Pull quote: “Image captioning: I use images a lot in my class, but I would like to do an activity each week where I show an image related to the week’s readings and then ask them to create a caption for it on an index card. This is a different skill from the usual and requires the ability to synthesize information. Plus I can use it as a mini-reading quiz.”
Pull quote: “I don’t know if there have been studies on this, but it would be interesting to figure out at which level does it make the most sense to provide face-to-face instruction and at what level would students benefit most from learning objects. It seems like most suites of learning objects designed to replace face-to-face instruction happen at the Freshman level, but that might just be because there are so many sections of the same few courses and it’s easier to create something that works for many, many, many classes.”
Pull quote: “As with the previous incarnation of the course, the students all walked away from the course with a firm belief that research counts and that accepting whatever you find online at first glance is a bad policy. I was really pleased to see that they extended this lesson beyond the Internet to pretty much all historical sources. As one student said to me, from now on she was going to apply the “sniff test” to all her sources..if it smelled slightly fishy, she was going to have to seek corroboration. If all they got out of the class was this one lesson, then it was well worth teaching.”
But what about asking students to do some work before they join us in the library classroom? I’m sure many of us ask students to come to their library instruction sessions with a research topic in mind, especially for one-shots. We could ask them to view or read tutorials or research guides about the library catalog and databases before their one-shot, so they can jump right in once they get to the library. But will they do it? And are there other ways that we can take advantage of the flipped model to help students get more out of library instruction?
Pull quote: “In sum, publication-based assignments emphasize the responsibilities of public discourse and build learner accountability. Librarians have concrete responsibilities and opportunities on this front. We are well positioned to encourage the dissemination of student work in open forums, many of which we are intimately acquainted with and/or directly responsible for. We can identify and pursue these prospects with faculty and students and collaborate to ensure the best possible realization, and in so doing become more critically and holistically involved in the learning experience of our user communities.”
Pull quote: “The decentralized model is no accident. In short, the goal of DS106 is to teach students how to be creative, capable Internet citizens, able to consciously shape their own identities and narratives online. Minus the modicum of structure and authority exerted by the instructors, the course operates much as the Web does. ‘DS106,’ says George Siemens, a professor at Athabasca University and one of the early pioneers of open teaching, ‘is itself an expression of its content.’”
Pull quote: “[H]ow do we successfully determine and prove what a feasible teaching workload is and how can new librarians like Meredith effectively share and demonstrate workload concerns with their administrators?”
Pull quote: “What if instead of coming into an information literacy session planning to teach students how to evaluate a website or explain searching the databases or catalog you came into class planning to explore an interesting information literacy question with your students? This would be a really interesting or important question that affects not just college research but our everyday lives. These would be questions interesting to us as librarians, but also likely interesting to anyone living in this information age.”
Pull quote: “What I am arguing for is that ‘library instruction’ should be so integrated into the academic curriculum that we construct it and implement it within this larger context. As long as we (libraries) continue to implement learning initiatives disconnected from the formal (read: real) curriculum, we will struggle to find attention and value.”
Pull quote: “Sometimes students are required to keep a journal of their research process, which they may have to hand in along with their research paper, presentation, or project. At its best the research journal forms a kind of story of the journey students take as they do research: the hesitant beginnings, wrong turns, forks in the road, unexpected shortcuts, and (hopefully) the successful outcome of completing the research needed to finish their project. And we hope that students find it useful to reflect on their own research process, and that they begin to understand the iterative nature of research, that it’s not just a straight line from point A to point B. What if we asked students to create a game that tells the story of their research rather than keeping a research journal? Would students achieve the same goals of recording and reflecting that they do with a traditional research journal?”
Pull quote: “Furthermore, this process of having a really good draft in hand, reading it critically, and then finding new evidence to fill gaps you didn’t see before is perfectly normal. In fact, it’s great! The research process is circular, so trying to hammer it out flat will often get you less great results. See? It looks like this. You are currently re-examining your topic. Again. And ideally you’ll do it often.”
Pull quote: “I will still make every effort to inject fun and joy in the classroom. Even the toughest physical trainers know that novelty, excitement, and enthusiasm are excellent motivators. But being popular and well-liked is on the back burner for the rest of the semester. It is more important that they respect me, learn from our experience together, and develop as young scholars. If they want gentle empathy, they can always come see me at the reference desk.”
Cool! Screencasts from the instructor as a means of providing feedback to students.
This brand new journal looks like it’s gonna be a winner.
Pull quote: “Our core message was that no one-shot is an island. Library instruction should be aware of and integrated within a wider learning context at the institutional and organizational levels, a process that requires planning, coordination, and reflection outside of the virtual or physical classroom (and preferably among colleagues). By taking steps to investigate and strategize in respect to a broader learning culture, even the briefest teaching interactions can be better organized in advance and have more impact during and after the moment of instruction.”
