Me

Highly motivated post-graduate student at the ischool, UBC with a strong record as a facilitator of student learning springing from rich and varied teaching experience in India and the Middle East. Uses proven verbal and written communication skills, combined with sound technical know-how with an ever-growing passion to learn and explore emerging fields of interest.

Highlights of the MLIS program

The MLIS program at UBC is Accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) and the UBC iSchool is ranked first in the world for graduate education in library and information management. Five core courses focus on understanding the essentials of information interaction, Information practices, methods of research, cataloging and management of information organizations.

 

  1. Human Information Interaction
  2. Methods of Research and Evaluation in Information Organizations
  3. Information Practices in Contemporary Society
  4. Foundations of Resource Description and Knowledge Organization
  5. Management of Information Organizations

 

As I chose the designing for people specialization pathway UBC School of Information, I opted to study the following courses from the list of available electives.

The courses were,

  • Information Design I: Systems
  • Information Design II: Documents
  • Information Visualization and Visual Analytics
  • Information retrieval Concepts and Practice
  • Database design
  • Making sense with data (Data Analysis course with an introduction to R)

Masters thesis

Since I had an interest in pursuing community-based research, I elected for the thesis option. The title of my thesis was “Design of a geographical visualization-based interface for a community-academic knowledge exchange”. My thesis which is available at https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0380703 was borne out of the motivation to bridge the divide between the members of Vancouver’s DTES community and academic research. Towards this goal, an easily accessible map-based visual interface was planned as an alternative point of entry to access community-based research. Following an extensive literature review, a textual analysis was done on journal articles about the DTES to bring out locational references and main topic areas addressed in each study. An iterative design-based approach with stages such as empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test, was adopted. The resulting connections between organizations, authors, and topics were represented in a map-based visual interface, designed to promote learning through exploration. Following the prototyping stage, a pilot study of the interactive version of the interface was conducted with graduate students of the University of British Columbia. On receiving the approval of the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board, a small-scale usability study was conducted with the members of the DTES community to evaluate the current design and identify areas for improvement. Some conclusions have been drawn and recommendations made based on the knowledge gained through this study.

Billy websites and online mentions: