LIB 4900 – Social Informatics – Fall 2015

Here are some resources that shed light on values and norms here at Baruch.

• Student conduct
• Academic honesty
• CUNY Policy on Acceptable Use of Computer Resources (pdf)
• Maintenance of Public Order
• Combating Sexual Assault and Other Unwelcome Sexual Behavior
• CUNY Bylaws that relate to student behavior
• Baruch Student Handbook (pdf) go to page 62
• Baruch Faculty Handbook

In addition, see some of the resources (such as the strategic plan and the self study) listed in yesterday’s blog post, “Sources of Info about the College and Our Students.”

Comparative Analysis of Academic Web Sites

MLA Citation:

MECHITOV, A. I., MOSHKOVICH, H. M., TAYLOR, R. G., & UNDERWOOD, S. H. (2001). COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ACADEMIC WEB SITES. Education, 121(4), 652. Retrieved from http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA78535651&v=2.1&u=cuny_baruch&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=2d6b0a271a79fb041e4ad03d574f0f70

According to Academic OneFile, Education is “a professional journal presenting studies and theoretical papers on all areas of teaching and learning in both school and university settings. Issues focus on school psychology, the prevention of delinquency through high school programs, curriculum, instructional procedures, and practices in education.”

One preliminary note on this particular study from me — though it seems to be geared more towards informational websites (baruch.cuny.edu) than web portals (cunyportal.cuny.edu), the web portal still emphasizes information content and overall design, though I don’t think entertainment value is as big a factor.

Research Question:

What characteristics should a university web site embody in order for it to be effective and useful for its student users?

Methodology:

The researchers designed a 27-question survey to evaluate the effectiveness of 13 Alabama public state universities. The participants were predominantly juniors and seniors taking a CIS course about Internet applications at the University of West Alabama. All in all, 31 students participated in the survey, which was presented to them as assignment for the course.

In terms of dependent variables, each student used MS Explorer 4.0 as the browser. The researchers chose schools from the same state in order to “have a representative pool of institutions which included universities of all sizes and levels, but also to control, as much as possible, for regional differences and other extraneous variables” (655).  The survey was conducted in the middle of the semester, ensuring as best as possible that all of the students had the same level of pre-established knowledge about Java, HTML and basic web design.

The questions were designed to gauge the students perception of each website’s information content, entertainment value and overall design. The researchers found that that the students favored entertainment value above all, then considered availability/accessibility of information and aesthetic value after that.

Extent to which this article takes a social informatics approach to the research study:

If social informatics is an interdisciplinary means of evaluating human-computer interaction, with an emphasis on institutional and cultural factors, then this study more or less fulfills that definition. Likewise, if social informatics believes that context key, then the design of the study embodies that concept. For example, the researchers specifically state that “[their] approach to reduces generalizability. However, given the aforementioned caveat that the perception of site effectiveness is likely to be very contextual, we believe that the present study provides an example of site evaluation and what such evaluations may yield, and not a conclusive set of standards” (655).

As you work on your research projects, you may find some of these reports helpful as background sources:

Baruch’s Strategic Plan (2013-2018)

• Main page on the college website
• Executive summary (pdf)
• Complete strategic plan (pdf)

Baruch’s 2010 institutional self-study report prepared for Middle States accreditation

• comprehensive self-study (pdf)

Data about Baruch

• Baruch at a glance
• Fact sheet
• Factbooks
• Factbook 2014 graphs (pdf)
• Common data set 2014-2015
• Student satisfaction inventory

Data about CUNY Colleges (with school-to-school comparisons)

• Factbooks and databooks
• 2014 student experience survey (pdf)
• Staff (and faculty) facts 2014 (pdf)

On the “Assignments” tab of the course website, I’ve added details to the critical literature review assignment. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here to the blog or ask me in class.

The Benefit of a Comprehensive, Integrated, and Granular Data System for Community and Technical College Institutional Research.

APA:

Schoenecker, C. (2010). The benefits of a comprehensive, integrated, and

granular data system for community and technical college institutional research. New Directions For Institutional Research, 2010(147), 81-108.

Research Question:

According to the peer-reviewed journal, It describes the Minnesota system’s organization and information infrastructure, IR office’s staffing and its role in developing and implementing an accountability framework for the system, how the unit has changes, and prospects for the future of IR system. How the unit’s role is affected by supporting both two-year colleges and universities (pg 81).

Methodology:

First of the methodology that I found in this journal is through survey. Schoenecker says that to find out system’s statistician, “third coordinates a survey of graduates and is a reporting expert “(pg 84).

Second methodology is also survey form but for different purpose. This survey to know the employment rate after the student graduate. Schoenecker says that, “each college and university is responsible for conducting an annual follow-up survey of its graduates regarding employment and continued education” (pg 91).

Thrid methodology is through oral histories and historical tracing. When IR staff communicates with the new staff, they using software and teach the new staff. For example, “Experienced IR staff frequently use the listerv to share their knowledge with newer staff” (pg 97).

A lot of the methodology in this journal that I found that is through quantitative method. IR staffs use the information and data in the system to analyze and produce different type of reports. For example, “The Research Unit consulted with the IR Group as it developed the measures and statistical analysis to identify acceptable level of improvement” (pg 88).

The extend to which this article takes a social informatics approach to the research study:

From the user aspect, the state system can be use by the students to register class, apply financial aid and etc. IR staff can also use the system to analyze and create different types of report such as system satisfaction or performance report of students or others.

Techonology aspect, the state system has categories into community college, technical college and state university, which total up is 36 colleges and 7 universities. All of the universities and colleges is using this state system to transfer students or do other admission documentary.

Information aspect, IR staff using the data in the system to analyze report and compare the target for every year. For example, “The Research Unit provides analysis, information, and consultation to community and technical college leaders and university and system leaders in support of the system’s performance improvement process” (pg 86).

Social and organization aspect, some of the reports from the state system also send to the federal state so that government has information to do update. Besides that, the state system also divided into two categories, one is for system staff and another is for campus staff. These two categories have different organizations to handle different role or function.

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.