Course Syllabus

Course Instructor
Amanda Etches-Johnson

Course Prerequisite
Certificate of Achievement in Basic HTML Coding or the equivalent.

Contacting the Instructor
e-mail: lis9763 AT blogwithoutalibrary DOT net
MSN: amanda AT etches-johnson DOT com
AIM: torontolibrarian
Yahoo! Messenger: etches_johnson

Class Chat (a.k.a office hours)
In lieu of "office hours", we'll have a weekly chat for an hour every week (we'll determine the best time for everyone during the first week of class). 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 the chat rooms on this site (accessible from the navigation area on the right once you've logged into the site). 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. Note: the class chat rooms are not accessible to anyone who is not logged into the site.

Course Description
The term "social software" has been applied to Web-based software tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, and network/community-building. This course explores the affordances of social software applications such as blogs, tagging, and online social networks in libraries and discusses questions such as: does social software have a place in library service provision and what social software applications can be harnessed by information organizations? The focus of this course is on social software literacies and, as such, provides students with opportunities to create and use social media tools, as well as examine the implications and applications of these tools in libraries.

Course Objectives
Students who take this course will:

1. gain an understanding of social software principles;
2. explore the impact of social software on library services.
3. examine the range of use of social software in libraries and information organizations;
4. with hands-on experience, develop proficiency in creating and maintaining social software tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social tagging/folksonomy development applications;
5. develop the capacity to critically evaluate social software tools within the context of an institution's needs.

Topics & Schedule

• Week 1: Introduction to social software
• Weeks 2 & 3: Blogs & blogging
• Weeks 4 & 5: RSS
• Week 6: Wikis
• Week 7: Social bookmarking & tagging
• Week 9: Folksonomies
• Week 10: Online social networks
• Week 11: Gaming & virtual worlds
• Week 12: Media sharing
• Weeks 13 & 14: Best practices, discussion, evaluation.

Course Communication
This site serves as the primary method of communication for the course. All course content is posted here and all students will have a blog here as well. We'll also be using an online social bookmarking space to gather links that pertain to the course topics (more on that later).

All course content has already been posted to the site via the links on the right ("weekly content"). Every week (usually on Sunday nights), I will put up a blog post that will include a couple of "talking points" or things to think about when reading the articles and reviewing the case studies for the. Students will be expected to do the reading and spend some time exploring the tools and technologies, after which they will blog about their thoughts, reactions and discoveries on their own blogs. Students are also expected to comment on their classmates' posts. As well, students will be reading other related works that they find during the course of their own social media explorations, and tagging these readings in del.icio.us (the tag we will use is "lis9763"). The content posted to the "lis9763" tag in del.icio.us will become a collection of resources that we will all read and draw upon during the course of term.

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 software researchers. To that end, our communication tools (blogs, RSS, del.icio.us) are open and readily accessible on the Web. As such, students are encouraged to contact me directly (via email or IM) to discuss personal or sensitive issues, otherwise all communication will be done via the blogs on this site, del.icio.us, and the weekly chat.

Assignments (the assignments are fleshed out in more detail on the Assignments page)

Weekly discussion & tagging (35%)
You will be expected to use your blogs to respond to the week’s readings, comment on your experience with the technology/tools being explored for the week, and to expand upon the learning process in which you are engaged. You will also be expected to comment upon a significant number of your classmates' blogs posts. In addition, all students will contribute to a shared social bookmarking space where we will post sites, articles and resources related to course topics (as described above). The amount and quality of participation in these activities will account for 35% of your overall mark. You are allowed to take a 2-week "holiday" from this assignment, which means that your grade will be based on 11 weeks of blogging, commenting and tagging (rather than 13 weeks).
Due: weekly, by 9 am Friday. There is no deadline to comment on your classmastes' blog posts and post links to del.icio.us. Just make sure comments & links are posted regularly (i.e. weekly, not monthly!)

Group Project (25%)
For this assignment, groups will be required to design a library service using a 2.0 tool and write an accompanying blog post explaining the project. Groups will works with 6 major topics:

• RSS
• wikis
• social bookmarking & tagging/folksonomies
• online social networks
• gaming & virtual worlds
• media sharing

Each group will choose one of these topics and develop their service around the tools/technologies associated with that topic. Projects and their associated blog posts will be due by 9 AM on the Friday of the topic week (see the Important Dates page for a breakdown of due dates). 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.
Due: weeks 5-11 (by 9 am on the Friday of your topic week)

Proposal for final project (15%)
This assigment is simple - write a one-page description of your final project (expectations for the final project are outlined below). Proposals are worth 15% of your final mark.
Due: 9 am Midnight, Friday June 20 (week 7)

Final Project (25%)
The final project will give you an opportunity to explore a social software theory, trend, technology, or application of interest to you. The topic and format of the final project is entirely up to you; for example, you may write an essay, develop a prototype, write a proposal to implement a 2.0 tool in a specific library, or perform needs assessment of a library and provide your recommendations for the implementation of social software applications at that organization.
Due: Noon Midnight, Wednesday August 6 (week 14)

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 students 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 a student has a valid reason (serious illness, family emergency, etc.) for requesting an extension on an assignment, he/she may contact me. For obvious reasons, extensions will not be granted on the weekly blogging/commenting/tagging assignment and on the Group Analysis & Presentation. 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 Scholastic Offence Policy Section 10 in the Faculty of Graduate Studies Academic Calendar at http://www.uwo.ca/grad/calendar.htm).