LIS 5213: Social Informatics 

Spring 2025
Instructor: Dr. Jiqun Liu

Description, Analysis, & Reflection

Description 

The course description for LIS 5213: Social Informatics states 

This course provides a survey of the key social issues related to information technology development and use. Its focus is on the critical analysis of cognitive, social, cultural, philosophical, ethical, legal, public policy and economic issues relating to information and computing technologies, and how these interactions shape workplace decisions and our everyday life (Liu, 2025). 

Expanding on that, the learning goals state that by the end of the course students will be able to  

1. Analyze social aspects of information technology including benefits and drawbacks of technology implementation; 

2. Identify and evaluate sources and tools they can use to support decision-‐making and discussion in the work place; 

3. Identify approaches to resolving social dilemmas surrounding information technology development, decision-‐making and use; 

4. Develop documents on best practices with information technology for community and organizational use; 

5. Demonstrate new information technologies in such a way as to convey both the social assumptions built into the system and potential impacts of the system on social relations, work-‐life and productivity; 

6. Describe the value of social informatics in professional and intellectual disciplines; 

7. Apply skills of persuasion, argument and effective written communication in relation to social issues (Liu, 2025). 

My artifact for LIS 5213: Social Informatics is the “Applying Social Informatics” Paper assignment.  For this paper we were to analyze “a current event or personal experience (related to social interactions and information technologies) from the perspective of social informatics as discussed in class and in our readings” (Liu, 2025).  I decided to go the personal experience route and wrote about the challenges of online job applications.  Using my own work history, I laid out how much the process of applying for a job has changed in the last 30 years and how that has affected various segments of the population.  Writing this paper and reflecting on my own job-hunting experiences and comparing them with those of the customers I have helped who struggled going through the modern application process put things into perspective.  I have often lamented with coworkers about walking customers through online job applications and how it can be frustrating on multiple levels, but by laying out exactly how much the process has changed was eye opening.  This paper helped me connect the dots and will help me the next time I walk someone through this process.   

Analysis 

Prior to seeing this course listed in the Spring 2025 schedule, I had never heard the term social informatics.  Essentially it is the study of how technology and society interact.  It is also a relatively new field of study.  What I like about it is that it is interdisciplinary by nature, thus providing a holistic approach to studying issues of technology and society. This is a subject that touches on a little bit of everything while at the same time not sticking to just one thing.  That’s what makes it fascinating and frustrating all at the same time.  Ultimately, I will use what I learned in this course while working with customers who have varying degrees of computer and technology literacy.  There are portions of the population that, for a multitude of reasons, have been passed by technologically.  Social Informatics helped me frame this issue in different ways and reinforced my belief that everyone is good and smart in something that I know nothing about.  Knowing that puts helping people on a computer or with their phone into perspective.      

Reflection 

One of the biggest frustrations of being a college student, at any level, is dealing with the course availability.  For years before I finally went back to college and earned my Bachelor’s degree, I would go through OU’s course catalog and copy and paste the names and descriptions of all of the classes that I thought looked interesting into a Word document.  The last time I looked, that document was over 30 pages long.  It was an excellent resource when I was putting together the classes that would make up my degree in Multidisciplinary Studies.  That was until I realized that many of those courses were not offered on a regular basis.  It becomes hard to plan your degree program when you don’t know if/when specific classes will be offered.  I ran into this same dilemma in the MLIS program.  Each semester, I navigated the class schedule by looking at the courses that were offered and picking the ones that I thought looked interesting.  That is how I came to be enrolled in LIS 5213: Social Informatics and LIS 5493: Data Stewardship in my final semester of graduate school.   

Personal Learning Goals 

Interestingly, while Social Informatics doesn’t fit into my four learning goals, it doesn’t not fit either.   Because it is interdisciplinary it touches many different subjects and disciplines, but it wasn’t a subject that I planned on studying when I put together my personal learning goals.  If I had to pick one, this course did help with Objective 1 of Goal 3: Increase reference and user services skills -- Develop new research and evaluation skills and techniques.    

MLIS Program-level Student Learning Outcomes 

This course advanced me towards SLO 2 Intellectual Skill through the study of how technology affects society and vice versa; SLO 3 Professional and Scholarly Communication from the discussion posts and course assignments; and SLO 4 Technology because this class is all about technology. 

ALA Competencies 

This course helped with competency 4. Technological Knowledge and Skills by examining the impact of technology on society. 

Liu, J. (2025). LIS 5213: Social informatics [Syllabus]. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma. 

Artifact:
Online Applications and the Struggle to Apply for a Job