Doug Oard's Courses

Undergraduate Courses

LBSC 208B: LBSC 208B was a course on Information and Knowledge Management. It was designed as the second course in the proposed four course sequence for the proposed Applied Information Technology Citation, but the citation program has not yet been approved at the university level. LBSC 208B was cross-listed as UNIV 233 when it was 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. I still speak with new Gemstone students from time to time, and would be glad to meet with Gemstone mentors and/or teams to pass on some of what we learned.

Masters Program Courses

LBSC 690: LBSC 690 is a core graduate course on Information Technology, one of four core courses in our 12-course Master of Library Science program. It is typically offered every semester, and I typically teach it about once every two years. I also sometimes work with adjunct faculty that teach the course on the design of their section.
LBSC 708T/INFM 718T: LSSC 708T/INFM 718T is an advanced course in Transformational Information Technologies. It was offered for the first time in Spring 2007. The course 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.
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. MLS students wishing to register for this course should contact me.
LBSC 790/INFM 718B: LBSC 790/INFM 718B (formerly offered as LBSC 708L) is an advanced course in Building the Human-Computer Interface. Completion of (or simultaneous registration to complete) the MLS or MIM core and some modest programming experience (even back in high school is fine) are the prerequisites. I plan to typically offer this course every two years.
LBSC 796/INFM 718R: LBSC 796/INFM 718R is an advanced course in the design and evaluation of Information Retrieval Systems. MLS students must complete LBSC 690 prior to taking LBSC 796, and they must either have completed the other three core courses or be taking them concurrently. LBSC 796 was previously offered as LBSC 708A. It has been cross-listed in the Computer Science Department (as CMSC 828o or CMSC 828L). CLIS typically offers LBSC 796 once each year, and I teach it about half the time.

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 CLIS. Information about my research interests can be found on my research web page

Ph.D. Program Seminars

LBSC 878 ISAR: LBSC 878 ISAR is a doctoral seminar in Information Storage and Retrieval. It is 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. LBSC 878 is normally offered in the Spring semester, alternating between ISAR and Communications. The ISAR focus is offered in odd numbered years; I will likely next teach it in Spring 2005. We rotate this course among the faculty; often, two faculty members co-teach it.

Doctoral Dissertation Research

LBSC 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 CLIS, but the timing of their LBSC 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 LBSC 898/899 should come see me in person to discuss it.

Non-credit 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 these 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 reading group that I helped organize in Spring 2002 and Fall 2003.
Email Access: A reading group that I helped organize in the Fall 2005.
Weblogs: A reading group that I helped organize in Summer 2006.

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.

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)

Last modified: Sat Aug 23 18:33:22 2008

Doug Oard oard@glue.umd.edu