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Semester Reflection: Autumn 2024

Updated: Aug 11


ISKM05: Information policy and management

As a full-time employee, I really appreciated the hybrid option to join the lectures remotely. I also valued the teacher’s approach - attendance was completely up to us, and we could simply record ourselves as present. This definitely helped build trust with the teacher, and it was clear that he trusted us as well.

The lectures themselves were very interesting, though occasionally a bit lengthy. I even caught myself completely zoning out when a guest from the industry spoke too much about his own company. Still, hearing about guidelines and policies was genuinely insightful.

The exam was also handled in a very practical way. Even though it was still through IS, I remember the questions being very hands-on and not just blindly asking for definitions or theoretical knowledge. Overall, a big thumbs up from me.


Syllabus of the course:

  • Basic terms, levels of information policy.

  • Strategic documents of information policy in the EU and the Czech Republic.

  • Key projects in electronization of public administration.

  • Laws defining the possibilities of work with electronic information.

  • Needs analysis and evaluation in the field of electronic services.

  • Information management.

  • Data management.

  • Open data and information resources in public administration and their use for business intelligence.

  • Information safety in organization and protection of intellectual property.


ISKM11: Literature and Cultural Area

An excellent balance of theory and practice, enriched with interesting book to read. The course was truly engaging and gave me a fresh perspective on communities - how they live, how they are influenced by technology, artificial intelligence and more. I still remember the impact of reading and information literacy, shared with some very interesting fun facts.

The course was also very well balanced in terms of practical work. By “practical,” I mean the design sprint we completed at the end. We went through the entire process - from understanding our target audience, creating personas, and building an empathy map, to developing a functional prototype and testing it. It was an intense team effort, and the final outcome was amazing.


Design Sprint was really sprinting
Design Sprint was really sprinting

Web of all links in designed prototype
Web of all links in designed prototype

To try our ad-in prototype for Edupage mobile app, click here and see what we achieved:



Syllabus of the course:

  • 27.9 Introduction Introduction to the objectives and structure of the course Basic concepts: society, technology, culture

  • 18.10. Social capital and community studies Social capital theory in the context of communities The role of technology in strengthening or weakening social ties Community engagement and participation in the digital era

  • 25.10. Innovative mindset and creative thinking Principles of the innovation mindset Creative thinking and problem solving

  • 1.11. Digital media, culture and innovation Innovation in digital media and its cultural impact The emergence of new cultural forms through technology Innovative approaches in content creation and distribution

  • 8.11. Artificial intelligence, innovation and society AI as a tool for innovation Ethical and social implications of AI Innovative applications of AI in cultural institutions

  • 15.11. Test and Discussion and assignment of a challenge from an interdisciplinary project in the fields of new technologies, art, design, humanities and social sciences

  • 20.12 Design Sprint (9 - 16)The course will be taught on selected Friday dates and also as a weekend design sprint, during which learners will focus on themes of inclusion, participation, sustainability and digitization, in the contexts of information studies and librarianship.


ISKM12: Organization of Knowledge

I had no expectations for this course and wasn’t really sure what to expect. In the end, it turned out to be a very practical subject that taught us the exact rules for organizing knowledge. The weekly homework assignments felt a bit like going back to high school, but discussing them in class was very engaging. I believe that without these assignments, I wouldn’t have learned nearly as much.

In addition to the regular tasks, we had to write a seminar paper at the end on a topic of our choice. I personally chose categorization and faceting. This gave me a lot of valuable insight, as I realized that these concepts are used not only in their simplest form (for example, in libraries and book archives) but also extensively on modern websites. Categorization and faceting are essential for creating intuitive navigation structures.

Overall, this was an interesting and valuable course, and I’m taking away a lot of new knowledge that I will apply when building websites, information trees, and content categorizations to help users navigate knowledge as clearly and efficiently as possible.


Syllabus of the course:

  • Subject of knowledge organization. Concepts of data - information - knowledge - wisdom. Knowledge creation. Object and subject. Empirism - rationalism - realism.

  • Knowledge and critical problem of truth. Theory of truth (consensus, coherence, correspondence, adequation). Growth of knowledge (cumulative vs. breakthrough approaches).

  • Knowledge organization area: information system - user - domain. Paradigms of knowledge organization. ASK. Realistic domain model. Domain analysis.

  • Concepts and their representation. Instrumental and formal signs. Nominalism - conceptualism - realism. Content and scope of the concept. Classification of concepts. Definition.

  • Languages. Their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects. Typology of languages. Natural and selection languages.

  • Categorization, classification, faceting. Classification theory (objective and subjective approaches). Classification of sciences.

  • Scientific classification, taxonomy and professional terminology. Semantic networks. Tezaury.

  • Philosophical and informational ontology. Fundamentals of FRBR. Semantic Web.

  • Document and its representation (metadata). Content analysis, indexing, classification. Hermeneutical approaches.

  • Systems of knowledge organization and their typology. Universal classification systems - MDT, DDT, Bliss, Ranganathan.

  • Knowledge organization systems based on native language. Subject authorities.

  • Visualization of knowledge organization system. Positive and negative aspects.


Rest of the Courses:

ISKM13, ISKM18, ISKM65, VV052


Diploma Thesis Seminar III: Text Creation was again focused on writing the final thesis.

This semester, I had my internship in my second NGO (SVAM), which focuses on social violence and prevention. I helped with social media and started to work on my dipoma thesis.

The User Research course was pure magic and an absolute highlight of my studies so far. (I’ve shared more about my experience in this separate post.)

As for Evening Drawing, I originally signed up for it just for fun, but in the end, it turned out to be incredibly relaxing. I can’t even describe how much I improved simply by training once a week.



 
 
 

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