DESCRIPTION OF INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY PROBLEM AREA
Philip Doty and R. E. Wyllys

Assignment Title: Description of Information-Technology Problem Area

Participation: Group.

Format:
Part 1, Team names: Discussion Board post.
Part 2, Essay: Formal four- or five-page essay in APA final manuscript format.

Submission Method:
Part 1, Team names: Discussion board post.
Part 2, Essay: Email to the course emailbox with the essay attached as a Microsoft Word document.

Maximum points: 5.

Introduction: The intent of this assignment is (1) to help students develop closer working relationships, and (2) to shorten the learning curve with respect to acquiring skills in the development of formal papers and in working as members of a group whose communication channels include the Internet.

Goals: The goals of this assignment are:

• To identify and describe a problem in information technology.
  
• To help you develop a closer working relationship with colleagues.
  
• To learn to identify reference sources available for research.
  
• To learn APA formatting standards and other writing requirements for this class.
  
• To practice formal paper development in general as a group, in order to enhance individual performance later in the class.

1. Form yourselves into small teams of 6 or 7 students. (The instructor will make time available in the first class meeting for the formation of teams.) Since one of the goals of this assignment is provide you with experience in working cooperatively using the Internet, the members of each group should, in carrying out this assignment, communicate with each other via the discussion board as much as possible. (Note: The team that handles this assignment may be, but does not have to be, the same as the team that will handle the later Web-Based Presentation assignment.)
   
2. Select a team name from library- and information-science pioneers (some examples are: Dewey, Taub, Eratosthenes, Cutter, Garfield, Callimachus, Tritheim, Bush, Gesner, Maunsell, Shaw, Bodley, Rostgaard, Panizzi, Jewett, Luhn, Otlet, LaFontaine, and Ranganathan).
   
3. Jointly select a problem area in the application and use of information technology in society.
   
4. Post your team's name, members, and topic to the discussion board.
   
5. Jointly develop a 4-5 page description of the problem area. The problem-area description must be based on at least 5 sources, and the sources must include at least 2 printed sources and 2 Web sources.
   
6. Send the essay as an attachment to an email addressed to the course emailbox.

Hint:

We encourage groups to do as much as possible in the development of the problem-area description via the Discussion Board. If a team wants to make a draft (or drafts) of the description easily available for members of the team to work on, there are "How-To" explanations available from the IT Lab dealing with how to set up, on the iSchool server, a subdirectory (under the directory of a team member) and how to provide, if desired, password protection for the subdirectory so that only team members will have access to it. These are, respectively, How-To Publish Web Pages and How-To Password-Protect Your Web Pages. With the tools provided in these How-Tos, you can arrange easy ways of uploading files to the subdirectory and downloading files from it.

Note: The Technology How-Tos Webpage of the IT Lab offers several other useful How-To explanations.