ARST 575R/LIBR 568R – Course Syllabus (3)

Program:MAS, MLIS, Dual

Year:2014-2015

Course Schedule:Tuesdays 2-5 pm

Location:IKBLC 460

Instructor:Dr. Heather O'Brien

Office location:Room 487, IKBLC

Office phone:604-822-0051

Office hours:Mondays and Tuesdays, 9:30-10:30 am

E-mail address:

SLAIS Student Portal:

Course Goals:

  • Engage and collaborate with peers, professors, and industry/community partners through a project-based learning experience;
  • Articulate and reflect upon the competencies you have gained during your degree program, and appreciate the transferability of these competencies across different information media and institutions;
  • Produce a meaningful, tangible product based on the needs of a stakeholder group;
  • Manage an information project in a real-life setting;
  • Recognize personal professional strengths and areas for improvement; and
  • Gain confidence as you move into your chosen profession.

Course Objectives:

Upon completion of this course students will be able to:

  • Apply foundational knowledge of library, archival and/or information studies in a community engaged learning setting, which may include:
  • Identifying, analyzing and assessing the information needs of diverse individuals, communities and organizations, and responding to those needs through the design, provision and assessment of information resources, services and systems;
  • Appraising, organizing and managing information for effective preservation, discovery, access and use;
  • Applying knowledge of information technologies and resources to real world situations, taking into account the perspectives of institutional and community stakeholders;
  • Reflect in a critical and informed manner on individual and institutional practices and on the role of the information professions in society.
  • Assess, select and employ communication and instructional tools based on an understanding of diverse communicative goals and audiences.
  • Demonstrate leadership, initiative and effective collaboration within a team setting;
  • Apply principles of effective management and decision-making to organizational issues and challenges;
  • Synthesize and apply existing scholarship from the information and related fields to identify and analyze significant theoretical and practical questions related to a specific information issue;
  • Conduct yourself in a manner consistent with the philosophy, principles and ethics of the information professions.

Course Topics:

  • Community-based engaged learning, and its role in LAIS education;
  • Project management;
  • Working with community stakeholders;
  • Becoming a reflective practitioner;
  • Other topics to be determined by students’ projects.

Prerequisites:

MAS, MLIS and Dual: Completion of 24- or 36-credits, including the MAS/MLIS Core. ARST 591 or LIBR 505 is strongly recommended. Students should be in the final or penultimate term of their studies.

Format of the course:

You will engage in collaborative projects with community organizations. Some of your course time will be spent in the community organization. The first half of the class will focus on topical issues and will feature instructor-led and guest lectures, discussion, and learning activities; the last half of the classes will be organized as “design studios” where we will come together to work on the term projects and you will have an opportunity to gain feedback from the instructor and other members of the class.

Required and Recommended Reading:

  • Phillips, J.J., Brantley, W. & Pulliam Phillips, P. (2012). Project Management ROI. John Wiley & Sons (on reserve at UBC Library).
  • Roy, L., Jensen, K., Hershey Meyers, A. (Eds.) (2009). Service Learning: Linking Library Education and Practice. Chicago: American Library Association (on reserve at UBC Library).
  • Schön, Donald A. (1984). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books (on reserve at UBC Library).
  • Watkins, R., West Meiers, M. & Visser, Y.L. (2012). A Guide to Assessing Needs: Essential Tools for Collecting Information, Making Decisions and Achieving Developmental Results. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Available through the Open Knowledge Repository:
  • Journal articles available through UBC Library (see course schedule).

Course Assignments:

Assignment / Due Date / Weight
Term project (group) / Progress report 1: January 27
Progress report 2: February 24
Presentation: April 7
Stakeholder evaluation
Final report/product: April 13 / 5%
5%
10%
10%
20%
Needs assessment implementation plan (group) / In class activity, January 27 / 10%
Reflection exercise 1 (individual) / In-class activities January 13
March 31 / 5%
10%
Reflection exercise 2 (individual) / March 10 / 15%
Participation (individual) / Throughout term / 10%

Course Schedule [week-by-week]:

Date / Topic / Activities / Readings
January 6 / Introduction to course and syllabus
Community engaged learning
Confirmation of projects with community organizations / Bishop, A., Bruce, B.C. & Jeong, S. (2009). Beyond service learning: Toward community schools and reflective community learners. In Roy, L., Jensen, K., Hershey Meyers, A. (Eds.) Service Learning: Linking Library Education and Practice. Chicago: ALA (pp. 16-31).
Mehra, B., & Robinson, W. (2009). The community engagement model in library and information science education: A case study of a collection development and management course. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 50(1), 15-38.
January 13 / Scoping the community-based projects
-Guidelines for working with the community partner
Professional and ethical standards
LAIS professional competencies / In-class assignment: Reflection exercise 1, part 1 / Cherry, J. M., Duff, W.M., Singh, N. & Freund, L.(2011) Student perceptions of the information professions and their master's program in information studies.Library & Information Science Research, 33(2), 120-131.
Jimerson, R. C. (2007). Archives for all: Professional responsibility and social justice. American Archivist, 70(2), 252-281.
Phillips, Brantley & Pulliam Phillips, Chapter 1 (pp. 1-14).
Wallace, D. A. (2010). Locating agency: Interdisciplinary perspectives on professional ethics and archival morality. Journal Of Information Ethics, 19(1), 172-189.
January 20 / Needs Assessment
Design Thinking and Processes / In-class activity: Needs assessment implementation plan / Watkins, West MeiersVisser, 2012 (see citation information in “required readings” list)
January 27 / Reflection-in-action
Experiential learning / Term Project: Progress Report 1 / Bird, N.J. & Crumpton, M.A. (2014). Real learning connections: Questioning the learner in the LIS internship. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 55(2), 89-99.
Brown, A. & Benson, B. (2005). Making sense of the capstone process: Reflections from the front line. Education, 125(4), 674.
Knud, I. (2007). What do we actually mean by experiential learning? Human Resource Development Review, 6(1), 84-95.
Schön, Donald A. (1984). From technical rationality to reflection-in-action. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books
February 3 / Project Management / Guest: Trevor Smith, Capilano University Library / Horwath, J.A. (2012). How do we manage? Project management in libraries: An investigation. The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice, 7(1), 34 pp.
Phillips, Brantley & Pulliam Phillips, Chapter 2 (pp. 15-30).
February 10 / LAIS Education and the Professions / Guest: Beth Davies, Manager, Neighbourhood Services, Vancouver Public Library / Adams, R.S., Daly, S.R., Mann, L.M., & Dall’Alba, G. (2011). Being a professional: Three lenses into design thinking, acting, and being. Design Studies, 32, 588-607.
Dall’Alba, G. (2009). Learning professional ways of being: Ambiguities of becoming. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(1), 34-45.
February 24 / Design studio / Term Project: Progress report2
March 3 / Design studio
March 10 / Design studio / Reflection exercise #2 due
March 24 / No class meeting
March 31 / Professional panel / In-class assignment:Reflection exercise 1, part 2
April 7 / Presentation of term projects / Term project presentation

Attendance:The calendar states: “Regular attendance is expected of students in all their classes (including lectures, laboratories, tutorials, seminars, etc.). Students who neglect their academic work and assignments may be excluded from the final examinations. Students who are unavoidably absent because of illness or disability should report to their instructors on return to classes.”

Evaluation:All assignments will be marked using the evaluative criteria given on the SLAIS web site.

Written & Spoken English Requirement: Written and spoken work may receive a lower mark if it is, in the opinion of the instructor, deficient in English.

Access & Diversity: Access & Diversity works with the University to create an inclusive living and learning environment in which all students can thrive. The University accommodates students with disabilities who have registered with the Access and Diversity unit: [ You must register with the Disability Resource Centre to be granted special accommodations for any on-going conditions.

Religious Accommodation: The University accommodates students whose religious obligations conflict with attendance, submitting assignments, or completing scheduled tests and examinations. Please let your instructor know in advance, preferably in the first week of class, if you will require any accommodation on these grounds. Students who plan to be absent for varsity athletics, family obligations, or other similar commitments, cannot assume they will be accommodated, and should discuss their commitments with the instructor before the course drop date. UBC policy on Religious Holidays:

Academic Integrity

Plagiarism

The Faculty of Arts considers plagiarism to be the most serious academic offence that a student can commit. Regardless of whether or not it was committed intentionally, plagiarism has serious academic consequences and can result in expulsion from the university. Plagiarism involves the improper use of somebody else's words or ideas in one's work.

It is your responsibility to make sure you fully understand what plagiarism is. Many students who think they understand plagiarism do in fact commit what UBC calls "reckless plagiarism." Below is an excerpt on reckless plagiarism from UBC Faculty of Arts' leaflet, "Plagiarism Avoided: Taking Responsibility for Your Work," (

"The bulk of plagiarism falls into this category. Reckless plagiarism is often the result of careless research, poor time management, and a lack of confidence in your own ability to think critically. Examples of reckless plagiarism include:

  • Taking phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or statistical findings from a variety of sources and piecing them together into an essay (piecemeal plagiarism);
  • Taking the words of another author and failing to note clearly that they are not your own. In other words, you have not put a direct quotation within quotation marks;
  • Using statistical findings without acknowledging your source;
  • Taking another author's idea, without your own critical analysis, and failing to acknowledge that this idea is not yours;
  • Paraphrasing (i.e. rewording or rearranging words so that your work resembles, but does not copy, the original) without acknowledging your source;
  • Using footnotes or material quoted in other sources as if they were the results of your own research; and
  • Submitting a piece of work with inaccurate text references, sloppy footnotes, or incomplete source (bibliographic) information."

Bear in mind that this is only one example of the different forms of plagiarism. Before preparing for their written assignments, students are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with the following source on plagiarism: the Academic Integrity Resource Centre: Additional information is available on the SAIS Student Portal

If after reading these materials you still are unsure about how to properly use sources in your work, please ask me for clarification.

Students are held responsible for knowing and following all University regulations regarding academic dishonesty. If a student does not know how to properly cite a source or what constitutes proper use of a source it is the student's personal responsibility to obtain the needed information and to apply it within University guidelines and policies. If evidence of academic dishonesty is found in a course assignment, previously submitted work in this course may be reviewed for possible academic dishonesty and grades modified as appropriate. UBC policy requires that all suspected cases of academic dishonesty must be forwarded to the Dean for possible action.