Professional Development

I could go in chronological order in this post, but that would require me to “bury the lead” and talk about Lawrence Lessig’s presentation in the middle of the post! Lessig is a rock star in my world and it seems only right that when writing about a copyright guru I “steal” his bio from his website!

“Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

For much of his career, Professor Lessig focused on law and technology, especially as it affects copyright. He represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. His current academic work addresses a kind of “corruption.”

He has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing “against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online.”

Professor Lessig is the author of Remix (2008), Code v2 (2007), Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). He is on the board of the Creative Commons project, MAPLight, Free Press, Brave New Film Foundation, Change Congress, The American Academy, Berlin, Freedom House and iCommons.org. He is on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation and LiveJournal. He has served on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He was also a columnist for Wired, Red Herring, and the Industry Standard.

Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.”

-from http://www.lessig.org/info/bio/

Lessig opened by discussing how in the past copyright had a tiny role at the turn of the century as the law was technical and difficult and only applied to a small group of businesses. Then things changed, and now copyright reaches across the spectrum, the law is more technical and difficult to understand, but applies to so many daily transactions. We collide with copyright constantly in our lives. It all changes because the platform we use to get access to our culture has changed. The current paradigm is that if we don’t secure this money for professional creators of content they will not be incented to create this content. But where is the role of the amateur (all those remixers on YouTube) in keeping culture alive?

Educators and scientist rather than questioning copyright have embraced it over the last 20 years without enough skepticism Lessig says we should all feel entitled to question the legal system (as lawyers do) rather than just roll over! Scholarly journal costs are blocking access to knowledge except for the richest Universities.

Necessary evils are still evil and should be avoided. It should not take years and over $500,000 to re-clear the rights to the “Eyes on the Prize” series. Documentaries suffer under current laws. Items will turn to dust before some items can be transferred and preserved

What to do about this? Well, Lessig thinks changing the law is hopeless. So he likes to change the norms with project like Creative Commons. He said we all need to be radical militant activists on this issue!

The Google Book Search Project was his next talking point. He has concerns the settlement is pushing us toward a radically complex model that pushes books toward the same issues faced by film (documentaries in particular!) He quoted Drucker that “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

He wondered how to convey to lawyers that the current system is a failure that can’t work in the digital age? Copyright is essential, he is not a copyright abolitionist, he believes it needs reworking. He is a great speaker and if you ever get a chance to hear him, take it!

The e-books session was at capacity and also very engaging! Robin Schulze from Penn State discussed their program with the Sony Reader 505. (The new model, 700 series is more interactive, highlight underline, annotate) This reader has no backlight, long battery life, and is readable in daylight. Sony E ink is great for readability. Sony loaned the readers and the put them to use in English 30. Sony is a single use device on purpose to encourage immersive reading. Those running the study were struck by the reviews that commented on the coldness of the device. One described it as “The book John DeLorean would have designed.” The lack of interactivity and custom fonts made it hard to get everyone on the same page. It became obvious that everyone wanted consistent page numbers.

At the same time the students did not say it hindered their general comprehension. This discrepancy was hard for those conducting the pilot to reconcile! Students said the ebooks did not seem friendly or companionable. Need to change patterns of infant instruction in reading and need to include more interaction, Flash, and features that change/augment the reading experience! (Do what books can’t do now!)

Kindle was not interested in partnering with any of these schools!

Next I attend a Google Wave Demo. I’ve written and talked so much about Google Wave in the last few months and I still don’t have an account! Still, I can’t wait for an account for myself and accounts for all my friends and coworkers so we can start collaborating with this new tool! I do have some concerns that it will be a paradigm shift that will require some change in my processes!

The program “I’m Thin and Green” : Reducing the Desktop Carbon Footprint while Offering Anywhere, Anytime, Computing Services, was led by Richard Toeniskoetter of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff who described the school of 15,000 students on a mountain campus (between Sedona and the Grand Canyon) 7,000 additional students statewide (elevation 7000ft) as one that is epitomized by small class size.

They have a goal to be carbon neutral by 2020. They engage and educate the community both locally and globally and offer hands on sustainability learning opportunities to students. Both the Business and Engineering buildings are Gold LEED certified and the Applied Research and Design building is Platinum LEED certified.

Thin clients in use there use only 4 watts of power, with no need for UPCs as the data is all saved at data center. Hotdesking allows a session to follow you anywhere. Questions like offline usage (Network is down?) and licensing were important when considering this switch. Thin clients allow the applications in a lab to be changed at a moments notice, but do require the infrastructure to support this new model of computing. These clients are goof for about 80% of users, but not for those who heavily use multimedia. He said resistance to thin clients is natural and we should not force it where it does not fit. For those wanting more information he suggested reading an article by Karla Hignite in Business Officer, Oct 2009 on thin clients.

This post is getting too long, so I’ll end with the wild program “Bricks and Mortar Libraries in the 21^st Century: An Oxymoron? This was a Point and Counter Point session between Suzanne Thorin and Richard Luce. Thorin said the library as place is dead and we need to move on. She said new discovery tools and resources are all digital. ILL is a scanning activity, only buying books on demand of faculty; we are moving our books off-site. Students use us as social study space with their laptops, still quiet spaces, often not using our services on those laptops. She described roving librarians, saying we have abandoned the reference desk and that our organizational structures are “a blast from the past”. She said we need to stop counting numbers of books and other things that don’t show what we do. She also said we should count how we impact student success and retention and scholarly publishing instead.

Then Richard Luce spoke saying that she had been talking about print v digital, not about the library as place. He said we came here today (to Educause) to interact with one another. The library is a place to be with one another. There is a social, community, role, with libraries becoming classrooms and laboratories. Library is the neutral/mutual location on the college/university campus.

This was a wild session with too much point and counter point to capture, but you get the idea. I think it is interesting that ZSR has made many of the transitions discussed, creating quiet study areas, cool new collaborative spaces, and doing more with instruction.

Finally, some quick stats! There are about 4000 attendees at Educause this year, over 6000 if you count all the vendors, and there are over 1000 people participating in the online Educause conference. Oh, and I’m the only person from WFU here!

After spending the better part of a day traveling and with only 14% power left on my iPhone (I never like to get below 20%) and with only six minutes before the close of registration on Tuesday night, I checked in at the Educause 2009 registration station and collected my conference materials! For those of you who may not have heard of Educause, it is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. This year the conference is in Denver.

I’ve never been to Denver, and on the walk back to the hotel after registering, I discovered that since the blizzard last week things had warmed considerably and many other attendees were enjoying the weather and the 16^th Street pedestrian mall near the convention center. I was wiped out after a day of travel and hit the bed early to be ready for the general session early Wednesday.

Wednesday began bright and early thanks to crossing two time zones, and this gave me a chance to catch up on email, exercise and plan my session strategy. Diana Oblinger, the president and CEO of Educause opened the general session, reminding us that Educause is not just a conference, but a community. The planners of Educause 2009 asked for feedback and listened. There are more on managing the enterprise in a tough economy and more sessions on sustainability issues. The Point/Counterpoint sessions are back as are the Lightening Rounds sessions where multiple presenters offer new ideas at a fast pace. As many of you at ZSR know, there is an online conference option this year and a new feature, Educause Central Online, where you can connect with colleagues and chat with Educause staff in the online conference virtual meeting hub.

The keynote speaker was James C. Collins http://www.jimcollins.com/ Author of Built to Last, Good to Great, and How the Mighty Fall. (We have them all in ZSR!) Collins spent much of his time discussing the five step-wise stages of decline he found in his research and outlined in How the Mighty Fall. He also focused what makes some good organizations become great. He states that “greatness is not a function of circumstance, but rather a matter of conscious choice and discipline”, and that “good” is the enemy of “great”. His research focuses on the business sector rather than the social sector, but he states that the results are applicable and the two are both necessary for a successful country. He has some interesting ideas about leaders and leadership, and his “Hedgehog Concept” is an interesting model to determine where you can be the best based on skills, resources and values. I plan to read some of his work, but it isn’t currently available for the kindle reader!

During my first pass through the exhibit hall I decided to shoot some video and post it on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/user/gizwomack#p/a/u/0/tXrOi1s6X20

The E-Portfolio Lightning Round was great! While it was familiar content it was good to see where various schools stand with E-Portfolios and to see that they are various uses. While some use them to show a student’s work to potential employers, many are only using E-Portfolios as an assessment tool. Some even used Google Sites to host the portfolios. Helen Barrett’s name always comes up when discussing E-Portfolios. She was described as the “mother of E-Portfolios” by one speaker. (Helen will be visiting WFU in the Spring.) Jeffrey Middlebrook from U of Southern California described their blog-based solution as a “blogfolio”. The University of Wisconsin is using the Desire2Learn E-Portfolio application. I also saw a demo of the open source portfolio add-on to Sakai.

In the Cloud Computing session “Cloud Computing and New Research Services: A Case Study”, The speaker. Beth Secrest, took a poll of the group before beginning, and there were only two librarians and many IT professionals present. Beth is the program officer for IT services for the Association of Research Libraries. She began with some definitions. “Cloud computing refers to the applications delivered as services over the Internet and the hardware and systems software in the datacenters.” She then defined “campus cyberinfrastructure” as serving the underserved and average rather than extreme scholar. It is flexible, agile, scalable, and sustainable. Needs to be implemented fast or users will go find these sources on their own! She described using SAAS Service: FormSpring. In the past a class or a researcher would send database specifications to IT and wait for a response. This method is much more interactive. There are challenges and policies to create. Questions come up such as who owns the data, and who can create the form. Newer tools include backup options and more export tools. In their pilot there was only one interruption of service for only a few hours and the service reported not only the outage, but which users were affected by it. The pilot collaboration with Ithaca went very well! The reason for using FormSpring for the study was that ARL did not have the infrastructure internally to manage the technology of this research project. Beth stated that “Cheap and Simple” can often be “Good Enough” (This is exactly how I feel about Google Sites!)

More to come in tomorrow’s post!

On Tuesday, October 6th, I led a pre-conference on Google Tools for TNT. I was expecting 16 attendees, but because of the cancellation of an earlier workshop, I ended up with 22 attendees. About half of them brought laptops as suggested, and this made for an excellent hands-on experience for those attending! The workshop was from 1:30-4pm, much longer than the normal 50-60 minute sessions I lead. It was amazing to have the extra time to cover the topic more thoroughly! I combined my Google Docs and Google Sites workshops and added a discussion of various other Google Tools (including Google Wave). By the time we were done, the participants agreed we had covered a lot of ground!

On Wednesday, July 29th, Mary Scanlon and I participated in the ACRL OnPoint Chat series, “Are Reference Desks Passé?” While no definitive conclusion was reached, many salient points were discussed. The format of this series was a Meebo Chatroom with 80 participants. Two parallel threads emerged during the 45 minute conversation: the medium and the provider of reference service.

The title challenged people to discuss different service points and varying technologies available for users. Service points included the traditional stand-alone reference desk, a single service point (reference and circulation) or virtual service points which included Twitter, IM, VOIP, video, text, email, walkie talkies, Vocera devices and software such as LibraryH3lp, Google Voice, and others. By and large the librarians in the discussion found that faculty were not users of chat clients, while undergraduates used both chat and text. No consensus was reached regarding the necessity of a reference desk, but many excellent questions were raised.

Who should staff the desk was the other dominant theme in the conversation. Current solutions ran the full spectrum, but a recurring theme was the de-professionalization of the desk staff. Numerous libraries are using a triage model to refer difficult questions to subject specialists. Another aspect of this discussion was that embedded widgets throughout a library’s website were viewed to be a powerful way to drive traffic to subject specialists.

As first-time participants in a chat session like this, both Mary and I were struck by the chaotic nature of the format. Participants were answering multiple questions simultaneously, creating a challenging discussion environment. However, in spite of these challenges, it was possible to see the overarching themes emerge and glean the experiences of other academic libraries. If you would like to see the transcript it can be found at: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/events/onpoint/index.cfm

Once again, the Z. Smith Reynolds Library is partnering with the Forsyth County Public Library for the “Big Read 2009.” You may recall that last year Rosalind Tedford was the ZSR representative for this project when the book selected was “Fahrenheit 451″ by Ray Bradbury. This year I’ve taken on that role and the book selected this year is Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”.In preparation for the various Big Read programs in September and October, Elizabeth Skinner of FCPL and I are attending the “Big Read” orientation this week in Minneapolis! Elizabeth has been leading the “On the Same Page” community reading program for years and in recent years combining and supplementing that program with the “Big Read” NEA grant which offers funds to match those contributed by ZSR and FCPL. As a result, more programming can be offered and more copies of the book can be made available in the community.

The orientation began with David Kipen National Reading Initiatives Director, National Endowment of the Arts kicking off the event and welcoming us to the orientation. Almost half of the audience was new to the Big Read. David Kipen reminded us that the program has grown from a handful of books to 33 titles and that this year there are over 269 communities/libraries receiving grants. Once again Mr. Kipen will be out in the Big Read mobile (a hybrid Ford Escape) crossing America and attending events. He is the author of the blog http://www.arts.gov/bigreadblog/ He also told us about a community that had 100% participation, the 140 residents of Kelleys Island, Ohio. It was a fun, entertaining way to kick off the event!

David Kipen was followed by Christine Taylor, the Program Director of Arts Midwest, one of the Big Read organizers. She pointed out the “hotline” information and introduced the members of her team who are there to help the grantees. Additionally we received a quick overview of the required deadlines and features of the website. They have made all the images and logos available via the web and secured all the necessary copyright for the audio files and essays available in the reader’s guide.

Tomorrow we will learn more about managing public and media relations, working with publishers and securing community partnerships just to name a few of the topics!

During some free time today I took advantage of the opportunity to walk the 6 blocks to the Minneapolis Public Library at 300 Nicollet Mall. This impressive building by Cesar Pelli boasts an 18,500 square foot green roof of low-growing drought resistant ground cover.

And no trip to Minneapolis would be complete without a photo of the Mary Tyler Moore bronze statue on Nicollet.

On May 27th Lynn, Megan and Giz met in the ITC Screening Room at 10am for a Mass Digitization Collaborative Information Session by Lyrasis. Laurie Gemmill the Lyrasis Digital Services Program Manager was the speaker. After a quick test of the webinar tools, Laurie Gemmill wanted to get a feel for everyone’s location, so we marked our location on a map.

Palinet established this collaborative about a year ago to assist members with digitization needs. Recently members asked for help with the specific digitization work. Reached out to the Sloan Foundation and committed to do 60,000 books or 20,000,000 pages, includes books, serials, etc. They are also looking to expand this digitization to oversize books, and other media like video and audio.

Laurie Gemmill began with an explanation of the program. On her first day there were over a hundred messages asking for assistance thanks to an announcement of the Sloan Foundation grant. Began with some mini-pilots at a variety of institutions like the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Penn State. Over a dozen mini-pilots were held. Pilot experiences were positive despite the variety of goals across the institutions. The benefits as seen by the pilot participants included: centralized coordination, visibility, ease of startup and billing, collaborative collection development, sustainability, digitization and OCR, metadata, and digital files and preservation.

The service includes: digitization, including OCR and quality control, hosting and preservation of files, project coordination, selection assistance, a quote based on # of volumes (not pages) and a one time cost. The Sloan Foundation grant helps by subsidizing costs, bigger projects get bigger discounts.

The overall process begins with a request for a quote, sign the quote, and have an orientation. Then materials are selected, copyright and metadata are the main criteria. Items are shipped, digitized and returned. The digitization centers are all over, but the ones in our close proximity are at Princeton Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne and Allen County Public Library: Fort Wayne, Indiana and Historic Barrow Mansion: Jersey City, New Jersey. Staff turn each page by hand before lowering glass platen and digital cameras shoot from above, both left and right simultaneously.

To see books contributed by Lyrasis members visit http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=lyrasis

Items are digitized literally cover to cover. Flip book and Flip book beta let users page through the book. Full text comes from OCR. The “all files” options shows users a complete list of the file types available. Master files are JPEG 2000 files.

Microfilm is still done at San Francisco center. It will be rolled out to other centers once the process is optimized.

Items are digitized at dpi relative to size, 300-600 dpi range:

•14.2″x 9.4″= 300 dpi
•10.6″x 7″= 400 dpi
•8.5″x 5.5″= 500 dpi

-overall size limit: 14.5″tall x 9.7″page width
-can do fold outs

Books are digitized in entirety “cover to cover” including blank pages. Books are scanned in full color. Microfilm is scanned as grayscale.

FAQS:

•How will our materials be handled?
-Staff experienced with fragile material
-Can accommodate specific handling requirements
•Will we get copies of images?
-Yes.Once digitized, files are available to download
•Can we link to materials?
-Yes. Feel free to update catalog records; links are permanent

Collaborative Members:

•Bloomsburg University
•Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
•Curtis Institute of Music
•Duquesne University
•Elizabethtown College
•Free Library of Philadelphia
•GoucherCollege
•Independence Seaport Museum
•Institute for Advanced Study
•Lancaster County Historical Society
•Lycoming College
•New Jersey State Library
•Paterson Free Public Library
•Pennsylvania College of Technology
•Penn State University
•Philadelphia Museum of Art
•Rutgers University
•St. Mary’s College of Maryland
•University of Maryland
-Baltimore
-College Park
-School of Law
•University of Pennsylvania
•University of Pittsburgh
•University of Scranton
•Villanova University
•West Chester University
•West Virginia University

How to Participate:

•Go to Lyrasis website
-View MDC info
-Sign up for info session
-Request a quote
•http://www.lyrasis.org/Products-and-Services/Digital-Services.aspx

•Contact Laurie Gemmill
-Laurie.Gemmill@lyrasis.org
-800.233.3401 x 1291
-Sign up for listserv

On Tuesday, November 18th, Roz Tedford, Lauren Pressley and I led a workshop on “Getting the Most Out of Google” at the Library 2.0 Instruction Conference at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill NC. The day before, Susan Smith, Roz Tedford and Lauren Pressley gave a presentation called “Teaching Them (2.0) to Fish: Web 2.0 as Subject and Method in Information Literacy Instruction.” The conference was sponsored by The North Carolina Library Association College and University Section and the Community and Junior College Libraries Section. The Friday Center was an excellent venue for this conference with ubiquitous Wi-Fi, large well-lit classrooms and plenty of coffee for those of us who hit the road very early to be there!

In our two hours time slot, Roz, Lauren and I introduced our 24 attendees (many of whom brought their own laptops in order to play along) to the wonders of Google Docs, Google Groups, Google Reader, Google Calendar and finally Google Sites. It was a fast-paced workshop with no break, but the attendees didn’t mind, they seemed far more hungry for information on Google Tools than for snacks in the lobby. Roz covered a Herculean amount of content on Google Docs and our participants were most impressed with the collaboration it offered! Lauren got everyone up to speed on managing RSS with Google Reader and I wrapped up the session with an introduction to Google Sites. Everyone who had managed a website with Dreamweaver was excited to see the ease of managing a website with Google Sites.

I often feel like Santa Claus when teaching Google Tools. It is like giving someone a present, only in this case, the gift is free! Add to that the chance to present with Roz and Lauren and it was a great experience all around!

On Wednesday, March 25th, 7 members of the ZSR Staff, Rosalind Tedford, Mary Beth Lock, Lauren Pressley, Kaeley McMahon, Sarah Jeong, Christian Burris and myself loaded up in the WFU Student Life van and headed up 421 to visit the ASU Library and Information Commons in Boone. We arrived and started a tour around 10:30am. Four members of the ASU staff (see list below) who were members of the”Library Internal Building Group” led us all over the building. After an amazing tour (see highlights listed below) we were treated to lunch by our host and had a discussion about the lessons they learned in this building process. After lunch and discussion we resumed our tour and by 3:30pm were back on 421 to WFU! Our ASU hosts were just amazing as was their facility. To see pictures of the ASU Library and Information Commons, check out the library’s photo set from this trip!

Below is a list of tour highlights, positives outcomes from the building experience and lessons learned. The seven staff who attended collected these items together in a Google Doc to make this a truly collaborative report!

Present from ASU

• Ann Viles- Associate University Librarian
• Lynne Lysiak- Head of Systems
• Pat Sweet-Facility Manager
• Lori Davis- Position in Technical Services

(All Four were on the “Library Internal Building Group”)

Library and Building History Highlights

• 1996-Planning began
• Funding received in 2000/2001
• Funding included building and Parking Deck
• Building completed in 2005, deck in 2006 (Architect-Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott)
• ASU uses the Innovative Library System

Tour Highlights

• Aluminum table in the conference room made for a very nice light movable piece of furniture, but makes the wireless mouse and keyboard unusable.
• They had 26 study rooms. Booked study rooms with III Millennium client with an opac interface
• Chairs in the conference room were stackable and colorful, light and wheeled.
• Floors had outlet junction boxes built in with covers that were flush with the floor when not opened. Made for flexible use.
• They shared students from circulation to reference desk and back.
• Had “stacks workrooms” on each floor where books that were picked up from study tables were scanned in to have a record of “in building use.”
• Movable shelves for microform cabinets!
• DVD collection was in open stacks, retrievable by patrons. Shelved in assession number order.
• DVDs, microfiche, children’s books collection, periodicals, all together on the lower level. All periodicals, both current and bound, were shelved together using compact shelving.
• Computing stations were facing each other but off set in a herringbone fashion. Made great use of space and students weren’t looking directly at each other.
• Computer lab tables had great cord management, and the chairs were light, comfortable, wheeled and cheap. Flooring in labs/classrooms was also raised to allow for flexible room configurations.

Positives Outcomes

• Lots of light, lots of study space
• carpet squares
• Ref collection shrunk by 50%
• The atrium was glassed in. This really cut down on noise but still allowed for beautiful and open views.
• The shelving in reference was half regular stacks height. This gave users plenty of flat surfaces to spread out or to write on. This also meant that everyone had a clear view of the area. Library staff could see anywhere if there was a problem, and students could see the desk (to know if the librarian was available, etc) from anywhere in the room.
• They have a building manager and really recommend this role.
• The library houses a large lecture hall that can be used by other campus groups during specific times. There are 120 theater-styled seats that are ADA compliant and each has an outlet.
• Sign displays are all easily changeable. (They really recommend temporary signage for the first few years as it takes a while to determine the best location for things.)
• The reference desk was designed for students to come around to the back to work side-by-side with the library staff member.
• Student employees are cross trained and have periodic group training sessions on specific skills (a database, a new technology, etc). These sessions are held three or four times in one week so that there are several chances to attend.
• There are 29 active group study rooms with various levels of technology. A few have international satellite for foreign language programming. A few have smartboards, but they have taken a beating as some used them as whiteboards.
• One computer classroom has 34 computers set up so that the front of the classroom is to the side (rather than in front of behind the monitors). There are two projectors so that everything is visible from any point in the room. There are two smartboards. The computers run software to allow instructors to restrict what students can do or to push screens to all computers.
• There is a server room in the library that runs things like the clocks (set by GPS) and security cameras. (The ILS server is housed elsewhere.)

Lessons Learned

• Be Wary of Value Engineering (cost-cutting)
• Getting lots of pressure to be open 24hours. The atrium was designed for that, but not the rest of the building. (going 24 with 4 security guards and 1 library staff.)
• Management support of campus using library classrooms created more than expected amount of work, training faculty, management, scheduling.
• Volume of patrons, 600,000 when opened, now 860,000
• Would run fewer Ethernet jacks (900 wired jacks)
• Some critical folks did not get to review particular designs
• Follow behind the engineers (what standards are they using?)
• They recommended to us to look into the Brooklyn College Library. It’s in a Carnegie library building and has some similar renovation interests.

If you have any questions about our visit, just ask one of us who attended!

The First-Year Experience Conference was an excellent conference that I would recommend to anyone working with first-year students in any capacity. As I look back on the sessions and put them in a broader context, one of broad concepts that came away with was that first year students (and their parents) are in the middle of an enormous life transition, something that is easy to forget when you see a new batch of first-year students each year. There are many things we can do at the University to facilitate this transition. Another theme I found in the conference was the use of technology to engage first-year students. The participants ranged from administrators at large, public universities to librarians at small private institutions. I even met an administrator for New Zealand! I came away from this conference with a new energy to look for ways to engage students and make then feel a part of our community.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Poster Sessions:

Building a Digital Library for the Provisioning of Mobile Orientation Presenter, Jim Hahn, Orientation Services Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

This poster session professed that campus orientation professionals can draw on techniques of digital librarianship to deliver digital learning content to their new students. Some of the software used for this task included; LibGuides, Greenstone and iTunes. The focus here was on both orientation and mobility, with all the content being formatted for video cell phones that can support the .3GPP standard. One resource for converting .AVI to .3GPP can be found at http://www.media-convert.com.

Face-Time: Millennial Perceptions of One-on-One CSI Meetings Presenters, Cathy Warner and Jana Tramper, Central Michigan University

Each year, 6,000 CMU students are asked to participate in the Noel-Levitz College Student Inventory. Results are delivered through a variety of means. When examining this process, it was discovered that if the results are delivered in a one-on-one meeting with a first contact professional like a student affairs administrator, they are more likely to seek support and advice from that individual and other support staff at the University in the future, especially when this meeting occurs in the first 8 weeks of the first semester. While this may seem obvious, for first year students, having a point of contact at the University can be key to their success and student retention.

Session: “Helicopter Parenting”: Stunting or Supporting First-Year Student Growth? Presenters, Deborah Taub, Associate Professor of Higher Education, UNC-Greensboro and Deborah Bennett, Associate Professor, Purdue University.

This session was standing room only! Deborah Taub begin by having the participants shout out words that they thought of when they heard the term “Helicopter Parent” Terms ranged from the very negative such as “co-dependent” to some positive terms like “partner.” She expressed that in addition to the ease of communication created by new technologies (students contact parents an average of 10.4 times per week now!) K-12 schools were also a contributing factor, teaching parents that a good parent is an involved parent. She also shared a few stories with the group and did a great job facilitating a discussion. She made a point to show us that the term “Helicopter Parent” focuses on the parent when we all have a role to play in this behavior, students, staff, and faculty alike. For example, when we act based on a parent’s call but not on a student’s request, we teach students to step aside and let the parent handle the situation. She describe how when parents send kids off the school they are taught at each level of education to give the kids more freedom and decision making opportunities, but often this is not covered at the college level. We talked about how college is a safer than average environment for kids to grow and make decisions that teach them this skill without putting them at undo risk. How various schools attempt to communicate this information to parents was discussed, and some anecdotes from participants shocked the crowd, describing some parents of seniors actively taking a role in the student’s career placement process. In addition to the usual stories of parents contacting housing to complain about a roommate that the student didn’t know was a problem until housing contacted them about the parent’s intervention, there were great stories from parents about how not intervening on a student’s behalf created a very positive learning experience. Finally, how Universities could perhaps leverage these involved parents in a positive way was discussed. For someone like me without kids, this was an enlightening session.

Session: Learning Academic Integrity with Audience Response Technology. Presenters, Christine Bombaro, Coordinator of Information Literacy, Dickinson College and Eleanor Mitchell, Director of Library Services, Dickinson College.

This was the only program on clickers at the conference. It was very well attended! Mitchell quoted a survey that showed up to 80% of high performing high school students admitted to cheating. Dickinson is 2,400 full-time students, 10% abroad at any given time. In the past there was not a consistent message about cheating, passive listening approach, and little concrete information. The goal was to reach the 635 first years students. They wanted to avoid the response “Nobody ever told me that was cheating.” Their approach was to make it NOT BORING! They got the clicker idea from chemistry department that makes all students have a clicker for class participation and attendance. They are using the same TurningPoint system we use at ZSR. Presentation used examples of plagiarism and then how to fix each example. They asked students before and after the program if they thought they had plagiarized and every time once they had been through the program, more of them self-identified as having plagiarized. Included a reading aloud section that shows how easy it is to detect. They also give a matrix of the penalties for plagiarism.

Plenary Session: Meeting Students Where They Are: Adventures in Experimental Instruction, Jacqueline Fleming, Texas Southern University

Meeting the needs of Urban Millennials is very challenging. They have all the expectations of their middle class peers, but without the benefit of helicopter parents or the technology skills of their more affluent peers. Texas Southern University is attempting to fix these issues through a variety of methods run through the Experimental Instructional Laboratory that brings students to campus in the summer to prep them for college and follows them after. Methods used with those students included having faculty follow a more Socratic approach where students were guaranteed to be called on and perform, the inclusion of multicultural content which helped the less academically inclined students, but not the more academically inclined students, and a motivation method of a subliminal CD (yes, I just typed “subliminal CD”) which rated highest in improved performance results with Socratic method coming in second. (Many at the session had questions after about the subliminal CD approach and the methodology of the study. Was it the CD, or some kind a placebo effect?) More help in the classroom to offer individualized support also generated a positive effect.

Session: First-Year Programs and Information Literacy: Challenges and Opportunities, Presenters, Ann Grafstein, Coordinator of Library Instruction, Alan Bailin, Assistant Professor of Library Services, Hofstra University

The session began Describing a collaboration that began in September 2003 at Hofstra between the first-year program and library course (like WFU’s Lib100, but pass/fail). These programs developed independently. FYP program wanted to promote social cohesiveness, Library 001 wanted to students to succeed and fulfill the expectations of future employers who wanted graduates with better research and critical thinking skills. In the beginning most Library 001 students were Juniors and Seniors who needed 1 credit to graduate. (Thought of as the failures of the advising system.) Administration recommended attaching Library 001 to FYP clusters. This removed the issue of having upperclassmen in the class and removed the artificially of the annotated bibliography project. Over time the school is getting it more right, but never getting it perfect according to the evaluations. It is a moving target. The timing of the Library 001 and FYP was a challenge. After the pilot, the pass/fail was changed to a letter grade to encourage taking the class more seriously. In 2007 they tried embedding the Library 001 course in the First-Year class. Basically, it was a tough road no matter how you sliced it. Their model really focuses just on the annotated bibliography as the deliverable. Administration wants to see all students getting a research component to the First-Year experience. The school is looking at hiring adjuncts to allow for more sections to be taught or to use Blackboard or some other technology to allow more sections to be taught in a blended approach, not an exclusively online approach. They are looking ahead to potentially offer the Lib 001 course that does not focus on an annotated bibliography deliverable.

Session: Incorporating High-Impact, Low-Cost Technology in FYE Classes: A Beginner’s Guide. Presenters, Robert Feldman, Associate Dean, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Feldman began by reminding us technology is just a tool. First-year students are different now and he wanted to show us technology that could help us engage them. Students now have a broader range of ethnicity and of age range. Students are often more aware of their learning style and often are a varying levels of cognitive development. Why use instructional technology? Well, there is theoretical support for technology as a means of information transmission. Additionally most students want a moderate amount of technology in their classes.

The Basics:

• Powerpoint
• Electronic Whiteboards
• E-mail
• Course Management Systems (Blackboard)

Advantages of Virtual Interaction

• Greater accessibility
• Allows more contact
• Permits the shy to participate

Disadvantages of Virtual Interaction

• Reduction in face time
• Heavy reliance on technology
• Puts demands on their time management skills
• May increase the digital divide if the students don’t all have the same level of access.

Interactive Classroom Technologies

• Clickers

Other Technologies

• Blogs
• Wikis
• Podcasts

While this session did not introduce any new technologies to me, (I would have enjoyed hearing more about incorporating RSS or even Twitter into a class.) it was interesting to see these technologies presented from a faculty member’s perspective.