Winter quarter is here, which, of course, means that today was the first day of classes. Today covered PBAF 594 and IMT 580, two very distinct courses.

PBAF 594, otherwise known as Economics of Environmental Management, is shaping up to be quite an interesting course, although the textbook reading is a bit dense. This course focuses on the idea that environmental resources can be evaluated under an economic system. This will be an interesting exercise, since I am certainly not used to the idea of the environment being reducible to a number or a set of numbers. However, Maria Damon, the faculty member teaching the course, seems to know quite a bit about the subject and is quite knowledgeable. This course should not require any mathematics at the calculus level, however, a glance at the textbook makes clear that some mathematical knowledge is definitely going to come in handy. This includes quite a bit of information about being able to actually interpret graphs properly. Normally, this is not something that I’ve actually had a problem with, but it is certainly something that I am a bit rusty at. There will be a lot of reading for this particular course, and a lot of it will be stuff that I am not used to actually reviewing. We’ll see how it goes.

IMT 580, otherwise known as Management of Information Organizations, was taught today by Mike Crandall, the head of the MSIM program. The normal instructor, Jochen Scholl, is currently in Hawaii attending a major conference there. However, since Mike has taught the course before, it really wasn’t that much of a problem — it will be interesting to see the differences between the two teaching styles. This course mostly focuses on the idea of — of all things — management, and how management can effectively change the way the information is handled within an organization. There really isn’t that much to say here, since we didn’t get very in depth. Most of today was simply an introduction to the course. We did get into some of the ideas behind management — such as the basic definition of management — but we didn’t get into anything the text did not cover.

It is becoming quite clear to me that, even though I haven’t had INFO 498 or IMT 530 yet, the amount of reading this quarter may very well end up being ridiculous. Already, I have several readings for all these classes, and quite a hefty stack of papers. I have nothing for INFO 498, however, since nothing has actually been assigned yet. Well, as Mike Crandall made a point of saying in IMT 580 this afternoon, “Hey — welcome to graduate school.”

For those of you who may not know, the MSIM program requires an internship of all its graduates. One of the possibilities I came across is with the Washington State Department of Ecology. From what I understand, this would involve working with them on the state’s sustainability measurements, coming up with a better framework that would allow them to produce these reports more effectively.

I talked briefly with the person that suggested this as a internship project: it turns out that the state’s sustainability work actually started in about 2005. The overall idea is that all state agencies collect roughly the same data and report on their consumption. Example measurements include gasoline use, electricity use and the amount of recycled paper used. The state is really quite serious about this effort, so much so that Governor Gregoire has issued a Climate Change Challenge to the state. The Department of Ecology has been responsible for the majority of the organization of this project, though there seems to be some state-level involvement. The sheer scale of this project seems quite impressive, and I would really look forward to being able to do this as a project. Though I was a little doubtful, it sounds as if the MSIM program actually allows for programming as a major part of the internship. It sounds as if I may be well prepared by taking INFO 498 next quarter, since that will introduce me to C# as a programming language, which will be quite an interesting experience, since it will be my first introduction to .NET as a programming architecture.

I am quite eager to see whether or not this will work out as an internship. I’ll keep this blog updated as I get more information.

By the way, I wrote this whole blog post using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which was an interesting experience.

If there’s one glaring thing missing from my work at the UW, it’s the evaluative process that I had gotten so used to in my undergraduate work at Evergreen.  The lack of that structure makes it fairly easy to forget to look back – hence why this post comes as late as it does when the quarter ended on the 10th.

This quarter, there were four different classes on my schedule – IMT 500, IMT 501, IMT 510, and IMT 540.  I’ll break each class down into a separate section, then try to combine them.

IMT 500 – The Information Management Framework: Since this was an overview course that lasted only the first few days of the quarter, there’s not as much to say here as there might be otherwise.  The major thing that happened for me in this course was the opportunity to give a presentation on SharePoint 2007 as part of an introduction to the course’s final project.  This 30 minute presentation was a general overview of the functionality provided by SharePoint, which I thought went extremely well.  The final paper in the class, which was an assignment designed around seeing how information moves through its lifecycle, allowed me to reflect a bit on how being an “expert user” of SharePoint (at least compared to the rest of the class) influenced my actions while working on the group project.

IMT 501 – Technology Foundations for Information Professionals: I nearly had no business being in this class, seeing as how it was about 95% review.  I’ve done this in the past when I took Computers and Human Reason during my undergraduate work at Evergreen, though that had a twist – not only was it review, but it was review from a very different lens – that of human cognition.  501 was review from a slightly different lens as well in that it took a high-level approach to explaining concepts while touching on many computing essentials, like database design and computer hardware.  My challenge in this class was not so much to learn the material, though I did have the opportunity to fill in gaps and to learn a few new tricks (JavaScript being one of them).  Instead, I used this class as a chance to pass at least some of my knowledge on to my classmates, though this was a somewhat limited endeavor, since it only really occurred in my group (labs for this course were optional, which is a move I don’t understand – barely anyone ever showed up).  However, I did have the chance to try my hand at explaining concepts in an effort to help people apply them properly, which is something I succeeded fairly well at.  While this was the easiest class content-wise, it was still quite worthwhile for the ability to try a new approach to learning some computing fundamentals and for the ability to show others how do think about concepts.

IMT 510 – Human Aspects of Information Systems: Of all the classes this quarter, this one drew the most from the approaches and ideas from the library sciences.  This class focused primarily on some of the psychological and social aspects of how information is used.  One of the most interesting things in this class was the idea of designing interview schedules and how one has to be careful about wording of questions, particularly as it pertains to questions that may be asked of people from different cultural background.  The class also focused a bit on the idea of information grounds – spaces where information is generated and communicated within a group.  I did fairly well in this class, though such a large chunk of the work was group-related that it was occasionally hard to assess my own progress in understanding the material.  My strongest point in this class was collaborating with two other team members to write up the final project report – the end result was so seamless that it was nearly impossible to tell who wrote what.

IMT 540 – Design Methods for Interaction and Systems: This was both the hardest class this quarter and probably the most rewarding.  Focusing on design methods for systems, this class covered everything from brainstorming methodology to usability testing to prototype creation (creating a physical system was outside of the scope of the class).  The group project consisted of designing a mobile system that would be in use in 2020, which meant that the class as a whole had to take a long-term view of what the future might end up looking like for mobile interaction.  My group focused on malls and what shopping might look like in the future, envisioning a system that was a cross between a social application like Facebook, Google Maps, a GPS, and a search engine.  The biggest challenge in the class was the sheer amount of reading required to understand a lot of the concepts, though I appreciated greatly the ability to turn around and put some of those concepts to use, either in our groups or as part of smaller assignments.

General Thoughts: I distinctly remember talking to a former co-worker who went on to become part of the iSchool’s Master of Library and Information Science program – he observed that graduate school really wasn’t that much harder than his undergraduate work at Evergreen.  I have to agree with this assessment, though I think I took enough ass-kicking classes during my undergraduate career that I knew what was expected of me.  Others who graduate Evergreen and who didn’t take a strong set of programs with faculty who were willing to dump loads of work in their student’s laps might not be quite as well off, but this did make my transition relatively easy (even after an entire year off from being a student).  A lot of this also has to do with the type of program and the fact that the MSIM program and the MLIS program share some of the same ideas and some of the same faculty members.  Regardless, I think I had an extremely successful quarter (with a final quarter GPA of 3.75, which is quite a bit above the goal of 3.5 I had set for myself).

A big part of next quarter will be my exposure to the ideas of environmental economics in PB AF 594, which I’m looking forward to, since I think it will serve to advance my work in sustainability quite well.  INFO 498 will also be quite interesting, since it will give me a chance to touch base once again with my computer science background and get into some programming.  I’m not sure on IMT 530 and IMT580 – I’ve ordered all my textbooks for all four classes, so hopefully that’ll give me some hints on what’s going on with each of them.  I’ll update more as I get more information about each class.

My hoped-for Winter electives are as follows:

1. PB AF 594, Economic Approaches to Environmental Management, (3 credits, description)
2. INFO 498, Special Topics in Informatics: Programming Semantic Structures (1 credit 2 credits, description)

Which results in the following schedule (I’ve added in likely work hours):

The number of credits for INFO 498 may shift slightly upwards after I talk to my advisor (Update 11/26: actually, it shifted upwards because I wanted a bit more exposure in this area, though my advisor indicated there’s not really a maximum number of credits that UW students can enroll for.  It’s now two credits.).