LIB 4900 – Social Informatics – Fall 2015

Please bring the worksheets you did last Thursday about developing a research question. In class, we’ll be doing more work in teams with research questions.

Also, make sure you’ve watched the video about literature reviews.

As I mentioned last week in class, I’m going to push back the due dates for the first two blog posts about journal articles. Instead of making two of the three blog posts being due by Oct. 15, let’s make one due by Oct. 22, another due by Nov. 5, and the third due by Nov. 12.

We’’ll talk about this in class tomorrow.

http://www.cio.com/article/2439102/enterprise-resource-planning/university-erp–big-mess-on-campus.html

I found a journal article that was posted on May 1, 2005 on CIO website called “University ERP: Big Mess on Campus” written by Thomas Weilgum. I thought it was interesting for me because I’m writing a research paper about CunyFirst (Fully Integrated Resources & Service Tool) in CUNY colleges that supported by Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

The article is about how students returned to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst campus in the fall of 2004 not knowing that new system was implemented while they were out for the summer. The problems started when they couldn’t log into the school’s new online registration system. Usually new systems require to set up a new password which students didn’t know about until they returned to campus. Students probably flooded the “I forgot my password” option because they couldn’t log in. After about a thousand of these requests, the system crushed, which was the result of a PeopleSoft Web portal implementation that had been rushed. “The freshmen were going crazy because they didn’t know where to go,” said one of the senior students. For the first three days of the semester, classes were half-empty and long lines everywhere. Around the same time other universities like Stanford University and Indiana University experienced problems too with the new implemented ERP system where nonfunctioning Web portal prevented students from finding out where their classes were or in Indiana University they were denied financial aid.

According to this article all these problems began because college executives relied too much on this new software hoping for a quick fix and expecting people to learn on their own to navigate the system. After all the ERP system is expensive itself which means hiring experts or recruiting staff would result in cost overruns.

Representatives from PeopleSoft said that a large part of the problem results from the inexperience of universities IT departments and their tendency to rush implementations and inadequately test the new systems. They try to do too much in too little time. Also lean staffs and tight budgets at most university campuses usually lead to a lack of proper training and systems testing.

Sincerely,

Nina K.

I don’t recall the last time I so enjoyed reading writing from students in my course. In everyone’s answer to the prompt, “What I find hard about research is,” I found beautifully expressed and very authentic responses. Reading them all this morning revealed some common themes:

• Getting started is hard.
• Picking a topic is hard, especially if the professor has said that you can choose anything.
• Focusing your topic is challenging.
• It’s easy to find sources–sometimes it’s even overwhelming when you look at the results of a search–but it’s hard to know if they are appropriate or reliable.
• As you search, it’s easy to get distracted by irrelevant sources or to go off on completely unrelated tangents.
• Reading the sources is tough: doing so consumes lots of time; they can be challenging because the authors often assume the reader knows lots of theories and concepts already; and they can undermine what you thought you knew and leave you feeling uncertain or confused as you try to synthesize the ideas in them.
• Keeping track of your sources as you find them is hard.
• As you work on the project, finding inspiration, motivation, and even passion can be tough even though you know it’s what’s needed to make the project a success.

Great work, everyone!

In my previous blog post, I should have mentioned there is another thing to read for class on October 8:

“Social Sciences, Qualitative Research in.” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Ed. Lisa M. Given. Vol. 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2008. 826-831. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.

Please also print this out and bring it to class.

For class on October 8, we will be discussing in detail a model research study that uses a social informatics approach and is described in this peer-reviewed journal article:

Arora, Payal. “Digital Gods: The Making Of A Medical Fact For Rural Diagnostic Software.” Information Society 26.1 (2010): 70-79. Library & Information Science Source. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.

Please read this article very carefully and be prepared in class to demonstrate to me in class:

• your understanding of how the sections of this article align with the standard journal article sections that we discussed in class on September 24
• your analysis of the interplay of the ICT  being studied and the social and institutional aspects of that ICT’s design, implementation, and use.

Make sure that you bring a print copy of the article with you to class.

As noted on the course website, in lieu of a midterm exam, I would like to meet with each of you for 30 minutes in my office to review where you are at in the course. All appointments will be held between October 14 and October 20.

Please use this Google Doc to sign up for a time slot. I’ll send you an email to confirm the date and time you’ve selected.