ITIG TechCorner - April 27, 2007
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ITIG Tech Corner Report on:

"Library-Faculty Collaboration"
-Presenters-
Colleen Anderson and Enoch Park

Bryant University,
North Smithville, RI

Report by: Janice Schuster, Providence College
April 27, 2007



On Friday, April 27, 2007, the Information Technology Interest Group (ITIG) and the Librarians on Online Course Information (LOCI) of ACRL/New England Chapter presented a program at Bryant University on "Library-faculty collaboration."

Colleen Anderson, head of reference services, and Enoch Park, instructional technologist, both at Bryant, co-presented the first portion of the program. They discussed student, faculty, and librarian challenges in identifying and using the library's resources. They mentioned reasons for collaboration, including: to have a more organized way to capture class assignments and ongoing class activity, since the librarians at Bryant struggled to keep up with class assignments; and the desire to build a virtual "information commons" with the potential to draw other team players into the process and reach off-campus and distance education students.

The librarians began to realize the potential of Blackboard, Bryant's course management system. Blackboard enables easy communication and collaboration with faculty and students, and faculty are already familiar with it. Colleen decided to approach faculty who use Blackboard about collaborating on a "library resources" module. Dr. Janet Morahan-Martin of the Psychology department agreed to incorporate the module into her Abnormal Psychology course for the fall of 2005.

Enoch Park, Bryant's instructional technology specialist, added Colleen to Dr. Morahan-Martin's site as a "course builder" (which prohibits access to any grade information). Colleen developed the library resources module which includes: library databases appropriate to the subject; APA style guides; relevant websites; library's subject guide to psychology; link to course reserves; explanation of a peer-reviewed article; contact information for the reference librarians. Once a module is created, it can be stored, updated, and copied into another class Blackboard site.

They market the service via: faculty liaison program; faculty open house; coffee with the faculty; attending faculty development programs; and word of mouth.

Outcomes: They plan to gather data from academic year 2006-2007 to measure student perception of the value of the library resources module. Faculty continue to request modules, including 2 recent request from Mathematics faculty.

Future possibilities: Use the discussion board to start a discussion thread on resources; collaborate with the Writing Center re adding them to the course sites when there is a writing assignment; and collaborate with graduate school faculty about developing modules for distance education programs.



Report by:
Janice Schuster
Reference Librarian
Providence College College
Providence, RI
jschustr@providence.edu

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