Doug Oard's Courses

Undergraduate Courses

INST 154: INST 154 is an I-Series course on Apollo at 50. It was offered for the first time in Fall, 2019.
HONR 269I: HONR 269I was an honors seminar on To the Moon and Back: The Apollo Program. It was offered in Spring, 2019.
INST 301: INST 301 was a course on Introduction to Information Science. It was a precursor to the iSchool's B.S. in Information Science major, and has now been replaced by INST 201.
INST 346: INST 346 is a course on Technologies, Infrastructure and Architecture that is a part of the iSchool's B.S. in Information Science major.
INST 408Y: INST 408Y is a course on Search Engines that is an elective in the iSchool's B.S. in Information Science major.
LBSC 208B: LBSC 208B was a course on Information and Knowledge Management. It was designed as the second course in a proposed course sequence taught by three units on campus (Computer Science, the iSchool, and Political Science) for a couple of years, but that course sequence -- and thus this course -- is no longer being offered.
Gemstone Honors Seminar: Gemstone is an interdisciplinary research program in which students work together for four years to produce a Team Thesis. As a Gemstone Fellow, I served as the mentor for the Information Technology in Medicine team. The team defended their thesis and was one of eight teams in Gemstone's first graduating class in Spring 2000.

Masters Program Courses

INFM 603: INFM 603 is a core graduate course on Information Technology and Organizational Context, one of three core courses in our 12-course Master of Information Management program. It is typically offered in most semesters, and I typically teach it about once every couple of years.
LBSC 671: LBSC 671 is a core graduate course on Creating Information Infrastructures, one of four core courses in the new core of our 12-course Master of Library Science program. I offered this course for the first time in Fall, 2013, and I will likely teach it about once very couple of years.
LBSC 690: LBSC 690 was a core graduate course on Information Technology, one of four core courses in our 12-course Master of Library Science program. It was last offered in Spring 2013 (because of the transition to the new core, which is structured quite differently).
LBSC 708X/INFM 708X: LBSC 708X/INFM 718X is an advanced course on E-Discovery. It was offered for the first time in Spring 2009 and again in Spring 2012, both co-taught with Jason Baron. It might next be offered in Spring 2016.
INST 716: INST 716 is an advanced course in Information Technology and Society. The course was was offered for the first time in Spring 2007 (at the time as LBSC 708T/INFM 718T Transformational Information Technologies). It looks across the broad sweep of history to identify common characteristics of technologies that have transformed information processing, and then applies that understanding by looking into the future to envision the potential implications of some of the trends that are visible today. I am not currently scheduled to teach this course again; interested students should contact Jessica Vitak.
INFM 718N: INFM 718N is an advanced course in Database-Driven Web Applications. Completion of (or simultaneous registration to complete) the MIM core are the prerequisites. I am not currently scheduled to teach this course again; interested students should contact Vedat Diker.
INST 734: INST 734 is an advanced course in the design and evaluation of Information Retrieval Systems. I presently offer this as an online course. MLS students must complete LBSC 671 prior to taking INST 734, and they must either have completed INST 602 or be taking it concurrently. MIM students must complete INFM 603 prior to taking INST 734, and they must have either completed the other two core courses or be taking them concurrently. INST 734 was previously offered as LBSC 796, and before that as LBSC 708A. It has previously been cross-listed in the MIM program (as INFM 718R) and in the Computer Science Department (as CMSC 828o or CMSC 828L). The iSchool typically offers INST 734 about once a year, and I teach it about half the time.
INST 790: INST 790 (previously LBSC 790/INFM 718B, and before that LBSC 708L) was an advanced course in Building the Human-Computer Interface. This course, which I originally developed, was one of two precursors to our 12-course Master of Science degree program in Human Computer Interaction, which admitted its first student cohort in Fall 2012. The courses in that program are organized differently, so although the course number is still in use, this course no longer exists in the form I had offered it.

Independent Study

LBSC 709: I occasionally am asked to supervise an independent study course by students with special interests for which I have no regular course. If you are interested in exploring this option you should approach me a bit before the registration deadline for the semester in which you would like to do the independent study. I take the "independent" part seriously - I will expect you to take the initiative to develop your own objectives, project design, and reading list, for example. I normally meet with independent study students weekly or every other week, depending on the nature of their project. If an independent study topic attracts continued interest from a number of students, I am willing to consider developing a regular course. This is, for example, how LBSC 790 came to be.

Masters Thesis Research

LBSC 799: Students who wish to write a masters thesis may register for up to six credits of LBSC 799, Masters Thesis Research. Because getting from the proposal though the completed thesis can take a while, students who are interested in working on a masters thesis with me should normally initiate preliminary discussions during their first or second semester at the iSchool. Information about my research interests can be found on my research web page

Ph.D. Program Seminars

LBSC 801: LBSC 801 was a one-credit introduction to research for Ph.D. students, which I taught once in Fall 2011. It has since been replaced with INST 800, a 3-credit course that fills the same role.
LBSC 878: LBSC 878 was a doctoral seminar in Information Storage and Retrieval. It was designed to help students prepare for the comprehensive examination, in which ISAR is a required topic, and to provide a basis for undertaking dissertation research. Our doctoral program has since been reorganized, and INST 888 is the closest counterpart.
INST 888: INST 888 (formerly LBSC 888) is a doctoral seminar in Information Studies. It is designed to help students prepare for the integrative paper, and to provide a basis for undertaking dissertation research. I most recently taught this course in Fall, 2010.

Doctoral Dissertation Research

INST 898/899: Doctoral students register for Pre-Candidacy Research (LBSC 898) or Doctoral Dissertation Research at various points over the course of their program. A doctoral student's research work normally extends over the entire time that they are enrolled at at the iSchool, but the timing of their INST 898/899 credits is governed by a number of factors. Students who are working with me and are curious about the proper time to register for INST 898/899 should come see me in person to discuss it.

Reading Groups

We often begin a new research project with a reading group in which we explore ideas that are new to us by reading recent research papers and then meeting to discuss them. Although many reading groups carry no academic credit, we welcome participation from any students that are willing to participate regularly and contribute to the discussion.

The MALACH Project: A non-credit reading group that I helped organize in Spring 2002 and Fall 2003.
Email Access: A non-credit reading group that I helped organize in the Fall 2005.
Blogs: A non-credit reading group that I helped organize in Summer 2006.
E-Innovation: A non-credit reading group that I participated in in Fall 2007.
E-Discovery: A reading group in Fall 2011 that I organized on current research in the design and evaluation of technology to support the process for discovery of evidence in civil litigation. Interested students may register for this reading group for one credit as INST 728A with the permission of the instructor.
ICTD: A non-credit reading group in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) that I organized in Fall, 2012.

Guest Lectures

From time to time I give lectures on specific topics in other courses. Some of my slides from those lectures are available here.

INST 201, November 5, 2018 (Powerpoint; also available as PDF): A guest lecture on privacy.
INST 346, April 3, 2018 (Powerpoint; also available as PDF): A guest lecture on encryption.
Journalism 175, Fall 2015: A guest lecture on disintermediation.
LBSC 770, Bibliographic Control, Spring 2015: A lecture on metadata.
LBSC 795, Human-Computer Communication, Fall 1988: A lecture on spoken language interfaces.
CMSC 723/LING 845, Natural Language Processing, Spring 2000: A lecture on information retrieval.
CPSP 118T, College Park Scholars, Spring 2001: An update of the lecture on spoken language interfaces.
CMSC 838B, Information Visualization, Spring 2001: Slides to motivate a discussion of visualization in text retrieval and text data mining systems.
IGCA Panel on the Impact of the Information Revolution in the United States: A four-speaker session that I moderated for the Institute for Global Chinese Affairs.
CMSC 838S, Information Visualization, Spring 2005: An update of the lecture on information retrieval interfaces.
CMSC 498W Web Architecture and Programming, Spring 2006: A lecture on IR for Web search.
CMSC 838S, Information Visualization, Spring 2006: An minor update of the lecture on information retrieval interfaces.
Search and Ye Shall Find: A lecture presented to the Seminar on Emerging Information Technologies at Tecnolgico de Monterrey (by videoconference)
Cross-Language Information Retrieval: A lecture presented to the Applied Natural Language Processing Course at UC Berkeley in Fall, 2009.
Dictionary-Based Cross-Language Information Retrieval: A lecture presented to the Web Search and Text Analysis subject at the University of Melbourne (Australia) in Semester 1 of 2010.

Last modified: Sun Jan 11 19:11:54 2015

Doug Oard oard@glue.umd.edu