Panel: IA Education in Europe


Sunday, 01 October 2006, 11:15 - 12:15

Like Information Architecture (IA) in Europe itself, education in IA as an emerging field is characterized by diversity of languages and regions as well as by variety of disciplines and academic institutions. This panel reflects these challenges and facets by combining individual presentations of five educators from Denmark, Germany, Ireland, and Italy who teach IA in the context of different regions and disciplines such as Corporate Information Management, Engineering, Interface Design, Information and Library Studies, and Human Computer Interaction. While all have built their practice of teaching IA, their curricula have mainly evolved independent of one another and their day-to-day work and challenges have largely remained unknown to the others. 

To help solve this mystery, each panellist will briefly introduce the IA curriculum, emphasize its particular strengths and/or weaknesses, and highlight instruction methods to be found effective or ineffective. The session will conclude with an open discussion soliciting questions and comments about the latest trends and activities in the programmes introduced, and involve the audience in envisioning what IA education in Europe should be and formulating an agenda to get us there. Key questions to be tackled during this include:

1. What are the components of the IA curriculum in the different contexts?

2. Is there a need for a core universal IA curriculum?

3. What kind of support network would be most appropriate?

The overall goal of this panel is to lay ground and to assess opportunities for future collaboration in IA education in Europe. The panel aligns with the goals and objectives of the Summit and should be of particular interest to colleagues who are engaged in IA education (or plan to do so) as well as to practitioners, students, and administrators who want to contribute to the advancement of IA education (and possibly research) from a European perspective.

Speaker(s)

Bernhard Thull,

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Thull holds a Doctorate in Natural Science and a Diploma in Computer Science, both from the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen. For 12 years, he has been with the "Ergonomics in Medicine" workgroup of the Helmholtz-Institute for Biomedical Engineering at the RWTH Aachen; almost 8 years thereof as Head of the department. His applied research with industry partners focused on human factors and design of clinical information and decision support systems. He has been Professor for Information Design at the Faculty of Information and Knowledge Management of the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt since 1999. He teaches Programming, Interface Design, and Information Visualization within a broader component of a study programme named Information and Knowledge Management (from winter term 2006/07 onwards: Information Science and Engineering) which can be interpreted as applied Information Architecture. He has published more than 50 papers, mostly on the design of clinical information systems, and has given numerous presentations and invited talks.

Boris Mueller,

Prof. Müller has a Diploma in Graphic Design from the Hochschule für Künste Bremen (College of Art and Design Bremen, Germany) and a MA in Computer Related Design from the Royal College of Art London. He has worked for a number of international clients and companies like MetaDesign San Francisco, the Science Museum London and the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication in Bonn. After being a visiting Professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, he became a Professor for Interaction Design at the newly founded Interface Design course at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. His design work has received several awards like the Excellence Award from the Media Arts Festival in Tokyo, a Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the Type Directors Club New York, or, the first prize in the student’s category of the EuroPrix Multimedia. He has given numerous presentations and invited talks.

Dorte Madsen,

Dr. Madsen has a MA in International Business Communication and a PhD in translation and specialist communication. She is Associate Professor in Communication Studies and Information Management at the Copenhagen Business School where she is also the Programme Director and main architect of a brand new international bachelor’s programme in Information Management. For a number of years, Dorte was an information officer in a Danish government agency with responsibility for information and counselling on rare diseases and disorders. She has also been an information architect of a large-scale web portal which includes all information available in the Scandinavian languages on rare diseases and disorders. The portal is funded by The Nordic Council of Ministers. Dorte’s research interests and experience include: management of information, communication and knowledge, and communication between experts and laypeople.

She pursues a goal of bringing perspectives together from communication, and from knowledge and information management, to support information architecture design and sense-making. She has given numerous presentations and invited talks.

 

Heiko Haubitz,

Dr. Haubitz is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin’s School of Information and Library Studies where he teaches IA. Prior to joining UCD in 2006, he created and taught courses in Web Systems Development, IA, Usability Testing, and Information Technologies in the Information Architecture and Knowledge Management Program at Kent State University in Ohio and at the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin. There he earned his doctorate in Information Studies. His dissertation is titled The Use of Public Web Portals by Undergraduate Students. He also holds a MLIS from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan where he studied under a Fulbright Scholarship, and a degree as Diplom-Bibliothekar from Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. His research interests include information behaviour, information architecture, and usability testing. He is a recipient of the 2002 Eugene Garfield Dissertation Fellowship and has given presentations and invited talks in the U.S and Germany.

Luca Rosati, Italy

Luca is a free lance Information Architect and assistant professor in Informatics for Humanistic Science (i.e. Information Architecture and Human Computer Interaction) at University for Foreigners of Perugia (Università per Stranieri di Perugia), in Italy. In 2003 he founded Architecta, the first Italian mailing list in IA, and run Trovabile (http://trovabile.org) an IA magazine (Trovabile is a neologism and linguistic calque on the English Findable). Luca is co-author of the book "Organizing Knowledge. From Lybraries to Information Architecture for the Web" (Milan, 2006). His website is http://lucarosati.it.