LIS 510: Information Behavior

 

 

 

Logistics

Overview

Grading

Readings

Schedule

Writing Tips

Presentation Tips

Newsgroup

 

Projects

 

For your class project, you will do an  information behavior study on one of the following types of people:

  • Physicians
  • Nurses
  • Medical students
  • Nursing students
  • Patients
  • Health Researchers
  • Other professionals or students (discuss with me)

You must choose one of the following types of behavior to focus your study:

  • Information seeking (e.g., searching, browsing, monitoring, or surfing)
  • Information sharing
  • Information giving
  • Information use

By Monday, April 21st please email me your choice of people and type of behavior to study.

By Tuesday, May 6th, please email me your exact study design including:

  • a project title
  • a summary of the goal of your project
  • the method that you will use (you will already be doing an observational component - due May 13th)
  • the details of your study design including the following (where applicable)
    • the questions you will be asking
    • the number of subjects you expect to study
    • the type of subjects you plan to study
    • where and when you plan to study those subjects

Example guidelines for different methods

  • Interviews - a minimum of 3 people interviewed for at least 20 minutes
  • Surveys - a minimum of 6 people who responded to your survey
  • Focus group - a minimum of 3 people in a group discussion for at least 40 minutes

On May 20th, you will email me a brief description of the progress on your project so far. This description should include a list of the tasks that you have completed so far and a list of tasks remaining, along with deadlines for those remaining tasks.

Final Report

You will write a 5-7 page paper on your project and present your results on June 10th. The format should be similar to the papers we have read in the last half of class that report on a specific study or project. The paper should include:

  • motivation (why your project is important)
  • objectives (what you hoped to learn)
  • methods (how you decided to study it)
  • results (what you discovered)
  • implications (why what you found is interesting and how it could help others)

Also, where appropriate, include (possibly as an appendix or table) details on the instruments you used in your study (e.g., the questions you asked for interviews, the written survey that you gave to subjects, relevant quotes or snippets from observations or interviews, codes used for observation notes).

You do NOT need to include any material on related work because you already did a literature survey as part of your presentation (even if your survey wasn't directly related to your project).

Presentations

On June 10th, you will present your project to the rest of class. You should:

  • limit your presentation to 15 minutes + 5 minutes for questions (I will enforce this limit)
  • practice your talk to make sure it obeys the time limit and to reduce the need for you to read your slides
  • prepare slides on the computer
  • include
    • the same components from report (but in an abbreviated form that is appropriate for a talk)
    • motivation
    • objectives
    • methods
    • results
    • implications