It's Academic

WIFI Hotspots for Student Checkout

June 13, 2023

Rural communities still struggle with internet access, which can lead to serious challenges for college students. My library had debated circulating WIFI hotspots to students for years but concerns of price and managing them held us back. After the switch to online learning in 2020, we began researching WIFI hotspots again to see if we might make them available for our students. There were no shortage of local public libraries who were offering them to patrons, so we knew it could be done. We eventually determined that T-Mobile was a frequent partner with several public libraries so we reached out to them about the costs and other details. After meeting with some of their representatives, we found the costs reasonable and signed on for 12 WIFI hotspots that we would offer to students beginning in the 2021-22 academic year. Our early results were positive with there being many periods when every hotspot was checked out. We could only help so many students at once with 12 hotspots, but the students we did help let us know our help mattered a lot. We also found the hotspots were useful to fellow employees. We sometimes circulate them to help staff who are travelling on college business to areas without internet access. One afternoon our regular ISP went down, bringing work to a halt in every department, except the Library with out little hotspots ready to go.

We have had some bumps along the way, however. A few students dropped out and never returned their hotspots. Hotspots can disappear just as easily as books. Hotspots also require some management. Unused hotspots need to be deactivated to prevent monthly charges for them, then reactivated when circulated. None of this is too time consuming but libraries should be aware these aren’t set it and forget it devices. If you’re curious, our hotspot policies page has some more details. Of course, you can always reach out to me at akirby@pennhighlands.edu if you have questions about circulating hotspots at your library.

Rising to the Challenge of HyFlex

June 8, 2023

tags: Information Literacy

by Darren G. Poley

The concept of HyFlex learning in Higher Education is not new. However, the recent disruption to traditional classroom instruction caused by the pandemic reinvigorated discussion around the idea. Simply put it is an instruction model that designs courses which offer students the choice to participate in a class in person or synchronously using video conferencing, or asynchronously online via a learning management system. Thus, providing the greatest flexibility to the student, but without compromising the learning outcomes for every student.

Brian Beatty, who first developed the model in 2006, articulates on page 32 of Hybrid-flexible Courses Design: Implementing Student-directed Hybrid Classes (EdTechBooks.org, 2019) there are 4 values with associated principles for HyFlex design:

Learner Choice: Provide meaningful alternative participation modes and enable students to choose between participation modes daily, weekly, or topically.
Equivalency: Provide learning activities in all participation modes which lead to equivalent learning outcomes.
Reusability: Utilize artifacts from learning activities in each participation mode as “learning objects’ for all students.
Accessibility: Equip students with technology skills and equitable access to all participation modes.

Dr. Beatty continues his professional engagement and there is a great deal of insight on the HyFlex Learning Community site which grew out of his book.

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) published “7 Things You Should Know About the HyFlex Course Model.” The National Education Association offers some advice on “Rethinking the Classroom for Hyflex Learning” that defines some key terminology, gives direction on implementation, and describes common pedagogical practices. J.P. Pressley does a good job in an article for EdTech magazine “Explaining the Difference Between HyFlex and Hybrid Teaching Models.”

“Student choice, Universal Design, and flexibility are key pillars of HyFlex’s promise. But less mentioned in the HyFlex conversation are questions about how we design the infrastructure and assemble the stakeholders required to build and support the environment in which we can successfully implement courses designed for HyFlex, with equal success for any modality a student chooses” Tracey Birdwell, Program Director, Mosaic Initiative, Indiana University Bloomington wrote in her piece “Learning Spaces,” 2023 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report, Teaching and Learning Edition, 37.

So, what role do librarians have at their institution as it faces this trending multimodal practice? Perhaps we should consider transforming our information literacy programs and start retooling our instructional spaces for the HyFlex modality. Because as this short video “An Introduction to HyFlex” by Dr. Beatty concludes: it is a student-driven hybrid, that “improves access to high quality equitable learning.”

Connect and Communicate Presents I Want It That Way: Student and Faculty Attitudes Toward Ebook Piracy

June 5, 2023

by Alex K.

Presented by

Haley Dittbrenner & Rob Sieczkiewicz

Wednesday, June 28, 2023 at 3:00 pm

Registration Link

Do you know how common digital piracy is on your campus? Are you curious about why students use pirate sites to download eBooks, and what their instructors think about this? In this interactive conversation, we will discuss the findings of our survey of Susquehanna University students and faculty, and explore attendees’ attitudes toward and experience with shadow libraries. Finally, we will conclude with a conversation about how these findings about the use of pirate sites might be used to inform library Open Educational Resources (OER) programs.

Haley Dittbrenner is a junior student at Susquehanna University. She studies creative and professional writing as well as publishing and editing. She currently works as a student manager at the Blough-Weis Library. She wants to make a career out of open access and publishing librarianship. Rob Sieczkiewicz is Associate Professor and Director of the Blough-Weis Library at Susquehanna University. Previously he was a digital scholarship and instruction librarian, and before that a university archivist. His research interests include digital humanities, information literacy, and open access.

We will mute participants on entry into the Zoom room. We will mute participants on entry into the Zoom room. We will enable Zoom’s Live Transcription feature during the session, and it will be recorded and available on the C&CS YouTube page afterwards.

If you would like to present with the Connect & Communicate Series, please contact the C&CS team.

This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, Governor.

Support is also provided by the College and Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association. —

LOEX Recap and things for my summer list

June 2, 2023

by Ula Lechtenberg

I recently attended LOEX in Harrisburg, PA where someone told a story of a colleague who wrote down every time they said they’d do something in the summer. Summer came and they had a very long list of things to do (much like in Kelly Safin’s post 😉). Here are some reflections from LOEX and peep into my own summer list.

LOEX is my favorite conference because of its unique focus on instruction. At ACRL earlier this year, a technical services friend said he had to convince his admin to allow his attendance at ACRL because they saw it as an instruction conference. While there may be sessions about teaching, I see it as a research-heavy conference. LOEX is THE instruction conference.

This year, I found myself targeting sessions that focused on issues around mis- and disinformation. Amber Willenborg and Robert Detmering from the University of Louisville shared results from their research project about if and how librarians are dealing with misinformation in their teaching. In their presentation, “I Don’t Think Librarians Can Save Us:” Anxiety and Resilience in the Misinformation Crisis, Willenborg and Detmering described while librarians are limited by time and know that they alone cannot fix the problem of misinformation, many do engage with their students on the topic in ways that they can. In his session, Teaching Information Literacy in Untrusting Times: Prioritize Research for Understanding (not just Knowledge) Mark Lenker shared just how he engages with students when their trust in experts is in decline, focusing on making meaning in a complex information landscape.

One session that I went to on a whim was Creating a Values-Based Future: Reflection & Planning to Support the Creation of Sustainable Library Practices. In this session, the presenters shared activities from a team workshop that helped them create a vision and mission statement for their department. It was a challenge to do these activities just as an individual and I don’t think it was exactly the right time for me professionally, because we are anticipating organizational changes in our library. However, I am excited to dive into these activities with my own team when the time is right.

On my to do list

Lead a Reading Circle about teaching and learning
Plan out a new tiered-approach to research skills instruction
Create digital learning objects for sustainable and scalable use across the disciplines
Hang out with my family!