Professional Development

Demonstration: The Learning Commons: Creating and Sustaining a Student-Focused Learning Space (Joe Williams, Janelle Joseph)

• Background
  • Learning Commons: social, friendly, inviting, support learning
  • Access to resources, images, ideas, inspiration, research support, productivity support (applications, etc), as well as social components
  • Renovation of East Wing
  • Involved students, faculty, staff
• Floor plan
  • You can see the PowerPoint here
  • Have in “information” desk, which is a little bit confusing… students ask “is this reference?”
  • Presentation room for practicing presentations
  • Different stations for different purposes
  • Group study spaces
  • Same feedback we’re getting: power, spaces, great wireless, etc.
  • Comfortable space
  • Circulation & reserve at one desk in another area (about 40 feet away)
  • This space has taken over the reference area
• Services
  • Research & computing, device lending, social space & collaborative spaces
    • Even have a few game consoles set up permanently as a break from studying, no complains about noise/distractions
    • Website has real-time PC availability that students can check before coming over
    • Can see some of the devices they loan out on their FAQ sheet (Word doc)
  • Accessible staff (even low, clear information tables (rather than tall, fort-like desks)
    • Signage focuses on words (like “law” or “dictionaries”) rather than call numbers
• Outreach
  • Week of celebration for opening of new learning commons
  • Student group involvement (multicultural students affairs office, union activities board, international scholars, student services, student organization resource center), went to their meetings to tell them about it
  • Campus partnerships (IT, center for teaching & learning, campus media, campus activities, eBoards)
  • Future events: with groups, maybe gaming, faculty lecture series (sound familiar)
• Assessment
  • Observations, counts, usage statistics
    • Including hits on website
  • Focus groups, surveys
  • Standing committees
    • University library committee, subgroup of this is specifically for commons (just students), director has student advisory board
  • Web-based options
    • Text box, fill in comments, hit send (right on front page)
    • Discussion board on main commons page
      • Requires university login to create new posts
• Interesting side effect
  • Business faculty bring students in to study how people use space, etc.
  • Some people teach in the space (not registering for spaces, though)
  • People LOVE roaming dry erase boards
  • Sound dampening furniture, more social space, louder than in previous space, some students shush other students, do query students when it seems like it might be too noisy
  • Staff didn’t need to be sold on this, but there was a need to do some retraining (printing options changed, etc)
  • Can rely on some grad assistants to help with advanced issues
• Some good photos and student comments in the powerpoint (link above)
• Funding
  • Bond, donations, Friends of the Library fundraising, library-specific campaign, education & technology fee allocation for computer equipment
  • 9 millions dollars, covered whole floor, includes learning commons, exhibits room, special collections reading room, etc.
  • 3 year refresh cycle for computing equipment
• Last page of powerpoint shows other resources that are useful
• Interested in knowing more? Listserv on that page, too
• Looks similar to Emory, from what folks were saying; will see if I can get over there on the weekend and take some pictures
• Maybe they’ll put together a bibliography on these topics

Panel discussion: Tapping Student Resources to Produce Multimedia Learning Solutions (Amanda Robertson, Mike Cuales, David Howard, Ben Huckaby, David Shew)

• Explained development of DELTA
• Recognition of top design students, hired them
• Have 9 interns, treat as part-time staff, to support multimedia solutions for professors
• Commit to good training for students in areas they want
• Creative with budget & location for student workers… sometimes hired/paid by department, but supervised by DELTA
• Students bring in good, new ideas about what’s really going on
• Students have good insight into student experience & help build relationships across campus
• Students get good, real-world experience
• Students get to be project managers on small scale projects, get management process experience
• Saves faculty time, lets students work directly with faculty
• Even simple flashcards and glossaries made major improvements
• Students paid 8-12 dollars per hour.  Also gearing up for a credit version (for folks within their own subject).

Plenary session: Staying Ahead of the Curve: The Open Croquet Consortium, (Marilyn Lombardi)

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” - Alan Kay

• What is the future of online education we want?
• Where is your teenager now?
  • Harbinger of social change
  • Pass around ideas like social items
  • Multitasking
• Online socialization
• Participatory culture
  • Media creators, remixing, passing media along
  • Multimodal interaction (visual, textual, audio)
  • Affinity-based self-organization
    • Fan fiction, online games, carving out own informal learning environments, joining apprenticeships/learning/on their own
  • Distributed cognition
    • Collective intelligence, virtual communities (including research communities), blur line of instructor & student, controlling is shifting from power holders, bottom-up contribution
• Learning
  • Online Learning 1.0: Course-centered: package, deliver, CMS
  • Online Learning 2.0: Student-centered: connect, converse, Sakai/Moodle/eFramework
  • Online Learning 3.0: Context-centered: coalesce, co-create, open source, 3D meta-medium, Croquet
• Context is everything
  • Proximity is important, but can you achieve this online?
  • Learning Commons
• Learning in Authentic Contexts
  • Real world relevance, ill-defined challenges, sustained investigations, multiple sources and perspectives, collaborations, reflection, interdisciplinary, integrated assessment, polished products, multiple interpretations
• Discussed using virtual environments (Second Life)
  • FERPA (may interact with anyone)
  • Use screen names (not real name)
  • Storing lessons, mission critical work on someone else’s servers (not yours or institutions)
  • Reliability? depend on SL servers, what if it’s down at a critical time?
• Recommends going in & playing, getting used to it & piloting programs
  • Then, when institutions are ready to be in there, there will be open-source solutions ready for you
  • Croquet!
    • Open source, scalable architecture, will run on PCs/laptops/PDAs/mobile phones, will run on different OSs
• Croquet
  • Share and co-edit resources in real time
  • Synchronous (how does this scale with DISTANCE learning?)
  • Allows browser in the game, but can be changed collaboratively
  • Allows hyperlinking to a new world
  • Privacy, authentications, etc (personalized workplace worlds, where they can interlock)
  • Visualizing abstract concepts
  • Collaborative white-board, CAD, etc
  • This is a developers’ environment, not an application
    • Very easy to create new objects!
  • Incorporates tagging & metadata for objects
  • Can make it so that some users see more of the world (in same location) as a reward for passing one level
  • Integrated VOIP power (Jabber), showed video of professor talking in corner of virtual world
  • Don’t need an avatar, can be yourself
• Croquet Consortium
  • Will be releasing software developers’ kit 1.0
  • Institutions can consider joining
  • Want: long term viability for platform that we need, not the entertainment industry

On March 14th, Heather and I went to the 10^th OCLC ILLiad International Users Meeting in Virginia Beach for a two day conference, where Atlas system is headquartered.

According to their website, “Atlas Systems was founded in July of 1995 as a software development company. After the launch of ILLiad in 1999, Atlas has been primarily focused on the development and support of the ILLiad Interlibrary Loan System. Atlas continues to be the authorized service, training, and development arm of OCLC’s ILLiad.”

Because it is their 10^th anniversary, Harry Kriz, the most recognizable founding father of ILLiad from Virginia Tech was the key note speaker. It was a very well-organized and informative conference with lots of perks. To start off, we each got a computer-sized bag with a box of salt water taffy candy. One nice touch, I thought was the three-letter symbol printed on the name tag along with the institution name. In ILL Land, the three-letter symbol is what is recognized first and foremost, not a library’s name. Sometimes, you are asked what your symbol is before your name is asked for.
Here is a summary of the sessions I went to.

OCLC Deflection

OCLC has installed an auto-deflection feature in OCLC Resource Sharing (formerly known as ILL). The new feature allows the auto-deflection of ILL requests based on lender-defined criteria in the ILL Policies Directory. Deflection can be based on request service type (i.e., copy or loan), group membership, or format type. We would have to set, for example, all Rare Books materials for “No ILL.” The “all or none” coverage has prohibited us from implementing the feature. In our practice, we have a lot of exceptions. If the requested item is in Rare Books or Archives, we will scan and send it on if Rare Books or Archives deems possible to photocopy.

With the new upgrade for Deflection, libraries can update their local holding records item by item or batch them at OCLC, which allows the ILL department the flexibility to deflect requests that they will not lend under any circumstances, such as “Sex and the City” and “Nip/Tuck” DVDs or journals that are too large or too tightly bound to be scanned or photocopied. It will save staff time by not having to go through those requests only to say “no.” ILL has a running list of journal titles that we routinely say “no” to due to their format or tightly bound conditions, such as Cutter Research Journal. I am currently going through the list and updating the local holding record to show “No ILL” for these titles.

We are, however, having difficulty with the TV series mentioned earlier. Carolyn and I couldn’t figure out how to change the status with the current setting. We are still awaiting OCLC’s response on this.

Unmediated Article ILL

With the new ILLiad 7.2 upgrade, it is possible to implement unmediated ILL article requests. However, we have to implement OCLC ILL Direct Request and set up Odyssey first. The ILL Direct Request service is a feature that facilitates unmediated interlibrary loan. With Direct Request, ILL requests with OCLC numbers are sent without staff intervention. We have not instituted the feature, because of possible wrong record association and book only limitation. Odyssey is a protocol used by ILLiad and the Odyssey Client to send documents electronically between institutions. It is a free software application developed by Atlas Systems. It enables libraries using ILLiad or the Odyssey Client to send and receive documents electronically.

The unmediated article ILL feature will allow requests sent by patrons that have an OCLC # or ISSN to be processed according to the routing rules set up in ILLiad 7.2. The benefits will be that ILL staff won’t have to handle those borrowing requests and the patrons can get the articles after hours and weekends as soon as the lending libraries have processed them. That ought to impress them.

Odyssey Round Table

There were not many of us there. But the hostility toward Ariel, an electronic delivery system we use to deliver ILL articles, was evident and overwhelming. “Death to Ariel” was being applauded. People are printing T-shirts and calling ofr the downfall of Ariel.
Ariel was rolled out by the Research Libraries Group (RLG) in 1996. It enables academic and research libraries to electronically convey and share scanned or digitized documents. It has seen better days. It is what we have been using to deliver articles electronically. It was acquired by Infotrieve in 2003. We have had upgrades in the past few years that basically halted all operations. So whenever we hear “upgrade,” it sends tremors down our spines and we cross our fingers.

As mentioned earlier, Odyssey is a free software application for electronic document delivery from Atlas Systems. It enables libraries using ILLiad or the Odyssey Client to send and receive documents electronically. Not surprisingly, Atlas representatives seemed to relish the fact that there is a push for their Odyssey product.

After the gripe session over Ariel was done, there was serious discussion about scanners. To my surprise, several libraries are already using the very desirable (to me) Minolta PS5000C color book scanner. It costs a whopping $13,000! It enables the scanning of journals that are too tightly bound without damaging the items. The color feature allows scanning of medical journals and photographs with satisfactory results. I was just drooling with envy!

ILLiad 7.2 Web in a Nutshell

The new ILLiad7.2 Web interface has a lot of bells and whistles that a web designer would love and probably has been asking for for years. I am looking forward to working with Kevin on improving our ILLiad pages which shall correct some of the quirkiness of the old pages.

Conclusion

This conference proved to be one of the best I have been to in years. It is organized, informative and very educational. One of the most valued benefits of going to a conference, to me, is meeting people you work with and talk to, either on the phone or online. We exchanged information and ideas. The atmosphere was cooperative and buzzing with excitement with the new developments and possibilities. I even got to meet a couple of ILLiad help desk people that I have bombarded with questions in the past couple of years.

Cristina Yu

Formal presentation: Promoting Higher-Level Processing: Evidence-Based Support for Student-Created Digital Learning Objects (Robert Crow)

• Test to see if elaboration is working
• Can learn through different modes: image, text, etc,
• Learning Objects
  • Any entity, digital or non-digital which can be used, reused, or referneced…
  • Deliverable over internet
  • Merlot used eSkeletons as an example
• Based on Elaboration Theory
  • Essay writing activity
  • Narrated PowerPoint, Camtasia, podcasting, use many modalities
• Grading was a challenge. Crow’s way of dealing with it was to grade by slide.
• Did a study correlating experimental and control groups with overall GPA, etc.
  • Used tests on concepts to get numbers
• Best correlation, Yes, having students construct learning object was a valid way to get them to hold onto concept over a longer period of time

Formal presentation: Effective Practices for Online Instruction (Laura Rogers)

• Focus on constructivist principles
• Want a lot of interactive, thoughtful conversations, thinking transformed through interaction
• ePedagogy interest group in TLT
  • maybe an eLearning coach for faculty?
• Demo-ed Second Life

Cristina and I attended the 2007 International ILLiad conference in Virginia Beach, Virginia, March 14 to the 16th, 2007.

First of all, for anyone who has not had the pleasure of visiting Virginia Beach I would highly recommend going to experience the calm waters of the beach, the fabulous Hilton Oceanfront Hotel, and the freshest seafood around. We arrived Wendesday afternoon with plenty of time to unpack, shop, and enjoy the sandy beach. This year’s conference celebrated the 10th anniversary of the creation of ILLiad (Interlibrary Loan Internet Accessible Database). It may be known to many, but I did not realize that ILLiad was created just north of us at Virginia Tech. After registration early Thursday morning and enjoying the meet-and-greet breakfast, ILLiad’s “creator,” Harry M. Kriz started the conference off on an energetic and empowering note to be the leaders for change in libraries. When Kriz headed the Interlibrary Loan department at Virginia Tech. there wasn’t software available that specifically addressed the needs of Interlibrary Loan departments or to reduce or eliminate the reliance and overabundance of paper. Kriz took this as a personal challenge to create a software system that mirrored the habits, policies, tasks, and problems found in ILL departments rather than something that forced ILL workers to change their processes. Thus, ILLiad emerged (along with numerous debates and protests of the double L in ILLiad).

Managing Overdues:

While Cristina headed to another conference session, I took part in a session titled “Managing Overdues: Getting Your Books Back Without Hired Goons” with John Brunswick, from Atlas Support Systems. Some days, it does feel like we need hired goons-however, with some new features in ILLiad version 7.2.0 (which we haven’t upgraded to YET), we will be able to better manage and track overdue items, ensure good standing with our lending libraries, and have our patrons not feel as if we’re badgering them for returning items. Since ILLiad is practically a paper-free system for ILL, the 7.2.0 version will allow us to send overdue emails to libraries that we’ve lent our materials to–this will surely make Colleen and our student workers happy–no more envelop stuffing and licking.

Interlibrary Loan Requests:

My second session of the day was titled “The $64,000 Question Answered: Why Do Patrons Place ILL Requests for Items that the Library already Owns?” and was an interesting study done by Karen Janke (ILL Librarian) at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indinapolis (IUPUI). Because of the emense campus size, satelitte libraries, and lack of ‘document delivery’ services, the ILL department at IUPUI tracked their statistics for ILL requests cancelled because the item was available in the main library or one of the many satelitte libraries. In 2006, IUPUI cancelled 25% of all ILL requests because of availability in their own library system, of the 25% total, 27% of the cancelled items were loan requests (books, audio-visual…) and 24% were article requests. After conducting surveys (student, staff, and faculty), examining the IUPUI online catalog interface, and conducting catalog search sessions, the IUPUI ILL department has seen a decrease in the number of cancelled requests due to current availability. As a result, IUPUI will soon begin to drastically redesign their online catalog interface since the obscurity of searching this system was the highest reason for ILL requests. IUPUI use SirsiDynix for their catalog system and feels this may be a major player in the confusion of keyword searching in the catalog.

The Tao of ILLiad:

Beth Posner from The CUNY Graduate Center in New York gave an interesting perspective to ILLiad, finding the Tao. After a brief introduction to Eastern thought, religion, and interpretations, Posner showed how one could find simplicity, connection, flexibility, balance, and engery in using ILLiad and the way in which we customize our staff screen interfaces. I’m not quite sure why I signed up for this session and unfortunately it was right after lunch so I didn’t get the fullness of this session.

ILLiad 7.2 in a Nutshell:

Stephanie Spires from Atlas Systems Training gave an overview of the features, upgrades, and customizations available in the 7.2 version of ILLiad. Since ZSR shares ILLiad with the Carpenter Library, we have not yet upgraded…but after attending this session, Cristina and I are both looking forward to these new features.

In conclusion, this conference was much more than I expected it to be. Whether it being the 10th anniversary of ILLiad or the lure of the beach during non-Spring Break time, I greatly enjoyed the conference sessions, accomodations, and support we’ve received from OCLC and Atlas/ILLiad. I think the greatest benefit that I took away from this year’s conference was simply getting to meet the people face-to-face that I’ve only met over the phone. To finally feel as if there is someone else experiencing the same error messages, process issues, or upgrade excitement is the greatest thing I brought back to Winston (apart from the laptop bags and salt water taffy of course!).

Thanks to Lynn and the Library in whole for Travel and Career Developement opportunities such as this.

Heather Gillette

Formal presentation: MySpace or Yours? Building Connections Between Student Computing Culture and Academic Computing Competencies (Bob King)

• Problem: disconnect between student computing culture & what we want students to do with the computer
• We know they’re doing something
• Learning builds on what we already know, must connect to existing knowledge
• When students come into academic setting, we don’t value what they know (their computing culture)
• Problem v.2: students begin their learning by deactivating what they know, rather than building on it
• How do we build connections between what they know & what we want them to know?
• We don’t have to like what students already know about computing
• We do have to know what they know, to build connections
• So what do they know? (brainstorm)
  • They know how to communicate (with their friends, emotion based, w/o proper grammar)
  • Knowledge-construction knowledge
  • Know how to multitask, know how to skim & surf (not necessarily how to drill down)
  • They have knowledge of how to make content in a variety of media
  • They may know less than they think
  • They know how to access information and play games
  • Have an online life
  • Sherry Turkle has useful theoretical context to understand this
  • The ability to explore the unknown socially
• What type of knowledge do they have? In either case, how do we build on it?
• Common views of what students know (Kaiser, D. Oblinger, etc)
  • The knowledge students have is very impressive and is generational or DNA-based, of a different species, gen X, Y, or M, etc.
  • The knowledge students have is not, after all, very impressive; despite what students may think, they lack basic skills
  • The knowledge students have is market-driven and represents an encroachment on academic turf (media-culpa)
• Student video (good stuff about information literacy!) on how they use the internet for academic & general purposes
• Problems with generational hypothesis
  • Doesn’t really allow us to build bridges
  • Idealize students just for being young leads to classroom disconnect & ignoring students who don’t like online existence
• One student said they’re lazy multitaskers
• Forcing into info lit or computer training model (ignoring what they do know) makes disconnect
  • “Such views minimize the social-base of students knowledge of computing while acknowledging (barely) their information-base (they can Google, yes, but that ain’t good enough)”
• Connection: both groups blame media
• Proposal: cultural-ecological knowledge hypothesis
  • The significant knowledge students already have about computing is of a type that is best described as cultural-ecological
  • Not a matter of generational difference, though can be younger
  • Not a matter of knowing insignificant skills & lacking basic
• A REALLY NEAT chart comparing student computing culture, academic computing culture
• If we incorporate items that they do know into our teaching, build bridges
  • Highly social, highly autonomous, choice-driven, desire-driven, bricolagic, nomadic/temporary, focused on content creation
• Real work application
  • Students create own wiki, own their own space (autonomous, choice-driven)
  • Collage, mashup, remix (bricoleur-friendly metaphors)
  • Self-selected topics
  • Focus on knowledge-construction processes including conversation, design, information skills
  • Temporal, project or performance-based structures

Formal presentation: What Can Students Learn from Computer-Based Training? (Tammala Bulger, Dana Ward)

• Supplemental online activities that allow printing certificates of completion
  • Sometimes this is used in face-to-face classes
  • Using SkillSoft’s SkillPort
  • Books 24/7
• What can students learn from CBT
  • Gives tech skills to students and certificates that can prove skills for internships
  • Blended Learning technique, slightly different definition than in the previous session
• I can see someone playing Second Life in front of me
• This session was less applicable to info lit instruction, as it focused on very specific software and one type of class, but still interesting information.

Formal presentation: A Primer on Blended Learning (Donna Petherbridge, Traci Temple)

• Very much an overview, but a nice general session
• Student characteristics
  • Demand we-based ed, prefer some tech, expect faculty to use some tech
  • Net Gen & Millennials (lumped together when comes to interest in online learning)
  • Web interactions have lead to an expectation for interaction and input into what and how they’re learning
  • Students still say teachers are invaluable to learning; online education often means LOTS of email for instructor… because they still want access to expert
• Blended Learning (lots of definitions)
  • Combining learning modes, teaching method/learning styles, teaching and learning strategies, learning in different contexts, and mixed approaches
  • Reduction in class time: refers to “Hybrid Learning,” not necessarily “Blended Learning.”
  • Mixed mode looks like: socialization group learning with learning possibilities of online environment
  • Student centered looks like: shift from lecture to student centered, new teaching strategies, teachers as facilitators, and focus on engaged instruction
• Viewed on a continuum (Carol A. Twigg)
  • Supplemental Model (traditional with online elements)
    • Could be PowerPoint that you post online
    • Could be a podcast, blog, discussion board
    • Online quizzes
    • CDROM/DVD with rich, interactive activities, simulations, movies
  • Fully Online Model (majority/all instruction online)
    • Students can access course anytime, anyplace, with asynchronous meetings
    • Content available online; materials could have been created collaboratively with multiple faculty members focusing only on their areas of expertise
    • Assignments within context of LMS at own pace
  • Replacement Model (Blended Learning)
    • Can reduce number of meeting times
    • Technology-based instructional activities
    • In-person classes could remain same (or change)
    • Can work individually or in small groups
    • Activity based learning fosters critical thinking skills
    • At own pace
    • Learning materials can match students’ personal learning styles
    • Weekly quizzes replace homework grading (sound familiar?!)
    • Automatic grading and record keeping
    • Links to additional learning resources: streaming media, lecture notes, exercise
    • Instructors spend time responding to students’ questions and needs
• Blended Learning Research
  • Recommends Educause (who doesn’t love it?)
  • Recommends looking at Program in Course Redesign at University of Central Florida
• Examples
  • Demo-ed eFlashcards that incorporated pronunciation
  • Blended website for an entomology course
• Benefits to students
  • Students like blended environment
  • Flexible course format
  • Active & student-centered
  • Greater interaction (student-faculty, student-student, student-content)
  • Part of learning process/learning communities
  • Serves varied learning styles
  • Increases learning outcomes
  • Better attendance, completion, and retention rates
  • Flexible, fits with “real life” family issues/work responsibilities, etc.
• Institutional Interest
  • Increased student learning
  • More efficient classroom use, increases capacity of facilities
  • “Supersection” model (I can’t imagine we’d ever see this at WFU, but we do something like this at UNCG) More info, see: Hartman and Moskai
  • Issues for administrators
    • Classroom scheduling, technology needs, testing facilities
  • Institutional Questions
    • Accreditation, institution definition of BL, how listed in catalog
• Overview
  • Blend “high-touch” with “high-tech”
  • Many different models
  • Will take time to develop courses