• Describe the concepts of the theoretical fields covered by the curriculum of the courses "Information in Context" and "Computer-mediated communication and collaboration"
• Explain the basic principles of organizing information
• Describe users' information needs, assess their implications for organization of information and recommend an information architecture design
• Apply concepts and theories from the course reading to explain social aspects of information and the role that computer-media play for culture, communication and collaboration
• Apply concepts and theories from the course reading to analyze and explain various forms of computer-mediated communication and computer supported collaboration and give recommendations for empirical cases

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the theoretical framework of information management and to develop their skills in analyzing and organizing information.
The course introduces a range of theoretical understandings of information and information organization within the fields of Information Management, Information Science and Information Architecture. Students will learn how to use this theoretical foundation for relating such concepts and theories to empirical information and practical approaches to information organization.
The overall challenge of information management is how information can be managed to create value and contribute to organisational goals. This course focuses on the the theoretical foundation for working with information, on general principles of organization of information, on analyzing information needs in different user groups, and on different types of information.
Students should develop an ability to describe and discuss information processes, users’ information needs, explain the relationship between the context of the user, the design of contents and organization of information.

The course includes but is not limited to the following topics

· The conceptual framework and challenges of

o Information Management

o Information Science,

o Information Architecture

· The concept of information

· Users, mental models, user needs and behaviours

· Organization of information and the structural design of shared information environments

o classification, metadata, tagging

o controlled vocabularies

o corporate taxonomies

Main Text Book: Morville, P. &  Rosenfeld, L. (2006). Information architecture for the world wide web (3rd ed.). USA: O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Selected Readings:

Feldman, S. (2004). The high cost of not finding information. KM World, 13(3), 8-10.

Crowston, K., & Kwasnik, B. H. (2004). A framework for creating a facetted classification for genres: Addressing issues of multidimensionality. HICSS '04: Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 4, 40100.1.