It is honestly a dream come true to be able to teach Community Informatics in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign this fall. I came to Illinois as a doctoral student in the fall 2010 to study community informatics under Dr. Kate Williams and later under Dr. Christian Sandvig.
In my first semester, I took Community Informatics as a student of Kate Williams’s. For years, both during my doctoral program and years after completing my PhD, I had dreamed of the opportunity to one day teach Community Informatics. I never thought I would be teaching it this fall as a tenured professor at Illinois.
I am grateful to Dr. Martin Wolske, an amazing collaborator, mentor, and friend over many, many years since my PhD program at Illinois, who has more recently helped pave the way for me to be able to teach Community Informatics in the iSchool. Martin and I collaborated on developing the following revised course description of IS 420, which we hope will be included in future semesters of the course.
Community informatics is a global, multidisciplinary field of research and practice focused on advancing local social, political, institutional, cultural, and economic development through information and communication technology. Covers key theories, principles, and practices rooted within community-engaged scholarship guided by reciprocal and participatory approaches using democratic practices. This course is useful for any information professional interested in co-designing, implementing, and evaluating information and communication technology initiatives with communities to address real-world sociotechnical issues and possibilities.
I have 25 graduate students enrolled in the course this fall. I am absolutely thrilled to begin work on the syllabus over this summer, building on Martin’s syllabus. I look forward to sharing the syllabus and teaching the course this fall.