Ted Talks course at UMW

I just read about a Freshman Seminar-type course that revolves around Ted Talks as the field for exploration. The course, taught at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA, includes student-led discussions on Ted Talks that they find interesting, further written comments from students on the course blog, as well as presenting their own Ted-format talk.

What a great idea for fostering student-interest driven discussions as an introduction to the world of ideas as they enter college, and "the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world". There could be all kinds of possibilities for information literacy instruction too, but with some juicy content to explore.

Here's the syllabus if you'd like to read more. [EK]

Get real

At this time of year, well, ANY time of year, it's easy to get caught up in the details of planning for instruction and preparing to meet the tidal wave that is Autumn Quarter. This uplifting, brief article is a great reminder to take time to reflect on your identity as a teacher:

Sense of self: embracing your teacher identity, by Carrie Donovan, Instruction Librarian at Indiana University, Bloomington.

From In the Library with a Lead Pipe, a fine blog for listening in on a wide range of conversations in librarianship. [EK]

Notes from TLG Connect: Reflections on Graduate Orientations

This intimate discussion revolved around the challenges, experiences, and hopes for providing effective orientations for graduate students. Below are a few tips and ideas that emerged. Listen to the audio recording for more of our discussion.

Keep it simple (what do they need to know right now?)

• After initially approaching orientations as BI sessions, Deb has since had better success with more general overviews based on what they need to know just to get started. Her current efforts include a visual orientation using images in PPT, set to a Q&A format.
• Emily likes to keep the emphasis on establishing an ongoing relationship with graduate students, and presenting a human face to the Libraries, raising awareness of services they may need in the future, without getting bogged down in details.
• Create handouts or guides to provide information and links.

Create an interactive environment

• We’re all interested in getting more input from grad students about what they already know, what they’d like to know, how they’d like to have instruction delivered, and their research interests.
• One idea is to ask them about their concerns and anxieties as they get started, as well as what they have found most valuable, whether in terms of people, tools, sources from the library in their previous academic experiences. This would give students a chance to share valuable tips with each other while giving the librarian an opportunity to translate how some of those services translate to this new setting.
• Another approach would be to contact graduate students who had just completed their first year, and ask them what they wished they had known during that first month of grad school. Use this to help structure future orientations.
• Hold a monthly synchronous discussion space where students can check-in, ask questions, even if off-campus.

Readings

Article explaining the use of online discussion boards for a synchronous online workshop on doing literature reviews for distance graduate students

• Rempel, J. G., & McMillen, P. S. (2008). Using courseware discussion boards to engage graduate students in online library workshops. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 13(4), 363-380.

Study on the information-seeking behavior of PhD students; suggests possibilities for how librarians can more effectively communicate and serve this group:

• Fleming-May, R., & Yuro, L. (2009). From student to scholar: the academic library and social sciences Phd students’ transformation. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 9(2), 199-220.

[DLR]

Thinking like a designer...

I love this blog, Designing Better Libraries, about applying design thinking to library services and settings. This particular post lays out a few design principles that clicked with the LibGuides swimming around in my brain. Among the principles, originally discussed in the context of presenting, but easily applicable to the world were about to plunge into:

--Put yourself in their shoes.

--It's not about the tools, it's about the ideas.

--Embrace simplicity.

There's more, and each elaborated upon, but with simplicity and care for the reader. Read more!

[EK]

21st Century Fluencies

At the May Inforum Terry Schenold, instructor in the English Dept talked about the Critical Gaming Project, a community of UW grad & undergrad students who discuss research and create classes on the study of gaming. The CGP website is here: http://depts.washington.edu/critgame/. Terry talked about the use of gaming in teaching and instruction and gaming literacy as an emerging concept.

Terry's talk made me think about a program that I saw at ACRL and mentioned at the TLG retreat last month. This program was called Improving on Excellence: Looking Beyond Information Literacy to 21st-Century Educational Paradigms and Virtual Worlds. You can see the overview of this program here: http://www.learningtimes.net/acrlconference/2009/improving-on-excellence-looking-beyond-information-literacy-to-21st-century-educational-paradigms-and-virtual-worlds/

The program discussed the concept of "information fluency" and how some K-12 and higher ed libraries are beginning to look beyond information literacy and towards the 21st Century Fluencies described in this paper by Henry Jenkins at MIT: http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf. 21st Century Fluencies involve things like media literacy, digital literacy, gaming literacy, scientific and economic literacy. As an example, it involves transforming media literacy from teaching students how to critically evaluate media created by a small number of people (networks, artists, etc) to looking at students as both consumers and producers of media and teaching to this - what are the ramifications in understanding media that is created by your peers?

I'm new to this concept, but have been reading a little more about here: http://newmedialiteracies.org/ and here: http://www.library.ubc.ca/wilu2008/Nicholson%20PPT.pdf

Anyway, Terry's talk at Inforum made me think that we should listen for conversations about 21st Century literacies/fluencies that might come out of the New Center for Teaching & Learning, and keep these ideas in mind as we continue to shape the vision of our Teaching & Learning Group. Gaming literacy and new media literacies seem to be discussed more heavily in the K-12 library world, but this definitely seems on the horizon for academic libraries information literacy efforts.
-Lauren

On the fly class guides?

One of the joys of teaching several sections of the same class is having the opportunity to reflect and refine, to experiment with activities and see the results immediately.

One way I like to structure dynamic class discussions is by asking students what they're going to need to complete their assignment. We often brainstorm these broad categories as a group and then fill in the blanks with specific tools and resources that will help them with the assignment. For example, if they haven't chosen a topic yet, what strategies or sources might they employ to find something interesting? I enjoy this approach because it unearths the collective wisdom of the group. It also allows me to assess their current state of understanding on the fly, both in terms of sources and concepts. Then if there are additional sources or approaches I think they will find useful, I'll throw those in along with theirs, building upon what they've already collected with a "if-you-like-Wikipedia-then-you'll-LOVE-The-Encyclopedia-of-American-Foreign-Policy" tone.

Traditionally, I've also created class webpages with a selection of sources and tools for that assignment. I'll show this at some point in our discussion, going back and forth between the strategies they've outlined, their sources, and my additional offerings. But wouldn't it be cool to collaboratively create this online class guide on the fly? In a recent session, a student emailed me a link from his laptop during the our discussion, then raised his hand to share it with the class. Wouldn't it have been great to be able to add this to the guide in the moment?

Any ideas for how I might do this? Have you done something like this? One idea would be to throw a plain Jane Word document on the screen and type things in, just as I would on a whiteboard, then tell them I'm going back to my office to hard code this bad boy, then push it through MyUW via SLN linking. But that just doesn't seem very sexy. Other ideas?

[EK]

Jing!

I've just put together a little video on how UW Libraries staff might use Jing, the screencasting software that you can use to quickly capture an image or record a video of what's happening on your computer screen and instantly share it with students, faculty or staff via email, Instant Messaging or websites. This can be a great tool for quickly showing a student how you do a search for information online.

Here's the video: http://uweoconnect.extn.washington.edu/jingforuwlibraries

Looking forward to hearing feedback or ideas on how you're interested in using Jing!

-Lauren

Upcoming conference: student library users

This looks like a great conference, focused on, gasp, students! And it's in Berkeley...quick travel, great food, music, I mean, intensive collaboration with our California colleagues.

Student Library Users: Deliver What They Need, The Way They Want It
Friday, October 23, 2009 Clark Kerr Campus, University of California, Berkeley [EK]

[image courtesy of Ju_li_a.]

What is information?

A brief, colorful video illustrating the importance of context in defining information [EK].

New computer classrooms

Three new computer classrooms are coming to Mary Gates Hall in Winter Quarter! And get this, they describe them as "specially designed to support computer-based instruction, experimental education, and student collaboration". Yippee! [EK]

Small groups, large classes

CIDR's Quarterly Forum on Teaching and Learning is never NOT interesting and useful. Save the date for their upcoming forum:

Using Small Group Inquiry Activities to Engage Students in Large Classes

Thursday, February 12, 2009, 3:30
Walker Ames Room, Kane Hall

[EK]

Design by the book

Check out this video series featuring five artists who were invited to create unique works based on their exploration of the collections at New York Public Library. The first video provides background on each of the artists; the second features their meetings with a librarian who pulled items for each artist.

This has me thinking about that magical, unique, creative aspect of the research process in which scholars make decisions about next steps and relevance based on how the information 'meets' what they already know and what they want to learn. I struggle to find creative ways to help students experience this fun, inspiring aspect of learning, especially when so much of their experience is online, and so much of our instruction tends to be about the 'how-to'. I don't suggest that inspiration only happens in the stacks with books, but I do think it's different, somehow, and I worry that students today are missing out on much of the fun, mystery, and excitement to be found in many of our physical collections. Or at least that we haven't built the the browsing and discovery tools that replicate or remake this experience online.

What do you think? Would this video speak to your students? Or are there ideas here for us to work with in instruction and reference? [EK]

Call for participation

The UW Center for Instructional Development and Research welcomes poster presentations for their annual Teaching and Learning Symposium on April 21. {EK}