Special Interest Group Archive: BI SIG 09/25/15

Topic: changing the way we teach is necessary in the library and in higher ed in general.

• See the article by Burgess – teaching students not standards
• Lecturing is not necessarily a bad thing. – everyone develops their own style.
• MSMC librarians learn educational theory from working with the department. (For more info, see the MSMC links from the last class.- especially the active learning parts of them.)
• Students are used to active learning from elementary and high school, and are not used the lectures of college. But some professors are changing that.

Sharing: we went around and shared some of our handouts for lesson plans and working with classes.

• If you can’t do a full lesson plan, you at least need an objective.
• There is a need for the faculty to be willing to collaborate.
• It helps to have a description of the embedded librarian description – kept short so that the faculty will work with the librarians.
• Active learning needs to focus on objectives and outcomes.

Topic: The library orientation is dead!

• You need to teach skills by using specific tasks.
• The papers in nursing are better since they’ve been working with the library. Next step: having tangible numbers that show improvement. 
• “Embedded” sometimes means just creating an assignment, but not actively involved unless there is a student who is a struggling with something specific.
• Research as inquiry – the best opening assignment. The process paper has less anxiety around it now. She actually looks at their papers, which also helps to close the assessment loop. She takes 10 minutes with them to review the finished paper.

Fun with tools & technology!

• Has anyone used clickers? – yes, they have!
• They can be useful tools for determining primary vs. secondary sources.
• Using case studies and asks for interventions with APA citations.
• Give students 3 different articles, ask which one is primary.
• TD – did something similar in a class this year. For a bio lab. They did a database demo, how to identify that an article was primary. Then they did a secondary search, and determined if the article was primary or not. She thought that worked out well. Some could identify the lit reviews, but some struggled with it. They didn’t have experience with lit reviews yet.
• DG – the clickers were originally part of the library, but they didn’t work in the new library. Part of IT, and now they are campus-wide. There are apps now – poll anywhere that work instead of clickers. Can be done over text, doesn’t need a smart phone. Sometimes you have to be at class early just to get the tech working properly.
• SK – teaches the students to read the introduction and conclusion, but don’t get hung up on the results.
• RF – she has taught life skills classes. Focusing on what scholarly communication is and how to do research – less on orientation. But then they don’t do research until 2 years later – they don’t know what literature review is, but the students still don’t know the basics of how to find books in the library.

What kind of college experience do your students have?

• Case study at CIA - the only thing they have is professional restaurant experience. Some have GED’s, some are from elite private schools, some from the military. Wide spectrum.
• At MSMC, sudents had a lit review with nurses to look at CINAHL, but that only worked in conjunction with a libguide on what a lit review is.
• make a difference between a professional, comprehensive lit review, and what you need to do for the assignment. (That might be a way to get more time with the students!)
• you know that they’re teaching it in K-12, but do the students forget it?
• It’s not being taught at point of need. 
• they are starting to do that in High School now, they have to cite sources. Example - a student had a paper with no cited sources, and it’s because the professor “didn’t say we had to.”
• One has the opposite problem – the students say they already know what the teacher is saying, the teacher says the students know nothing. Do you teach the simplified version the professor wants, or do you teach what the students say they know? (suggestion: have them do a pre-quiz before the class. Then you will see where they are.)

Topic: What about the culture of thinking from taking music and things for free from online?

• Objective: define plagiarism and do it in 10 minutes. Instead of active learning, use a short powerpoint, or use the avoiding plagiarism pamphlet. (See downloads on right.)
• See the Credible Hulk image on the right, for a nice visual!
• Can you reuse a paper for two classes? That got a good discussion going.
• Learning by doing is not new. For instance, teaching them that “.com” means commerce. (RF will be providing a handout she uses comparing FDA.gov with FDA.com. Things that you can look for and tell the difference.
• Databases is seamless on campus – searching seems like searching, students don’t always know the difference.
•  If you start to talk about the deep web or the dark web or the invisible web, they get that. It leads into teaching about how you don’t see databases in google. Difference – we’ve paid for the content already, but don’t forget to look at Google Scholar before you try an ILL. But argh! Professors sometimes tell students to use Google Scholar first, except some nursing teachers, who say to never use it. Neither of them is right!
• The professors are used to the things they used for getting their phd. They love to show them jstor. But they have opportunities to show a false hit, and how controlled vocabulary works.
• It helps to have the professor there for support, but sometimes that backfires.

On Embedded Librarianship:

Reading on the Framework

Burgess, C. (2015). Teaching Students, Not Standards: The New ACRL Information Literacy Framework and Threshold Crossings for Instructors. Partnership: The Canadian Journal Of Library & Information Practice & Research, 10(1), 1-6.

First Year Experience Programs (like MSMC's program):

It would be poor form, and crushing irony, to not mention the source: http://credible-hulk.tumblr.com/

Amy Hillick Orange Community College
Stephanie Kinsler Orange Community College
Denise Garofalo Mount Saint Mary College
Jen Park Mount Saint Mary College
Tiffany Davis Mount Saint Mary College
Raven Fonfa Culinary Institute of America
Andy Heiz Orange Community College
Nancy Murillo Orange Community College

Where to go next? Assessment?

Can we assess our own lesson plans? micro Real-time assessment? Big time programmatic assessment?

The next meeting is set for Friday, November 20 from 11am-1pm. Look for registration coming soon!