library+instruction+technology

Anne Pemberton and Rachel Radom from University of North Carolina Wilmington shared their experience in creating and teaching a three credit hour course. The development of this course came out of a request from the computer science department. The Library had (and still) teaches two different one credit hour courses. 

Anne described the initial discussion by the Library staff and the pros/cons of the course having a library (LIB) designation in the course catalog. Anne listed some of the challenges the Library faced getting the course approved by the University's Curriculum Committee. She suggested talking to members of the committee before bringing the course proposal to identify questions early enough to get answers. 

Some ideas given during the presentation that I will probably integrated into the two credit hour course I teach:

• Structure assignment grades so that students with an A don't have to take a final (or do the final project in my class). 
• Assign students to take notes and post them on a wiki or blog. Have students review the notes at the start of the next class and make changes.
• Promote the course on the Library's web site.

Anne posted their PowerPoint slides (4.6 MB) and recommended reviewing her LIB 103 class blog for syllabus and assignment examples. Rachel also has her LIB103 syllabus and assignment online if you are interested.

I was glad I attended this session even though I've been teaching a two credit hour course for the past three years. My biggest challenge (frustration?) teaching the course is getting students to turn in assignments. It was reassuring to hear that others have experience many of the same challenges.

Feel free to take a look at what I used for our Library Research Methods course for this past Fall semester. You may also want to look at the modified syllabus for Spring.  

Every librarian and faculty member should read the CIBER briefing paper Information behaviour of the researcher of the future (2 MB PDF). CIBER conducted this research for the British Library and JISC . The report focuses on information seeking behavior of students born after 1993 (the Google Generation). The paper also ties in research from OCLC's Perceptions studies. You may also want to listen to presentation given and Q&A's when the paper was released on January 16, 2008.

Found via Stephen's Lighthouse. 

This was one of the two "current issues" discussion groups sponsored by ACRL's Instruction Section (IS) at Midwinter. I was planning to go to both, but impromptu Collage training (more on that in another post) changed my plans. The topic for this discussion is very relevant to me as an instructor. IS has an overview page for this discussion (the link should be good for awhile…but I know they are planning a redesign eventually).

Scott Scheidlower from York College (CUNY) lead the discussion. Scott started by reminding us that the student, the institution's disability coordinator, and the instructor/librarian are all responsible for student success.  We must accommodate special requests if possible, except if they are prohibitively expensive. The student's disability must be documented with the institution for the accommodation to be required.

Invisible disabilities are not seen by casual observation. Invisible disabilities can include deafness, dyslexia, color blindness, depression, and mental illness. It is okay for us to ask how to help someone. It is not okay to ask what the disability is specifically.

Scott is a firm believer that we should understand and effectively use Gardner's multiple intelligences to increase student learning. Scott had created 10 scenarios and assigned each table to discuss two. I jotted down notes as each table reported their ideas.

These ideas can be used to improve your teaching technique and handouts for students with/without disabilities:

• speak clearly and depending on the room louder than normal
• face your students when speaking (speechreading aka lip reading)
• make sure you are illuminated in a dark room
• gesture with your hand or with a laser pointer instead of saying "click the search button"
• number handouts instead of relying on color to distinguish the
• use shading or patters on charts and graphs instead of colors
• label colors with numbers
• consistently use the same shape to represent a color (e.g. triangles are red, squares are blue)
• ask a student to take notes and make them available to the entire class
• ask a student to navigate the computer allowing you the ability to maintain eye contact and gesture freely
• accept alternative assignments if possible
• determine if your disability services office provides a scribe service

These ideas can be used to improve the computers in your libraries and your library's web sites:

• install a text to speech screen reader on computers
• install voice recognition software on at least one machine
• use alt text in html pages to be very descriptive of the image being displayed
• don't use frames and limit the use of tables to layout pages

One participant suggested that we find out if our institution was a member of Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic. She had positive experiences working with "RFB&D" to obtain materials for students.

Scott recommended that we read the following references for more information.

Fabio, D. (1994-2007). Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences. In Encyclopedia of educational technology. Retrieved December 3, 2007, from <http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/multiintell/index.htm>

Hernon, P., & Calvert, P. (Eds.). (2006). Improving the quality of library services for students with disabilities. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

Hurst, A. (1996). Reflecting on researching disability and higher education. In L. Barton (Ed.), Disability and society: Emerging issues and insights (pp. 123-46). Longman sociology series. London: Longman.

Konur, O. (2006, July). Teaching disabled students in Higher Education. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(3), 351-363. Retrieved January 3, 2007. doi:10.1080/13562510600680871

U.S. Department of Justice. (n.d.). ADA home page. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from <http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm>

[tags]ALAMW08, Midwinter08[/tags] 

Here's another one to add to your informationista bag o'tricks. Classes draw nigh and people are starting to freak out. A religion paper is due tomorrow and one of the required readings is in a reference book. Unfortunately, someone is currently hiding in the building with the book and their laptop, hidden the book, or walked off with the book (unlikely). 

On a whim, I went to Amazon and found that the AWOL title is available on Amazon with Search Inside. The student looking for the book needed a specific article. We quickly brought up an image of the page he needed to read. He mentioned that he didn't know Amazon offered such a feature.

I don't normally talk about Amazon during instruction. I do sometimes talk about Google Book Search and/or the related copyright issues with GBS. Do you make a point to talk about these commercial discovery tools with classes or individual students?

This will be my fifth time teaching the class and the second time using a wiki. Wiki-ists will rail against me for not using a wiki the right way.

We have Blackboard on campus. I should probably use it. I don't because I would only use it to store files. I tried using Blackboard the first time I taught and it didn't work out so well.

It's been an interesting week and it's only Wednesday. I find myself sitting at the Reference Desk twelve hours after arriving to work. Our Director is in Columbus for OPAL (not the one that gets all of the biblioblogosphere hype) and OhioLINK meetings. One coworker is out sick with something that sounds like bronchitis and another coworker is recovering from major surgery.  So, that leaves just two of us and Brian normally works late on Thursdays…so here I am writing this blog post.

I have been able to use this time to catch up on some recent journal articles. Steven Bell has a good article, "Stop IAKT syndrome with student live demos," in the latest issue of Reference Services Review. [OhioLINK link | everyone else link] Steven does an excellent job of laying out the benefits and challenges to turning over the keyboard to a student during instruction.

I don't think we are running into many students that are suffering from "I already know it syndrome" in our classes. If they feel that way, they are doing a good job of hiding their boredom.

Kate and I have been using students to demonstrate searches during instruction this academic year. We don't have student computers (yet) in our instruction room. We reserve computers in the lab on the first floor and have the students work together for about 15 to 20 minutes at the start of class. Then we go back upstairs and ask for volunteers to show us what they searched, what they found, and why they chose certain articles. It has worked out well for introductory speech, composition, and some disciplinary entry level classes as well. We have received positive faculty feedback. We have be doing 3-2-1 assessment and the student comments are positive too. 

So if you're still being the "sage on the stage", you might want to give this a try. 

The latest edition of the Horizon Report is now available for your browsing/reading pleasure. This is a joint publication from The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. The technologies forecasted along with their time to adoption include:

• user created content (1 year or less),
• social networking (1 year or less),
• mobile phones (2 to 3 years),
• virtual worlds (2 to 3 years),
• new scholarship and emerging forms of publication (4 to 5 years), and
• massively multiplayer educational gaming (4 to 5 years)

The executive summary identifies several trends and challenges impacting higher education. "Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given." [page 4] I agree with this statement, but would like to know who really considers information literacy a given in the first place? We try our best to teach students how to use our resources, but we know we don't reach everyone and even the ones we do reach are not always receptive to learning because it's all free on the web anyway.

The authors continue, "Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the information literacy skills of new students are not improving as the post-1993 Internet boomlet enters college." [page 4] Yep. The continual challenge we face is helping our students straddle the digital and analog worlds during information research. We are also challenged to help faculty understand that their students do not approach research the same way that they did 10-20 years ago when they were in college.

I enjoy reading/browsing this report. However, I am always concerned about how I can really apply any of these technologies locally.

Steven Bell wrote about the National Freshman Attitudes Report on The Kept Up Academic Librarian. The report is based on an attitudinal survey administered in the fall to 97,626 first years as they arrived on campus by Noel-Levitz. Questions asked about intellectual interest show that:

• 57% feel that books have helped them grow intellectually or creatively
• 47% derive a lot of satisfaction from reading
• 40% don't like to read scholarly materials and only do so when required
• 40% do not take any pleasure in reading books 
• Students at 4 year private IHEs had slightly better attitudes than students at 4 year public IHEs
• Female students had better attitudes than male students 

The Pew Research Center for People and the Press has released a new report on Millennials attitudes, A Portrait of "Generation Next": How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics. They are defining Generation Next to be those born between 1981 and 1988. The data comes from a survey conducted in September 2006 and from data collected in earlier polling.  The report includes comparisons with polling of previous generations to show how attitudes are shifting over time.

The uniqueness of this report is the compilation of technology and social software usage data with their views on their lifestyle, politics, religion, and social issues. Some of the findings include:

• 80% talk to their parents daily and 75% see their parents weekly
• 50% have modified their body with a tattoo or piercing
• 20% have little or nothing to do with religion
• 33% pay attention to politics "most of the time"
• 48% identify as Democratic Party and 35% as Republicans
• 40% feel that as a citizen they have a "duty" to vote
• 23% read the newspaper
• 67% feel that immigration is good for the country
• 74% support privatizing Social Security [They obviously didn't loose their 401K when the Internet bubble burst a few years back...]
• 47% support gay marriage

Denise Monbarren, Special Collections Librarian at The College of Wooster Libraries, presented a concurrent session at the OPAL Conference on using special collections in support of student learning. I was interested in what she had to say, since I had received a request to use materials from our special collections this past Spring to support a class assignment.

Denise gave us many good ideas. She recommended that we understand our special collections strengths and how that matches faculty research interests and courses being taught.  She strongly encouraged us to think through preservation issues before having students use materials. A major concern is the handling of materials and the ability to make copies. Denise suggested having two copies of heavily use materials (like yearbooks) and designating one as the one that can be photocopied and used during classes. She also recommended that assignments not require students to use the same item.

She gave some ideas for how to start using special collections to support student learning and also indicated how much time it would take.

Minimal commitment – Show and Tell

Give tours and show some examples.  This can be used to introduce students to the idea of primary research. This option works best if you have limited staff. 

Limited commitment – Show and Tell and Learn 

Give a tour and use examples for hands-on learning to provide context. Denise advised that this be done during one class period and works well for those with limited staff.

Moderate commitment – Show and Tell and Discover

Give a tour and have students come back in groups of 3-4 during the semester to research a specific area of interest.  Denise advised that this can be done well if the faculty member gives the students direction and not have every group's assignment due at the same time.

Extreme commitment – Show and Tell and Hope for the Best 

Give a tour and allow students to pursue individual research in the collection. Denise shared that in her experience this only works well for motivated upper level students.  She advised that it would be difficult with limited staff.

Denise finished by saying that she was more than happy to have anyone come and visit her in Wooster and she would share more of her experiences. Examples of some of the policies she developed can be found on the College of Wooster's Special Collections page.