Masters in Social Computing

Facebook and MySpace addicts are now taken seriously by the academic community! The University of Michigan's School of Information recently launched the first Masters Degree program with a specialization in Social Computing. It's exciting to see this kind of coursework at a traditional Library and Information Studies School. According to the UMSI website: "Students pursuing a specialization in Social Computing learn to analyze online social interactions, both in online communities and in more diffuse social networks. They learn about features of social computing technologies so they can recognize opportunities to put them to use in new settings and make good choices about alternative implementations" The specialization is one of six newly launched programs that prepare students for careers in newly emerging fields. Other tracks include:

• Incentive-Centered Design - Teaches the art of designing systems or institutions to align individual incentives with overall organizational goals. It draws deeply from economics, psychology, and sociology, with computer science as a unifying thread.
• Community Informatics - Prepares students for positions as public interest information professionals and technical leaders for nonprofit organizations, government agencies, community development agencies, and entrepreneurial social ventures.
• Information Analysis and Retrieval - Teaches how information is stored in computer systems, how it is searched and analyzed, and how humans access it.
• Preservation of Information - Identifies preservation challenges and standards-based preservation practices and responds to the urgent need for expertise in preservation, digital curation, and Web archiving.
• Information Policy - Prepares students for analysis and design of information policy, at both the organizational and general public policy level.
• Library and Information Services - Prepares students for all aspects of librarianship. Students may also choose a track for careers in K-12 school media.
• Archives and Records Management - Teaches concepts and techniques to manage historical materials as well as methods that can be applied in information systems design to support integrity, authenticity, access, and long-term preservation of records.
• Human-Computer Interaction - Educates the professional who designs and develops technologies that fit the organization and work practices, the work to be done, and the capabilities of the user.