iSchool Colloquium Series
Friday, April 20, 2012
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm
Room 403 IS Building
Amy Bruckman, Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Online Collaboration: Creative and Civic”
Peer production of content has led to surprising successes such as Wikipedia, YouTube, open-source software, and more. Yet we are still in the early days of understanding its potential and still learning how to deliberately engineer systems to make new things possible. Two types of online collaboration that are currently coming of age are creative and civic. In this talk, I'll first discuss leadership in creative online collaboration. How do groups of people work together to make creative products? Collaborative modes include remix, benevolent dictatorship, and open collaboration. How do these differ, and what constraints does each mode put on process and product? Can a group of people who have never met work together to create a product which is initially only partially described? What challenges do they encounter, and how can we help them overcome those challenges? Second, social media has controversial but potentially transformative potential for enhancing civic participation. I'll explain how the site iHollaback.org raises awareness of street harassment, and how this social movement has exploded to 40 cities worldwide in one year. Finally, I'll present new work in which Eric Gilbert and I are helping Public Broadcasting Atlanta to increase civic participation through our redesign of publicsquareatlanta.org.
Bio: Amy Bruckman is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on peer production of content online. She studies how to create a motivating and supportive context for creation and sharing, and learning through this process. Bruckman received her Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab's Epistemology and Learning group in 1997, her M.S.V.S. from the Media Lab's Interactive Cinema Group in 1991, and a B.A. in physics from Harvard University in 1987. In 1999, she was named one of the 100 top young innovators in science and technology in the world (TR100) by Technology Review magazine. In 2002, she was awarded the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies.
Friday, March 30, 2012
1:30 pm -2:30 pm
Room 403 IS Building
Marti Hearst, Professor, School of Information, UC Berkeley
“Emerging Trends in Search User Interfaces”
Dr. Hearst will discuss the future of search user interfaces, based on her research for a 2009 book, Search User Interfaces, published by Cambridge University Press. This lecture will identify important trends in the use of information technology and suggest how these may affect search going forward. Most particularly, Hearst will address a notable trend towards more "natural" user interfaces, a movement in the direction of social rather than solo usage of information technology, and an increasingly important role for video and audio, all blended with large knowledge bases. These trends are, or will be, interwoven in various ways, which will have some interesting ramifications for search interfaces, and should suggest promising directions for research.
Dr. Marti Hearst is a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her BA, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and was a Member of the Research Staff at Xerox PARC from 1994 to 1997. A primary focus of Dr. Hearst's research is user interfaces for search. In 2009, she completed the first book on the topic and she has invented or participated in several well-known search interface projects including the Flamenco project which investigated and promoted the use of faceted metadata for collection navigation. Professor Hearst's other research areas include computational linguistics, information visualization, and analysis of social media. Dr. Hearst has received an NSF CAREER award, an IBM Faculty Award, a Google Research Award, an Okawa Foundation Fellowship, two Excellence in Teaching Awards, and has been principle investigator for more than $3M in research grants.
This event is made possible through the support of the Provost of the University of Pittsburgh.
Monday, February 13, 2012
10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Room 403 IS Building
Stephen Paling, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Rethinking the Organization of Literary Works”
Organizing literary works, particularly in terms of subject analysis, has traditionally presented librarianship with difficulties that are not necessarily present with other types of works. This talk is developmental in nature, and has four goals:
- Summarize and synthesize results from two separate but related studies that examined the organization of literary and nonliterary works from two different methodological perspectives.
- Describe a possible new paradigm suggested by the results of the studies.
- Discuss future research needed to elaborate and further test the proposed paradigm.
- Discuss how the possible new paradigm can be presented in the classroom.
The studies in question also represent an attempt to avoid several assumptions:
- That users want access to literature at the level of the book.
- That existing cataloging tools are the best tools for organizing literary works.
- That quantitative and critical approaches need to be seen as antagonistic.
Rather than asking a more typical question such as, What can we do with the tools we have?, these studies are guided by the question, What tools do we need to have in the first place?
Friday, December 9, 2011
1:30 pm
Room 501 IS Building
Christian Schunn, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh
“Obtaining Wisdom via Scaffolded Peer Review”
Abstract: Via the Web, students and teachers are increasingly exchanging resources and ideas. We have been studying the ways in which peer reviewing, and supports for improved peer reviewing, increases the quality of what is shared and retrieved in these web-based exchange systems. I will present data from both student sharing and teacher sharing websites, revealing a number of dysfunctions and the ways in which they can be circumvented.
Bio: Christian Schunn is a Research Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center and a Professor of Psychology, Learning Sciences and Policy, and Intelligent Systems at the University of Pittsburgh. His primary basic research examines the cognitive basis of engineering innovation and creativity, and most of his educational research and curriculum design work involves the use of engineering design projects to teach science and mathematics. He directs the SWoRD project, a web-based system for using peer-review to bring writing back into the undergraduate curriculum and to provide a supercollider for educational research on writing. He has also studied academic peer review, and peer exchange of teaching resources via the web.
Friday, November 18, 2011
2:00 pm
Room 404 IS Building
Paul Resnick, School of Information, University of Michigan
“Healthier Together: Social Approaches to Health and Wellness”
It’s getting a lot easier to track our health-related states (weight, blood pressure, glucose, moods, disease symptoms, etc.) and our health-related behaviors (smoking, food intake, drugs and medications, exercise, sleep, etc.) Reflecting privately on our traces can help us make good judgments (e.g., deciding whether to exercise in the morning or at night to improve sleep?). Reflecting privately on our traces can also help us make behavior changes that are hard to stick with (e.g., eating less; exercising regularly). Selectively sharing some of these traces can be even more powerful than reflecting on them individually. In this talk, I’ll offer a framework for thinking about the benefits and barriers of sharing those traces, with illustrations from my own work and other research projects and commercial practice.
Bio: Paul Resnick is a Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. He previously worked as a researcher at AT&T Labs and AT&T Bell Labs, and as an Assistant Professor at the MIT Sloan Scohol of Management. He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1992.Professor Resnick’s research is broadly in social computing. His current projects include using reputations to calibrate raters and prevent manipulation, designing news aggregators that encourage exposure to diverse political opinions, detecting and correcting the spread of rumors online, and the design of social applications that promote health and wellness.He was a pioneer in the field of recommender systems (sometimes called collaborative or social filtering). His work with colleagues on the GroupLens system in the 1990s was recognized with the 2010 ACM Software System Award. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and a book, written with Robert Kraut, titled Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-based social design. Forthcoming 2011, MIT Press.
Friday, November 11, 2011
1:30 pm
Room 501 IS Building
William R. McIvor, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, University of Pittsburgh
“Human-Patient Simulation: A Prospect for Information Scientists”
This talk will introduce two educational technologies being used by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine that may benefit from collaboration with information scientists: manikin-based human patient simulation and screen-based, computer simulation.
During manikin-based simulation a computer-driven mannequin serves as a surrogate patient. Healthcare providers learn and practice on the simulators, and then must be debriefed after their experience as to the appropriateness and impact of their actions. While debriefing is critically important to the participants’ learning from the simulation, it generally lasts about twice as long as the simulation itself, is labor-intensive for the simulation educator, and often follows a similar algorithm for each scenario. My goal is to create a learning system that determines a participant’s actions from the simulation logs, and then debriefs participants by asking a series of questions to help them reflect on their performance and decisions made during the simulation. By “automating” the debriefing process the proposed effect could be to increase the efficiency of simulation education and improve the consistency and quality of the debriefing experience for the simulation participant. We propose to use a screen-based simulation application developed at Pitt Med called vpSim (http://vpsim.pitt.edu/vpSim/shell/Login.aspx) to create the debriefing system.
In addition to debriefing after manikin-based simulation, vpSim is used to present clinical scenarios to learners via text and/or pictures. Participants respond to multiple-choice questions about their proposed treatment options or understanding of pathophysiology, and then receive feedback from the application based on those answers. The limitation of this application is that it uses MCQs, and therefore the decision-making of the participant is not as accurately judged as if they answered questions using free text. In its current formulation, vpSim cannot recognize and respond to free text in real-time, as the participant is using the program. Therefore, I am making a presentation to the School of Information Science to solicit collaborative relationships to develop Pitt Med’s screen-based simulation capabilities.
Bio: William McIvor, MD is Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Associate Director of the Winter Institute of Simulation Education and Research for Medical Student Simulation Education. My research interests are in using simulation (mannequin-based and screen-based) for medical student education and assessment.
Friday, October 21, 2011
2:00 pm
Room 501 IS Building
Diane Kelly, Associate Professor and McColl Distinguished Term Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
We have a Suggestion for You: Understanding Query Suggestion in Information Search
Abstract: Query suggestion is now a common feature of many information search systems. While much research has been conducted about how to generate suggestions, fewer studies have been conducted about how people interact with and use suggestions, and make decisions about their quality. In this talk, I will provide an overview of several studies we have conducted to better understand how and when people use suggestions during information search and the outcome of this usage. These studies include investigations of the effects of query popularity, search experience, topic difficulty and search stage on use of suggestions. I will also provide an overview of a recently completed study that investigated how people evaluate the quality of query suggestions and how these evaluations relate to features of the queries and search results, as well as how they impact a person’s willingness to recommend the query to others.
Bio: Diane Kelly is an Associate Professor and McColl Distinguished Term Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. Her research interests are in interactive information search and retrieval, information search behavior and evaluation methods and metrics. Her research has been published in several conferences and journals including ACM SIGIR, ACM CHI, CIKM, IIiX, JCDL, Transactions on Information Systems, Information Processing and Management, JASIST, IEEE Computer and CACM. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on research design, interactive information retrieval and foundations of information science. She is the recipient of two teaching awards: the 2009 ASIST/Thomson Reuters Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award and the 2007 SILS Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. She has served on the UNC Behavioral Institutional Review Board (IRB) since 2005. She received a Ph.D. in Information Science and a Graduate Certificate in Cognitive Science from Rutgers University and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Alabama. (Homepage: http://ils.unc.edu/~dianek/)
Friday, September 23, 2011
1:30 pm
Room 405 IS Building
David Lankes, Professor and Dean’s Scholar for the New Librarianship at Syracuse University’s iSchool
LIS Grand Challenges and the Death of the User
Abstract: Grand challenges are hard problems with solutions that have societal level impacts. They are as much rallying cry as research agenda, and are useful in promoting innovation in the field and building strong cross-disciplinary partnerships. What are the grand challenges in library and information science? This presentation will focus on efforts to define these grand challenges and the implications for research and education in the LIS field. Special emphasis will be put on moving past concepts of users to true participation and past information to knowledge.
Bio: R. David Lankes is a professor and Dean's Scholar for the New Librarianship at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, the director of the library science program for the school and director of the Information Institute of Syracuse. Lankes is a passionate advocate for librarians and their essential role in today's society.
link to: [ video ]
May 4, 2011
Jim Jansen
Associate Professor, College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University
Evaluating Demographic Targeting in Online Advertising Using Sponsored Search Analytics
Abstract: Revolutionizing the advertising industry, sponsored search is the economic engine of the Web, providing the revenue stream for the major search engines and fueling much of the “free” access to information and tools that have become essential in the daily lives of millions. As such, sponsored search has shaped the web as we know it. Generating multi-billions of dollars in operating profit for the search engines and others, a complex technical platform underlies this economic and marketing system. Beginning with an examination of the economic impact and conceptual components of sponsored search, we cover empirical research results using data from a four year, &8.5 million dollar sponsored search advertising effort that generated more than $56 million in sales. We investigate the results from the perspectives of common marketing models, demographic targeting, and human information processing. In addition to specific results, findings show that sponsored search provides a data rich source for empirical marketing and advertising research. As such, sponsored search can be a fruitful research area for those in the information science and web analytics research areas.
Jansen is an Associate Professor with the College of Information Sciences and Technology at The Pennsylvania State University. He is a graduate of West Point and has a PhD in computer science from Texas A&M University, along with master degrees from Texas A&M (computer science) and Troy State (international relations). Jim is editor of the Internet Research Journal (Emerald), a member of the editorial boards of eight international journals, and serves on the research committee for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). He has received several awards and honors, including an ACM Research Award and six application development awards, along with other writing, publishing, research, and leadership honors. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Pew Research Center with the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
April 15, 2011
Dr. Allison Druin
Associate Dean for Research & Director of the HCIL, University of Maryland, College Park
The International Children's Digital Library: A Library for the World's Children
Abstract: Educators from Canada are working with pre-school children in rural South African community centers. Mongolian Public School children have "Digital Storytime" twice a week in rural classrooms. The children of Arab immigrants are learning about their parents' culture in Michigan charter schools. In Taiwan, English is being taught to working mothers and children.
All of these people are using the International Children's Digital Library (http://www.icdlbooks.org/), the largest freely-available digital library of children's books from around the world. For almost a decade, this research has been led by the University of Maryland; more recently, a non-profit foundation was created to sustain this work. In addition, the library is now available for mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and netbooks. This presentation will show how users are exploring this digital library to support numerous and diverse literacy activities. A live demonstration of the online library will be presented along with a discussion of how new mobile storytelling tools have been developed for children to share the stories they create.
Bio: Allison Druin is an Associate Dean for Research in the iSchool at the University of Maryland and is Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. For almost 10 years, she has led the design research for the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL). To do this, she leads a unique intergenerational research team, where children (ages 7-11) partner with an interdisciplinary group of researchers to develop new technologies for children. With this team, she has helped to developed new digital library and storytelling tools with such partners as the U.S. National Park Service, Sesame Workshop, Nickelodeon, Nokia, UNICEF, and many others. In 2010, the ICDL was given the "American Library Association President's Award for International Library Innovation" and named one of the "25 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning by the American Association of School Librarians."
November 22, 2010
John Leslie King
Vice Provost for Strategy, and W.W. Bishop Professor
School of Information at the University of Michigan
[ poster ]
The i-Schools in the Transformation of Higher Education
Abstract: Higher education in the US (and much of the rest of the world) is facing its most challenging transformation in more than 150 years. The forces behind this will be discussed, focusing on the importance of higher education (hint: too important to be left to higher educators), the relationship between higher education and "freedom" (hint: more twisted than first meets the eye); and the social contract between higher education and the commonweal (hint: it's changing). The i-Schools fit into this transformation in funny ways, but not funny "ha ha." An effort to make sense of it all is promised.
Bio: John Leslie King is also the former Dean of the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He came to Michigan in 2000 after being on the faculty at the University of California, Irvine for 20 years. His research examines the relationship between technical change and social change, focusing in particular on information technologies and highly-institutionalized production sectors including common carrier communication, transport, finance, health care, and higher education. He is currently a member of the National Science Foundation's Advisory Committees for Cyberinfrastructure and for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, and a member of the Council of the Computing Community Consortium. He holds a PhD in Administration from UC Irvine and an Honorary Doctorate in Economics and Business from Copenhagen Business School.
October 26, 2010
Mawaki Chango
PhD Candidate, Syracuse University Information School
How We Became Artifacts: Medieval Seals, Modern Passports and the Making of Digital Identity
Abstract: To date, cyberspace assumes the characteristics of a global territory without a consistent and reliable identification system of its own. On the one hand, the Internet software industry has been engaged in devising technical standards and protocols to address what they see as a crucial problem for Internet business and users alike. On the other hand, the White House recently undertook a "Cyberspace Policy Review" that has led to developing a strategy towards enabling secured and trustworthy identity credentials in cyberspace. Furthermore, government and the technical community have also been collaborating in order to define levels and expectations of assurance regarding digital identity credentials to be issued by private entities for online transactions that require identification. This process is currently underway with the hope that government adoption and sanction might provide the momentum much needed for a large-scale rollout of digital identity services. This talk will present the status of an ongoing research project aimed at clarifying the social antecedents or conditions required for effectively establishing a reliable and authoritative identity system in cyberspace. The research takes the form of a socio-historical inquiry into similar challenges in the past, and the ways that they were addressed through identity systems such as medieval seals and modern passports. Technologists and their design activities may gain from confronting possible assumptions regarding social factors on which their technical design depends on. More broadly, it is expected that this research will provide insights into governance, policy and societal implications of the emerging identity systems.
Bio: Changojoined the PhD program at the iSchool at Syracuse in 2005. He has earned two Master's degrees: Political Science from Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris-1 (1996) and Philosophy (Lille, 1995), both in France. He served for several years in various countries in Europe and in Africa as consultant with international development agencies such as UNESCO, the International Development Research Centre, and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa.