Community Informatics Studio: Designing
Experiential Learning to Support Teaching,
Research, and Practice
Martin Wolske
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
501 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820 Email: mwolske@illinois.edu
Colin Rhinesmith
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Email: crhines@illinois.edu
Beth Kumar
University of Colorado Colorado Springs, Email: bkumar@uccs.edu
This paper introduces a model of experiential learning to support teaching, research,
and practice in library and information science (LIS). The concept we call Community
Informatics (CI) Studio uses studio-based learning (SBL) 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. Our paper begins with a review of literature
to frame our research before introducing our analysis of the CI Studio course. Using
the first three semesters of the course as case studies, the goal of the paper was to present three related investigations that emerged from our over-arching research question:
How can the CI Studio be understood as a model of experiential learning to support LIS
teaching, research, and practice?
Keywords: community informatics, studio-based learning, experiential learning, community engagement, popular education
Introduction
T
his paper introduces a model of experiential learning to support teaching,
research, and practice in library and information science (LIS). The concept we call
Community Informatics (CI) Studio uses
studio-based learning (SBL) to support enculturation into the field of “Community
Informatics” (Campbell & Eubanks, 2004;
Gurstein, 2003; Keeble & Loader, 2001;
Stoecker, 2005; Williams & Durrance,
2009). The SBL approach is rooted in the
apprenticeship model of learning in which
students study with master designers or
artists to learn their craft. This pedagogical
technique is closely related to John Dewey’s inquiry-based learning (Lackney,
166
1999). In this paper, we argue that the CI
Studio provides a novel research approach
for examining LIS-led community engagement by modeling actual learning environments where future LIS professionals
can develop meaningful CI projects.
The paper begins with a review of the
“community informatics” and “studiobased learning” literature to provide a
foundation for our research. We then briefly consider the research sub-questions,
methodological approaches and findings
from our three mini-case studies of the CI
Studio course offered over three semesters.
The study presents and discusses three related investigations that emerged from our
overarching research question: How can
the CI Studio be understood as a model of
J. of Education for Library and Information Science, Vol. 55, No. 2—(Spring) April 2014
ISSN: 0748-5786 © 2014 Association for Library and Information Science Education
Community Informatics Studio: Designing Experiential Learning
experiential learning to support LIS teaching, research, and practice? The goal of
the paper was to provide an instructional
model that can prepare future LIS-professionals to lead meaningful community and
civic engagement projects.
This study is significant because federal
agencies and foundations have recently
called for public libraries to address community information needs by leading community engagement efforts. “The Promise
of Libraries Transforming Communities”
(Institute for Museum and Library Services, 2012), IMLS & The MacArthur
Foundation’s “Learning Labs” (Institute
for Museum and Library Services, 2011),
and The Knight Foundation’s (2009) “Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy” are three recent examples recognizing the unique abilities that public,
academic and school libraries offer to advance local community and civic engagement. In this paper, we argue that the CI
Studio can provide LIS teachers, researchers and practitioners with a theoretical and
methodological framework for advancing
LIS-led community engagement initiatives.
Theoretical Framework
We begin the paper by introducing the
CI and SBL literature as the foundation
upon which we suggest a model for coupling these practices as a useful approach
for advancing LIS teaching, research and
practice with community members.
Community Informatics
Community Informatics examines
how people in geographic locations interact with information and communication
technology (Williams & Durrance, 2009)
and its application to enable and empower
community processes (Gurstein, 2007).
Community Informatics researchers view
“informatics” as the digitization of society,
particularly as people’s lives move online
from physical to virtual spaces. O’Neil
(2002) argued that “theories for measuring
167
the impacts of CI projects fall into five key
areas,” including strong democracy, social
capital, individual empowerment, sense of
community and economic development
opportunities (pp. 78–79). Other scholars
have argued that CI can help support community organizing projects and social justice goals. For instance, one area of study
for CI, which served as a project focus for
each of the case studies in this paper, looks
at the ways community institutions such as
public libraries, community centers, social
service agencies and churches can utilize
public computing centers (PCCs) and digital media literacy workshops as interventions for addressing the “digital divide,”
or the gap between the “information haves
and have-nots” (National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
1999, p. xiii).
Stoecker (2005) described CI as an effort to use “technology to support community development goals.” Stoecker (2013)
also explained that scholars often discuss
community development within two contexts. The first perspective is defined as a
top-down approach where elites determine
the goals and manage the implementation of information and communication
technology (ICT) development projects
often in poor or underserved areas around
the world. The second perspective advocates for a more participatory approach.
Scholars and activists informed by this
perspective argue that those most directly impacted by ICT projects should organize themselves and decide their own
terms by which ICTs are used (or not) to
advance shared community development
goals. Stoecker (2005) described this second perspective as a community organizing approach to community development
and argued that it can often be useful as
a way to get people involved in and excited about CI projects. Bishop, Bruce, &
Jeong (2009) further refine the concept
of participation through a “community
inquiry” approach to community engagement that recognize students and school as
vital parts of the community and collec-
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tive knowledge building as something performed of, for and by communities as living social organisms. As they explained,
“Knowledge is found in the community as
well as the school and is constructed anew
by all participants. In this way, the borders
between school and community are not accepted as fixed, only to be crossed under
special circumstances” (p. 22).
Community informatics has also been
described as “a sustainable approach to
community enrichment that integrates
participatory design of information technology resources, popular education and
asset-based development to enhance citizen empowerment and quality of life”
(Campbell & Eubanks, 2004). In her
work developing “popular technology”
workshops with low-income women at
a YWCA in upstate New York, Eubanks
(2007) detailed how participatory design,
popular education and participatory action
research can provide “alternative articulations of digital equity” and opportunities
to develop “powerful strategies of resistance” in the information age (p. 1). We
believe the participatory perspectives described by Stoecker, Bishop et al. and Eubanks provide insightful examples of how
the lines between CI education, research
and practice intersect and provide a way
forward for LIS professionals looking for
new approaches to leading community engagement projects.
Studio-Based Learning
Studio-based learning is rooted in the
apprentice model of learning in which students study with master designers or artists to develop their craft. It emphasizes
learning by doing, often through community-based design problems and is an integral pedagogy in architecture, urban planning and fine and applied arts. Lackney
(1999) described SBL as being focused
on helping students learn to be a professional using the apprenticeship model as
opposed to learning the knowledge needed
to be a professional through lectures. The
iterative design process, as described by
Brocato (2009), relies heavily on desk critiques and feedback from instructors and
outside experts to provide students with
guidance and support.
Studio-based learning reflects Dewey’s
approach in 1938 to experiential learning
(Lackney, 1999). For instance, Dewey
emphasized the importance of helping
students shape their purpose for a given
activity by constructing a plan based on
their impulses, past experiences and community knowledge to maximally shape the
current learning environment. In this way,
teachers act more like “guides” to assist
students in developing and implementing their design choices. Students and
instructors work together within a studio
space that serves as a model of professional practice, incorporating field visits
to inform work. Regular student reflections also help students think more deeply
about the paths that lead them to their final project designs. The community-based
studio in particular provides an opportunity for students to participate in realworld design projects through engagement
with community partners (Lawson, et al.,
2011; National Endowment for the Arts,
2002). Community-based studios not only
teach critical knowledge regarding how to
be a professional, they also provide preprofessional students with confidence that
they can accomplish outputs promised to
a partner (Lawson, et al., 2011). Further,
when explicitly considered in course design, community-based studios provide
opportunities to advance multicultural
learning (Lawson, et al., 2011).
Community Informatics Studio
Pedagogy
In this section, we briefly introduce our
Community Informatics Studio Pedagogy
and describe how it builds on previous
studies of CI and SBL. The purpose is to
construct the framework for viewing our
three mini-case studies that follow in the
next section.
Community Informatics Studio: Designing Experiential Learning
Simpson et al.’s (2004) model of SBL
in CI was described in their study of
community journalism platforms. They
showed how the studio pedagogy helped
to “move the classroom focus from the
teacher to the learner and to create a more
active and engaging climate for the learners” (p. 256). CI Studio builds on this social constructivist approach by drawing
from pragmatist, progressive and popular
educational philosophies that begin with
Addams (1902) and Dewey (1938) and
continue with works by Freire (1970),
Eubanks (2011) and Stoecker (2013).
These philosophies lead us to prioritize
the following CI values mentioned above
within our SBL classes: (1) developing a
sustainable approach to community enrichment, (2) approaching community engagement with an asset-based perspective,
(3) embracing difference as a resource,
(4) teaching, researching and practicing
with community members, (5) focusing
on community-defined goals for building healthy communities. The CI Studio
builds upon perspectives of SBL, participatory action research/community based
169
research (Stoecker, 2013) and community
engagement (The Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching, 2013) as
applied in fine and applied arts through the
East St. Louis Action Research Project, or
ESLARP (Lawson, et al., 2011; Sorensen
and Lawson, 2012) and its integration into
LIS through a 12-year collaboration with
ESLARP (Wolske, 2012). Our engagement with our students especially calls attention to the iterative aspects of the studio-design process and seeks to model the
studio space as a key foundation of our CI
Studio pedagogy. Real-world cases arise
from ongoing conversations with community partners as a natural part of the
boundary-spanning role of the lead author.
Specific partnerships are highlighted each
semester to emphasize specific community
informatics themes.
Figure 1 is an adaptation from Brocato’s (2009) SBL design path proposal,
highlighting the role that readings, discussion and community engagement play
in our studio design process. The author
described the “propose-critique-iterate” as
part of a pedagogical approach that asks
Figure 1. Community Informatics Studio Proposal Path.
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students to develop their designs with instructors as guides using pin-ups, desk
critiques and formal juries (p. 142). We
closely model our CI Studio pedagogy on
Brocato’s framework.
On Day One of the semester, instructors
introduce the design problem or case, to
students. The individual, team, community and project-level learning outcomes are
listed in the course syllabus and revised
as needed, based on a collaboratively developed shared understanding of purpose
within the current learning environment.1
Early classes rely heavily on readings and
discussion to ground students and prepare
them to work in field. Field visits with community partners and model sites inform
the studio designs. Instructors and outside
experts ask students to defend their design
choices at desk critiques during scheduled
sessions and informal conversations. At
the end of the semester, students present
their design projects to a juried panel of
instructors and invited guests as part of a
final critique.
Community Informatics Studio:
Three Mini-Case Studies
In this section, we introduce three semesters of the CI Studio course. The
course is an elective offered at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science with enrollments between four and
the cap of 15. It has attracted students from
departments outside the school, including Journalism and Education, who are
particularly interested in the role of technology in supporting community engagement. For each semester, we present the
design case and the theoretical perspectives guiding the student projects, along
with the research sub-questions, methodological approaches, findings and recommendations from the case evaluations. For
1Syllabi
are available online:
summer 2010 - http://go.illinois.edu/cistudio_su10;
summer 2011 - http://go.illinois.edu/cistudio_su11;
fall 2012 - http://go.illinois.edu/cistudio_fa12
all three case studies, the data were collected using qualitative methods, including face-to-face interviews with students,
instructors and community members. We
hope the three studies can be considered
together in order to respond to our study’s
overarching research question: How can
the CI Studio be understood as a model of
experiential learning to support LIS teaching, research and practice?
Case Study I: [Re]Designing Public
Computing Centers
The case for the Summer 2010 CI Studio was informed by research surrounding
PCCs as social centers serving a range of
important learning, collaboration, creative
and civic functions (Baker, 2008; Becker
et al. 2010; Ceballos et al., 2006; Fuchs,
1998; Gurstein, 2003; Viseu et al. 2006).
After in-class presentations to introduce
core frameworks and the design case, students from Library and Information Science, Architecture and Education used
field trips to local and regional PCCs and
collaborative spaces to research the intersection of community and technology. Students also performed a literature review of
environmental psychology and evidencebased design to consider how principles
previously applied to health, school and
work settings might be applied to PCCs.
The students then worked collaboratively
with the staff and students of a community
center to create a design proposal for their
PCC. The 4-week summer session did not
allow time to implement the final design
proposal, but several students volunteered
into the fall to help implement the redesign
(Wolske et al., 2013a)
The research question directing the
evaluation of the semester was How does
SBL compare to other forms of classroom
learning? The mixed-methods research
on the class pedagogy, conducted by Beth
Kumar, third author on this paper, included
pre- & post-surveys of the students, class
observations both in the studio and in the
field, informal discussions with the student
Community Informatics Studio: Designing Experiential Learning
groups, interviews with the instructor and
teaching assistant and the formal written
course evaluations.
The evaluator found that the first few
sessions of the course consisted of background lectures to ground the students on
related ongoing CI-related projects as well
as on the CI studio pedagogy course objectives. However, the lecture format of the
classroom soon switched to active studio
learning. The students became the apprentices, each group finding solutions to the
lab space at the community center by visiting existing labs and researching possible
solutions. The instructor, in his role as the
master, was on hand for the student’s decision-making process, guiding them when
questions came up, but primarily letting
them use trial and error to find a solution. The student teams worked as partners
with the staff of the center and the course
instructor, jointly owning the project. The
studio pedagogy removed the pressure and
emphasis on tests and grades, instead shifting the focus and effort to the end result.
Overall, it was found that students unknowingly repeated Kolb’s (1984) cycle of experiential learning (Figure 2) many times.
The 2010 CI Studio final project documents, which have served to inform the
design of numerous subsequent public
computing centers, are online at: http://
www.prairienet.org/op/labdesign/
Figure 2. Kolb’s Cycle of Experiential Learning.
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Case Study II: Equipping Community
Media Newsrooms
The case for the summer 2011 CI Studio
responded to various calls, such as those
by the Knight Commission Report on the
Information Needs of Communities in a
Democracy (2009) and Schaffer (2010),
for informed communities and hyperlocal
news startups to develop informed, engaged and healthy communities. Wolske,
the first author on this paper, had recently
received funding to lead the “Equipping
Citizen Journalists” project, which sought
to bring together key ongoing and recent
projects to address the disparity in effective use of technologies for information
gathering, reporting and information and
news presentation existing in the local
community. For this semester’s project,
co-instructors Wolske, Brant Houston,
the University of Illinois College of Media John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise
Reporting, and Pam Dempsey, reporter
with CU-CitizenAccess, identified four
PCC pilot sites to serve as community
media newsrooms. After several class sessions reviewing related literature (Gillmor, 2006; Howley, 2010; Lundby, 2009;
The Knight Commission, 2009), students
worked with pilot sites and professionals to adapt community media and citizen
journalism programming to the current
needs of residents.
Grant funding also included funding
for a researcher, Rhinesmith, the second
author on this paper, to evaluate the effectiveness of the CI Studio projects. The
main research questions were: How important is the goal of equipping a community media newsroom to foster citizen
journalism? And how successful was the
project in achieving this goal? The research sample included students, instructors and community partners (Rhinesmith
et al., 2011).
The findings indicated that the course
was successful in beginning to help equip
citizen journalists by providing residents
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with the training needed to produce and
distribute their own stories. University
and community were able to collaborate
through the CI Studio to work towards
advancing community development goals
using community media and citizen journalism. However, limited time and resources meant that the CI Studio course
had to be flexible in what, where and how
the work was executed. By the end of the
summer semester, the instructors decided
that the goal for future semesters would
be to have students develop digital and
media literacy workshops with residents
in low-income communities to develop
the skills needed to improve the image
of their communities and to help promote
their community development goals. Students, instructors and community partners
also agreed that the course was too short
and recommended that future semesters
spend more time working with partners
in the community.
The descriptions of the final projects
and lessons learned by the 2011 CI Studio
students are documented online at: http://
www.prairienet.org/op/journalism/.
Case Study III: Creating Popular
Technology Workshops
In reviewing student evaluations and
findings from the previous two semesters,
the authors decided that a 16-week semester CI Studio offering during Fall 2012
would respond to students’ feedback by
providing new students with an opportunity to engage more deeply with SBL to
develop meaningful community engagement strategies. The grant-funded case for
Fall 2012 was to develop popular technology (Eubanks, 2011) approaches to digital
and media literacy workshops. The course
considered frameworks of popular education, participatory design and participatory action research—the three legs of
Eubanks’ popular technology approach—
through works such as Addams (1920),
Dewey (1938), Freire (1970/1993), Reardon (2000) and Stoecker (2013) to ground
workshop development. These works also
provided key theoretical concepts and
specific examples of participatory action
research that we used as a guide for our
approach to studio-based learning in community informatics.
The co-instructors, Wolske and Rhinesmith, along with students used SBL to
model educational spaces working with
community members to design workshops
rooted in people’s everyday experiences
with technology. Opportunities during the
full-length semester allowed for greater
in-class participation by outside experts
including Virginia Eubanks and Diana
Nucera of the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition.2 However, delays in the start of the
funded project meant that not all students
were able to work directly with community partners on workshop development during the semester, although all were able to
capitalize on their other community partnerships to inform their work. Students
used studio time during class to work on
their projects and to receive feedback from
instructors and fellow students. In addition, students wrote weekly reflections in
an online course forum. These contributions provided students with an opportunity to think about workshop design choices
and to receive additional feedback from
instructors and peers. The four students’
final workshop designs are presented in
Table 1.
The findings reported in this third minicase study are drawn from recently completed research published by Wolske et al.
(2013b) that help us to consider the following research question: How can studiobased learning—informed by perspectives
from community informatics—prepare
students to advance LIS-led community
engagement?
Students used data from group critiques,
individual critiques, weekly journals and
workshop dress rehearsals to analyze the
use of SBL to advance LIS-led community
2http://detroitdjc.org/
Community Informatics Studio: Designing Experiential Learning
engagement. In authoring their reflections
for the case study (Wolske et al., 2013b)
students described how the desk critiques
promoted a deeper understanding of theories and popular education-style workshops by identifying their misconceptions
and by having the instructors encourage
workshop revisions. In addition, guest
speakers also modeled for students how
to plan and facilitate workshops. Students
found that outside experts helped to concretely connect theories to practices from
a CI perspective. Students also discovered
that the class culture was an important aspect of the course. They reported that the
modeled studio space encouraged open
and honest communication and feedback
from teachers and other students in the
class. The CI Studio also demonstrated
popular education in action and modeled
how students should facilitate their workshops.
The 2012 CI Studio workshops outlines,
which are freely available to be adapted
and used by the public, are online at: http://
www.prairienet.org/op/dmliteracy/.
173
Limitations of Research
The case studies above highlighted the
development of a SBL course to advance
LIS teaching, research and practice. In this
section, we share some of the challenges
and overall limitations of this research
project.
The case studies described above
weren’t originally planned as part of a
larger study when the first case study was
developed. Therefore, the authors found
it challenging to consider three different
semesters of the course—each with separate research questions, theoretical frameworks and methodologies—for this paper,
while attempting to design and respond
to a single overarching research question.
In addition, the evaluation conducted for
each case study was led by different sets
of researchers. The authors also discovered the core research question over time.
It was not until the last semester (i.e. case
study III) that the following research question was articulated based on findings from
studies of the first two semesters: How can
Table 1. Community Informatics Studio Workshops.
Student
Jennie Archer
Emily Bayci
Workshop Title
Description
Preserving Local History One Voice
at a Time: A Popular Technology
Workshop for Teens
This workshop aims to raise teenagers’
awareness of their positions within their
communities and to remind them that their
voices and experiences matter.
Seniors Step Forward: Increasing
This workshop was aimed towards senior
Technology Awareness and Sharing it citizen African-American women. The goal
with Your Peers
was to help them learn that they are not alone
in their quest to learn technology and to help
them reach an understanding about why they
feel it is necessary to learn technology.
Ryne Leuzinger
Uncovering Art in C-U: Forming
partnerships to share and promote
artwork and address issues of concern
to artists in Champaign-Urbana
This workshop seeks to bring together
members of a local arts community to
engage in a discussion related to forming
new partnerships and addressing common
obstacles.
Lucas McKeever
Queering the C-U Wiki
Due to the nature of wiki sites, the goal of
“Queering the C-U Wiki” was to equip LGBT
members of the community with the skills
required to ensure their past and present do
not go undocumented.
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studio-based learning informed by community informatics perspectives prepare
students to advance LIS-led community
engagement?
Additional challenges to both the course
offerings and this study included the limits of our university, as an institutional
system, to support, particularly through
funding, this type of community-based
research. Lastly, because the CI Studio
is meant to model the actual environment
where future LIS professionals might find
themselves designing community engagement projects, the lines between teaching,
research and practice often blurred, which
created challenges for researchers interested in developing evaluative frameworks
for this study.
are quite the opposite. It’s a lot of feeding
you facts and figures and processes and
assignments that require regurgitation of
those things, which is like a very traditional way of teaching. But I think [instructor’s] was the most experiential of any approach that I had while I was here. I mean
you learn way too much from it—which is
almost a problem [laughing].
The findings represent a progression in
research related to our guiding question:
How can the CI Studio be understood as a
model of experiential learning to support
LIS teaching, research and practice? We
consider three key findings that emerged
across the case studies: (1) the value of the
experiential learning opportunity; (2) the
benefit of the iterative design process; and
(3) the importance of CI Studio Values for
informing future LIS-led community engagement.
Indeed, students from Fall 2012 recommended that clear opportunities be provided to allow students to continue the
experiential learning of their studio work
through a second iteration of the course, a
practicum, or an independent study. (Wolske et al., 2013b)
Further, the experiential learning provided a valuable way to engage in research
on current topics in LIS through the design
problem. For instance, a Summer 2010
student remarked: “I couldn’t imagine
taking a CI class that wasn’t in the studio
format. How would you learn anything?
This one class has shaped my entire outlook on CI. CI requires hands-on experience, with trial and error and lots and lots
of brainstorming; the studio format is ideal
for these activities.” Students from the first
and third offerings of the class have gone
on to co-author works based on their participation in the studio course (Wolske et
al., 2013a, b)
Experiential Learning
Iterative Design
The CI Studio pedagogy resonated with
students because of its grounding in experiential learning. As one Summer 2010
student mentioned: “I would love to take
another studio course because it gave the
opportunity to not only learn from real
world observations but it also gave me the
opportunity to apply the concepts to real
world situations.” A Summer 2011 student
emphasized the importance of the experiential learning aspect of the course more
strongly:
As pointed out in the last quote, the iterative aspect of the studio design process
combining trial and error with brainstorming was an important part of the studio. Indeed, in response to the delayed start of formal critiques until mid-semester because
of extenuating circumstances, students
from the Fall 2011 course recommended
desk critiques start earlier in the semester (Wolske et al., 2013b). In the evaluation of the Summer 2010 course, Kumar,
the third author on the paper, found the
iterative aspect as applied in the CI Studio reflected Kolb’s (1984) experiential
Discussion
Most classes here are not like that. They
Community Informatics Studio: Designing Experiential Learning
learning cycle. The role of the instructor
as guide during the formal and informal
desk critiques was central, as described
by a Summer 2010 student: “making sure
we were doing something in the right
general direction, but letting us wander
otherwise. Devil’s Advocate may not be
the right term, but he served as a voice of
challenge, testing our ideas and showing
us possibilities we might have otherwise
ignored.” By the third case study, the incorporation into the CI Studio pedagogy
of Dewey’s (1938) framing of instructor
as guide, along with the importance of
purpose and past experience to shape the
current learning environment, served as
a model for students’ own project work
developing alternative models for digital
media literacy workshops.
CI Studio Values
Our framing of CI draws heavily from
the work of Bishop et al. (2010), Eubanks
(2011) and Stoecker (2005/2013). These
in turn build upon the philosophies of Addams (1908), Dewey (1938) and Freire
(1970) among others. From these philosophies we have prioritized the following,
what we call, CI Studio Values within our
SBL classes: (1) developing a sustainable
approach to community enrichment; (2)
approaching community engagement with
an asset-based perspective; (3) embracing
difference as a resource; (4) teaching, researching and practicing with community
members; (5) focusing on communitydefined goals for building healthy communities. As federal agencies and foundations call for public libraries to address
community information needs by leading
“community engagement” efforts (Institute of Museum and Library Services,
2011/2012; Knight Commission, 2009)
we argue that the CI Studio can provide
LIS teachers, researchers and practitioners
with a framework for advancing LIS-led
community engagement initiatives.
Students in the Summer 2010 CI Studio
used participatory, evidence-based design
175
that emphasized an asset-based approach
with community members. It centered
on community-defined goals for building healthy communities as implemented
through the programs of the social service
agency that served as host to the redesigned computing center. The result was a
transformed physical space that
re-shaped social expectations from the
space, revitalized administrators and staff
members in pursuing more sophisticated
programming, improved the mood of the
users and resulted in better maintenance of
computers through more immediate reporting of problems and collaborative problem
solving. (Wolske et al., 2012)
In their online project documentation of citizen journalism workshops,3
students from Summer 2011 reported as
key take-away lessons the importance of
actively planning curricula with collaborators and fostering empowerment and
agency in community using participatory
principles to explore technologies, interests and content creation. In an interview
following the semester, a Summer 2011
instructor stated, “I learned a whole lot
from this. I had a lot of personal growth,
you know when you’re dealing with the
community, community media and just
listening to their conversations.” The
workshops developed by Fall 2011 CI
Studio students reshaped digital media
literacy workshops based on their understandings of these theoretical frameworks
(Wolske et al., 2013b)4. Research is ongoing to assess the community impact of
the Fall 2011 studio. Assessing the full impact on LIS-led community engagement
of the CI Studio approach outlined above
will require a longitudinal study following students as they progress through their
professional careers.
3http://www.prairienet.org/op/journalism/workshop-structure-and-
strategies/
fall 2012 workshop justifications at: http://www.prairienet.
org/op/dmliteracy/
4See
176
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
Conclusion
In this paper, we introduced a model of
experiential learning to support teaching,
research and practice in LIS. The authors
attempted to show through the research
how the CI Studio can be an effective pedagogical approach to using SBL to help future LIS professionals design meaningful
LIS-led community engagement projects.
The paper wove pragmatic and progressive
epistemological traditions together into a
framework through which to view what we
believe is a unique approach to CI. Three
mini-case studies of the CI Studio course
were presented, along with the guiding
theoretical frameworks, research questions, methodological approaches, findings
for each semester. The goal of this educational research project sought to respond to
the paper’s overarching research question:
How can the CI Studio be understood as a
model of experiential learning to support
LIS teaching, research and practice?
The study found that the CI Studio provided a unique opportunity to prepare future LIS-professionals to lead meaningful
community engagement projects by advancing student’s skills to bring theory and
praxis into dialectic. In particular the authors found that key values from CI literature played a key role in shaping students’
experiences and their thinking about design
choices that encourage ways to engage
with, rather than for, communities.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to gratefully
acknowledge the financial support of the
Illinois Informatics Institute through an
ICUBED award to develop the first iteration of the course and the work of graduate
assistant Fiona Griswold who was supported by the grant. We would also like to acknowledge financial support by the University of Illinois Office of Public Engagement
and the Illinois Department of Commerce
and Economic Opportunity “Eliminate the
Digital Divide” program for awards that,
in part, funded student projects during the
second and third case studies.
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