Professional Development

My presentation was scheduled for that most hated time….last slot, last day. I was sure it would be me and the two people who couldn’t get flights out until Sunday, but in actuality I had between 60 and 70 people attend and they were an enthusiastic and appreciative group. My topic was two-fold. First I was discussing rethinking the pure annotated bibliography as a final project for library instruction (or any lower level course, for that matter). Second, I was discussing using wikis and Google Docs in our LIB100 classes. There was some familiarity with Google Docs in the crowd but MUCH enthusiasm for my demo and my ability to answer questions. There was also a lively discussion of the annotated bibliography and new ways to approach similar skills with more relevant assignments. So it was a success and I was so pleased to be able to give others some new ideas, as I had been offered so many in the presentations I had attended.

It was a really useful conference to me — it is nice to be in a place where everyone does the same thing. You don’t have to introduce the concept of Information Literacy, and when people say ‘one-shot’ everyone knows what you are talking about. And the sessions gave me a lot to chew on over the summer as I prepare for my ACRL Intentional Teacher Immersion and work on improving our LIB100 and LIB200 curriculum. But for now….that’s all on LOEX….I have bigger fish to fry in the next few days….

This excellent presentation was done by two librarians at NCSU: Scott Warren, the Assoc. Director of the Textiles Library and Engineering Sciences and Kim Duckett, Digital Technologies and Learning Librarian.

What they have done is to expand on our discussion of the economics of information and scholarly publishing for an upper-level english class on communication in the sciences. Here’s what they do:

• Want to convey to students that their tuition $$ goes to things that the general public cannot afford. They are privileged by their association with an institution and a library and that can give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
• Focus on Discovery (what Google Scholar is for) and Access (what the library pays for)
• Find that students who run into a fee from a Google Scholar link move on to something else until they find something for free.
• They focus on discussing with the students WHY articles, journals and databases cost money — the library is a business — we purchase these things on their behalf (and with their money)
• They provide a larger context to peer review discussion including rejection rates, page rates, ‘not all journals are created equal,’ royalties, ownership, etc. to give them a sense of the culture of scholarly publishing, not just the process
• Ask Why can publishers charge so much? and Why do we pay it?
• Ask If we pay so much, do you think the publishers are giving it away for free on the web??
• Kim uses a great deep web metaphor to explain how Google scholar works vs. online databases

While we already do some of what they are doing in our LIB100 classes — this encouraged me to give it more context — business models make sense to students (they pay, for example, for iTunes songs) so work with that. Especially for our LIB200 classes, this discussion becomes even more important to have.

Good metaphor: the journal is the CD, the journal article is the MP3 of one of the songs….

This morning’s plenary panel on the future of libraries in HE was presented by Dr. Annette Haggray (Dean at College of DuPage), Lisa Hinchliffe (Head of UG Library at U of IL at Urbana-Champaign) and Christopher Stewart (Dean of Libraries at IL Institute of Technology).

Univ of Illinois:

• RESEARCH is primary
• 11 million vols in Library
• how do we reposition ourselves in an era when having a lot of print stuff is not what makes a great research institution -
• 10,000 graduate students!
• how do the research libraries serve the undergraduate student?
• how do we connect with student habits, traditions, patterns?
• Put the library where the students will ’stumble’ over it
• Best thing about being a librarian is helping students reach their dreams

College of DuPage

• Community College (largest in IL - top 4 in country)
• multiple missions - education, workforce development, community outreach, economic stimulation,
• Deeply embedded in community -
• many non-traditional students, online, experiential learning,
• Library helps faculty with instructional development and design
• increasing number of students who are underprepared or unprepared and of non-native speaking students - library will have a growing role in both of these

Illinois Institute of Technology

• known for science, technology, engineering and architecture
• Mies Van der Rohe designed the campus - library is a knock off
• Libraries 1.8 million volumes; 30,000 digital journal titles
• Flashpoint of financial tsunami that is affecting libraries — all of their research areas are the expensive titles…..
• Information Literacy is a bit different for science and technology libraries — much more reliant on a primarily online environment for their research — they will be the ones building our buildings, bridges, schools, airplanes — VERY important that they know how to do good research

Question to panelists: Where will we be in the future?

• What will the value of the university be in 10 years? What are the President and Provost reading? Quality, measurement, regulations, value, markets, prestige (not related to quality), efficiency will all impact IHEs — where does the library fit in with all of these things — has the library become part of the problem or part of the solution to addressing these issues?
• Are we going to be an institute of the future or the past? Given the way funding, regulation, student as consumer model are going - do we answer in what we were in the past or what we need to be in the future. What does pursuing quality aggressively mean?
• Do we have the courage to bring in and welcome the new librarians seeking to come in and work with us and take us in future-looking directions or will we drive them away to other more future-looking professions
• Library does not ‘OWN’ information literacy — we bring IL to the table and ask faculty ‘how will you work with us on this?’ — we need to address how to define it collectively and collaboratively within the disciplines.
• Market share of for-profit institutions is growing — neither faculty nor librarians own the curriculum - they have addressed efficiency in the educational enterprise — Univ. of Phoenix now has 300,000 students
• Illinois State study on how they got such great results integrating IL into the curriculum — librarians were on the committees, volunteered for the jobs others didn’t want (like policy writing) and did the work they said they were going to do….had a profound impact on the policies and the speed at which they were created and adopted
• Offer the library up as a solution to problems on campus - space, services, events, etc.

Question to Panelists: How do we market libraries?

• Marketing is about your brand - get students to connect your brand with learning - not just with stuff or with a place
• Marketing potential exists in EVERY transaction within the library
• Make sure the marketing is in line with the institutional brand - let the institution print your marketing materials
• Staff (not librarians) often have more transactions with our patrons than librarians do (student workers even more) — be sure you include them in any discussion of marketing
• Reconceptualize the job of the student workers — customer service model — so many barriers between a student and a librarian - make sure ALL their interactions are positive and service-oriented
• Market Librarians’ office hours –

Question to Panelists: How do we create a welcoming environment?

• Don’t make assumptions about your students and how they expect to be treated in your enviroment
• New or renovated spaces bring in more people
• Library should be the symbolic starting place on campus
• Library is the only place where it is socially acceptable to be alone (never thought of that!)
• Libraries should start to think of multi-use possibilities — writing center/writing lab; eating/drinking;
• Part of the reason we get space based on books is because that is how we have sold the need for more space — we need to discuss the need for space for collaboration, student study, staff connecting with students, etc. Change the sales pitch!
• Career counseling, campus help desk, academic advising, wellness center all have on-site hours in the library — don’t have to bring the office into the building - just the services — set up a consultation desk — have organization schedule time at the consultation desk
• Prioritize your space for your people, not your books. Let books be off-site and let students connect with the librarians
• University of Chicago is doing the opposite –new space coming — all monographic titles would be browsable in the new building — only moved journals off-site. Gathering in all of their monographs to one location.

So some of you may know that last fall I took my first step into the world of fantasy sports, joining a Librarians fantasy football league on Yahoo Sports. I finished in the middle of the pack - not bad. Having Brett Favre didn’t hurt. I know Susan Smith plays fantasy football….anyone else out there doing this????

This league was assembled via my Info Lit listserv by Paul Waelchli from the University of Dubuque. Paul is a big name in the Library gaming community but is doing some really cool things with using Fantasy Sports to teach information literacy concepts. His presentation Fantasy Sports: The Road to Information Literacy Championships was wonderful. His co-presenter, Sara Holladay is the Fantasy Football Librarian is an avid FF player and did the background on the statistics of FF.

Last summer, The University of Dubuque library had a 30-minute orientation session for their incoming football players and he used the question “Who should be the #3 running back drafted in a fantasy football league?” They talked about researching the issue, where to go for information, difference between the print and online sources of info, how to check multiple sources, credibility, etc. and got extremely positive results.

Since the session was not tied to a real assignment he had wanted to do something that would engage them immediately, make them see the library and librarians in a positive light, and make sure they associated the library with a place that can help you find information. It really looks like he succeeded.

I have been considering what we might be doing with our athletes who are on campus for 2nd session summer school to introduce them to the library and our services. This is getting me thinking about lots of possibilities — if anyone out there is interested in exploring something for our athletes, let me know.

The folks at Univ. of Kentucky did a video in Second Life combined with some live footage of their libraries to put together a replacement for a PowerPoint presentation that had been given to all students in the UK101 class - an intro to college class that was taken by about half of the Freshmen on campus.

In trying to liven up the presentation and give the students the basic information about getting help in the Library - they created about a 7 minute video that does it well — something to think about as we take Technology of WFU out of the live world an into the online one….never thought about using Second Life to animate a concept - they just used Camtasia to capture the Second Life action, recorded an audio track separately and then knit the two together with Camtasia.

Enjoy: http://tinyurl.com/47zwq9

Robin L. Ewing and Melissa Prescott from St. Cloud State

Web 2.0 Definition (won’t regurgitate this - the basics - Social networking, bookmarking, tagging, communicating, RSS, etc.)

Web 2.0 Surveys 2007

Teens and Social Media from Pew Internet and American Life

Creating and Connecting from National School Board survey

• 64% online teens have created Web 2.0 content
• Approx. 30% of online students have their own blogs
• 22% have uploaded videos they have created

Their own Web 2.0 Awareness Survey

74 students

Awarness of Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, Podcasts, Social tagging, Wikipedia, Other Wikis, RSS

• RSS had not heard of 92%, 0% had ever used
• Social Bookmarking 68% had not heard of
• Other Wikis 45% had not heard of
• Podcasts 51% had heard of but had not used
• 5% had blogs
• 8% had uploaded videos

Audience discussed how their students compare - similar experiences — students are not seeing new technologies as ‘exciting’ the way librarians do….for them it’s like a new feature on a car — or a refrigerator…..

Librarians respond to Web 2.0 — we see it as a way to connect, market, facilitate — but do students want us there?

Wanted to use credit courses to introduce Web 2.0 concepts and applications, identify tools to discuss with them but not have them create the content or evaluate

Devoted the last 5 minutes of each class to Web 2.0 technology - overview and example — used PPT presentations, or Social Bookmarking YouTube videos (In Plain English series)….. sometimes also did in-class exercises

Virtual Library Tour

• Had students take the pictures (check out the cameras from Circ) …..upload to Flickr….. tag….
• Set up a Flicker account for the class
• Assigned them to groups
• Gave each a camera
• Instructor uploaded them to Flickr
• Tagging happened later in the semester
• Now they do a short tour - students upload the pcitures - students add tags and notes — http://www.flickr.com/photos/13167481@N03
• Practice tagging with Google Image Labeler

Social Bookmarking

PPT - definition, video — in class they signed up for account and tagged some sites

Podcasting

Online article — Online May/June 31-31 — Bennington, Adam. 2007. Stick it in your ear: Keeping current with Podcases

Had them listen to a podcast and then evaluated it in class….

Next Steps

Connect Web 2.0 Resources to student research

• Blogs as research logs
• Wikipedia article creation
• 23 Things idea….
• Short readings ‘7ThingsYour Should Know about…..” from EDUCAUSE outside of class and come into class ready to discuss

Implications for IL Instruction

Evaluation of Information from Web 2.0 Sources needs to be considered - not easy to get a checklist format for this.

This was a great session because it confirmed my hunch that students don’t use Web 2.0 the  way librarians use it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not relevant to their research in certain circumstances. I really love the idea of having the students take pictures of the library and then use the concept of tagging to introduce the concept of controlled vocabularies.  I also got some other good ideas about how to approach the topics with students by starting with things we know they do (read their updates in Facebook) and applying that to other Web 2.0 technologies (RSS Feeds).

This presentation, from Elmhurst College, called Laying an Ethical Foundation: Information Ethics as a Good Beginning –

IL in a first-year seminar (new program to Elmhurst) –

• Dean brought it into the curriculum
• Went to First Year Experience conference (in Hawaii!!!)
• Partnered with Student Affairs personnel
• Wanted FYS to be very academic in nature (rather than an extended orientation class)
• 4 pilot classes (Business, Geology, Education, Rhetoric/Composition)
• Rhetoric/Comp Professor was an honors section “Exploring Chicago” — place as text — history/politics/economics/culture/immigrants
• All 4 sections taught at the same time — they would get them together for larger discussions
• For all 4 classes - 5 specific goals
  • Articulate an understanding of the value of a liberal arts education and its synergy with professional preparation.
    • Liberal Arts Articles
    • The Eagle’s Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World– common text
    • Class Reflections
    • Final Synthesis Paper
  • React ethically to varied perspectives and experiences to stimulate intellectual curiosity and to expand cultural awareness
    • Attendance at campus events and reaction papers
    • off-campus trips that required critical & reflective thinking about the experience
  • Respond critically to varied texts from different disciplinary speheres of knowledge and perspectives
    • critical examination of readings from many different perspectives
  • Contribute to the campus and/or society through varied means including civic engagement
  • Articulate and demonstrate ways to ethically gather, synthesize and present information in school, work and life
• Last goal was Information Literacy — library partnership
• Focus on access and evaluation in first year programs results in lack of time for consideration of communication and ethics
• College’s mission to teach ethics and values
• Millennial students as creators and users of information
• Goals of the Information Literacy Module
  • Engage students where they are
  • Prompt them to think about information ethics
• 3 blog assignments
  • Academic dishonesty — group discussion, followed by reflective writing
  • Sources of information — critical thinking exercise on web-based resources — analyze Wikipedia and Britannica entries
  • Ownership of information - blog ‘reports’ on events with multimedia component

Results (Librarian Perspective):

• Most students completed blog assignments
• Used information ethically
• Did not comment on each others posts -
• Did not use this blog for other assignments or recreationally
• Resistance to blogging
• Engaged students in learning with librarians
• Embedded librarian in a course
• Introduced information ethics as part of information literacy
• established information literacy as essential skill in gen ed revision
• Importance of integrating information literacy instruction with ocourse content
• collaborative course design
• understanding faculty styles

Results (faculty perspective)

• Very positive
• Supportive expertise
  • In-depth knowledge of most current reference materials
  • Understand best practices regarding ethical use of resources, source evaluation, citation, etc.
  • experience with the latest technology
• Enhanced academic experience
  • Integrated instruction
  • content focused
• Class blog
  • resources materials
  • student postings

Results (student perspective)

• Initially anxious about research and the technology
• Glad (and surprised) to know the librarian knew more about blogs than students
• Learned a lot from in-depth exploration of mis-use of information….. ‘don’t cheat’ does not make students understand the use and misuse of information
• Librarian contact and instruction took away the excuse ‘I didn’t know how to find the research’ –
• Students connected with each other…..through exploring Chicago, etc.
• Time in class might have made students read each others postings
• If more assignments had used them, students may have been more comfortable….
• Blogs did help students synthesize the information…..

Next Year

• expanding to 8 sections then to 28 sections for all students
• assignments will be more integrated with course content
• spread workload out over librarians
• follow up with students over the summer

Q & A

1 librarian assigned to all 4 sections

went to most of the common sessions

did grade blog assignments

workshop for faculty beforehand on blogs

Interesting discussion about whether the blogs should be public……

Arrived at the Doubletree at Oak Brook, IL this morning after a bit of R&R with my sister including an outstanding Comedy of Errors at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre….but now it’s two days of Library Instruction ideas.
LOEX, for those who don’t know, used to stand for Library Orientation Exchange….now it’s more of an acronym (think OCLC) for an organization and an annual conference on instruction and information literacy in libraries. After a good breakfast, we had a wonderful opening speaker, Laurel Orfstein, an instructor in the Loyola MBA school with an emphasis on creativity in business and decision making. The presentation was wonderful and thought provoking - here are the high points…..

• 82% of White Collar workers collaborate on a daily basis
• People don’t REALLY love new ideas - they tend to fall back on old one — the promise of new outcomes rarely outweighs the comfort of old processes….
• Roadblocks to new ideas can come from indifference, outright rejection or killer phrases like ‘It’s not in the budget,” “We tried that before….” “get a committee to look into that” and my favorite ‘But we’ve always done it this way’
• Idea shortages in organizations are often self-inflicted
• Creative approaches to Collaboration….
  • Be open to possibilities
  • Include Different Viewpoints
  • Start with WILD ideas
• Cultures that foster new ideas include
  • Challenge and Involvement: Meaningfulness vs. Disengagement — to what degree are people personally involved in teh business of and in the success of the organization?
  • Freedom - Autonomy vs. Strict Guidelines: to what degree do people have the autonomy to define much of their own work toward the common objective?
  • Idea Time - Slack vs. Tightness: To what degree do people take time to consider suggestions that are not part of their assignment?
  • Idea Support - Resources vs. automatic no: To what degree are new ideas greeted with affirming encouragement as opposed to judgments?
  • Degree of Conflict — Tension vs. Acceptance: To what degree do people engage in departmental ‘warfare’ of spend effort to ‘best’ their internal competitors
  • Discussion - Participative vs. Authoritarian — To what degree do people engage in lively discussion about the issues as aopposed to discussing each other?
  • Humor & Play — Spontaneity vs. Gravity — To what degree do people feel relaxed and are willing to express humor and tell jokes at work?
  • Trust and Openness — Being Frank vs. Suspicious: To what degree do people willing put forward their ideas and opinions?
  • Risk-Taking — Trying things vs. Being Cautious and Hesitant:To what degree do people feel supported to take a gamble when there is ambiguity?
• To encourage creative thinking focus on dreaming of an ideal tomorrow — instead of starting where you are and going forward — start with where you want to be and work out the steps backward from there.
• Ask “Wouldn’t it be nice if…..” to spark creative thinking about change instead of focusing on what you want to change.

We then did an interesting exercise where everyone at our tables wrote three statements about the future of an information literacy program beginning with the phrase “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” then we gathered our responses together and read them outloud. Common themes emerged at our table:

• Need for appropriate instruction spaces
• frustration at faculty
• Desire to meet the students where they are
• Keeping students engaged

All in all it was a very interesting session that gave me some good ideas for analyzing where we are in the LIB100/LIB200 arena and also where we are in the one-shot library instruction space.

This morning started with a session on student computer use in the classroom. They looked at tablets and laptop use by students at the Univ. or Vermont School of Business where they REQUIRE TABLETS of all their students - undergrad and grad. Their faculty struggle with needing the students to have computers in the class with the fact that computers are now fully-functional entertainment centers (sound familiar?) They revamped the class to use the tablets and installed activity monitoring software on the computers to track what the students ‘really’ do in class. They found that 20% of the time students were not doing class-related activities. The found that tablet users did less instant messaging but more gaming, email, web surfing than the laptop users. They also found that the more time a student spent instant messaging the worse grade they got in the class (shocking!). They also found that 50% of web browsing done in a class is unproductive. They also found that to some degree the tablet students did better on the course final grade. There are still some questions to be answered, but an interesting empirical look at classroom computer use.

Finally able to write about the other sessions I attended today. One about the use of iPods in English Composition classes was particularly interesting. The professor (from Miami Dade Univ.) based his comp class around James Bond (great idea — no Cliff Notes for the books, great fodder for composition in comparing the books to the movies, and the students love it). He taught two sections and for one handed out iPods and created podcasts with supplemental material like a ‘Villians Gallery’ and other content for students to listen to and watch outside of class. For the other class, the same material was available on the web. The grades were significantly better in the one with the iPods. He found that his student athletes, especially, would listen to the material on the bus, on the treadmill and on the trainers tables. He thought the students who benefited the most were the ones who were at risk of falling through the cracks — those who needed just a bit more experience with the material to be successful.

In a different look at the same issue, however, was a professor at the poster session who surveyed his students about iPod use and found that they did not want ‘educational’ material encroaching on their ‘recreational’ device. They very clearly saw the dilineation between work space and play space and never the twain shall meet…..
This question about how far into student spaces we should venture before we start to get pushback was the topic of a discussion session I went to. Lots of discussion about how schools are using wikis, blogs and even Second Life but no consensus about how far we should take it. Anecdotally there is a lot of evidence that students don’t want grown-ups in their spaces, but also anecdotally you have some success stories about faculty using Facebook groups successfully in classes. I think the key is to know your students and your campus culture. The group did recognize that a lot of the social software technologies that we are experimenting with (RSS aggregators, Second Life, etc.) have yet to ‘catch on’ with undergrads, and there is some evidence that even Facebook is becoming less popular with college students as High School students are now allowed and employers and grad schools are now looking at profiles in hiring and admission processes.

The general session this afternoon was on disaster preparedness and recovery. Presented by people from Southern Miss. Univ. and LSU we got a first hand look at how disasters can affect all areas of a campus even when your campus is not the one hit. Southern Miss. was nearly completely wiped out by the storm, LSU just had all of the issues around being an evacuation point. They gave good advice - and sobering account of how Katrina affected so many. I know I’m going to go home and make an inventory of our house and store it online somewhere I can get to it even if the house is gone!