It's Academic

Understanding the Problem Before You Solve it: Effective Resource-Based Assignments
Terry Mech, King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, PA

Terry began with the statement that Middle States is concerned with the teaching and learning experience. Terry next ‘assessed’ our assumptions about effective library assignments.

Osmosis – many faculty and students evidently believe they can learn by osmosis.

Full-time students spend about 16 hours a week, about 10% of their total time in a week. Many studies have shown that little learning takes place in class (including in our 50-minute one-shot sessions).

So how do students become info lit? He referenced a study called “Connecting the Dots” which found that a well-designed resource-based assignment increased student retention and learning and their sense of what they can accomplish.

Today’s students — no less intelligent than previous generations. However, they have diverse learning styles & preferences; are visual & kinesthetic learners; have a positive view of technology & their ability to use it.

Students of today —
need to see ‘big picture’ before disaggregating, expect customization & choices; low threshold for boredom; aliterate, read less; self-assured & self-focused; ‘prove it to me’ mentality; wants something in exchange; multi-taskers; take word of their peers over the word of the expert; hate busy work; responds well to ‘coaching’; like to know the payoff, don’t like getting frustrated; weak general knowledge & facts; impatient

Today’s students:
-Like structure & clarity
-Like immediate responses
-Like to solve problems
-Like to apply to ‘real situations’
-Like collaborative work
-Like to share what they know

35% of college students report large gaps in at least one area, and 86% report some gaps in at least one area. However, employers/instructors are more dissatisfied with high school’s skills prep; especially with students’ ability to read and understand complicated materials. So students are aware of shortcomings, but not of scope of their shortcomings.

Kolb Learning Style Inventory
4-stage learning cycle
-Concrete experience
-Active experimentation
-Reflective observation
-Abstract conceptualization

Students 70% are active learners 30% are passive learners
Faculty 46% are active learners 54% are passive learners

Scherdin 2002 studies show that librarians, like most faculty, are mostly introverts

Faculty socialization: faculty share a strong belief in education, yet most never really aspired to be college teachers. Many faculty by nature do not enjoy the social interaction central to teaching (Bess, 1982). Grad schools produce subject specialist not undergraduate teachers.

In past not as many students went to college; those that did, taught themselves to learn, but perhaps because more and more students are going to college.

Faculty view teaching as a very private act; don’t like “unwelcome intrusions.” Most are at the very least not totally comfortable with classroom teaching.

Higher Ed’s dark secrets:
– Despite our rhetoric about higher order learning, most faculty still focus on knowledge acquisition (Cashin & Downey, 1995).

Why give assignments?
-Students acquire and refine critical skills
–Reinforce lecture and other materials
-Preparation for future learning activities
-Assess what students have learned
-Apply previous learning in new situation
-Acquire the disciplines’ conventions
-Allow students to explore their interests
-Allow them to work at own pace
-Able to use resources not in the classroom
–Encourage independent learning & self-discipline
-Makes the best use of class time

Terry shared his handout, a trait analysis of effective assignments. He emphasized that learning objectives should reflect what you want them to be able to do and to learn. It’s important that faculty understand what assumptions they are making about students’ ability. Tell them what their evaluation criteria; have to know what hoops they are trying to hitting; a rubric is ideal – difficult to write well – however, it makes grading much easier.

Effective assignments break large projects down into smaller tasks; don’t waste students’ time.

VERY IMPORTANT: Many faculty teach the subject, not the student.

Active learning
We comprehend:
10% of what we hear or read, but almost 90% of what we do

Faculty dread
grading/evaluation, disappointment of worse work; nuisances of late/sloppy work; plagiarism

Librarians observe
students are not prepared; students do not understand assignment; students read into assignment or unsure how to proceed

Librarians wonder
what does it take to get a copy of the assignment; how much help do we give students before we send them back to the instructor; why are we hesitant to give instructors feedback on their assignments

Sample assignments, from Lynn Cameron
Worst: Term Paper: Write a 15 page paper due the final day of class
Best: Broken down by week, give instruction where to look for resources; how to cite; not necessarily a paper — could be an pamphlet; define terms (peer-reviewed, substantial); tell students what to consider (issues, for example); begins with the learning objective (Stoloff: ex: in order to write more effective literature reviews, students will read and evaluate reviews written by other students … to determine what makes an effective review.)

Suggestions for librarians
-give faculty feedback on assignments
-work with your teaching center
-focus on faculty who enjoy and talk about teaching
-search out innovative faculty
-remember that real change takes time

Lots of Q & A
Here’s a revolutionary idea: don’t do instruction without an assignment! Can do it nicely,
-do not despair

Innovative fauclty tendencies
-interdisciplinary
-internally focused research (what can I do locally)
-non-traditional background
-identify with the intutitional mission
-are older (more secure)
-enjoy teaching at all levels
-talk about teaching (Holland & Latiolais 2007)

Pop Quiz! Terry went over the T and F answers which examined our assumptions

Information Literacy Trends: Within the Virtual World of Second Life
Alexia Hudson, Penn State Great Valley/Donna Upshaw, Avatar Persona

What is Second Life?
An online, virtual 3-D multi-user, avatar-based “virtual world”developed by Linden Lab
More than 9.9 million ‘residents’ as of October 10, 2007
Membership is free; your avatar provides a catalyst for individuals to assume a “Second Life”
Alexia staffs the online virtual reference desk within Second Life

Why are people interested in Second Life?
It’s fun, first of all. Can do all sorts of things virtually; quadriplegics for instance can ‘fly’ in Second Life.

Second Life Demographics
~63% are between 25-44 years of age; avg. age is 33 (in adult grid)
~42% are women
-US constitutes about 26.5% of residents followed by Brazil, Japan, German, the UK, France and Italy (there is a translation device called ‘Babbler’ which doesn’t work in Japanese yet)

Type of info you have to give to register – name, credit card, has to be real name because of cultural norms which are tracked

Real Businesses & Educational Institutions
-Virtual Currency is called Linden Dollars, is exchanged for services & items in SL
-Current exchange rate $1 = $186 L
-Business Week featured first millionaire in Second Life in 2006
-Electric Sheep Company is one of the companies specializing in developing and managing virtual networks

Ed institutions using SL:
-Harvard Law School
-NYU
-Penn State, etc.

Penn State Second Life Pilot Project
–ETS (Ed Tech Services at PSU) purchased several virtual islands within SL (Penn State Isles)
–http://ets.tit.psu.edu/gaming/ – Penn State Educational Gaming Commons Blog
-Penn State began investigation in 2005
-They believe avatar based learning applications will become the ‘norm’ for the next generation of Penn State students

Second Life’s Connection to Librarianship and Info Lit
-at Penn State, have used in 2 courses:
Operations Management and Information Science Seminar, total of 43 students; built a virtual library for students

Trends
-Students & their employers identified the library as the place for info & instruction of Second Life
-Librarians gave students a space in Second Life to play with and learn aspects of SL
-Virtual Reference/Distance Ed: time in SL given course-related instruction, reference consultations, and providing resources (landmarks) to qualified SL locations for Research projects

It’s essentially a tool for distance education, only avatar-based. For example, a class will meet online in a room with avatars. There is more classroom interaction with avatars since it doesn’t require the bandwidth that webcasting does.

May need to add more RAM on computer to sustain gaming environment. Crashing computers is a fairly common occurrence.

The pilot courses using Second Life are synchronistic, not asynchronistic; students have to be there at the time the course meets.

Probably not appropriate for vision-impaired students because SL is so visually oriented.

Lots of questions from the audience; for many of us, this is a new concept and people are trying to ‘wrap their minds’ around Second Life.

Can be highly addictive in terms of time; do have to manage your time.

Is a highly monitored environment; ‘Big Brother is watching’ — socially inappropriate behavior is monitored and banned.

Learning Ecology
–can simulate a possible ‘real world’ business scenarios prior to implementation
–fostering a unique learning environments

Launching a Redesign of your Library’s Web site? What do your users want?
Bonnie Oldham, U of Scranton, Tina Hertel, Lehigh University

Part 1, Bonnie Oldham
Library Dean Charles Kratz had suggested getting input from users; got internal grant money and IRB approval for their focus groups.

Target groups
-faculty
-grad students
-traditional undergrads
-works study students
-distance learners
-students with disabilities

Very labor intensive — 900 letters, over 300 emails, about 26 users
Moderators: grad students in the School Counseling Program; focus groups held in library
Librarian had online interview with distance learners and students with disabilities

Results were audio-taped and transcribed by moderators

Key Themes:
1 – Ease of use
2 – Home page style issues
3 – User name and password
4 – Database access page

Followed up focus groups with Web usability testing. Observed participants completing a set of tasks using the Library’s Web site; used Camtasia Studio screen recorder. Was an amazing experience; many could not find the article to which they had a citation.

Redesign process
-librarians reviewed all input and then examined other Library Web sites to compile a list of desirable features
-committee met with official University PR committee
-when had a draft of page designed by professional designer, went back to users and surveyed about new page

First version; they liked fact that all the important links were on left side. Left some white space for important notices to users, e. g., a database down for maintenance.

Important feature was implementing single sign on for users; eliminated need to have remote user links. About six months after implementing page, got a tab on University portal page. Had just the links that were needed, not the bells and whistles.

Actual timeline was almost 2 years for new page to go live.

Part II, Tina Hertel
Accessible Web Design

Tina mentioned that students with disabilities are often not kept in mind when Web page is designed. She referred users to her handout with summaries of the law.

Ten Quick Tips from the Web Accessibility Initiative
1- Images & animation — Some folks do use text-only, turning off images. Make sure content is still available to them. Important to consider context, to make sure that context that picture conveys is not lost to this user. Can turn feature on in Dreamweaver to add ‘alt’ tag to provide more info. Tag does convey info to user what the image is, that is, a link or image. Always have an alt attribute when there is an image. Use an empty alt attribute if the image doesn’t contribute anything (like a spacer line); then screen reader won’t read it. But if you don’t have an alt attribute, and the screen reader will say there is an unknown image.

2 – Image maps – always use client-side image maps, NOT server-side image maps. If you’re scripting, that is server-side.

3- Multimedia

4 – Navigation – make sure Web page is keyboard accessible; tab key allows users to jump from link to link; enter key allows users to ‘click on a link’; mouse only options limit users. Drop-down images are problematic if you use Java script, be sure to use ‘on focus’ option. Annoying things for users are text like: click here, more, link, link to, go here, more — doesn’t give any info on where the link is going; provide context. Appearance: underline and color are standard conventions.

5 – Structure, content, organization – try to keep content separate from structure. CSS helps with this. It’s OK to use tables with screen readers; they’ve gotten smarter. Dreamweaver can distinguish if for layout or content purposes.

6- Graphs & charts – in alt attributes, convey what kind of info chart contains.

7 – Scripts, applets & plug-ins

8 – Frames – bad. Don’t use them. If you do use them, use appropriate titles, have no frames option, have alternate navigation options. Cascading Style Sheets take care of this.

9 – Tables – can use them. For complex tables, there are newer accessibility codes.

10 – Check your work and validate it. Bobby has been bought out; now called WebXACT. Plug in URL and check accessibility of page. Free online version will evaluate one page at a time.

Tina’s favorite pages for accessibility (from her handout) are Web Accessibility in Mind and Dive Into Accessibility.