Special Interest Group Archive: Info Lit / HS to College Transition 07/16/2019

The students in HS question the use of databases, and are finding quality information on Google. The database searches get them frustrated. One librarian is working on helping the students perform better Google searches. At the college level – is it expected that they need to use those? Answer: yes, it’s also a struggle at college. The difference is that they will run into paywalls if they use Google. Some professors are more stringent about requiring academic sources than others.

Talking to students about how academic publishing works gets them interested in how paid information works. Information as a commodity vs. free on the open web.

Dan Russell has a free class on how to use Google better.

What kind of time do the high school librarians have with students?

• Sometimes just with the English classes
• More if the librarians do outreach and ask for time
• There’s one partnership with a special ed teacher that’s a year long
• Usually it’s just a 10-minute meeting based on an assignment
• Having a relationship with the teacher is helpful.

Niche Academy has video tutorials for getting out basic library skills. It’s good to work with public librarians to see what kinds of information they have available for their patrons.

Using a quantitative rather than qualitative process for evaluating sources is a newer and different way of going through online sources. Students aren’t certain what they’re looking at when the work is just online. Finding source information is difficult.

A case study of different sources and different scenarios to decide when it’s OK to stop at a certain place. “Get an academic article” doesn’t work for every situation, such as “identify and describe a particular psychological condition.” Get them thinking about why you are using a certain website, or when is OK to just go to a Google search for basic information.

We spent some time talking about the Beyond CRAAP presentation:

https://research.ewu.edu/beyondcraap

Some problems come in when the students seem to be parroting back the information they think you’re looking for, and not thinking for themselves.

Definition of “one-shot” – that’s when instruction librarians get to meet with a group one time vs. having a full semester-long information literacy instruction class. Embedded librarianship involves collaboration without taking up as much time.

SUNY Ulster has partner librarians for English 101 & 102. At the 102 class, they follow up on a welcome email by meeting with the class in person. They put together research guides and work with the students through the year by keeping in contact via email. They have between 800-900 students come through the program every year.

Bard has a personal librarian program that isn’t tied to a class, it’s tied to a house, because students are randomly divided into four “houses.” There are librarians assigned to each house. They’re not residential groups, more like cohorts.

Where the kids are at right now: Tik Tok. There’s a lot of silly things going on.

Ideas for Educator Lab

Include a civics course, focus on fake news

Create a cohort that meets regularly online, and then once or twice in person

Maybe make it after school and shorter, and still a series.

Hold it at BOCES so that people don’t have to go so far.

Have people form teams so that librarians bring a teacher.

Have a team rate – people could come as a group.

Encourages people to think they’re going to come home with something, not just learn something.

SIGs on topic

• Classroom teachers and librarians together – history professors and social studies teachers
• Community colleges have professors who teach in high school, which helps with enrollment. A reciprocal meeting might help with that
• Professor and librarians together presenting from a college to a group of librarians/teachers from schools & do it all online.
• Have a meeting with an outcome – like Google bucket, creative new lessons
• Evaluating text – we could build a curriculum from that.
• Ask some of the beyond craap presenters to Zoom in