Rutgers - Curricula at 3 Levels

1. Ugrad - nothing yet in IR

2. MS

• MLS
  • Background, plan
    • shifted 4-5 years ago from core competencies to specializations
    • one is IR, taught by Belkin and Saracevic
    • target is for information professionals More and more are lawyers looking for retraining, jobs. Few have background for highly mathematical presentations.
    • wanted minimal set of courses, at MS level, within constraint of 36 credits
    • stages IR curriculum / specialization
    • explicit focus on users
    • 4 courses evolved as core. There are 3 hours of lecture in each; some have labs too. 1st 2 are prereq. for others. Others follow the sequence given:
  • Intro. to Human Information Behavior (basic course for area) (has become a de facto core course for other areas too) (perspective carries through other courses)
  • Information Technology (familiarity with networking, ...)
  • Interaction, Mediation, and Searching (there is ongoing job need for intermediaries)
  • Knowledge R (indexing, classification, ... - Jim Anderson)
  • IR project: systems analysis and effectivenss type evaluation goals: understand adv. & disadv.'s no: signature files, programming yes: models, systems as examples
  • Needs Assessment and Evaluation learn methods for understanding info. needs, doing research in information context prior text was "Intelligent Corporation" refers to marketing information
  • Information Analysis, Synthesis, and Dissemination (not required, but highly recommended) understand information problems know how to search for solutions, synthesize results, present the summary report
• MS Comm. Inf. Science: multidisciplinary, depts. all covered (Communication, Education, LIS)

3. PhD - unified program