I 501—Intro to Informatics

Objectives:

To foster a deep appreciation of the diverse traditions out of which Informatics research comes;

To encourage students to approach informatics research in a truly multidisciplinary manner; and

To make them more effective consumers of Informatics research.

On the general informatics track:

On the Science Informatics track

On the Ethnography Track:

            “Ethnography” refers to a social science way of knowing that stresses long-term, in situ fieldwork.  “Participant observation” is a virtual synonym.  Ethnography has its deepest history in social/cultural anthropology, but a version of it developed early on in sociology and spread to other social science and humanities fields.  Because “ethnography” literally means “a picture of a people,” the term is also often used to refer to the representations—e.g., a monograph (book) or film—typically produced by the ethnographer.

Ethnography is of interest to the professional Informatician (Informatologist?) for several reasons.  One is the growing influence of the body of research produced by professional ethnographers of information and of automated information technologies (AITs) in use.  This research, which grows out of deep methodological traditions in anthropology and other social sciences, has complexified notions of what information is, what is involved in the development of systems to support its production, transmission, and manipulation, and what it takes to get people to use AITs effectively. 

            A second reason why Informaticists are interested in ethnography is the cachet that the term has recently acquired as a marker for a whole range of alternative approaches.  In addition to its long role in the study of culture, one can find ethnographic approaches to marketing and design as well as to research.  What these appropriations of the ethnographic gaze tend to share is a frustration with formalist, quantitative approaches dominant in fields which spin out from or assert the paternity of technoscience.  “Ethnography” is a banner under which they choose to march, but the diversity of their approaches makes it look very much like a mere flag of convenience.

            For the Informist, ethnography can be both exciting, a license to think about information and AITs in many new ways, but it can also be alternately diaphanous and opaque in its knowledge claims.  In this section of the course, we concentrate on thinking of ethnography as a way of knowing, what philosophers call an epistemology.  While I will ask you to do some of the things that typically go into ethnography, I am not training you to become ethnographers of Information.  Both insufficient time and the bureaucracy of informed consent prevent this.

            Rather, my aim is to help you to be better consumers of ethnography of information; that is, both better users of existing E of I and increasingly sophisticated demanders of ethnographic research.  I do this by brining into dialogue two recent texts.  Diana Forsythe’s Studying Those Who Study Us is an important articulation of the fulsome ethnography of information being done in social science, a good example for informatists who wish to sink to engage with this perspective.  Brenda Laural’s Design Research reflects in many ways the diverse trends in HCID that make extensive use of the ethnographic gaze.       

            Students will have three kinds of responsibilities in each track:

1. to read the assigned materials and come to class ready to discuss them; I will expect no more than two absences;
2. to carry out four brief ethnographic tasks:
1. using a tool to record what you see, observe a place and then write a one page description of it;
2. also using a tool to record what you see, observe some human interaction and then write a one page description of it;
3. describe in one page an intervention that you might make to improve an AIT application; and
4. write a three page proposal of an ethnographic investigation which you might undertake that includes:

1) the question you wish to answer

2) information you think you need to answer it

3) an ideal way to get the information; and

4) a realistic way to get at least some of the information

3. write a take-home final essay that illustrates mastery of the tasks and the reading on a topic to be assigned in the last week of class.

Class schedule

8/30     Information and Informatics

9/1       Informatics Research

9/6        Current Informatics Research Practice

9/8        Ethnography as an Epistemology and its History in Social Science

9/13     The Semiotics of Information                 Place description due

9/15     The Metaphysics of Information

9/20     Ethnography and Information                Hakken: “Ethnography” (reserve)

                        Ethnography of Information                   F: Editor’s Intro, Note; 1.

9/22     New Artifacts in Informatics Research  

Ethnographic Description due

9/27     Senses and Information

9/29     A Research Agenda for Informatics

10/4     Research questions in the ethnographic tradition                         F: 7; 11

Current Issues in the Ethnography of Information                      

10/6      Execution in Informatics Research

10/11    Issues in Research Execution: Doing ethnography of/in Design   F: 8&9                                                

10/13   Execution in Informatics Research

10/18   Guest Presentation: Current Issues in the ethics of Informatics research

10/20   Epistemological issues in informatics Research Design and Execution,

10/25   Additional issues in Informatics Ethnography Practice                F: 4 & 5                       Reflective Practice

10/27   Designing Informatics Research for new Users

Follow up ethnography exercise due                              Take home midterm assigned

11/1     Analysis: Form and Representation in Ethnography                                F: 3 & 6          

11/3     Analysis in Current Informatics Research                       Intervention design due

11/8     Guest Presentation: Issues in Data Mining

11/10   Ethnographic Analysis, cont.                                                                 F: 2 & 10

11/15   Informatics Analysis, cont.

11/17   Guest Presentation on Application and Action in Cybersecurity

11/22   Application and Action: Use of Ethnographic Results                 F: 12

11/29  Application and Action: General Informatics

12/1     Action: Organizational Informatics

12/6     Conclusions

12/8     Conclusions, cont.                                                                                Proposal due