Events

Upcoming events 2021-2022

 
Events Descriptions Format Presenter Dates/times
Writing Retreat Write in a supportive online environment with other students and faculty. Following the Pomodoro Technique, we write in 25min intervals followed by 5min breaks to pause, chat, and/or stretch. You are welcome to work on any type of writing: article, paper, thesis, grant application, presentation, CV, blog, etc.

Online, via Zoom:

https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/81969815589

ASIS&T Student Chapter

Nov 10, 2021, 2PM-4PM

Nov 24, 2021, 2PM-4PM

Dec 8, 2021, 2PM-4PM

Dec 22, 2021, 2PM-4PM

Note: These meetings will be held twice a month

Monthly Lunch An informal gathering, over lunch. Get to know others in SIS, chat about your interests, etc. Thomson House ASIS&T Student Chapter

Dec 1, 2021, 12PM

Note: These meetings will be held once a month
Peer Research Support Group An opportunity for anyone to share their research (course assignments, thesis drafts, recent publications, etc.). Practice presenting your work and receive valuable feedback from your peers. TBD TBD

TBD

Note: If you want to present your research, please contact Zoey: xiaoqian.zhang [at] mail.mcgill.ca

Skillset Development Learn about research methods, scholarly publishing, jobs, etc. TBD TBD TBD
EBSI-SIS 14th Symposium Held in partnership with EBSI (Université de Montréal), this annual symposium is an opportunity for master's and doctoral students to present their research and meet their peers. This year’s event will be held in a hybrid (remote and in-person) format.

Hybrid

(SIS and online)

SIS/ASIS&T and EBSI Winter semester 2022

Events are open to all SIS students

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Winter Semester 2021

 

Workshop: Implementing presentation design choices in PowerPoint

Abstract:
An effective presentation requires delivery skills, content, and design. Without delivery your presentation will not be received. Without content your presentation will be empty entertainment. And without design your presentation will be confusing and hard to follow. This workshop will focus on how you can implement your design choices in PowerPoint. We will cover common rules for presentations as well as basic and advanced features of PowerPoint. Using these rules and features we will analyze and revise example presentations submitted by students.

Presented by lja Frissen
Associate Professor
School of Information Studies
McGill University

Date: Monday March 15, 20211:00 PM (EDT)

Join Zoom Meeting: https://bit.ly/3byCTHP
Meeting ID: 898 9619 6297
Passcode: 068542

If you missed the workshop, you can access the recorded video here.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Seminar: Tips for presenting and defending your dissertation or thesis online

Abstract:
As the current pandemic has re/shaped the ways in which we work, interact, and share information, academic defenses are likewise changing. In this informal conversation, Prof. Gracen Brilmyer will go over tips for defending your dissertation or thesis via Zoom. This will include tips on presentation style and format, what to expect during your defense, as well as general words of support as you prepare for your defense. This webinar is targeted at PhD students but masters students who have interest in research and presentations online are welcome to attend. Bring your dissertation defense questions and concerns to discuss! 

Join Zoom Meeting: https://bit.ly/3pKKQ1k
Meeting ID: 825 4497 0130
Passcode: 171923

Monday March 1, 2021
2:00 PM (EST)

Seminar (Open to PhD and masters students). Please see the poster below for our speaker, Prof. Gracen Brilmyer's bio

If you missed the seminar, you can access the recorded video here

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ASIS&T McGill Student Chapter Townhall

Join the ASIS&T student chapter tomorrow morning February 16, 2021 at 9:30 (EST) to hear an incredible panel of speakers on working in the Information Science & Technology field and how to strategically position yourself to stand out in the LIS Job market, either as academics or as professionals.

Plus, we'll be doing a drawing for two full-year memberships to ASIS&T (each valued at 60$).

JOIN ZOOM MEETING https://bit.ly/3rUmDHy

Meeting ID: 894 9422 1433 Passcode: 910183

Meet our speakers (Please see attached poster for full bio):

Dr. Naresh Agarwal is an Associate Professor and Director of the Information Science & Technology Concentration at the School of Library & Information Science at Simmons University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He is currently the President-elect of ASIS&T. Naresh’s research area is information behavior and knowledge management.

Dr. Sam Chu is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He was the Head of Division of Information and Technology Studies (2013-16). He has obtained 2 PhDs in Education – one focusing on e-Learning from University College London, Institute of Education and another one focusing on Information and Library Science from HKU. He is currently the Director of Chapter Assembly at ASIS&T. His areas of expertise include gamified learning, 21st Century Skills, and Social Media in Education.

Dr. Aylin Imeri (Ilhan) is head of the Information Science Department at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany. She is working on activity and fitness tracker, health information behavior, and social media. She teaches bachelor and master courses (e.g., social media marketing, statistics, scientific writing).

See you there! Thank you.

PDF icon asist-townhall-poster-v4.pdf

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Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce the annual EBSI-SIS Information Science Symposium, exceptionally organized this year by the School of Information Studies (SIS) of McGill University in collaboration with the École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information (EBSI) of the Université de Montréal. For the past 13 years, the annual symposium has provided an opportunity for master's and doctoral students to present their research work and meet their peers. This year, we are taking advantage of the opportunity offered by technology to encourage international students to respond to our invitation. The event will take place virtually on April 28, 2021.

The symposium committee invites master's and doctoral students, and postdoctoral researchers in information science to submit their paper proposal in the form of a poster, a flash presentation (3 minutes and 3 slides maximum) or an oral presentation (20 minutes), all accompanied by a question period. A variety of perspectives and methodologies, as well as current research projects, are welcome. Prizes will be awarded to the best poster and the best presentation. Papers can be given in English or French. Authors may submit their paper by completing the submission form provided by 26 March 2021. Decisions will be communicated to authors by 9 April.

Registration

The symposium is free for all. For more information, please visit our websites ebsi-sis.ebsi.umontreal.ca or mcgill.ca/sis-students/asist/events. You can also contact us at sympo.ebsisis [at] gmail.com, or follow us on Twitter @sympoEbsiSis and on Facebook @sympoEbsiSis.

We look forward to seeing you at the EBSI-SIS Symposium!

EBSI organizing committee: Shahrazad Rahme, Virginie Wenglenski

SIS-ASIS&T organizing committee: Philips Ayeni, Michelle Mussuto, Muhe Yang

 

List of upcoming Events 2020-2021

EVENTS

FORMAT

PRESENTER/ORGANIZER

DATE/TIME

ASIS&T Writing Retreat every other Friday Online via Zoom ASIS&T Student Chapter Chair Fridays, Feb. 5, 19, March 5, 19 @2:00-4:00 p.m. EST
ASIS&T McGill Student Chapter Townhall Online via Zoom

Dr. Naresh Agarwal; President-elect, Association for Information Science & Technology

Dr. Sam Chu, Director of Chapter Assembly

Terrence Curtiss, Lead for Chapter at ASIS&T Headquarters

Tuesday, February 16, 2021 @ 9:30 AM (EST)
Skillsets developments webinars professors Online via Zoom

Prof Gracen Brilmyer - Tips for presenting and defending your dissertation or thesis online

Prof Ilja Frissen - Implementing presentation design choices in PowerPoint

Monday, March 1, 2021 @ 2:00 p.m EST

 

Monday, March 15, 2021 @ 1:00 p.m EST

EBSI-SIS 13th Doctoral Symposium Online  SIS/ASIS&T and EBSI (hosted by the Canadian Association for Information Science) Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Past event: Fall Semester 2020 

You can access the presentation video here, or the pdf in the link below:

PDF icon Career transitions: preparing for what comes next

Past years:

2018-2019

September 28, 2018: ASIS&Tance Workshop - The Write Time

Licensed under Attribution


Are you looking to make progress with your writing?
Step out of your busy everyday life and come to the SIS writing retreat, hosted by ASIS&T!

Friday, September 28th from 2pm-4pm @ SIS 106
This time and space has been reserved for writing in a distraction-free and supportive environment among other writers. We will use the Pomodoro technique, structuring writing time into 25-minute intervals. Feel free to drop in whenever you can and leave early if you want. Coffee and snacks will be provided.

To celebrate our success, there may be a post-writing gathering at Thompson house if there is interest. The retreat is open to everyone (MISt/PhD/Faculty/Staff) working on any kind of writing (article/grant application/PowerPoint/blog/etc.).

 

2017-2018

March 19, 2018: 11th EBSI-SIS Student Symposium in Information Studies

​​

Date: March 19th, 2018
Time: 10am-4:30pm
Location: SIS Mansion, 3661 Peel, room 106

We at the ASIS&T McGill student chapter are delighted to announce the next EBSI-SIS symposium, to be held on March 19, 2018 at the School of Information Studies (3661 Peel) at McGill University from 10am-4:30pm. The symposium series continues to provide a meeting place for the two departments' research communities, and will once again feature student research. Breakfast, lunch, and light snacks will be served. 

Schedule

10:00-10:30 – Breakfast and registration
10:30-10:40 – Welcome
Vera Granikov
​Dr. Ilja Frissen
ASIS&T McGill Chapter Co-Chair
Assistant Professor, McGill SIS
Dr. Charles-Antoine Julien Assistant Professor, McGill SIS & ASIS&T McGill Faculty Advisor
10:40-11:55
Christopher Trudeau Classifying soundscapes using a multifaceted taxonomy
Grace Brooks Sound engineering: Scoping the field
Rebecca Katz A study of fan fiction writers' legal knowledge
11:55-12:40 – Lunch
12:40-13:10 – Lightning presentations
Heather Rogers Canadian academic librarians’ perspectives and experiences with research data management
David Ramirez Jaimes The library's physical space: Is the brick-and-mortar building still important in the digital age?
Vera Granikov Where are we today? The use of mixed methods in library and information science research
Aaron Bowen-Ziecheck Implementation and impact of a Chronic Disease Management System for patients with multimorbidity in primary care
13:10-14:25
(Carrie) Jiamin Dai Beyond communication and social Interaction: A review on designing for dementia care
Asma Minyaoui Caractéristiques du comportement informationnel en matière de santé en ligne de nouveaux arrivants
Cynthia Kumah Do millennials evaluate information found on mobile devices?
14:25-14:40 - Break
14:40-16:20
Tyler Kolody Blockchain applications beyond bitcoin
Daniela Oliveira Understanding Building Information Modeling issues through lessons learned from concept maps
Kayley McLeod Every player their game and every game its player: Game collections and programming in Canadian public libraries
Dr. Ilja Frissen The relationship between personality and information literacy self-efficacy in undergraduate students: A pilot-study with a MISt research methods class
16:20-16:25 – Closing remarks
Vera Granikov ASIS&T McGill Chapter Co-Chair

Program
Click here to download a copy of the program.

Slides
To download the presenters' slides, please click here

For further information, please contact asist.mcgill [at] gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you at the symposium!

January 29, 2018: Lunchtime seminar series with Jill Boruf

​​

Practice-informed research to improve information literacy assessment in an academic library setting

SIS Mansion, 3661 Peel, room 106, 10am-12pm

The presenter will discuss her recent research on assessment methods used in the information literacy instruction of rehabilitation sciences students, and how this research grew out of her practice as a health sciences librarian. This seminar will be interesting to both PhD and Master students, researchers, those interested in an academic career and evidence-based librarianship.

Jill Boruff, MLIS, AHIP, has been a librarian at McGill since 2007, and currently serves as the liaison for the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, and the Department of Psychiatry.

October 16, 2017: ASIS&T Lunchtime Seminar

SIS Mansion, 3661 Peel, room TBA, 12:30pm-1:30pm


An opportunity for those scheduled to present at the ASIS&T annual meeting in Washington DC to be able to practice their presentations in order to gain confidence and to receive valuable feedback from their peers.

Speakers:

Cynthia Kumah
Mobile device use to access information on well-being
The research focuses on young adults' use of smartphones to search for information in support of their well-being and how specific applications are used to manage their life to achieve well-being.

Vera Granikov
Overcoming the digital divide? Low education low income parents are equally likely to report benefits associated with online parenting information
Vera will describe findings from a study of perceived outcomes associated with use of online health information. Attention will be given to outcomes reported by parents with lower levels of income and education.

​Reem El Sherif
The value of user feedback: Parents' comments to online health and well-being information providers
The poster illustrates a concrete example of how feedback from information users has been integrated to improve information content. Reem will present how this was operationalized and describe the knowledge management system used in the project.

October 11, 2017: Producing Engaging Podcasts Workshop with Antoon Cox

Antoon Cox

SIS Mansion, 3661 Peel, room 106, 10am-12pm

Antoon Cox is a PhD researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and King's College London (KCL). His research focuses on non-professional interpreting in the emergency department. In this context, he carries out non-participant observation and discourse analysis in a multilingual inner city public hospital emergency department in Brussels. Apart from this, Antoon is training and examining community interpreters at the Flemish Centre for Community interpreting (COC).

​This workshop offers an introduction to the production of research podcasts for the purposes of dissemination within both the academic community and the public at large.

In this workshop, we will study how to turn academic research projects and papers into audio podcasts. We will focus on what it takes to make good podcasts (both content-wise and from a technical perspective) and how to turn your research into a radio documentary or an academic interview. You will also learn how to collect and edit soundbites, interviews and contextual sounds that describe your research. 

Note: This workshop is useful not just for research podcasts! You can effectively use podcasts to engage with your community as an information professional regardless of your information environment. It will also offer incredibly valuable strategies for planning research or reference interviews.

In preparation, please:
  • bring a laptop computer, headphones, and a voice recorder/Dictaphone (or download a voice recording app onto your smartphone such as 'Easy Voice Recorder' (Android), 'Windows Voice Recorder' (Windows phone), or 'Voice Recorder' (iPhone));
  • download and install Audacity (free and legal); and
  • create an account on Freesound.org, a free to use database of sounds (it will not spam your email).

2016-2017

January 27, 2017: Lunch Talk Series - Quan Nha Hong

SIS Mansion, 3661 Peel, room 106, 12:30pm
A systematic review: What it is and what it isn’t
Quan Nha Hong, PhD candidate, Department of Family Medicine, McGill

Summary: This seminar will present what is a systematic literature review and compared it to other types of reviews (rapid review, scoping review, etc).

Why attend: Explanations, tips, and advice shared by Quan Nha will be useful to all those thinking of undertaking a systematic literature review as well as students embarking on the independent reading course this winter or the literature review for their doctoral project. This seminar will also benefit Master's students by introducing the basics of different types of literature reviews, in which librarians participate more and more.

Presenter bio: Quan Nha Hong is a PhD candidate at the Department of Family Medicine at McGill under the supervision of Dr. Pierre Pluye. She is an occupational therapist with Master’s degree in Clinical Sciences and Health Technology Assessment. She is interested in mixed studies reviews, methods of knowledge synthesis and critical appraisal. Her doctoral research project is on the validation of the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT).


This session will be followed by our new exciting series, C4C (Call for Collaboration), which aims to publish papers at the next ASIS&T Annual meeting which will be held in Washington DC in October.

You are all welcome to join the following three research projects, with details to be explored after the Lunch Talk. Please join us if you are interested in any of these topics:

  • Social Media in LIS education: LIS faculties and their PhDs in Twitter
  • Is the poster the end of the research?
  • Have you published enough papers? An investigation on the threshold of winning a tenure-track position.

December 5, 2016 [new date]: Lunch Talk Series - Gita Ghiasi


SIS Mansion, 3661 Peel, room 106, 12:30pm
On the Compliance of Women Engineers with a Gendered Scientific System
Gita Ghiasi, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Concordia University
Engineering is typically associated with technological advancements and innovation, which is central to many countries’ economic growth. Yet engineering fails to meet its promises for societal development, as women are largely underrepresented in this discipline. Attempts for integration of more women in engineering are proven to be only partially successful, as gender disparities are also rooted in cultural associations among engineering, technology, and masculinity. As a consequence, women are likely to face greater difficulties coping with the engineering culture, which is referred to as ‘in/visibility paradox’, as women are often visible as women but invisible as engineers, and they constantly have to work harder to prove themselves as professionals. In the growing literature and focus on the capacity building for women in science and technology, there is a lack of focus on women’s scientific participation and performance in engineering specialties. There remains, therefore, a clear need for disciplinarily homogeneous, contextually enhanced, and methodologically rigorous studies of gender disparities in engineering. This talk seeks to address this void and evaluates gender differences in scientific production and impact of engineers using publication and author data from Web of Science, a comprehensive database of scientific publications. It further scrutinizes the engineering scientific community and analyzes cross-gender co-authorship collaboration patterns among researchers, mapping the position of female and male engineers in a complex network of scientific collaborations.

October 26, 2016: Lunch Talk Series - Jesse David Dinneen

SIS Mansion, 3661 Peel, room 310, 12:30pm
Cardinal: Novel Software for Studying File Management Behavior
Jesse David Dinneen, PhD Candidate, McGill SIS
Abstract provided by the author
At this lunch talk I will discuss my experiences with collecting data and recruiting participants for my PhD study. I'll go into detail about why I had to make custom software for my data collection, how I went about doing this and sharing the software on GitHub, how I tried to use this as an opportunity to make a methodological contribution, the successes and challenges of recruitment, and lessons learned from the whole process. To some extent this will serve as a follow-up to the ASIS&T talk Jon Dorey gave last April about getting ethics approval, since recruitment and data collection are often the next steps in a research project.

This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards.

This session will be followed by the McGill ASIS&T executive meeting, where all are welcome to join us and participate!

September 30, 2016: Lunch Talk Series - Philippe Mongeon and Sarah Cameron-Pesant

SIS Mansion, 3661 Peel, room 106, 12:30pm
This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards. This session will be followed by the McGill ASIS&T executive election. Coffee will be served.

An empirical investigation of partial alphabetical authorship in biomedicine
Philippe Mongeon, PhD Candidate, Université de Montreal
The purpose of this study is to provide original insights on the prevalence of partial alphabetical order in medical research and on its evolution over the last decade. After investigating 1,967,776 articles in biomedical research and clinical medicine with between 6 and 100 authors from Web of Science, this study find that as the number of authors per article increases, the prevalence of partial alphabetical order also increases. A plausible explanation is that a high number of authors complexifies their ordering, so only the most important contributors are ordered according to their contribution while the others are ordered alphabetically.

Exploring scholars’ downloading patterns
Sarah Cameron-Pesant, Master Student, Université de Montreal
In the context of the current “publish or perish” culture of academe, scholars’ working habits and work-life balance issues have become a subject of interest. The aim of this presentation is to examine scholars’ downloading patterns on four different timescales: hourly, weekly, monthly and by season. Our analyses are based on the web log data of Érudit, the main journal diffusion platform of French-Canadian journals in the social sciences and humanities, from 2011 to 2015. We focus on the countries with the highest number of downloads: Canada, France and the United States. Results show that Canadian and French users perform the large majority of their downloads during weekdays. Americans’ online activity, however, is steadier across the day (and night) and during weekends. Canadian users’ download activity increases at the middle of semesters, probably due to the high number of undergraduates using Érudit.

2015-2016

April 15, 2016: ASIS&Tance: A Comprehensive Guide to Your Comprehensive Exam

ASIS&Tance: A Comprehensive Guide to Your Comprehensive Exam
SIS Mansion, room 106, 2pm
The ASIS&T McGill Student Chapter is pleased to announce a new series of events, called 'ASIS&Tance Workshops', wherein popular topics related to research or PhD studies will discussed. These are intended to be helpful, loosely structured meetings for the informal exchange of information and ideas between PhD and MISt students interested in research.

The first session will be a discussion and Q&A regarding the PhD Comprehensive Examination. Senior PhD candidates will be on hand to share their experiences, and to answer questions from junior PhD students.

April 15, 2016: Lunch Talk Series - Johnathan Dorey

SIS Mansion, room 310, 12:30pm
This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards.

This year, the Tri-Council introduced new guidelines regarding ethics training in Canada. McGill made this training mandatory as of this term. With some of you having to apply for ethics before conducting research, this discussion will cover what you need to know before applying! Elements that will be covered include: the ethics application form, what to submit/provide, ethics training, wording issues and coordinating with the ethics review committee of other institutions. Questions are strongly encouraged!

February 12, 2016: Lunch Talk Series - Fei Shu

SIS Mansion, room 310, 12:30pm
This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards.

Since the 1960s, many scholars have questioned the relationship between library and information science. This paper investigates LIS doctoral dissertations in terms of their topics and interdisciplinarity. Results show that LIS is an interdisciplinary field in which library science and information science are intimately related, Information Science has surpassed Library Science to become the dominant research topic in LIS, and doctoral advisors’ academic background affects the interdisciplinarity of their student’s doctoral dissertations.

March 11, 2016: Lunch Talk Series - Steven H. H. Ding and Kunsheng Zhao


SIS Mansion, room 310, 12:30pm
This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards.

The reverse engineering of software is fundamental to understanding the inner workings of new malware, exploring new vulnerabilities in existing systems, and identifying patent infringements in distributed software. It is also an intense and time-consuming process that has a much steeper learning curve than programming. This talk introduces the basics and the latest progress of our collaborative work with Defence Research and Development Canada in resolving critical information retrieval problems for reverse engineers. We study the challenges and concerns of the problem from the perspective of data mining, and address them by proposing new variants of search models in data mining. We have released open source software to the reverse engineer community, and received positive and constructive feedback that has improved our ongoing work.

February 12, 2016: Lunch Talk Series - Fei Shu

SIS Mansion, room 310, 12:30pm
This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards.

Since the 1960s, many scholars have questioned the relationship between library and information science. This paper investigates LIS doctoral dissertations in terms of their topics and interdisciplinarity. Results show that LIS is an interdisciplinary field in which library science and information science are intimately related, Information Science has surpassed Library Science to become the dominant research topic in LIS, and doctoral advisors’ academic background affects the interdisciplinarity of their student’s doctoral dissertations.

January 29, 2016: EBSI - SIS Symposium

EBSI-SIS Symposium
The 9th EBSI-SIS symposium will be held from 1 to 6pm on Friday, January 29, 2016 at the School of Information Studies (3661 Peel) at McGill University. This annual event is organized by students at the McGill School of Information Studies and EBSI at the Université de Montréal.

The purpose of the symposium is to provide EBIS and SIS faculty and students, including post-doctoral, PhD and master's level students, with the opportunity to present their work to their peers in a nurturing environment. Students and faculty can solicit feedback from symposium attendees in order to improve papers, posters, and presentations for later use in academic and professional conferences and journals, if desired. The symposium also provides an opportunity to discover research being done by other students and faculty and to make connections in areas of interest. The event is open to anyone with an interest in Information Studies research. 

Presentations, posters, training in scientific communication, networking opportunities and food are all included. Come enjoy - the event is free of charge!


Please click here to view the symposium's schedule
Please click here for directions to the event

January 15, 2016: Lunch Talk Series - Dr. Rita Orji


SIS Mansion, room 310, 12:30pm
This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards.

Many people want to practice the habits of a healthy lifestyle but find it difficult to motivate themselves to do so, even when aware of the benefits. Persuasive Technology (PT) – technology designed to motivate behavior and attitude change – has helped people to manage addictive behaviors, achieve personal wellness, manage diseases, and make healthy choices. However, most PT interventions are designed using a one-size-fits-all approach, and research have shown that an approach that motivates one type of person to change her behavior may actually deter behavior change for another type of person. In this talk, I will present my work on tailoring PT to increase their efficacy at motivating healthy behavior change.

Dr. Rita Orji is a Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University and a visiting Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria. She received her Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Before moving to Canada, she received a M.Sc. in Information Systems from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria. Her research examines how Information Systems can be designed to aid and motivate people for actions and causes that are beneficial for them and their communities. She is particularly passionate about studying how Behavior Change Support Systems and Persuasive Technologies can be designed to help people move towards improved health and wellness. Dr. Orji’s work has won several awards at local, national, and international levels, including the prestigious Canadian Government Vanier Scholarship, Federal Government of Nigeria, and the Government of Turkey awards, and Best paper awards. She presented her work to the Canadian Parliament. She serves as an Associate Chair, reviewer, on editorial and scientific committees, and as a conference organizing committee member for several international journals and conferences in the area of Human Computer Interactions.

November 20, 2015: Lunch Talk Series - Daniel Steele


SIS Mansion, room 310, 12:30pm
This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards.

The various gaps between urban designers and planners (UDPs) and soundscape researchers results in UDPs failing to incorporate in their everyday work the state of the art knowledge on the interaction between users of urban spaces and their acoustic environments. Acoustic concerns are addressed mostly in the final stages of the design or planning process and this can lead to noisy, unpleasant city soundscapes marked with barrier walls. UDPs are generally responsible for shaping and intervening in the urban environment, but can lack sufficient acoustic expertise to achieve the best outcomes. Meanwhile, soundscape researchers, study the acoustic environment as it is perceived and understood by people, yet have little power to intervene and apply their findings.

In this study, semi-structured interviews deal with issues of soundscape and acoustic concerns by inviting UDPs to discuss general concepts about acoustics followed by a discussion that puts those concepts into context with two specific interventions, from their past and present work. Using the method of grounded theory, we identified key findings on a number of topics, such as: different categories for UDPs’ conceptualization(s) of soundscape; their perceived agency for change how obtain expertise; and the way in which UDPs evaluate the success of the acoustic components of their interventions. Further questions reveal how UDPs access new knowledge. The long-term goal of the study is to identify and/or create support materials or tools for UDPs that build on their existing understanding of acoustic issues and aim to aid them in making better decisions about soundscape in their daily work.

October 23, 2015: Lunch Talk Series - Mohammed AlGhamdi

Mohammed AlGhamdi's presentation
SIS Mansion, room 310, 12:30pm
This series aims to facilitate scholarly culture at SIS and provide a platform for informal discussion of works in progress. The general format entails bringing your lunch (e.g., brown bag) to the meeting room, eating while listening to a guest speaker present their current readings or research, and discussing afterwards.

The first of talk in the series will be given by SIS PhD student Mohammed AlGhamdi, who will talk about how he used the Think Aloud protocol in a usability evaluation of 3D Virtual Learning Environments with early teens: "I’ll be discussing how I got to this topic, my research questions, methodology, and some preliminary results".

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