Published: August 6th, 2024 by Dr. Virginia Tucker

The INFO 202 Information Retrieval System Design course is one of the three core courses required of all students in the MLIS degree program ⁽¹⁾ at the iSchool. Each core course has a coordinator, and I have served in this role for the INFO 202 course since 2014. With the immense size of the iSchool’s programs, around 1,000 students take the course each year, and it is taught by eleven different faculty members. Creating a balance between consistency in achieving the learning outcomes and individuality in the instructor’s teaching presence is a key principle behind the design of the course.

The course assignments reinforce essential knowledge in three areas of design that are relevant to information retrieval systems: database design, vocabulary design, and website design in the context of information architecture. Each of these three areas includes a hands-on project. For the database design project, students develop product designs for a collection, then implement their designs in the software, and last, collaborate with other students on beta testing and evaluation of their products, including creating records and testing their search forms. These activities support three of the course’s learning objectives (CLOs):

• Identify an appropriate user group for an IR product, assess their information needs, and design an information retrieval system to meet those needs;
• Explain and apply basic design principles for usability, focused on the content and organization of information for retrieval;
• Learn database management software in order to implement database design, information structures, and create search interfaces.

Over the last decade, we have used three different software programs for the hands-on database design activities and, two years ago, decided to move to new software. To prepare for this change, I designed a research project that included requirements analysis, environmental scans, and several stages of user research with students to test the software, new assignments, and tutorials. I hired an exceptional graduate student assistant, Christina Perucci, who worked on all phases of the research and was the lead on creating the tutorials and screencasts. The software we settled on is Caspio, a low-code platform for building online database apps. Together, Christina and I build a course blog for all of the shared course materials and assignment instructions, https://ischoolblogs.sjsu.edu/202 (see screenshot below). Christina is now one of our newest adjunct faculty.

We have finished writing up the research project, and our article will appear in the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science later this year (Tucker & Perucci, 2024). The project’s user research methods and lessons learned can benefit other LIS educators who teach database design principles through hands-on and collaborative learning activities, with the findings especially useful for introductory courses. Much of my previous research has informed the overall course design, which is based on threshold concepts (Tucker, 2018; 2019).

Acknowledgements: We selected Caspio based on user requirements and the online learning environment, but a critical step was also ensuring that the software we chose met the University’s latest security specifications, and this was handled by our IT team and campus security experts. Deepest thanks go to the iSchool’s technical team lead, Abigail Laufer, who coordinated the vetting of software for meeting campus security requirements. Gratitude also goes to Robert Lucore, who supported setting up the blog platform, and to Dr. Linda Main, iSchool Associate Director.

References:

Tucker, V.M. (2018). Threshold concepts and information experience in IL professional education: Curriculum design for online learning. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 810, 749-758. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74334-9_76

Tucker, V.M. (2019). Ways of learning of information professionals: Concepts, roles, and strategies. Advances in Librarianship, 46, 51-65. doi.org/10.1108/S0065-283020190000046006

Tucker, V.M., & Perucci, C. (2024). Experiential learning about database design in the MLIS curriculum: Software and instructional design for threshold knowledge. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 65(4), forthcoming.

Notes:

1. In addition to the three core courses, students are required to take a one-credit course to prepare for online learning (INFO 203) and their choice of a research methods course (INFO 285).