Syllabus

Instructor

Amanda Etches-Johnson

Prerequisite

Working knowledge of HTML.

Description

The term “social software” (or “social media”) refers to Web-based applications and tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, and network/community-building. This course explores the affordances of social software/media applications such as blogs, wikis, and online social networks in libraries and seeks to answer the following questions:

• How has social media changed the web landscape and what does that change mean for libraries?
• What role does social software/media play in library service provision?
• How can libraries harness social media tools and environments to extend services, engage users and build community?
• What roles do librarians play in facilitating the use of, as well as education about, social media in their communities?

The focus of this course is on social software fluency and provides students with opportunities to create and use social media tools and examine the implications and applications of these tools in libraries.

Course Objectives

Students who take this course will:

1. with hands-on experience, develop proficiency in creating and maintaining social software tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, tagging, microblogging, lifestreaming, and social networking tools;
2. explore the impact of social software and social media on library services and examine the range of their use in libraries and information organizations;
3. develop the capacity to critically evaluate and implement social software tools within the context of an institution’s needs;
4. gain an understanding of social software and social media principles, including the impact these principles have on online interactions and user experience.

Contact Info

Email is the best way to reach me, although IM is also good if you need an immediate response (add one of my IM handles below to your buddy list). I try to respond to email within 24 hours (and usually much quicker than that), although I’m usually more reachable outside of working hours (9-5). Here are all the ways you can contact me:

e-mail: etchesjohnson AT gmail.com
Google Talk: etchesjohnson AT gmail.com
AIM: torontolibrarian
MSN: amanda@etches-johnson.com
Yahoo! Messenger: etches_johnson

Also, feel free to follow/friend me on Twitter and/or Facebook. I use both venues for professional/scholarly purposes (as well as personal ones), so I’m happy to engage there, too!

Class Chat (a.k.a office hours)

In lieu of office hours, we will have a weekly chat for an hour every week (we’ll determine the best time for everyone during the first week of class). While the weekly chat is optional, all students are invited to the chat and we’ll use the time to talk about the topics of the week and anything else that comes up. These chats will take place in a password-protected meebo chat room (I’ll send you the password for the chat room during the first week of class). If you have something you’d like to discuss privately with me, your best bet is to send me an email or ping me on IM (contact info above).

Topics & Schedule

• Week 1: Course Introduction
• Week 2: Social Software Literacy and Affordances
• Week 3: Content Creation: Blogging
• Week 4: Collaboration: Wikis
• Week 5: Crowdsourcing: Social Bookmarking & Tagging
• Week 6: Collective Intelligence: Folksonomies
• Week 7: Building Community: Social Networking
• Week 8: Research Week
• Week 9: Participation: Microblogging & Lifestreaming
• Week 10: Ubiquity and Mobility: Cloud Computing & The Mobile Web
• Week 11: Infrastructure: RSS & Mashups
• Week 12: Social Media Policies & Assessment
• Week 13: Social Software Literacy and Affordances
• Week 14: Reflection & Wrap-up

How This Course Works

This site serves as your “virtual classroom” and the primary method of communication for the course. All course content is posted here and all students will have a blog here as well (which you set up during week 1). The site includes a page for each week that covers the week’s topic and includes 2 or 3 learning objectives, a few readings, a few case studies to explore, and a list of activities to complete during the week.

Here’s how a typical week works:

• Every Monday, I will publish a short lecture/slideshow on the week’s topic on the course blog (starting with week 2).
• Once you have viewed the lecture/slideshow, you can visit the weekly content page for the readings, case studies, and list of activities for the week.
• You will be expected to write and publish at least ONE blog post by the weekly blogging deadline, which is every Friday at noon.
• You will also be expected to comment on your classmates’ blog posts to continue the discussion.
• You can find more information about my expectations for your weekly blogging and commenting in this post.

In this course, I place a great deal of importance on the notion of “community” and hope that over the course of our term together, we will become a focused research community that is engaged with the broader community of librarians and social media researchers. To that end, our communication tools (blogs, RSS) are open and readily accessible on the Web. As such, you are encouraged to contact me directly (via email or IM listed above) to discuss personal or sensitive issues, otherwise all communication will be done via the blogs on this site and our weekly chat.

Assignments

Weekly Blogging

• Worth 30% of your final mark
• Based on 10 weeks of blogging and commenting
• Starting in week 2, due weekly, by noon Friday

Think of the weekly blogging as the online equivalent of “class discussion”. Since this is a distance ed course, you will be using your blogs to discuss the content of the course. Grading on your blogs will begin with week 2, since week 1 is just an introductory post. The comments you post to your classmates’ blogs will also count in your weekly blogging grade. You are allowed 2 weeks of “blog holidays” when you do not have to blog or comment. For more information on my expectations for your weekly blogging, check out this post.

Group Project

• Worth 25% of final mark
• Due: weeks 4-11 (by noon on the Friday of your topic week)

The main deliverables of the group project are a working model or prototype of a library service built using social software/media tools, and a blog post that explains the service, what software was used to build it, who the target audience is, etc. (there is no particular word-count for the blog post, just make sure that you’ve communicated all the important aspects of your project). I’m looking for a few things with this assignment: creativity, usefulness of the service, and evidence that you’ve thought through a particular “problem” and provided a meaningful solution with your prototype. There are 5 types of tools groups can choose from for this assignment: wikis, social bookmarking/tagging tools, microblogging/lifestreaming tools, social networking tools, and RSS/mashups.

To get you started, here are a few suggestions for projects (these are just ideas and you should not feel limited to choosing one of these):

• a blog targeted to a specific library user group
• a library website or staff intranet built using wiki software
• a subject guide using a social bookmarking tool
• a social network for kids/teens using online social networking software
• a library plugin built using LibX
• a screencast describing the use of a library resource
• a library tour using Flickr
• a library promotional video on YouTube
• a library portal built using RSS and a personalized home page tool like NetVibes or iGoogle
• a library portal built using RSS and a lifestreaming application
• a Twitter account targeted to a specific library user group
• a library website optimized for mobile browsers
• a subject guide or pathfinder built on RSS tools
• a mashup of 2 or more data sources using Yahoo! Pipes

Each group should run their idea by me — I’d like to make sure you’re on the right track before you put too much work into your project. I’ll put out a call to sign up for groups during week 2, so keep your eyes open for it. Groups should have no more than 4 students and each group will receive a single assessment which will account for 25% of your overall mark. To submit your group project post a link to the prototype and publish the accompanying blog post to one (or all) group members’ blogs, then send me an email with the link to the blog post and an outline of who contributed what to the project (all group members should be cc’d on the message).

Crowdsourcing and Social Bookmarking

• Worth 10% of final mark
• Due: noon on Friday, October 15 (week 6)

The purpose of this assignment is to help you to gain an understanding of how social media tools “crowdsource” by harnessing collective intelligence. For this assignment, you will set up an account on Delicious and tag at least 10 items pertinent to this course (anything to do with social media) with the tag “lis9763”. Once you have tagged your 10 items, check out everything else that has been tagged with the lis9763 tag on Delicious. Then write a short blog post (no more than 500 words) outlining your thoughts and reactions to the usefulness of social bookmarking tools to effectively crowdsource a specific topic.

To submit your assignment, simply send me an email with your Delicious username and the link to your accompanying blog post.

Proposal for final project

• Worth 10% of final mark
• Due: Noon, Monday, November 1 (week 9)

This assignment is simple – write a one-page outline of what you’d like to accomplish with your final project. Don’t put too much work into the Final Project until you’ve received feedback from me on your Proposal. More details on the final project below.

Final Project

• Worth 25% of final mark
• Due: Noon, Wednesday, December 8 (week 14)

The final project is wide open for possibilities and I encourage you to use your imaginations! Here are a few ideas to get you started (again, these are just ideas, you don’t have to choose one of these):

• write an essay on a 2.0 topic or technology of interest to you. The essay can be theoretical or it can explore the use of the tool/technology in libraries, or some combination of the two.
• write a proposal for the implementation of a social software tool in a specific library. If you’re on co-op this term, this might be a good assignment to tie into your work.
• perform a needs assessment of a library and write a project proposal with your recommendations for the implementation of social software tools at that library. Again, for those of you on co-op this term, this project might tie in well with the work you’re doing at your placement organization.
• build a prototype of a library service for a particular library or user group (see suggestions for the Group Project, above). You may choose to build upon the work done by your group for the Group Project, or you may choose to build something new.
• edit a number of Wikipedia articles and write a paper outlining the experience.
• explore the potential uses of location-specific social tools for user engagement and library outreach.

If you choose to write an essay or proposal, your paper should be between 1500-2000 words long. If you decide on one of the other projects, you should have some supporting documentation outlining the project. This documentation can take the form of a submitted paper, a wiki, a blog post, or any other format that makes sense to you. There is no specific word-count for this supporting documentation. As you can tell, you have a lot of lattitude with this project, so I expect you to have some fun with it!

Assignment Formatting and Submission Guidelines

Formatting of Submitted Assignments: Please include your name, student number, and email address on the first page/covering page of your submission. Please also make sure that all electronically submitted assignments (see next section) are saved with your first and last names in the file name.

Submission Guidelines: If you are submitting a paper or any sort of attachment, please submit it using Google Docs (no email attachments please). If you don’t already have an account on Google Docs, set one up and upload your paper there. Then add me (etchesjohnson AT gmail.com) as a collaborator so I can post comments to your assignment online. Finally, please send me an email letting me know that you’ve shared a document with me so I know to look for it. NOTE that this procedure should be followed only for submitted assignments. If your submission is online (as is the case with the Crowdsourcing and Social Bookmarking assignment, Group Project, and possibly your Final Project, depending on the topic you choose), a simple email with a link to your submission will suffice.

Style Guide & References: You are free to use whatever style guide you are most comfortable with for your submitted assignments, just remember to apply it consistently. For the weekly blogging, I do not expect you to formally cite every source you refer to, a simple link in-text will do.

Policy on Late Assignments

While I recognize that one of the advantages of distance education is to allow students flexibility in completing the course content, it’s important for students in this course to complete assignments in a timely manner so that our online conversations are productive and topics are tackled as a group. This doesn’t preclude you from blogging about a topic well after that module has been completed, but it’s also important to address the topic when the rest of the class is tackling it. That said, if you have a valid reason (serious illness, family emergency, etc.) for requesting an extension on an assignment, please do contact me. For obvious reasons, extensions will not be granted on the weekly blogging/commenting assignment and on the Group Project. Assignments handed in late without permission will be penalized as follows:

• 1-7 days late: 30% reduction in mark
• 8-14 days late: 50% reduction in mark
• more than 14 days late: zero on the assignment

Statement on Plagiarism

Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see the Scholastic Offence Policy Section 10 in the Faculty of Graduate Studies Academic Calendar).