I-schools or Schools of Information are emergent academic programs that focus on information, information technology and the relationships between information, information technology and people. They try to understand the role of information from human aspect.
Nowadays, we have entered the age of information. In the information-driven world, we have to face a lot of challenges caused by ubiquitous information. With the fast development of digital technology, we have the easy access to Internet and we have increasing mount of data. How can we benefit from these data instead of being swamped by it? I-schools will teach us how to solve the problems. That is the most important reason that I-schools emerged.
What makes I-schools different from those traditional colleges or fields is their interdisciplinary nature. I-schools employ all forms of information in science, business, education and culture, and allow people in all other fields to create, store, operate and share information. Another nature that makes I-schools special is that they treat and solve real world problems from various perspectives. Specialists from different areas get together and provide their viewpoints from their own academic aspects. This kind of collaboration can inspire new ideas and thus can make I-schools active colleges.
I-schools share a lot in common. First and foremost, of course, they conduct interdisciplinary research on information, technology, people, and the relationships between them. Second, they study the opportunities and challenges of information management like universal access and user-centered organization of information. Last but not least, there are several popular research topics in I-schools such as human-computer interaction, information retrieval and management, medical informatics and social and organizational informatics.
Though there are a lot of common attributes between I-schools, they do have different flavors. Some I-schools focus on library science which most I-schools come from, like Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina; some focus on computing like Georgia Tech, UC Irvine; some like study business, such as UC Berkeley, Singapore Management University; Also, some I-schools focus on policy like Carnegie Mellon some focus on education like UCLA.
The reason why I choose my graduate study in an I-school is because I like the research work of my advisor. Before I came here, I thought I-school conduct research on information technology which was similar to computer science, and it matched my background. Though I didn't know what an I-school mean before, but when I see the attractive integration of I-T-P and the interdisciplinary nature, I can see the bright future of I-schools. So I think I can adjust to it and I may like I-schools later.
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