SIGIA-L Mail Archives: RE: SIGIA-L: survey results: profession
RE: SIGIA-L: survey results: professional credentials for IAs
From: Tal Herman (therman_at_seralat.com)
Date: Sat Nov 11 2000 - 16:41:53 EST
Back on Tuesday in a message regarding the results of the IA professional
credentials survey, Louis Rosenfeld asked:
-----Begin Original Message-----
From: owner-sigia-l_at_asis.org [mailto:owner-sigia-l_at_asis.org]On Behalf Of
Louis Rosenfeld
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 6:27 PM
To: SIGIA mailing list
Subject: SIGIA-L: survey results: professional credentials for IAs
[snip]
* 3% of you claim to have a masters degree in IA. Which begs the question:
where the heck did you get those degrees??? 1% of you claims professional
certification in IA. Ditto. This might be due to my not wording these
questions well, though I did pre-test them...
[snip]
-----End Original Message-----
Louis,
I did not think the survey question regarding academic credentials was
either poorly written or ambiguous. Nonetheless, I recall debating with
myself about how to answer that particular question, ultimately coming down
in favor of saying that, yes, I have a Master's degree in IA.
Actually, my MS is in Information Design and Technology from Georgia Tech
(see <http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/idt/index.html>). My graduating class in
1999 was the third or fourth for that program. While there are some,
including some of those who have completed this degree program, who might
debate the degree to which the words "information design" actually belong in
the program title, there is no doubt that graduates of the IDT program have
been very successful in landing ID/IA positions in a wide variety of large
and small web design companies not just in Atlanta but nationwide. When I
began the IDT program in 1997, it was the only one of it's kind that I could
find in the US. I believe that Carnegie-Mellon might have had a program
with some of the same elements, but I did not know of it at the time. At
this point, there are probably around 20 IDT grads working in IA or similar
positions, not to mention those who started off as IAs and moved on to other
positions (e.g. consultants, creative directors, managers, etc.).
So, all of this begs the question. What did I learn in school? It might be
easiest to start off by saying that I did not learn library science. The
failure to offer at least a basic understanding of library science was, I
think, one of the major oversights of the IDT program. That said, the
program of study encompassed a wide variety of theoretical approaches to
understanding multimedia applications as well as extensive practical
experience in the technologies used to construct those applications, whether
for the Internet or for CDROM or other platforms. Information
design/architecture was not taught as a separate field of study but rather
was addressed in a variety of different settings as students attempted to
resolve the problems attendant to creating multimedia applications. If
you're interested in the particulars of the IDT program, I recommend that
you check out the URL included above.
Does this mean that I have a master's degree in IA? I'll let others on the
list be the ultimate judge of that. I think it does, and the success of
other IDT graduates in securing and prospering in ID/IA positions suggests
that I'm not completely deluded in holding that opinion. I would, however,
be interested to hear what other list members think about the IDT program.
Tal
====================================
tal herman
therman_at_seralat.com
<http://www.seralat.com/>
[Please note the new e-mail address]
====================================
Paradise is exactly like
where you are right now....
Only much, much better.
====================================
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