The City of Detroit has a lot of data to share. The challenge is making this data accessible to residents. So, the city partnered with Data Driven Detroit to solve the problem. Together, they formed a user testing group, CUTgroup Detroit, and enlisted the School of Information (UMSI) to contribute the user testing acumen necessary to ensure the voices of Detroit… Read More »
Online civic engagement is generally viewed as a positive way for individuals to improve the quality of life in their community. But new research led by School of Information associate professor Libby Hemphill suggests that online civic engagement doesn’t always feel good, and it doesn’t always improve the community. Hemphill and her team interviewed 40 nonprofit employees and… Read More »
U-M School of Information faculty and PhD students have earned three Best Paper and five Honorable Mention designations at the 2019 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Best Paper awards go to the top one percent of accepted papers at ACM CHI, the premiere international conference on Human-Computer Interaction. This year’s conference takes place May 4-9 in… Read More »
School of Information graduate student John Traylor knew the work he was doing in Puerto Rico to shore up communications infrastructure some nine months after Hurricane Maria was important, but it wasn’t until the project was finished that he fully understood the impact. That’s when one of the residents came by and uttered one very recognizable word—”Wi-Fi”—and delightedly… Read More »
The U-M School of Information, in partnership with the Amazon Web Services at U-M team, is pleased to announce a free hands-on cloud computing workshop. Join us on February 28 at the School of Information, 3100 North Quad, Ehrlicher room. Computers will not be provided, so please bring a laptop to this event. If you are interested in… Read More »
Florian Schaub, an assistant professor in the School of Information, is the co-author of the book Privacy in Mobile and Pervasive Computing, which has just been released. Schaub and his co-author dissect and discuss the privacy implications of mobile and pervasive computing technology. They not only look at how technology affects our expectations of (and ability to enjoy) privacy, but they… Read More »
Online harassment usually originates from deviants operating in dark corners of the internet. But research shows that, more and more, anyone online is capable of becoming a troll. Efforts to curb this behavior have not been effective because they approach the problem with the wrong tools, says Sarita Schoenebeck, assistant professor of information at the School of Information (UMSI).… Read More »
Robin Brewer, an assistant professor in the U-M School of Information, leads an effort to introduce high school girls to technology through workshops that encourage them to create social impact through coding. Brave Initiatives, a Chicago-based non-profit, started offering weekend workshops in January, 2018 to young women at Hamtramck High School in Detroit. Brewer leads up this Detroit chapter… Read More »
A new study has shown that people feel online harassment is deserved when the person commits an offense, even though the common consensus is that on principle, harassing is not appropriate. U-M researchers at the School of Information discovered that bystander intervention could change this perception. These researchers recruited participants from Twitter and Amazon Mechanical Turk and… Read More »
School of Information researchers Christopher Brooks, Joshua Gardner, and Kaifeng Cheng, presented findings at the London Festival of Learning that showed that replacing images of men with women in online courses encouraged female students to engage more with the course. These researchers are also working toward supporting the development of online courses with tailored content for the learners. The U-M research team conducted… Read More »
Cliff Lampe, U-M School of Information associate professor, was elected Executive Vice President of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI), a significant honor. In his wide-ranging research on social and technical structures of large-scale technology-mediated communications, Lampe has worked with Facebook, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and Everything2. He also has helped create multiple social… Read More »
Interested in building technical skills? Enroll in one of three concurrent workshops offered by the School of Information. For the second year in a row, UMSI is presenting short, technical skill-building workshops taught by expert faculty and graduate students to help students gain confidence prior to a summer internship or to add to a resume or portfolio. The… Read More »
Getting help in programming courses outside of instructors’ office hours can be difficult, but a new tool called “chat.codes” may help change that. Steve Oney, assistant professor of information at the U-M School of Information (UMSI) and of electrical engineering and computer science at the College of Engineering, has received a National Science Foundation grant of $174,981 for his… Read More »
“Applied Data Science with Python,” an online course specialization developed by four professors at the School of Information, has won a major award from Coursera, a leading online learning platform. Christopher Brooks, Kevyn Collins-Thompson, Daniel Romero, and VG Vinod Vydiswaran won Coursera’s Outstanding Educator Award for Innovation for the highly successful specialization. Romero accepted the award at the Coursera Partners Conference at Arizona State University… Read More »
School of Information experts are sounding the alarm on a potential information apocalypse, a state when fake news and altered videos on social media and elsewhere effectively end social reality as we know it. To address this growing concern and bring some of the brightest minds together to brainstorm creative solutions, U-M has formed the School of Information… Read More »
A new tool employing augmented reality (AR) developed at the School of Information (UMSI) simplifies and shortens the physical-to-digital process for mobile app interaction designers. ProtoAR, developed by Michael Nebeling, UMSI assistant professor, allows designers to work with physical prototypes using paper and clay such as Play-Doh, then easily transition to digital prototyping using their mobile phones’ cameras.… Read More »
On January 30, the university held its first Privacy@Michigan symposium. Celebrating the 10th anniversary of International Data Privacy Day, the event featured an interdisciplinary group of U-M faculty and researchers who addressed top privacy-related—and threatening—issues in an era when the very notion has gotten complicated. The event was sponsored jointly by the U-M School of Information (UMSI), and… Read More »
As more robots are showing up in all kinds of jobs, organizations must figure out how to successfully integrate human and robot co-workers. But how? According to a recent study co-authored by School of Information associate professor Lionel Robert, it’s by making robots more like people. The study, “Human-Robot Similarity and Willingness to Work with a Robotic Co-worker,” found that… Read More »
The School of Information has announced the future establishment of two new information centers to improve communications infrastructure in underserved communities, and advance data usage by organizations that serve populations in those areas. The centers will be designed and managed by Edward Happ, a global IT leader with a background in nonprofit management, consulting, financial information services, and technology.… Read More »