Information School News

In April this year, I attended the 10 th World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland. as part of the Faculty of Social Sciences' Global Leadership Initiative (GLI). I represented the Information School as a Policy Analyst in a team of eight students led by Dr. Suay Ozkula (Sociological Studies) and Dr. Paul Reilly (Information School). WSIS is a United Nations (UN) multi-stakeholder global forum that promotes the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines for advancing UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With a focus on “ICTs for development”, the Summit identified global trends and new partnerships to help achieve the SDGs. In addition to attending various sessions during the week-long Summit, we worked on blogs and policy briefs on our topics of interest, which were later published on Global Policy Opinion . The team also had an opportunity to deliver our own panel during the event. ICTs in the University Environment – 7 Case Studies saw ea

Professor Stephen Pinfield, Dr Simon Wakeling and Professor Peter Willet have had a blog published on the major global publisher blog 'Scholarly Kitchen', summaring a recent article published from the Open-Access Mega-Journals project . You can read the blog post here. The blog discusses article commenting and community reviewing in the context of OAMJs. Scholarly Kitchen, established by the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), is a moderated and independent blog helping to fulfil SSP's mission to 'advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking.'

Last week saw the first presentation in a series of joint talks between the Information School's Health Informatics and Information Systems Research Groups in Sheffield. and Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.The talks aim to promote research collaboration and knowledge sharing. Dr Laura Sbaffi and Dr Efpraxia Zamani are organising this series and chairing the Sheffield presentations, and Prof Josephine Nabukenya will be chairing the presentations from Makerere. In this first session, PhD student Liliana Sepulveda offered the audience a great overview of her PhD research on "An experiential study of the human-technology relationship between informal caregivers of people with dementia and assistive technologies". There will be similar virtual meetings every month and the next schedule one is for Tuesday 11th June, when a PhD student from Makerere will be presenting their work. More details will be forthcoming. You can view the recording of the session here: 

This year I was fortunate enough to receive an Information School bursary to attend LILAC 2019, the information literacy conference, which was held at the University of Nottingham from the 24th to 26th April. As a distance learneing student who is also the sole information professional at a small academic museum library, work can be a bit insular, so I applied for the bursary to connect with the wider information community and learn more about information literacy. I was excited by the rich programme of sessions and the promise of a dynamic set of keynote speakers. I had also heard from previous colleagues how great the conference is for networking and sharing ideas in friendly environment so I was thrilled when I found out I was on my way to LILAC19. I was slightly nervous to attend my first library conference but I needn’t have worried. From the moment I stepped off of the tram at the University of Nottingham, concerned about finding my way to the conference venue, fellow attende

作为谢菲尔德大学信息学院的学生大使，我本人的情况是在英国读过本科，但学的不是信息管理专业，没有上语言课。如果是没有在英国读过本科的人，上语言课可能是个比较好的选择，既能提高自己的英文能力，也能提前适应在英国读书的生活。 在开学之前会有一个写论文的小测试，就是需要写700字的文献综述，不占分数，老师会鼓励大家写这个文章， 能帮助大家了解自己写作中擅长以及需要提升的地方，以后写论文的时候可以避免低分的情况发生。同时学校也会给每个学生安排学术性写作以及数字技能的课程，教大家怎么写学术性写作以及如何使用学校的网站，怎么搜索书籍等等很实用的技巧。每个人都会有个人导师，有生活或者学业上的问题是可以跟导师约时间交流的。在谢菲尔德大学的学联是很出名的，大家可以在课余时间参与一些社团活动，充实一下自己的生活。 众所周知，信息管理是世界第二的专业，很多中国人都慕名而来。不少必修课都是大课，当然也有可以不少可供选择的选修课。课程的作业都是以不同的形式以不同比例来展现的，比如个人作业占百分之60和小组作业占总成绩的百分之40，有的必修课是需要机考的。在这些课程里, 建模的授课模式是我喜欢的，小班制，与中国教学不同的是上课之前需要看老师提前录制好的课程，课堂上主要是老师和学生的互动，老师会随机分组，并且分配任务，课上会有助教，帮助解答不会的问题。而且每节课都有回放，也不用担心听不懂或者错过课程。如果像我一样本科不是这个专业的学生，也不用担心建模很难，只需要跟着老师每节课把分配的任务做好就可以了。 除了课程以外，在谢菲有著名古老的电梯，漂亮的达西庄园，可爱的羊驼，有好吃的中餐，有方便的电车。谢菲的物价感人并且相对安全。 赵欣颜 (This blog is also available in English here )

As a student ambassador at the Information school, my personal situation is that I have studied my undergraduate degree in the UK, but I did not study Information Management before coming here. If you are a person who has not studied at undergraduate level in the UK, a language class may be a good choice, not only improve your English ability but also help you to adapt to studying in the UK. Before your course properly starts in the Information School, there will be a small test, where you need to write a 700-word literature review, which is not credit-bearing. The teachers will encourage you to write this essay, which will help you to find where you need to improve, to avoid low marks in next assignments. The School also arranges academic writing and digital skills courses for each student, teaching you how to write academic writing and how to use the School's website, how to search for books and so on. Every student has a personal tutor. If you have a personal or academic pro