Discussion of IA education

["Victor Lombardi" <victor AT victorlombardi.com>]

Interestingly I just received an email from a director of an IA program
saying "I could really use a list of competencies NOW." Per Livia's second
suggestion below, I'd like us to do some freelisting of what we think IA
competencies are. I can compile a master list later on, then we can see
what sort of categories come out of them.

Here's my quick list. Certainly not complete but what comes to mind first:

=== IA Compentencies ===

USER RESEARCH
* ethnographic studies, i.e. qualitative
* card sorting etc.
* quantitative studies

BUSINESS
* understanding of different business strategy models
* understanding of basic operations
* organizational psychology

COMPUTER SCIENCE
* understanding essential programming concepts
* knowing limitations of common info systems, i.e. databases and queries

INFO SCIENCE
* organization schemes and controlled vocabularies

HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
* user interface design for a couple different platforms
* mental models
* task analysis

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
* Navigation
* Labeling System
* etc., all Polar Bear stuff

INFO DESIGN
* Page layout
* Basic visual design concepts and skills

Also writing, ability to lead a group discussion, and problem solving.


What did I miss?


Livia Labate said:
> : This is getting a little clearer in my head through our discussion. :
> Perhaps when we talk about this subject we should make a distinction :
> among competencies, methodologies, and philosophy.
>
> I really like how you've split that up.
>
> : should "aim higher than conveying content and skills as something we :
> could or should do as instructors of IA." And yet I don't think we have
> : much agreement on the basic competencies required.
>
> Do you want to create a list of competencies? I think the *ideal* way
> would be analysing the philosophy to see which competencies would be
> needed to support it. That of course, is only possible in Utopia where
> we can sit around all day and wonder about it :)
>
> We could, however, take the statistical approach and gather all
> competencies we can find (which are being taught or discussed elsewhere)
> and sort them out in terms of relevance to that philosophy (impulsive
> classification is an IA disease, is it not?).
>
> Were you thinking of something like that? I didn't think you'd want to
> get to the competencies yet, but discuss the philosophy first. Since
> that is the reference to the competencies relevance I think it makes
> sense.

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