Serious fun

The Teaching Librarians have been working on our lesson plans for the fall over the last week. One of our sessions is with our third year students.  I love working with third years.  Something seems to happen by the junior year where many, if not most, of our students really understand that you are a valuable resource.  They don't sleep through class.  They ask questions.  They ask for help.  Hallellujah!

We are 100% committed to active, inquiry-based learning and to having fun in the classroom.  As we thought about how to engage our students, we started talking about how third years seem ready to be serious.  We don't have to "trick" them into participating or learning anymore.  We can treat them like fellow researchers.  It's kind of exciting.

In this case, students are tackling their first literature reviews.  As we thought about what students need to do this assignment well, we found ourselves digging into some pretty advance research skills.  As we talked about the what and the how, the question arose: how do we make the session fun while also imparting the serious nature of the assignment and the task?  Can we be serious but also have fun?

We talked about a number of ways to engage our students.  We talked about metaphors.  We talked about using technology, music, Youtubes.  We talked about relating to things they care about.  We talked about the process, the outcomes.  And we came up with a lesson plan that is feeling pretty solid.  But still, the question haunts me.  Not because I think I know the answer but because I think it is revealing about our own attitudes towards what we offer and sometimes teach.

I think fear factors into it.  Fear of boring students and being boring, fear of messing up in front of them, fear of lacking authority, fear of not being invited back, fear of descending reference statistics, decreases in funding....AHHHH! (she runs and hides under her desk).

This fear is natural I think.  We've been told for decades and longer that we will soon be outdone by computers.  By golly, I watched Desk Set the other night and realized that we were already manifesting that fear in 1957!  But while this fear is natural, it is also exhausting.

A particular axiom comes to mind: Ensure your own good time.  What is it about databases that makes it fun for you?  For me, I love how it makes me think about a topic in a different light.  And that excites me.  When I have to show databases in class, that is what I share about it.  How this tool excites me and makes me feel like I am on an adventure.  Dorky?  Sure.  By god, I'm a librarian!  I am dorky!

Can we make serious research and serious teaching on research skills fun?  YES!  But it has to come from within.

So when it comes to the serious stuff, what is it that you (yes YOU) find fun about it?  How to share something fun is way easier than sharing something boring, right?

Do you have a story to share about something serious you made fun?  I'd love to hear it!  Share away!

Using Mobile Phones in Info Lit Instruction

Andy and I presented at the New England Library Instruction Group's Annual Conference this past Friday. Such a great day! I will be posting later on Randy Hensley's awesome keynote (he's incredible). Here are our slides on using Poll Everywhere in first year instruction. We had a terrific group in our session who posed a number of good questions about the technology, our program, assessment, and faculty reactions. If you have questions, please share them in the comments! Enjoy!

The Librarian Says "Turn Your Cellphones on!": Piloting mobile polling in inquiry-based information literacy instruction

View more presentations from Sarah Cohen.

Just model it.

We recently ended the Faculty Collaborative at Champlain. This annual event brings faculty together for three weeks to have conversations we've been vying for but for which we never have the time. Anyone that has met me or worked with me knows how much I love things like this. Nothing feeds my soul more than listening to and participating in conversations about our students, our teaching, our curriculum, or our institution. I am one of those people. I love it.

As you might expect, one thing that came up a lot was our students. Faculty expressed a drastic increase in their frustration over a lack of curiosity in our students. And a lack of reading. It's no question that reading habits have changed over the course of all Americans but particularly young people in the last decade or longer. TV, computers, texting, video games. There's a lot of ways to entertain yourself. "Back in my day", my dad would walk in the room if we were watching TV and turn it off, no matter what was on, and tell me to go read a book. I did and here I am, a librarian and avid reader. There doesn't seem to be as clear a way to get kids to read today. My husband and I have paid a lot of attention to the literature about early childhood development and reading. Hence, our daughter gets at least one book a day (more like five) and she is only four months. But, I digress. The point I want to make is that there seems to be a shifting tone to the conversation. A tone of great concern and of disappointment and shock. One professor suggested locking all the students' cell phones in one room and forcing them to the stacks to read. I smile even as I write that down.

I don't think there is anything new here in terms of adult incredulity at student learning or student interest or student apathy. But I do think we are facing a change in terrain. I suggested to faculty that they neglect to realize how much reading students are doing. Just a reading of a different kind. I credit my friend and mentor, Rob Williams, for pointing this out to me when I taught an online class. When I shared my assignments with him he reminded me how much reading and writing students are doing on discussion boards. Or how much reading they are doing just to attend the class. He pushed me to make the readings I do assign more essential, more vital.

Today, we had a candidate for our librarian position field a question from a faculty member on this topic. The professor asked how we can get students to take their position as student more seriously. The response from the candidate was that we need to make a case for reading, for books, for whatever we want students to read. We need to be compelling rather than admonishing. I agree but I also think there is a component that is missing there. We need to model the behavior. We, as educators, talk about and know the value of this in writing. My 15 year old niece was just telling me how she wished she were a better writer and I immediately responded that to achieve that goal she should read more. She immediately went on to say that she hates to read but I reminded her that she doesn't have to read fiction. She can read magazines, newspapers, history, science, sports writing....whatever it is, she should read more of it. Turn off the TV, I said, and read anything of interest in any format but pay attention to how its written. If you like something in particular, try to write in a similar fashion. Model it.

And that, to me, is a fundamental need that is often overlooked. In libraries, in the classroom, modeling the behavior and the type of questions we want to see from students provides essential scaffolding to their learning those skills. If we want students to ask questions in a new way, let's stop asking them questions in the same way we have always done. If we want students to try new things, experiment, and get comfortable in new information environments, I think we have to ask ourselves if we model that behavior. One thing that Champlain librarians do exceptionally well is communicate the amount of fun we have helping students find information. And that invites students to have fun with us. But I wonder what behaviors I expect from students that I don't model.

What ways do you model "good" behavior? What strategies do you use to engage students that brings results?

Awesome

Just a reminder that some days, it's truly worth it!

LILAC2010: Information Literacy and Digital Natives: Bridging the Gap

Information Literacy and Digital Natives: Bridging the Gap
Elizabeth Symonds, Univ. of Worcester
Sarah Kennedy, Univ. of Gloucestershire

A faculty member wanted to know about the “journey” the student took between when he gave the assignment and when they handed it in.
Focused their research on first year students, first semester.

“How do new students engage with the learning process outside the classroom?” Where do they prefer to work
who do they interect with
what technologies do they use
what do they think will be expected of them when they come into higher ed
what skills do they think they need to work on?
IDEA: compare their data to US data

How they did it: harge mandatory module; questionnaire once they received the assignment; focus groups; another questionnaie after the assignment to look at actual practices; more focus groups; faculty interview (compare faculty expectations with students’)

Findings on WHERE: home and “learning center”; they indicated that they wanted fewer distractions. Wanted more quiet. What we might think they want in more general activities might not be so in their learning spaces.

Findings on WHO: suspicious of group work. Again, assumption that because they like being social, it does not mean that they like learning in groups.

Findings on SKILLS that students bring with them:
They are good at some things but not at all. They recognize that they don’t have good researching skills.

Expectations before they did their assignments:
Student concerns on Essay Writing, Time Management, Referencing, Faculty Standards. Difference among the two student groups (Sport students v. Psychology students).

What skills do you think this assignment has asked you to use or develop?
Was this a multiple choice or did we ask students to think about it and describe it on their own?

Students were quite wary of Wikipedia. Knew how to use it appropriately.
They want their own computers.

Real concerns over time management: leaving it to the last minute. They ALL said they would start earlier on next time.

Recommendations:
Students do rely heavily on different types of university resources: digital and physical, quiet and group.
Heavy concerns over summative assessment in group work. All group members’ contributions should be assessed and held accountable.

Information services should include a range of support activities: time management, referencing, etc.

Who do you go to for support? Drawing on the LIM idea. And finding out where we can be offering additional support. They don’t know who else is available. They only think faculty.

A lot of questions here. A lot of assumptions challenged, particularly about group work. How they think about group work v. their actual experience. Faculty dealing with group work more effectively. Peer assessment.

LILAC2010: Information Literacy and Digital Natives: Bridging the Gap

Information Literacy and Digital Natives: Bridging the Gap
Elizabeth Symonds, Univ. of Worcester
Sarah Kennedy, Univ. of Gloucestershire

A faculty member wanted to know about the “journey” the student took between when he gave the assignment and when they handed it in.
Focused their research on first year students, first semester.

“How do new students engage with the learning process outside the classroom?” Where do they prefer to work
who do they interect with
what technologies do they use
what do they think will be expected of them when they come into higher ed
what skills do they think they need to work on?
IDEA: compare their data to US data

How they did it: harge mandatory module; questionnaire once they received the assignment; focus groups; another questionnaie after the assignment to look at actual practices; more focus groups; faculty interview (compare faculty expectations with students’)

Findings on WHERE: home and “learning center”; they indicated that they wanted fewer distractions. Wanted more quiet. What we might think they want in more general activities might not be so in their learning spaces.

Findings on WHO: suspicious of group work. Again, assumption that because they like being social, it does not mean that they like learning in groups.

Findings on SKILLS that students bring with them:
They are good at some things but not at all. They recognize that they don’t have good researching skills.

Expectations before they did their assignments:
Student concerns on Essay Writing, Time Management, Referencing, Faculty Standards. Difference among the two student groups (Sport students v. Psychology students).

What skills do you think this assignment has asked you to use or develop?
Was this a multiple choice or did we ask students to think about it and describe it on their own?

Students were quite wary of Wikipedia. Knew how to use it appropriately.
They want their own computers.

Real concerns over time management: leaving it to the last minute. They ALL said they would start earlier on next time.

Recommendations:
Students do rely heavily on different types of university resources: digital and physical, quiet and group.
Heavy concerns over summative assessment in group work. All group members’ contributions should be assessed and held accountable.

Information services should include a range of support activities: time management, referencing, etc.

Who do you go to for support? Drawing on the LIM idea. And finding out where we can be offering additional support. They don’t know who else is available. They only think faculty.

A lot of questions here. A lot of assumptions challenged, particularly about group work. How they think about group work v. their actual experience. Faculty dealing with group work more effectively. Peer assessment.

LILA2010: Describing the use of scholarly literature by undergraduate students

They can find it, but they don’t know what to do with it: Describing the use of scholarly literature by undergraduate students
Stephanie Rosenblatt, Cal State, Fullerton

Not just finding information, but using information.
Hurst & Leonard, 2007 “Why are papers so often lacking in solid, factual information from scholarly sources?”

Assumptions based on the assumption that if students can be convinced to use our “great” resources found through the tools of the “modern academic library”. They will then synthesize information, add it to their knowledge base, and learning occurs.
Would instruction sessions change behavior. Change in behavior indicates learning rather than just an affect.

Is library instruction even detrimental to student work? Do we put them off? It depends, I think, on what we are teaching and how we are teaching it.

Students found materials that met her requirements and even they gave information:
What’s the point of a research paper that doesn’t make connections between the research and their thinking?
Defining our idea of “Synthesis”. What does it mean? How do faculty come to understand it? How do students?
AACU Value rubrics mapped to ACRL rubrics.
Her expectations: Integrating, Developing, Emerging.
“Transforming Qualitative Information”

Action research methodology: open dialog, communication between practioners.

We are making false assumptions about what they need or what we need to teach. We cannot stop there. It’s not about finding, it’s about using. Is the lack of synthesis a problem in information literacy or is it a problem in writing: they might not know how construct the model for writing.
Activity and instruction that models the behavior. In our teaching, show how we find the connection and how to make the connection. Look at peer reviewed articles for how the connections are made in the articles.
Other activity ideas: working in small groups, look at scholarly literature, specifically at literature reviews to emphasize how to make the connections. How do we deal with wanting to cover so much so quickly?
How much do we need to teach students about interface?

Great example of thinking more broadly about library services: integration!
Concerns about stepping on faculty’s toes: is the analytic the job of the faculty? How do you affect change without insulting their teaching? Faculty that are complaining about student work are prime for this kind of collaboration.

Still thinking about ALA: What is IL Instruction for?

As you might know from previous posts, even my most recent post, I love conferences. I thrive in hearing about projects at other institutions and thinking about ways they will work at my own library. I get inspired by librarians and I also come to recognize how special as place my own library and campus can be. My trip to ALA Midwinter is no exception.

As part of our travel, my Director asks us to think about “trends, highlights, ideas you think might work (or not) here.” In reading other blog posts this week, there seem to be a lot of ideas around technology trends. But most of the sessions I attended were not geared towards technology. Especially since I was travelling with Andy, who is the Emerging Technologies head honcho. No, I tried to focus my attention on instruction. What I learned, though, is that the way I am developing are instruction program at Champlain is not easily aligned with instruction at a lot of other institutions. That gives me pause for thought.

One of the sessions I attended discussed the role of experiential research in information literacy. Our students are taking on ethnography projects this spring so that felt like the right place to be. However, as I listened to librarians share their strategies and techniques for preparing students for experiential research, I found myself conflicted with this “student as scholar” model. Are we truly setting our students up for success by asking them to behave as scholars? Is that model appropriate to today’s climate or economy?

Thinking back on the Education Life section of the NY Times I read a few weeks ago, I wonder if scholars are really what students should be trained to be? I think back to this TED video by Sir Kenneth Robinson as well. Are we serving students well by asking them to behave as mini-scholars? Maybe. Maybe if we are making it clear what these scholarship projects can do for them out in the “real world”. Maybe if we can make clear connections between the methodologies we are teaching them and the work they will encounter in their cubicles, classrooms, studios, labs. What are students getting from a particular research method that will matter to them after college?

That’s where my head is and has been for a while. I look back at my thinking about seeing Ken Robinson’s video and I still asking the same question when I attend conferences: what is Information Literacy instruction for? From listening to librarians speak, I think we can answer that question to ourselves and maybe to administrators. But I’m not convinced we can answer that question for students.

Are you?

Why do we cite?

I spend a lot of time talking over the last three weeks talking about citation and documentation with faculty. What is it that we want our students to be attentive to: correctly identifying and attributing someone else's idea or citing a source correctly. Don't get me wrong. Both are important. But in the grand scheme of things, I am more interested in talking to students about documentation, attribution, plagiarism, and intellectual integrity than talking to them about MLA or APA. Styles seem like the cherry on top (did I just equate citation styles to the cherry on a sundae...I did. That happened.)

I guess this is where I remember arguments in ontology and want to parse our what we mean by citations and documentation.

Here's a first go:

Documenting is really about giving credit where credit is due. This is a tough one for students who are just starting out and I think that is worth really thinking about. It's difficult to remember what an 18 year old who is new to college, let alone college writing or research, is taking in on any given day or assignment. At times, I wonder if the expectations we make for students in their first year assignments are truly setting them up for success. When it comes to documentation, the key point is that a student can identify an idea as their own or as someone else's that they are building on. It is, essentially, providing evidence.
This gets into why do you provide evidence and how.

Now we get into citations.

The real question is why do we really cite anything?

The answer that I’d like to advocate for is that citations are the most consistent way of sharing information. We cite because we have information we see as worth sharing. Citations aren’t just to prove your point. They aren’t even about being a part of the scholarly community. With so much information in the world, it’s about SHARING that piece, that piece that did something you wanted, needed, or made you think. That piece that stood out. That piece that was relevant and valuable to the questions and issues you are exploring.

Once we have a handle on what needs to be cited and why it should be cited, then we can get to that final layer: how we cite it. APA, MLA, AMA, IEEE. In the end, the important thing is that the information is findable. All key components are present.

This is my philosophy on citations and documentation. To my way of thinking, there is not a real good reason to teach one style over another. Students are using web-based citation tools whether we like it or not (more on our hunt for one of those in a forthcoming post.) There is a good reason though to talk to students about why it is an important thing to do. There is a good reason to talk to students about what they can get from these "stupid citations". Perhaps we could bring it back to the most basic of lessons: sharing. We are sharing information with one another every day in many different ways. Citations are a way to do it in writing so I can FIND what you found.

And then comes the hard part: teaching this in the classroom. Any ideas?

LILAC09: My students and other Animals”

My students and other Animals
Matthew Borg and Erica Stretton
Sheffield-Hallam

Dealing with LARGE cohorts.
Students have to understand the importance of information literacy before they can incorporate information literacy skills into their “academic mindset”.
We need to know the limitations and the strengths of the materials that we are using with students.

Tells students there are 1 trillion unique urls on the web. When you do a google search, what percentage of the web are you actually searching? Has students write their answers on post its and then put them on a continuum on the board.
Google actually indexes 4%--40 billion pages.

Their experiences with 900 business students over
One shots, computer based, practical tools for databases and library materials or materials specific to their course of study (business).
NOW, they are seeing students over three workshops, each with a different focus. Sessions without computers other than podium. NEEDED SOMETHING NEW.

Considerations of student boredom, using active learning, different learning styles.
Needed to rely on one librarian leading the session in non-digital rooms.

Asking students: How do YOU find information?
Ask students to discuss a recent information search of your own with a neighbor.
The type of info you are looking for, where you looked.
Look at the list of animals: what kind of information animal are you?
Ask students to analyze their information seeking behaviours and adapt to the changing landscape in the academic sphere.

Ask students:
How many types of business information you can think of? What have you used in the past? Report back and then share with them a list of sources. RAISE AWARENESS. Now that they are in a higher ed environment, they need to think more broadly about what is available and appropriate to their work.

Putting the research question FULLY into Business Source Complete = no results. Then explore how to deal with it. Give them a full working demo that isn’t perfect or practiced, include the bad and the good. Show them how to deal with NO results.

Find mistakes in a screen shot of a search screen. Cool exercise. Shows how complex a search can be and how to use options to make your search more useful. Awesome idea. Great addition to COR120 exercises.
One thing I’ve noticed is that there is a lot of emphasis on truncation and wild cards. Been mentioned in a number of sessions and in conversation.

Start their discussion of critical analysis with Wikipedia. Ask students what they think of Wikipedia?

What feedback they received from their sessions.
Invite staff (or faculty!) to the practice session.
GREAT IDEA. Way to get faculty involved, solicit feedback, and practice. Also helps us deal with questions about the setting the bar appropriately. We should make this a standing component of our sessions.
Kept an online diary (use Clearspace or Zoho??) for tracking feedback.

MEGO = My eyes glaze over. HA!

Creating a reference guide for students rather than taking face-to-face time for basic skills (library catalog). Perhaps this is a cultural difference—would our students really read through a workbook?

Fantastic that a librarian asked about how much paper they are using in their sessions? AWESOME!

Loved the active learning part of this session! A bunch of ideas I will take home, especially the screen shot of databases exercises and inviting faculty to practice sessions.

LILAC09: Getting the Student Perspective: is Joe Student Paying Attention

Student perspective on Info Lit:
Alison Bestwick, Univ. of Sheffield, student ambassadors to CILASS

Student created film about what students think about Info Lit.
CILASS Channel (They have a student film group—good idea)

Asking how you define information literacy:
Students did not know!
Can they (or other librarians) put the “7 pillars” in order? Understanding higher order vs. lower order skills. They put two into the right place but were discussing info lit in the process, “which is a good thing”.
Students not giving themselves enough credit for what they do already. Student admitted that it is something they already do, they just don’t know. COGNIZANCE
Ask students what they think students should be able to do at certain points in their own careers. GREAT IDEA. It might help develop instruction.
From the video: great to see how the student perspective shifts our own vision of IL frameworks.

Is the term “information literacy” the best way to describe it. Use non-threatening mechanisms. Stop using JARGON. Let’s come up with other ways to describe what we’re doing and do it in a way that is more inviting. From the video: when we don’t use the term information literacy, we get better results.

Asking students how successful they are when they research?

Where do you (students) go to fill in gaps in your own knowledge?
GREAT QUESTION. Add a component to the Goals and Expectations exercise.
Do you feel you are supported in your research?
How confident do you feel in x, y, z, skill?

The Information Literacy Parthenon.

IDEA for ROB: Could your media students make a video for us on IL? Defining it? How they use it? Students want to hear more from other students.
Connection to CCM and Business: how can we market IL? What kinds of promotional materials can we generate?

From the questions:
First time one attendee had seen a student perspective. So helpful.
Suggestion to share the definition with students and get their feedback to how we could redefine it, describe it otherwise?

An interesting comment about students not being information literate but that is not what the video said, at least in my view. They ARE more information literate, just not familiar with the way we ask them to describe it.
How do we make the sessions we do more aligned to what students need? If you ask students, they will say they haven’t had training, even if they’ve had multiple sessions. But they aren’t seeing that as support or helpful. How can we remedy that? Is it how we present our sessions? Is it how we try to make a connections to students?

We make a lot of assumptions about what students need or do. Perhaps our assumptions are off.

What's working?

Probably like thousands of other librarians, my inbox was full of friends and colleagues sending me this article in the New York Times about school librarians. The article is pretty interesting but I was particularly drawn to the video (which I can't link to...NYT needs to fix that!). It coincides with a major issue we are dealing with at Champlain: what information literacy skills do our students already have?

At the moment, the five teaching librarians are teaching info lit sessions to all first year students. Our information literacy program is embedded into Champlain's Core Curriculum. The Core curriculum is an integrated, interdisciplinary, incremental program that is a required component of the Champlain education. The chance to reach all students, every semester is incredible. And we have a lot of ideas about what our sessions should encompass. But the spring semester of their first year is when students encounter their first research assignment. And trying to make sure students are equipped to handle that assignment is difficult because we don’t know with which skills students have come to Champlain.

To cover all the bases, in the IL session for first years students will:
-be introduced to the library catalog,
-practice using print material effectively,
-develop keywords,
-apply their keywords in an academic database, and,
-use database results to deepen their searches and refine their keywords.

We are combining a lot of hands on, interactive tasks during the sessions with some more traditional instruction. One of the activities students try is using the index and table of contents of books to seek out specific information. Pretty basic, right? We thought so too. But during reference interviews, we have been incredulous at how few students know how to find a book or use PARTS of a book rather than the whole thing. Yet, when we go to classes, many of the students say that they know this already. Mostly, that's a relief. But the same is true when using the databases. They say they know this already.

Essentially, as the NYT video shows, librarians in K-12 are doing valuable and important work in teaching IL skills early. The problem I face in a higher ed library is that we don't know if every student has had it. As the article points out, "as school librarians increasingly teach students crucial skills needed not only in school, but also on the job and in daily life, they are often the first casualties of school budget crunches." So, some schools have librarians performing this function and some don't. Where does that leave students when they get to me at the college level?

Many other librarians advocate for pre-tests to determine where students are. I have never been a fan of pre-testing and I haven't seen much literature that points to its effectiveness. Moreover, just because students say they know how to use an index, does that mean that they know how to use an index effectively or know when it is an effective tool? Regardless, we are faced with the challenge of students coming to us with different levels of knowledge and practice when it comes to research. How do we deal with students that are more experienced and sophisticated users with those students that haven’t had much experience or instruction?

I am seeing it as a balancing act. We are trying to pitch these sessions as refreshers and “tips and tricks”. We talk to students about what we, information professionals, would do to deal with their questions or assignments. At first, I was pretty skeptical about that approach. But students seem to really take to it. I think a big part of that has to do with authenticity. I remember reading Parker Palmer’s piece for Immersion and the idea of teachers being authentic and open to vulnerability really struck a chord with me. And it seems to strike a chord with students. I don’t know the answer to their questions but I talk them through how I try to figure it out. And they seem to appreciate it that. Is it perfect? Certainly not. Is it working? Our assessment data will show us. More importantly, as they delve into their research papers, we’ll see whether the reference questions demonstrate that they are hearing what we’re saying and practicing what we’re showing them. But as we wrap up our sessions….it feels right.

Teaching Students

I had a paper accepted at ACRL Seattle a few weeks ago. = Very cool. I will be bringing two students from Champlain's Emergent Media Center with me to talk about the process we have gone through in developing our new information literacy game. I have learned so much from these students about our approach to info lit and pedagogy. And I don't mean it in terms of just what's fun. They are tremendously creative and evaluative so they really push me to give session design my full attention. Talking with them often leads to long writing sessions afterwards where I try to put together my thoughts with the ideas we generate.

It's interesting to me how often we use the words "teach our students". For me, I have been fortunate to watch and learn from educators who view working with students as a two way street: we teach and they teach. Perhaps we are more intentional in our teaching but students teach me things all the time. And not just while I answer their reference questions. Just listening to them sort through a problem or respond to questions teaching me a great deal about the ways they use, understand, and relate to information and the library. But more so, they teach me about the world in which we live and how they participate in it. How do they interpret what is taught them at school? Are they learning? How does what they are learning relate to what we are seeing, doing, thinking, wanting? Especially when it comes to info lit, my goal continues to be to create skills that are applicable and injected into students' everyday lives. It's hard to know how to do that without really learning from students what they value, what they do, what they are interested in, what they are learning and wanting to learn.

Sometimes it is hard to create space for that kind of dual learning. Working on this project with Tim and Lauren has created a project dedicated to that kind of learning. We are collaborating, teaching one another, bringing our own strengths and vision to the table.

But what about when I'm not working on the proposal? When do I create spaces for that kind of teaching and learning? Where do I do it? Where do you?

Met the Author: T.C. Boyle

Every year, Champlain selects a Community Book for the campus to read and come together to discuss. The highlight to the experience is the author's visit to campus. This year we had T.C. Boyle.

I'll be blogging more about the program and his visit at Champlain on our library blog but I wanted to take a moment here to talk about how AWESOME a person "Tom" was. We've met a number of authors at Champlain but this was the first one who was genuinely interested in getting to know us, the people that brought him here, and share a bit of himself with us. What's amazing is that this is an author who is often known as a renegade. But I, and I feel comfortable speaking with my fellow committee members here, found him to be warm, funny, engaging, and just plain cool. And what's best is that our students felt the same way. They laughed at his stories. They asked him questions. They introduced themselves and talked to him about their interpretations of the book, his experience as a writer, his perspectives on the issues he delves into in his books. It takes a lot to bring authors to campus but those few hours, those few precious hours when you see a student really learning something, really experiencing something by meeting the author...it makes it so worth it. We never know what will put students onto their paths, something that Tom talked about in his lecture and reading. I hope that some student looks back on this visit as a moment that helped them realize there are a lot choices, some of them different than what they find in the box.

If you have a Community Book, whatever you call it, that brought the author to campus, I'd love to hear which authors you've had and how your students reacted to them. We are always thinking about next year's book.

However, I think T.C. will be a hard act to follow.

At a Faculty Conference, thinking a little differently about Info Lit

I have been in North Carolina this week for the Association of General and Liberal Studies Conference. Cyndi Brandenburg, Kelly Thomas, and I gave our presentation "Too Much Information: Helping Students Deal Effectively with Information Overload." You can see our slides here or check out our wiki here. The presentation went really well. It was a tiny room but we filled it up. While the presentation was fun, it was the conversation that followed that was truly the highlight of the conversation. These faculty were very excited by what we are doing with information literacy in both library sessions and in classrooms. Many of them expressed interest in embedding IL into their own courses or curriculum! YAHOO!!!

It was really interesting to talk about information literacy at a faculty conference rather than a library one. The issues and concerns that these faculty members expressed are not far from those I've heard on library blogs or in the literature. The difference I think is that faculty are surprised to hear that the library would think about information literacy in any way other than as a ploy for using the library. The group of faculty that I sat down with seemed to be wondering how to cope themselves with not information overload among their students but knowledge deficiency. Students, these faculty decried, don't come into college with the general knowledge that they should have. They fear that we are purporting what some of them see as a crutch: the ability to look things up but not to LEARN. Not to KNOW.

That's worth thinking about. It aligns well with a book I have checked out from the library called True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. It's by Farhad Manjoo, the technology/media/politics writer for Salon.com. Essentially, Manjoo argues that it doesn't matter what is real, true, or fact. What matters is whether it does what we want it to do: answer our question, support our point of view, "prove" someone else wrong. The book is fascinating, challenging, aggravating and important, especially for those of us that are designing and teaching programs that we say will help our students find, select, evaluate and manage information. If we focus our programs and instruction on what the Library has to offer, how are we preparing our students for the world they will live in when they graduate and don't have an academic library to draw on? In essence, what are we doing to prepare them for the digital world, the knowledge society, the information age?

These are the questions we grappled with for our 75 minutes of glory. We had to push people out of the room at the end. Needless to say, I loved it. And it gave me a lot of ideas for posts that I hope to hash out over the next few days.

On the more personal side, a few things about the trip itself:
1. Asheville was a really pretty town with the friendliest people I have met in quite some time. It was refreshing.
2. I ate some darn good fried chicken at the Moose Cafe and felt my arteries clogging up as I did it. Fantastic and worth every calorie.
3. I experienced the gas shortage first hand. Every gas station in the area was out of gas and it was a little nerve wracking driving the two hours back to Charlotte. I am thinking of the people dealing with that.
4. I went to an AMAZING book store, Malaprops, and found my motto.  Living it and smiling.

Twisting a Tag Cloud, or, Exploring New Technology: Wordle

So, as I was leafing through my Reader this morning, my tired eyes were drawn to the plethora of tag clouds wafting through the inter-air. I saw Meredith's. Then Jenica's. Then decided I wanted one too.

So I hopped on over to Wordle, put my del.icio.us tags in and WOW...there I was, a pretty little cloud of libraries, technology, web 2.0, vermont, sustainability, activism, innovation, and media. I was beautiful. Except that I couldn't seem to get it off of the webpage and onto my blog post.

So, I went exploring how to do that. The first thing I did, was look in Wordle's FAQ, assuming that it was something easy that just didn't come to me right off the bat. However, I was disheartened to read that no, it was not so easy. You could save your wordle as a screenshot but since it is a Java Applet, you cannot save it as a jpeg. Hmm. You could save it as a pdf, but how am I supposed to get a pdf into my blog post?

Breathe. Think. Try something else. Let's see what someone else did.

So, I hopped back over to Meredith's blog, since she is a bit of a guru. And I started copying things like "firefoxscreensnapz" and googling it to see what it is, and how did she do this, and GRRRR.

And then...sigh, I realized I could just copy my screen shot into the Paint accessory, crop it, and save it as a JPEG. Thank goodness.

Is this the most tech-savvy way to do this? Probably not. But that's what I came up with and I have to get back to work pretty soon here. It's not exactly the size I want, but as both Jenica and Meredith point out, you can see an awful lot from very little.

And that got me thinking: what could this be good for? Tomorrow, I am speaking at a course for educators about using 2.0 technology in the classroom. So, what might I do with this in my classes?

Hmm. For a number of semesters before I was blessed to design a course of my own on technology and society, I taught five semesters of freshman writing. The number one problem first years have with writing is that they don't know what their papers are really about. They meander across multiple topics, losing track of their thoughts, let alone the thoughts of others. What if students pasted a few paragraphs or even their whole paper into Wordle so they could see what their paper was really about? It might be a great way of helping students see the direction their papers are headed, whether they know it or not. Bringing 2.0 to students to help them become better writers? Whoa.

Or, what if we used it in online education? What if the week's discussion threads were pasted into Wordle as a way to capture the key points of the week? Or within a lecture? I know that my students would be grateful for a more aesthetically pleasing and accessible method of keeping tabs on key points in a week's discussion. Using 2.0 to expedite masses of information for deeper reflection? Whoa, again.

And what about in the library? Perhaps as a way to market ourselves: let's put a print out of a Wordle tag cloud out this year's "Come to the Library" flyer. What words pop up the most? Might it attract students attention as they are scanning the kiosks and bulletin boards more than just a picture and some text? Perhaps.

These are just a few thoughts right off the bat. I'm sure you've got others. I hope you will share them.

Wikipedia: Where Does It Belong?

As I am spending more time in the classroom this semester during my day job as Information Literacy Librarian at the College, I am constantly dealing with the question of Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit. As part of my starting the Information Literacy program with students, I ask them if they have been told that they can't use Wikipedia. Invariably, they say yes. Then I ask them why they think that is. Invariably, they say that it is because anyone can edit it. Because professors think it is unreliable. Because professors, wrongly they say, think it isn't worthwhile.

Students get pretty riled up about it.

The reason I don't want students to use Wikipedia is not because anyone can edit it. As a matter of fact, the more time I spend on Wikipedia, the more articles I read, the more changes I track, the more I learn about the technology, the more I believe in the democratization of information, the more I think that an encyclopedia anyone can edit is cool. Very cool.

But I still don't want students to use Wikipedia for their academic research papers. I don't want students to use any encyclopedias as a resource of an academic research paper. Encyclopedias, I tell students, are starting places. They are a great place to familiarize yourself with a topic, to identify keywords, key events, key issues, key players. But going to a summarization of a topic and its issues is not research. Why are they here? They are here to do dig deeper into what they learn in encyclopedia entries, electronic or print, edited by anyone or by the elite. You, or your parents, aren't paying all this money for you to look stuff up in an encyclopedia and call it a day.

Students are here to hone their critical thinking, writing, reading, and analytical skills. In my course on Society and Technology, we have been talking a lot about how everyday people use the internet everyday. Students have been discussing how there are many skills that we expect people to just have. Knowing how to pick which electronic resources to use is one of them. As you well know, I think there is more to it than that. I think students need to be taught to differentiate and discern what makes some sources, especially electronic ones, worth while.

Part of that process asks them to think about what their goals are for their research. What do they expect the information they need for their work (or play) to look like? What do they expect it to do? I have been doing a lot of activities with students on these questions and it has been working very well. The students buy into a list of expectations that they create. They are willing to think differently when we start talking about goal they have, rather than goals or expectations their teachers have.

Much like Kim Leeder points out in this post from the ACRLblog, a few years ago I took a different tack on Wikipedia. But it has changed and so have I. I think Wikipedia will continue to improve and continue to flourish, especially if Aaron Swartz gets his way and connects the Open Library with Wikipedia. But that's another, and forthcoming, post.

So where does Wikipedia belong in the research process: as a place to start it. But it is just that: a starting place. It does not belong on a Works Cited page. But it can surely be a useful resource in figuring out what does.

Injecting Information

The ever-wise and excellent question-asker, Jeff Rutenbeck, brought up, what I think, is the essence of the the information literacy question: how can we inject information literacy into the daily lives of our students? How can we illustrate to them that information literacy is not just about school.

As always, Jeff makes my mind go a million miles a minute.

This is where most discussions about information literacy seem to go awry. What is information literacy? What are the skills that we are teaching students supposed to do for them in the long run? Let me set the stage with a question I was asked by a student the other day. They asked me why I advocate for them to use the databases when those databases won't be available to them once they leave college?

This is a good question.

My answer: I ask you to use databases in college because I want you to use the information that is most appopriate for your needs and situation. And in college, that means information from scholarly resources.

The first part of the answer is the important part here, though. Information literacy should not be another name for library instruction. It also should not be strictly understood as a research process. Information literacy is understanding what information you require given your situation and the purpose of that information's use. That is the true role of a librarian: to help a patron figure out those questions and then guide them to the best and most appropriate resource.

To return to the initial question, I am going to respond with how NOT to approach it. We are not going to successfully instill information literacy skills into our students lives by making it about databases or citations. The way to inject (good choice of words) that into students' daily lives is to make them see that the skills you apply to getting dressed to go to a party are much the same as you would use to select a website. What are they doing at this party? Who is going to be there? Is it dressy? Is it a pool party? Do I need to bring anything?

I'm purposely trying to sound a little hokey but my point is not hokey at all. We all use information literacy skills in our lives already. Shouldn't we be trying to make that clear to students? Shouldn't we be bringing it down to the daily level and then show them how at college, their daily level requires a certain kind of resource with a specific purpose?

I think Jeff's question and the questions surrounding information literacy echo another important issue that is often asked: what do librarians do? At times, I am not sure that librarians always know what we do. Information literacy is a perfect example of how librarians are trying to be many things to many people. We are trying to be teachers, to be educators, to be gatekeepers, to be technologists, to be generalists. What is it that we, as a profession, want to be first and foremost?

2.0 in the classroom: future teachers give me some ideas

Last Friday, I joined an education professor at Champlain for his "Integrating Technology in the Classroom" course to discuss what 2.0 technologies we are using at the library, the challenges and benefits of 2.0, etc.

One word for how the classes went: AWESOME.

I went to both sections of the course and started the discussion off my showing the class the library website. I gave them a little context by asking them what they thought of when they thought about librarians. Buns, glasses, shsh-ing. That school of thought tends to represent the library as a temple. But 2.0 brings the library out into the world wide open. It allows the library to integrate patrons' information needs with service and resources. The best example of this is Chat. We know students are IM-ing all the time and so we are available through IM to chat with them about their questions.

This was a perfect segway into Facebook. I wanted to find out from students what their thoughts were about having a librarian in Facebook. Would they friend me? Their responses were fascinating! At first glance, they said, "Yeah, we'd friend you." But then their professor asked them to think about it as future teachers: would they want to have their students able to see their Facebook page? Now is this really a fair comparison...probably not. As a librarian, I wouldn't use my Facebook page as they use theirs. And I said that. No matter. Their song changed. They unilaterally agreed that they wanted a space of their own where they didn't have to work about a teacher or a librarian seeing their life. Privacy settings of not.

This also brought up an interesting question about when to turn off. When do you, as an educator, get to be you and not an educator? And how does that fit into 2.0 technology. Some people stay connected all the time but others, such as the Sheck, like to sign off and have some Sheck time.

The idea of time management was an important one in the class. Especially when we talked about maintaining these cool technologies. We looked at the MIC's flickr show. Yes, the tag cloud has a lot of possibilities for increased usability and gives the library props in the coolness category. But it is a lot of work on top of cataloging, on top of reference, on top of collection development, on top of faculty senate, on top of blogging, on top of IM-ing...everything takes time. And you have to decide before you implement any new idea, 2.0 or old school, whether you have the time to maintain it. That is a tough one for the Sheck to always come clean about because I do like to wear my super-hero costume and pretend I can do everything. But that is not always so and we all have to realize that.

But back to the students. A few things I loved about what they said:
1. Use blogs to communicate with parents about what kids did in school today. Wow. What a great way to keep parents in the loop. I hope my future child's teacher does something cool like that.
2. They were genuinely concerned about the role of technology in their classroom. "Is it," they asked, "the role of the teacher to teach students technology? Or is that something that should be left in the home?" They also talked about the digital divide: what about kids who don't have access to technology outside of the classrrom. Both of these are intensely important and complex issues. And their professor and I made clear to them that there is not an answer for that.

I can understand it from their point of view. As future teachers, they wonder if they will be mandated to include this "stuff" in their classrooms. Some of them seemed to think that they should be focusing on curriculum rather than technology. But, I said, if you do have students who lack access, your inclusion of technology in the classroom might be the only way they can bridge the gap. And, is it realistic in today's world to assume that technology is something that can just be picked up somewhere?

That's where I am, three days later. I can't let go of that idea: that we see technology as this "other thing" rather than as something important and that needs to be taught and viewed critically. If we don't put that kind of critical thought into it, if we don't educate our children in how to use technology responsibly, how can we be surprised when they don't use it responsibly? This is more than information literacy, or at least how IL is talked about in libraries.

More on this in future posts...it is a lot to think about and I want to reflect on it some more. But what a good class, huh? I love students. I love how they make me think!

A face with a name

Tonight is my first night as a Library Commissioner for the City of Burlington. I am really looking forward to getting to know another side of our local library, the Fletcher Free, and to dip my feet into the murky waters of public librarianshhip.

So Steve Bell's post in my Feevy about being lucky to be an academic librarian seemed perfectly timed to the day ahead. I agree with Steve that academic libraries are fortunate in that we have an immediate audience: students and faculty. However, I think Steve has been fortunate to work at institutions where the library is imbedded in the intellectual and academic culture of the college. I think that community college librarians might know what I mean. At small, growing institutions like mine, the library is trying with all of its might to not stay relevant but become relevant to our professionally focused students and faculty in the first place. So our outreach is extensive, creative, and constant.

One of the methods of outreach I rely on most is getting out on campus. I go to stuff. I introduce myself to new folks. I always chipper that "come up to the library to find that," or "I just saw a book about that at the library," or someother such quip. Getting out around campus is a way for people to put a face with the library, to feel like there is someone there that they know and can approach, either virtually or physically. It seems that librarians are so often chained to our facility, only getting out when we are invited to class sessions or for necessary meetings. But if we showed our smiling faces, or our thoughtfulness and intellectual curiousity (which seems a prerequisite for our jobs in many ways), our standing among faculty will rise, thereby bringing them to our lecture series, our brown bag lunches, our introductions to new databases, our meet and greets...and then our website, our stacks, our instruction sessions. Wouldn't that be something?!?

I chose to be an academic librarian because I wanted to work with a specific audience and because I wanted to know I always had a budget line, even if less than I wish it were. I applaud public librarians for their open-mindedness, their courage, their creativity, and their problem solving. But let's not give away the store. We all have issues with audience. As I pointed out last post, even in an article about how cool librarians are, we still are rivaling Google.

I will keep you posted, loyal readers (?), about how the Library Commission goes and my first foray into public service. And I hope that those of you that are sitting at a desk, working hard but browsing the blog, will head out to the cafeteria, the student union, wherever to say hi and put a face with your library.