Martin Wolske

Establishment of public computing centers (PCCs) has often been implemented within the digital divide framework and viewed as only stepping-stones towards preferred private access.  However, a range of research indicates the ongoing importance of PCCs to meet both private and public computing needs.  We used an evidence-based design approach to guide the implementation of a redesign of an active PCC located in an economically depressed metropolitan region of Illinois, USA.  Results indicate that physical design is critical and inseparable from the overall success of the lab, leading towards positive changes in the use and perception of the lab.

ABSTRACT How to do more with less has become a recurring theme in discussions amongst IT professionals, but this has been a theme for library professionals for many years. Libraries have worked to build consortiums allowing them to minimize duplication of services, thereby maximizing their utilization of resources while assuring a high quality of service for patrons. A review was undertaken of the University of Illinois Library system to consider how the lessons they have learned regarding resource sharing amongst campus and departmental libraries could be applied to University of Illinois IT support groups. This paper will provide an overview of the findings from this study. In addition, specific examples of how the University of Illinois campus-wide IT support group and departmental IT support groups are working together to optimize centralized and distributed services as a means for increasing the overall service levels while minimizing overall support costs.

In this paper, we present a methodology for investigating the impact of community media newsrooms at public computing centers in East St. Louis and North Champaign, Illinois, USA. The study is part of a participatory action research project informed by community organizations in both locations and supported by students, faculty, and staff at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) and the Department of Journalism in the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The project also supported two courses: an ongoing service-learning course and a newly developed Community Informatics studio course, designed to introduce students to and have them apply theoretical and methodological concepts from journalism, community informatics, and community media studies. The purpose of the course is to help students develop the tools, skills, and knowledge they need to address a community's information needs and to support existing assets. The ultimate goal of this project is focused on designing effective strategies with people in low-income communities to foster a more vibrant news and information ecosystem. The course builds upon previous collaborative projects, in both cities, as a way to sustain the university's engagement with the two communities. While much has been written about public, civic, and citizen journalism, much less has been written about the methodologies used to measure the impact of participatory news initiatives in the U.S. This paper seeks to address this gap and to contribute to the field of community informatics by providing a framework that researchers can use to evaluate community news and information projects. Abstract: Methodology, community media, service learning, citizen journalism, participatory action research

This presentation will report on work related to a recently funded Office of the Vice Chancellor for Public Engagement project, "Equipping Citizen Journalists," which is bringing together key ongoing and recent projects by CII and the Department of Journalism to address the disparity in effective use of technologies for information gathering, reporting, and information and news presentation that currently exists in north Champaign and East St. Louis. Four public computing centers have been identified as pilot sites to serve as community media newsrooms in these communities. The presentation will report on ways faculty, staff, and students from LIS and Journalism are coming together to work with professionals and pilot sites to adapt community media and citizen journalism programming to the current needs of residents in the marginalized communities of north Champaign and East St. Louis. Issues of controlled vocabularies, wayfinding, preservation and archiving will also be considered to assure information is not only produced but also accessible in a way that is sustainable and impactful

Introduction to Networked Information Systems is a course that has been taught by the author since 1997. For much of the time, a participatory action research service-learning component has sought to address the digital divide while supporting hands-on sociotechnical skills development of students and community members. However, extended research on this course has identified key limits in the essential advancement of critical student values development related to the deeper socio-cultural agendas interconnected with digital technologies and the Internet. Unless primed, students often remain centered on problematic political agendas revolving around hyper-individualism, neoliberal capitalism, and technological utopianism. This paper introduces a new teaching template, sans the service-learning component, in which the teacher-student uses “systems”, “information”, and “network” as generative words, and carefully selected hands-on exercises and digital counter-storytelling as codifica...

This poster describes an educational research project we call “Community Informatics Studio,” which uses studio-based learning (SBL) to support enculturation into the field of community informatics. The SBL approach is rooted in the apprenticeship model of learning in which students study with master designers or artists to learn their craft and is closely related to John Dewey's inquiry-based learning. The poster reports on research from our Community Informatics Studio course, which uses experiential learning as a model of information scholarship in action. We highlight the guiding theoretical frameworks, research questions, methodological approaches, findings, and recommendations. The goal of our poster is to respond to this year’s conference theme by presenting our research question: “How can the Community Informatics Studio be understood as an innovative educational model of information scholarship in action?”

This paper extends the theoretical framework underlying the Community Informatics (CI) Studio. The CI Studio has been described as the use of studio-based learning (SBL) techniques to support enculturation into the field of CI. The SBL approach, closely related to John Dewey's inquiry-based learning, is rooted in the apprenticeship model of learning in which students study with master designers or artists to develop their craft. In this paper, we introduce our critical interpretive sociotechnical (CIS) framework as the conceptual framework underlying the CI Studio course and pedagogy. In doing so, we explain how the CI Studio can be understood a pathway for advancing community-defined social justice goals through critical pedagogy and participatory design techniques. We describe our embrace of both critical and interpretive perspectives as the foundation upon which the CI Studio supports the following ideas: Instructors, students, and community partners can collaborate as co-lea...

Randy Stoecker noted in 2005 that CI remains underdeveloped as a field of practice as long as it does not have its own set of ethical guidelines. While Averweg & O’Donnell published a researcher-focused set of guidelines in 2007, a full-scale work for CI practice has not yet been completed. Workshops employing a range of collaborative techniques have been held at the last three Community Informatics Research Network conferences, identifying perspectives and ideas from attendees regarding ethical CI practice and guiding critical questions. This paper is published as a means to widen the audience reviewing and commenting on these.