CIC Seminar Fall 2006

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This seminar serves as a focal point for the School of Information's Community Information Corps, a loosely organized interest group of faculty, doctoral and master's students, alumni, and outside "friends". The mission of CIC is to prepare students for careers as public interest information professionals. For complete syllabus, see this page This fall we are experimenting with a new format, with more focus on practice and less on theory. Rather than reading about the theory of democracy, social capital, and inequality, we will be seeking out and defining projects that students could engage in during the winter semester. In the first half of the semester, we will explore the landscape of public interest information work, both domestically and internationally. We will spend two weeks each looking at:
  • public access to computing and communications
  • ICT infrastructure to support public interest organizations
  • Civic applications, where end users directly use the technology to share information, communicate, coordinate, or mobilize
From these explorations, we will identify organization and projects that students might want to work with. Students will then make contact with those organizations and projects and work with them to draft specific Directed Field Experience (DFE) opportunities for winter semester. Class sessions in the second half of the semester will be devoted to review and constructive critique of the draft DFE opportunities.