curotto, Graduate Assistant
Interim Report: July 1, 2007 – January 30, 2008
1. Project Overview
The University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) proposes to develop LIS capacity in community informatics by expanding its pilot Community Informatics Corps (CIC) masters program and extending the alliance among LIS schools participating in community informatics. Central to the CI Corps is its unique collaboration with Paseo Boricua, a low-resource Latino community in Chicago. Project goals are to: further develop of the CIC masters curriculum; attract and support CIC students, especially those from underserved communities; support faculty development in CI within GSLIS; strengthen communication and capacity-building at the intersection of university and community; and pursue collaborative program development with other CI institutions.
2. Project Activities
Our progress during the first six months of the project is outlined below, according to our stated goals and objectives.
Goal 1: Further develop the CI Corps master’s curriculum, improving its design and expanding its content
* Objective 1.1. Establish a CI Corps curriculum committee made up of faculty who teach CI Corps required and elective courses, and selected others.
A CI curriculum committee was formed and met three times in the Fall 2007 semester. The committee currently includes eight GSLIS faculty and instructors: Ann Bishop, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Kate Williams, Abdul Alkalimat, Jon Gant, Martin Wolske, and Bertram Bruce. In addition, one PhD student and one Master’s student volunteered to join the committee as student reps. They researched and produced a guide to courses outside of LIS that may be relevant to CI students.
* Objective 1.2. Perform continued basic development of the CI Corps program in terms of defining and developing required and elective course sequences, non-course learning opportunities, certification, continuing education credit, appropriate means of integrating campus vs. community-based settings and face-to-face vs. technology-mediated mechanisms, and other overall program elements.
These were the topics of discussion during our Fall 2007 CI curriculum meetings. We changed the name from “CI Corps” to “CI program” when referring to our actual master’s specialization to avoid confusion among different CI activities at GSLIS. We mapped out a new course sequence and outlined a new set of required vs. elective CI courses. We inaugurated a new non-credit event on Dec. 3, 2007, called the Community Technology Workshop, open to the public, which brought CI students and their community partners together for a day of presentations and discussion of future directions.
* Objective 1.3. Redesign existing required and recommended courses, based on faculty and student course evaluations along with a broader review of the changing field of CI.
Our most significant redesign was of the three existing required courses in the CI program. One was the pilot offering of a new version of LIS 490CIC: Community Informatics Corps, which is a practical engagement course. Kate Williams adjusted the course to provide more background readings, a community technology survey in which all students participated, and student-produced posters as a required form of project dissemination. Caroline Haythornthwaite piloted a new CI seminar on research and theory, as a possible replacement for the existing required course 590CIS: Community Information Systems, which previously focused on one specific conceptual area each time it was taught. Ann Bishop redesigned her 590 PRA: Professional Research in Action course taught in Chicago so that students would all work together on major CI projects in Paseo Boricua.
* Objective 1.4. Develop several new courses, after initial program review.
Jon Gant began to develop a new CI elective course in Geographic Information Systems, to be offered in 2008. Abdul Alkalimat offered a new elective course called 590ITB: Information Technology and the Black Experience.
Goal 2: Attract and support students, especially those from underserved communities
Objective 2.1. Provide four new assistantships for CI Corps master’s students in each of the project’s three years.
We placed CI students into five new CI assistantships: 1) John Vincler (grant writing); 2) Nick Curotto (recruiting); 3) Sunny Jeong (curriculum development and evaluation); 4) Sharon Comstock (Community as Intellectual Space Symposium development); Syed Karim (website development). One 50% assistantship was split into two 25% assistantships, so we were able to support five students, rather than four.
Objective 2.2. Provide the equivalent of five one-year fellowships for CI Corps students in each of the project’s three years.
We found that we did not have enough students at the project’s outset to justify disbursement of the complete set of full one-year fellowships during its first six months, though we did support five promising students. We awarded one full year fellowship (tuition and stipend) to Emily Brown, a current CI master’s student whose work has been outstanding. We awarded fellowships in the amount of a tuition remission to two excellent students: Emily Barney (current CI student) and Anita Mechler (new CI student). We awarded a fellowship in the amount of a tuition differential waiver to Michelle Torrise (current CI student with an assistantship in Paseo Boricua, whose work has been held up as a model for future relationships by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center). And we awarded a fellowship in the amount needed to ‘buy out’ an excellent existing CI PhD student, Nav Khanal, from his previous GSLIS job, so that he could devote himself to his CI research and coursework fulltime.
Goal 3. Support faculty development in CI
Objective 3.1. Increase faculty involvement in the Community Inquiry Research Group, a weekly gathering begun in 2006.
The Community Inquiry Research Group is led by Bertram Bruce, who is in Ireland for a year-long Fulbright position. This fall, instead of the Group, we invited interested faculty to attend Caroline Haythornthwaite’s CI research seminar class, which a number of faculty members did, but only on a sporadic basis. We also considered the successful CI Colloquium series a good alternative for the Fall Research Group. In the current semester, we have invited all interested faculty to attend a weekly CI research potluck supper initiated just last week by Kate Williams and Abdul Alkalimat.
Objective 3.2. Create the CI Corps Colloquium, a monthly series with outside speakers.
The CI Colloquium was established in Fall 2007. Four speakers have presented so far, with very good attendance (an average of about 25 participants). Spring 2008 semester speakers have already been lined up.
Objective 3.3. Foster the growth of the annual Community as Intellectual Space national symposium, inaugurated in Paseo Boricua in 2005, which brings together faculty, students, and community activists around CI.
We have held CIS planning meetings every two weeks in Chicago, beginning in August 2008. “Save the date” announcements have been disseminated, the program drafted, and all presenters confirmed.
Objective 3.4. Provide two course buy-outs/year for GSLIS faculty to (re)design their courses to incorporate CI.
We have provided two one-course buyouts for GSLIS faculty in the 2007/2008 academic year. Les Gasser is designing a new course on information communities. Caroline Haythornthwaite received a course buyout to lead the curriculum overhaul for the entire CI program. In addition to the two course buy-outs, youth services faculty member Carol Tilley received funding for a TA to revamp her youth media course to include more emphasis on media production by youth. Adjunct instructor Anke Voss received support for a TA to help redesign her archives course to focus more on community-based archiving, including a case study based on the Katherine Dunham collection in East St. Louis, where the CI program already has a strong base.
Goal 4. Strengthen communication and capacity-building at the intersection of university and community
Objective 4.1. Hire a Service Learning and Technology Coordinator in Paseo Boricua for ten hours/week in all three years of the project.
Alejandro Luis Molina was hired and has been serving in this role since the project’s inception. He is providing valuable onsite support in Chicago for both classes and student projects, as well as important insights for further development of the project.
Objective 4.2. Further develop communication tools and practices to facilitate rich and reflective communication between community members and university students and faculty.
Mr. Molina has trained the non-profit program leaders affiliated with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Paseo Boricua to use Google Docs as their primary online communication environment. He also set up a Google Docs account in the same space for the CI Program. We have created a Moodle environment for Bishop’s 490 CIC course in Paseo Boricua, in which Mr. Molina has an account and is an active participant. We expect to help Albizu Campos High School teachers learn how to create Moodle spaces for their courses, support which they have requested. In addition, we have prototyped a new website for the Community Informatics Initiative and set up a simple starter webpage for our IMLS project, linked from http://www.cii.uiuc.edu
Regarding our face-to-face interactions, we inaugurated the Community Technology Workshop, noted above, and have set up a poster exhibit on CI projects at the University YMCA. We offered several GSLIS CI program recruiting ‘open houses’ at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago, but attendance has been poor so far.
Goal 5. Implement mechanisms for collaborative program development with other LIS programs
Objective 5.1. Support three “mini-sabbaticals” per year for CI faculty from other institutions to visit GSLIS and Paseo Boricua for a week to work on course design, conference programming, joint writing projects, etc.
We plan to hold a workshop on CI curriculum in Spring or Summer 2008, to which we will invite several colleagues from other LIS programs across the country.
Objective 5.2. Explore offering CI courses through Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) (http://www.wiseeducation.org/).
This is the only objective for which we are behind schedule, having originally planned to begin serious discussion of this topic during the first six months of the project. We will, however, pursue this during the upcoming iSchools conference in about a month. A number of key CI faculty across the country will attend, and several sessions devoted to CI have been planned.
Objective 5.3. Further develop web-based mechanisms to support collaboration, and to communicate and record experiences.
We have created a Moodle environment for our internal project communication.
III. Significant Findings or Accomplishments
Our significant findings, accomplishments, and lessons learned so far include:
* We received IRB approval for the evaluation component of our project and conducted an online survey in the fall on CI interests, needs and goals among GSLIS students and faculty. The survey provided important input for planning CI ‘extracurricular’ activities as well as revamping our CI curriculum. Also for our ongoing evaluation, we collected bios and brief semester reflections from our IMLS RAs and Fellows.
fellowships to allow prospective CI students to take one CI course on a community credit basis before they even apply to GSLIS will be important in removing the barrier of the unknown that faces many people who might not have considered attending grad school before, or who are not sure they have interest, skills, time to attend graduate school.