Information School News

Between January and December 2015 the LSE Impact blog received over 1 million unique page hits and has released its most popular posts this year . Among the top 5 most viewed articles this year is a post by PhD student Wasim Ahmed , from the Information School. The post proved to be very popular among the social media research community, and has strengthened relationships between the Information School and industry providers of social media data.   With over a million page views this year and over 28 thousand followers on Twitter, Wasim noted that the LSE impact blog is a fantastic place to disseminate research.

ITV News Calendar has recently reached a milestone of 100,000 likes on their Facebook page, an occasion that offered a good opportunity to discuss a bit more about the popularity and influence of social media.   In the UK, more than seven in ten (72%) Internet users have a social media profile and 81% of them use it at least once a day. Indeed, the numbers reflect the fact that the popularity of social media is now well established. But there are wider issues that are increasingly getting more attention and worth exploring in further detail here. Below I outline four key issues:   1. Data privacy and ethics issues concern users more than ever before Users’ concerns about data privacy, the control they have over personal information , how this information is used by third parties or how social media data is collected and used for research purposes has become a significant issue. It is true that the very nature of social media encourages sharing of information a

Dr Gianluca Demartini , Senior Lecturer in Data Science at the Information School has been published in The Conversation. Gianluca's article entitled ' Clinton-Sanders data breach spat goes to the heart of modern campaigning ' highlights the significance of data management in US electoral campaigning. How voter data is utilised to better understand the electorate and help campaigners craft their speeches as well as facilitating more targeted advertising and seeking prospective donors is explained. In addition, Gianluca highlights potential problems in using big data but explains how the use of this data may benefit the voter.

On 18 December 2015 the Information School held the 'Christmas: A beginner's guide' event to learn about the traditions of Christmas from around the world.   Staff and students discovered the Christmas traditions of Mexico, Italy, Cyprus and the UK. As well as sampling traditional Christmas foods, staff and students raised over £49.00 for Sheffield Food Banks. Many thanks to all who attended the event and made a donation.

On 17 December 2015 Kandy Woodfield (Head of Social Sciences at the Higher Education Academy), Curtis Jessop (Senior Researcher at NatCen Social Research), and Wasim Ahmed (PhD Researcher at the Information School) delivered a successful workshop on sustaining and growing a community of practice at the Social Media for Learning in Higher Education Conference at Sheffield Hallam University .   The workshop was based on the New Social Media New Social Science (NSMNSS) network which has over 4,000 lively followers across the world. A live blog and the workshop slides can be found here .

There are still places available for the Information School Societys forthcoming event:   Christmas: A beginner’s guide   Are you curious about the traditions of Christmas in the UK and around the world? What is the significance of Christmas? What are the key tastes and sounds of Christmas? This event brings together iSchool students and staff to discover more about the Christmas experience and celebrate the holiday season. Samples of seasonal refreshments will be provided!     The event will be held on Friday, 18th December 2015 in the iSpace, Information School at 12:30 – 13.30 and we will be asking for a small donation for entry with the proceeds going to buy food for a Sheffield food bank. Book your place here

On Friday 18 December the Information School Society presents     Christmas: A beginner’s guide   Are you curious about the traditions of Christmas in the UK and around the world? What is the significance of Christmas? What are the key tastes and sounds of Christmas? This event brings together iSchool students and staff to discover more about the Christmas experience and celebrate the holiday season. Samples of seasonal refreshments will be provided!     This event will be held in the iSpace in Information School at 12:30 – 13.30 and we will be asking for a small donation for entry with the proceeds going to buy food for a Sheffield food bank. Book your place here

Congratulations to Izzy Savage, BSc Informatics with Employment Experience, who has been shortlisted for Best Student Placement Award in the 2016 National Undergraduate Employability Student Awards following a placement year as Technical Specialist at IBM in 2014/15. This is a fantastic achievement. "This Award celebrates the amazing contribution that students make to businesses across the UK and abroad. Our finalists have made a genuine, measurable impact to their business whilst on placement." Izzy was involved in a number of technical and client facing projects at IBM including: Demonstrating the capability of IBM’s Analytical tools to several clients including a leading UK supermarket Successfully developing and demonstrating ‘art of the possible’ applications to allow clients to easily understand how IBM can solve some of their industry pain points Creating an asset for client executives within the Banking and Insurance industry that aids in creating new discussions

Pamela McKinney of the Information School has undertaken a project, which explores student’s perceptions of group work and how they work with each other in formally assessed, and casual group work situations. In order to research this complex topic Pamela adopted the “Draw and Write” methodology first designed by Jenna Hartel from the University of Toronto to investigate student conceptions of information. Students from across the Information School were asked to create a drawing on a square piece of paper (10cm x 10cm) called an ‘isquare’ that describes or shows their conception of a phenomena, in this case their experience of group work.  They were then asked to write a brief description on the other side of the isquare of what their drawing represents.  This unusual data collection methodology led to the creation of rich qualitative data that gave an interesting insight into what students think about group work.  This builds on Pamela’s research analysing stude