CI 101: Community Informatics as General Education

Abstract

In some countries, university students fulfill a set of general education requirements in addition to the core requirements for their major program of study. The role of general education requirements is to broaden students, particularly with respect to general skills and knowledge such as reasoning, communicating, understanding the natural and social world, and appreciating cultures, the arts, and human values. In this paper, we propose that community informatics can be part of contemporary general education. We present a brief course outline for a notional CI 101 in order to promote more concrete consideration and critical analysis of this proposal.