Noting the recent publication of several books on Information Architecture (IA), I became interested in taking a course on the subject. The Information School's MLIS curriculum, while impressively interdisciplinary and well-rounded, lacks an IA course. Thus, I set about designing my own Independent Study course on IA.

Process

In order to create the Independent Study, I needed to submit a proposal to the school that included a list of the learning objectives, resources, activities, deliverables, and evaluation criteria I would use to guide my study. I began by surveying the literature of IA, including the most significant books, web sites, and mailing lists in this fledgling discipline. From these I created a syllabus that would allow me to explore these readings in depth and apply them to a real-life project at the same time.

I approached David Hendry, an iSchool professor with some experience in IA, and asked if he would be willing to act as my instructor for this independent study. He agreed, and we began meeting once a week to discuss the issues I explored throughout the term.

The readings provided a foundation of theory and best practices, and I spent the first few weeks absorbing them all. It was then time to apply the concepts to practice. Using the Faculty Accomplishments project as the test-bed for my ideas, I produced several documents central to the information architecture process. I applied what I had learned through the readings and noted how each book contributed to each activity.

In the beginning, I wanted to learn about both the theory and practice of IA. The latter turned out to be easier to accomplish than the former. The discipline of IA draws from extant theories in Library & Information Science, Architecture, User-Centered Design, and Systems Science. However, there is no single theory of IA, and many practitioners of IA have attempted to re-invent the wheel with new theories of how information should be organized and used.

Reflection

This experience taught me some of the complexities involved in curriculum design. Teaching a discipline involves extracting the key concepts and practices of a knowledge domain and producing curricula that convey those concepts and practices to learners. With information architecture, a fairly new discipline, the key concepts and practices have yet to be reified. By developing my own training module and testing it on myself, I have a better idea of how to go about designing a course (or series of courses) on IA.

What's Next

I am working with a few Information School faculty members to develop a quarter-long special topics IA course, and I hope to learn more about the curriculum development process through this interaction. The goal is to eventually propose a sequence of courses that will serve as a certification program in IA.

Artifacts

• Independent Study Proposal
• System Analysis
• User Needs Analysis
• Final Project
• Recap