Looking for the Core: Preliminary Explorations of iCaucus Syllabi

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to perform an empirical analysis of existing "core" or "foundation" courses in iSchools to better understand what the community implicitly considers to be its foundational knowledge base. This paper presents a preliminary journal citation analysis of core syllabi from master's programs in the iCaucus. Initial findings show journals from library science and information science dominate the field and only eight articles are cited by more than two courses. Finally, the disciplinary diversity of programs was calculated and visualized showing how interdisciplinarity is expressed across the iCaucus. The hope is that this initial report will help enroll additional collaborators, either as data providers or analysts, and stimulate a data-rich conversation about what we teach in core courses.

Comparison of library studies programs in Croatia and the USA

“…However, researchers have examined the core curriculum (also known as “required courses”) as a way to understand what topics students are likely to have encountered during their LIS program, as well as providing a glimpse into what each program has determined to be central to the education of students. As Chu (2012: 8) writes: “Required courses, known as the curricular core, represent the essentials that must be taught in a degree program.” Hall (2009: 57) reasons that by “investigating the core curriculum in both structure and content, we can develop an idea of what fundamental knowledge, skills, and abilities the average LIS graduate can be expected to possess.” In addition to general and historical examinations of the core curriculum (see Burton, 2016; Irwin, 2002; Marco, 1994; Markey, 2004), researchers have used the core curriculum to examine specific aspects of LIS programs, such as diversity and social justice (Kumasi and Manlove, 2015).…”

“…Hall (2009: 57) reasons that by "investigating the core curriculum in both structure and content, we can develop an idea of what fundamental knowledge, skills, and abilities the average LIS graduate can be expected to possess." In addition to general and historical examinations of the core curriculum (see Burton, 2016;Irwin, 2002;Marco, 1994;Markey, 2004), researchers have used the core curriculum to examine specific aspects of LIS programs, such as diversity and social justice (Kumasi and Manlove, 2015).…”

Information science identity: Students' perspective

“…Hence, it is not surprising that text analysis and content analysis have become a commonly employed method. Thanks to the scale of accessible data and increasingly sophisticated computational methods, studies were able to pull data from faculty web pages (Luo, 2013; Wedgeworth, 2013; Wu et al, 2012; Zuo et al 2017), mission statements on university websites (Luo 2013; Wu et al, 2012), titles of university course offerings and curricula (Mattern & Gunn, 2019; Varvel, Bammerlin, & Palmer, 2012; Wedgeworth, 2013), course syllabi (Burton, 2016; Durr, 2018), school titles/founding history (Olson & Grudin, 2009), and also iSchool Ph.D. dissertation topics (Shu & Mongeon, 2016). In these studies, researchers assess and compare multiple texts or documents to discover, for example, what topics were found in the curriculum or what professors had previously studied, to come up with an inference at an aggregate level what topics or areas the field deemed important.…”