NELIG Blog

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Updates

• Video Recording of Microlearning and Learning on Demand is on our website
• May 14th Meeting – Embracing our Electronic World at College of the Holy Cross – Deadline for Proposals is 12/14
• NELIG Conference – June 4th at Yale’s West Campus – Call for Proposals will be out via the listserv

Today’s theme came from information we received from the feedback from the annual conference last year.  There is a meeting today  simultaneously at URI so there will be notes from that meeting on the blog.

Research for Success: Using the Library for Thesis and Capstone Projects

Regina Raboin and Laurie Sabol, Reference & Instruction Librarians, Tisch Library, Tufts University
Reference and Instruction Librarians Regina Raboin and Laurie Sabol will discuss the eight-week course they offer through Tufts University’s Experimental College. Geared towards upperclassmen working on an honors thesis or capstone project, the course introduces students to the major research tools and techniques at an intermediate-to-advanced level specific to their subject area. Each student also develops a working bibliography of resources, as well as a plan for continuing his/her research.

Presentation Notes:

• Research for Success Using the Library for Thesis and Capstone Projects – 1/2 credit course offered for the past 3 1/2 years
• Class was formed because of: lack of research skills among students, entree from University President, interest on behalf of the Library Staff and Administrators.  On listservs and articles they noticed there was a proven record of success for courses like this.
• They started by developing a syllabus and looked at other libraries that had courses like this, such as URI.  The difference between their course and URI is that those are required and students are looking for gen ed requirements.  They brainstormed for at least a year about what skills they wanted to teach and tried to make a plan they could implement.  They solicited comments from faculty in departments that offer senior theses or capstone projects.  There were varied responses – some supportive, some turfy.  The faculty are now very supportive of the work the  librarians are doing.  From the beginning, they were collaborating with faculty rather than being in conflict with them, but there’s always more to do.
• They had to find a home for the course because there is no gen ed requirement at Tufts.  There is an Experimental College at Tufts where different things are taught and there was good support from the Experimental College.  They also collaborated with the Academic Resource Center and  continue to work and offer workshops with them.  One of the most important connections is the relationship with the Undergraduate Education Office.  In Week 2 of the course, they have a faculty panel and the dean of that office is on the panel.  They still need to work more closely with them.
• Promoting the course: In 2006, they made flyers, and put them anywhere on campus and was not a terribly successful form of promotion.   Now they send out emails to students have been targeted to take this course due to their GPAs.  It’s listed on Department office websites where a thesis is offered.
• Challenges: Buy in from administration and awareness of the class are still challenges.  The course has changed multiple times – graded vs pass fail, 8 week or 9 week.
• Lessons learned: Important to make changes if it isn’t working. Always looked at if assignment worked and did it achieve the goal they wanted it to achieve.  Changed an assignment because it was too easy where they were given the whole citation so they made it more process focused when they gave them an incomplete citation and where did they locate it and how did they locate it. They have an assignment on statistics – first it was just look at the census for your hometown.  This year, based on your research topic, find a piece of data for your question and an opinion poll on your topic and one non statistic piece of information on your topic.  Report back on what they did and how they found it. Students understand and like to report in different ways – powerpoint doesn’t work for everyone – included a poster as an option.  Some students prefer the powerpoint though.  Try to adapt to students topics and needs. In the research log, they streamlined it to be easier for them to use and understand what the librarians were looking for. The course started out as pass/fail 1/2 credit but they thought that if they went to graded more students would take it.  Students were concerned about their GPA and it wasn’t worth it for a graded course not in their major.  It was a good activity for them to add grade points to activities even though they are switching back to pass/fail.
• Faculty panel – pass on their information about research to their faculty and good to see that faculty struggle with the same questions as they do and made them feel more okay from that.  They added a student to the panel to get a peer perspective and the students were interested in her perspective.
• Assessment: Used evaluative questions for students to answer on how to improve their class, organization of the class, if they would recommend the course and why and their satisfaction with the class.  The answers aligned with their goals for the class.

Q & A

• How many students are in each class?  How do you get them?  You said you had support, did you have to go to curriculum committee?  3-13 students per semester that they attract through promotion.  They submitted a syllabus and met with the director but did not have to go through curriculum committee because it’s through the Experimental College.
• Where are the courses held?  In the library computer classroom.  Some assignments are more in class and some are independent m outside of class.  Every assignment is put in their topic for their thesis.  Mix of discussion activities, homework, and in class assignments.
• What strategies do you employ for them to form learning communities?  Other than blackboard, it’s personality driven and forced through group work. They don’t use blogs, wikis, or like facebook anymore.  They don’t know about Second Life or any of these things but this is a small sampling.
• Do they need to take an overload or are there other half courses?  They don’t need an overload to take it but students do have a lot of courses and end up dropping the course because they are overloaded.

A New Upper Division Undergraduate Instruction Paradigm

Amy Craig, Research and Instruction Librarian, Brandeis University
Brandeis University instruction librarians and instructional technologists are working on a new paradigm that allows instruction to target students systematically, teaching progressively more sophisticated literacies, using evidence-based pedagogies and regular assessment to improve both the program and the teaching.  The paradigm is based on principles, the delivery mechanisms vary according to disciplines.  The new paradigm is being rolled out through the subject liaison program, in conjunction with a campus-wide effort by departments and programs to establish learning goals for students’ majors.

Presentation Notes:

• Trained as a librarian but has done extensive IT work including course management system work but is now more in undergraduate instruction
• History – 1st Year Library Instruction Program – FLIP – connected with writing program, workshop on resources that is tool based and saw every student at Brandeis but students weren’t getting much out of it other than knowing a librarians face, which was useful but tools change too often for it to be useful. Workshops for upper level were around 20/year and very specific to the course and could only do so many and only for the students who had faculty that called.  Knew that things had to change to get a larger swath of students.  Did more assessment and knew to reach more students.  Each department now has to write learning goals.  Started to assess each program according to learning goals and were at a point to help faculty as they were writing learning goals.  There aren’t enough liaisons to reach each department.  There are liaison teams that include more staff that bring a wealth of knowledge.  They can also co-teach these courses.  The requests from faculty are increasingly interdisciplinary.
• Strategy – systematic, sustainable, comprehensive, research based, assessed, progressive.  To do these things, we need to be strategic and drop things that don’t work – like research guides ( fire hose of information) and tool teaching (tools change).  Also, provide different delivery approaches for different disciplines.  What does it mean to be strategic?  Talk to the faculty that we know and build on relationships but not always provide what the faculty are asking for.  If they want a session that is so course specific that it won’t be used in the rest of the student’s career – is it useful?  Also talk to the faculty who are writing the learning goals and have them be co-thinkers and get into the learning goals.  Faculty in the Social Sciences thought there were citation issues but its mostly information landscape issues – student can’t recognize what it is on the screen so not sure if it’s a website, book or journal

Q&A

• Your libguides are inspiring to us, I’m interested in why you’re moving away from them since they do seem to be more helpful for us as librarians?  Said that to be provocative but we need to find something else before we get rid of them but these are not terribly helpful
• What did you mean by sustainable?  As many people as we have on staff can continue to do that.  Modular is that whatever we do for one class can be used for another rather than generate new work.  Need modules to work across the board
• What kind of model is the science team thinking about if not a lab?  For biology, starting with the honors students.
• You talked about surveys as assessment – is that faculty or students?  First year program – instructor assesses and librarians assess each other.

“Gear Up!”: A Showcase Event for Graduate and Professional School Students

Jane Quigley, Head of Kresge Physical Sciences Library, Dartmouth College

In October 2009, shortly after the start of fall term, Dartmouth librarians hosted a showcase event for graduate and professional school students, postdocs and researchers called “Gear Up! Information Management Tools to Make Your Life Easier.” Traditionally, outreach to graduate students (workshops and information fairs) has aimed at raising awareness of research resources and information discovery tools.   With this event, however, we aimed at highlighting tools that help students manage the downstream stages of their research, such as reference and pdf mangers, RSS readers, and organizers like Evernote. We displayed library tools, extensions and widgets, and answered questions about information rights management with respect to dissertations and theses. This highly practical event met with a positive and appreciative response; attendance and feedback were good, and we laid a solid foundation for future encounters with this group of more advanced students.

Presentation Notes

• Event that was held early in fall term for graduate and professional students.  They began in the summer thinking about how they can help them integrate in the library.  Undergraduate student channels are well established but not so much at the upper level.  There are mostly poorly attended workshops.  Graduate programs in the physical and life sciences and there are professional programs in business, medical and engineering.  It was a compact group of students to reach out to.
• Started out with certain assumptions – already knowledgeable and not a blank slate, motivated and mature learners, already under pressure.  There are fewer opportunities to work with these students in the classroom, no assignments to specifically help them develop their research skills.  They already have a set of research strategies and are set in their ways.
• Three big ideas – Fairs rather than workshops – lower anxiety participants control their level of commitment.  Emphasis  on the practical – more appealing than teaching research skills and strategies and would be immediately useful.  Build relationships and gain credibility.
• Planning and prep – 5 person group – 4 liaison librarians and the DCAL director for graduate programs (tremendously helpful – different perspective and had communication channels), one meeting and a few emails and phone calls
• Marketing and publicity – we tend to plan opportunities but don’t tell people about it, so there was a lot of effort put into marketing through posters, flyers, emails, student newspaper, events calendar, facebook, DCAL.  Person on committee from DCAL could do things to market that they librarians couldn’t.
• Program highlights – 7 or 8 staffed tables with commercial applications, freeware tools, widgets – endnote, zotero, refworks, papers and mendelet, evernote, google reader and rss, library tools and widgets – tie in to things they are already comfortable with
• Tables about services and people – expert resources – copyright and author’s rights management, computing support.  Displays on books, research guides, workshop calendars
• Measures of success – 30+ attendees, busy for the whole 2 hours, spent time at each of the tables, survey responses (about 1/3 responded) were positive, foundation to build on for upcoming workshops and road shows/repeat performances

Q&A

• Where was the fair? Location was debated but it was in the main hall of the entry way to the library
• When did you start marketing it?  Wish it was further out but it was not until a week to ten days before the event.  Marketing person was swamped so they couldn’t get it out earlier.  Wish it was in everyone’s hands at orientation but next time
• What day was it on? Friday 1-3 based on the class schedule
• Did you invite or think about inviting vendors? No, we didn’t.  They do an eresources fair which is a vendor event and have both librarians and vendors and they have a different feel.  Not sales events exactly but less intimate than librarians and students.  Did get swag from vendors beforehand.
• Tables had demos, handouts?  Yep.  Monitor with someone showing how it would work, handouts, sign up sheet for follow up (but didn’t work as well as hoped)

Emerson College’s Information Literacy Faculty Learning Community (IL-FLC)

Nicole Brown, Coordinator of Instruction & Reference Librarian, Emerson College

Laura McCune-Poplin, Instruction & Reference Librarian, Emerson College

Karen St. Clair, Director of the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning, Emerson College

Instruction Librarians Nicole Brown and Laura McCune-Poplin, and Faculty Developer, Karen St.Clair, will discuss Emerson College’s Information Literacy Faculty Learning Community (IL-FLC). The IL-FLC approaches information literacy from a course design perspective and provides a unique opportunity for librarians, faculty, and teaching and learning experts to articulate ways that librarians and faculty can enhance information literacy at Emerson. Faculty participants range from General Education instructors to graduate program leaders.

Presentation Notes:

• Faculty learning community – clarify term learning community – Milton Cox (guru of learning communities) – group of faculty (6-15)  and professional staff engaging in an active year long program with a curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning.  Can be a cohort or a theme based one (they chose IL themed learning community)  They always ask why when they work together.  Set up because on campus the administration said IL will be a priority.  Exciting but scary – great opportunity but what does it mean.  Accreditation was coming up so they latched onto that because NEASC said IL needs to be a partnership between faculty and librarians.  They needed a plan and the plan should mean anything they wanted since a learning community would fit with campus culture – homegrown and artsy.
• Approach – issues with teaching and student learning can be solved with course design.  Course design is going on a journey and if you design a journey – Where do I want to go? How will I know I’ve gotten there? How will I get there? Designing a course is similar – what are the learning goals?  How will I know the students have gotten there?  What assessments?  How will I help them get there?  Wanted to model course design approach in the learning community.  Wanted to use different tools in the approach and be interactive and different types of activities (interview each other, discussions).  Always thinking about what it has to do with student learning.
• What was covered in these sessions?  4 sessions in a semester – monthly meetings.  Session 1- set tone and demystify information literacy, take an it’s already in your course approach, our role is to help you articulate where you do it and hone in and sharpen it for students. Brainstorm students IL strengths and weaknesses – they just say they’ll discuss the weak spots and they always bring up positives.  Session 2 – student learning outcomes and course design approach.  Discuss IL in that context.  Session 3 – Assessments – look at research assignments through an IL lens.  Session 4 – practical approaches, next steps and collaborations – what are our action items.  Theme changes, format is the same – chat, agenda, activity, highlights of the reading and reflection.
• Logistics – Laura is a plant and not a facilitator.  Select faculty invited by email.  This semester there are 2 groups of participants.  Notebooks for each organized by session.  Always have food.  They meet immediately after to debrief and be flexible about the session needs and individual’s needs.  At the end of last semester, there was an assessment where the reflection sheets were suggested and the readings so those were incorporated.  Will change again based on assessment this time.
• Issues are common across the faculty – same issues rise to the top – like evaluation of sources.  Activities are transportable to different groups – could be used for assignment consultations for faculty.  Develops a framework for it.
• Research assignment worksheet – faculty worked through it together and then had rich conversations about thinking about creating assignments and was not personal.

Q&A

• How long did each session last? Since volunteers – 1 hour and it’s a fast hour but the faculty feel that it’s doable.
• For the first group, did you keep in touch and see how they implemented it?  Trying to do that now, one left, one on leave and the other wants to do it again and brought a colleague
• How did you choose faculty and what’s their motivation?  Started with the school of Institute of Interdisciplinary School – little bit different and like pedagogy, like being forerunners and small number of faculty.  Targeted through the library director and individually emailed invitation and goals.  Asking for their goodwill.  Director of the institute encouraged them.  Then opened to whole campus but still targeted and invited.  Needs to be a directive so there are representatives from each department that could come
• How many in session?  First time 4, now one has 6 and one has 5.  Wouldn’t want more than 6 or 8 at any one time with only an hour.
• Is it hard doing 2 sessions in one day?  Trying to clear brains between.  Found helpful to be back to back to know what to expect.  Debriefing is better because it’s all in one day.  More validation when information is shared because it’s the same issue across the board.   Helps faculty to feel connected because they feel teaching is solitary.  Opportunity to discuss mechanics of teaching not just be a researcher in a field.
• You all mentioned terminology and vocabulary, our audience doesn’t understand our LIS terms and library has a bricks and mortar connotation, starting to think we need to rethink these terms about what are users are looking for.   We need to not be hung up on what we call it and focus on the process and doing it.
• Do you mention ACRL standards?  Yes, it’s a reading and it says as a reference only so it doesn’t terrify them so they don’t have to do all of it and not scary for them.
• Do you have an online component?  No, we want the face to face and hand holding.  There is a variation of skills that faculty have across the school.

Wrap-up and discussion

• Any sharing to reach upperclassmen, advance researchers or faculty members
• IL for SHS at Cape Cod community college – upperclassmen are second year and in dental hygiene they have an IL component.  Second year students at the culmination of evidence based project are going to do poster presentations 5-7 minutes on current research that will be juried by faculty and local dentists and the winners will be at a regional conference and exhibit there.
• High percentage of adjunct faculty who are hard to reach out to, how do others reach them?  Relationship building and addressing individual needs but not on campus much and don’t share assignments with each other.  Opportunities to get them together to share but scheduling is difficulty.  Tufts does a Tools for Tenure workshop and that gets junior faculty involved and it includes the academic technology.  Day long workshop which is offered every other year and helps to demystify tenure.