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Deb Robertson

Balancing Act: How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crun... - 0 views

projectinfolit.org/...11_TechStudy_FullReport1.2.pdf

Project Information Literacy PIL information literacy College Students

shared by Deb Robertson on 24 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Deb Robertson on 24 Feb 12
     
    Our major findings are as follows: 1. During one of the busiest times of the academic year, the students we interviewed were mainly using different IT devices to stay in touch with their friends while they were in the campus library. In the hour before we interviewed them, 81% of the students in our sample had checked for new messages (e.g., email, Facebook, IMs, texts). 2. At the same time, many of the same respondents who said they had checked for messages had also prepared assignments for submission (60%), studied and reviewed materials for class (52%), and satisfied personal curiosity with a computer search (e.g., sports score, news, gossip) (45%). 3. Despite the pressing need to complete assignments at crunch time, few respondents reported having used the full range of library resources and/or services during the previous hour. Many more respondents said they had used library equipment (39%) such as computers and printers than anything else, including scholarly research databases (11%), library books (9%), face-to-face reference (5%), and/or online reference (2%). 4. Overall, we found most respondents (85%) could be classified as "light" technology users. These were students who used "only" one or two IT devices primarily in support of coursework and, to a lesser extent, communication. The most frequent combination (40%) of devices being used was a cell phone (including smart phones) with a personally owned laptop computer while they were in the library. In stark contrast, only 8% of the sample could be classified as "heavy" technology users. 5. For over half the sample, a personally owned laptop (58%) was the primary-most essential-device in use at the time of the interview. A smaller percentage of respondents (35%) were using a library desktop computer. 6. More than any other combination of applications, respondents had both a Web browser and a word processing program open at the same time (47%) while they were in the library. 7. Despi
Sara Thompson

Essay on making student learning the focus of higher education | Inside Higher Ed - 1 views

www.insidehighered.com/...earning-focus-higher-education

essay education assessment teaching learning

shared by Sara Thompson on 20 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Culture -- in higher education, and in our society -- is at the heart of the matter.
  • We have reduced K-12 schooling to basic skill acquisition that effectively leaves most students underprepared for college-level learning. We have bastardized the bachelor’s degree by allowing it to morph into a ticket to a job (though, today, that ticket often doesn’t get you very far). The academy has adopted an increasingly consumer-based ethic that has produced costly and dangerous effects: the expectations and standards of a rigorous liberal education have been displaced by thinly disguised professional or job training curriculums; teaching and learning have been devalued, deprioritized, and replaced by an emphasis on magazine rankings; and increased enrollment, winning teams, bigger and better facilities, more revenue from sideline businesses, and more research grants have replaced learning as the primary touchstone for decision-making.
  • The current culture -- the shared norms, values, standards, expectations and priorities -- of teaching and learning in the academy is not powerful enough to support true higher learning. As a result, students do not experience the kind of integrated, holistic, developmental, rigorous undergraduate education that must exist as an absolute condition for truly transformative higher learning to occur.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Degrees have become deliverables because we are no longer willing to make students work hard against high standards to earn them.
  • Rethinking higher education means reconstituting institutional culture by rigorously identifying, evaluating and challenging the many damaging accommodations that colleges and universities, individually and collectively, have made (and continue to make) to consumer and competitive pressures over the last several decades. What do we mean by “damaging accommodations?
  • We mean the allocation of increasing proportions of institutional resources to facilities, personnel, programs and activities that do not directly and significantly contribute to the kind of holistic, developmental and transformative learning that defines higher learning.
  • We mean the deplorable practice of building attractive new buildings while offering lackluster first- and second-year courses taught primarily by poorly paid and dispirited contingent faculty.
  • We mean the assumption that retention is just keeping students in school longer, without serious regard for the quality of their learning or their cumulative learning outcomes at graduation.
  • The primary problem is that the current culture of colleges and universities no longer puts learning first -- and in most institutions, that culture perpetuates a fear of doing so. Isolated examples to the contrary exist, but are only the exceptions that prove the rule.
  • In calling for the kind of serious, systemic rethinking that directly and unflinchingly accepts the challenge of improving undergraduate higher education, we are asking for four things; taken together, they demand, and would catalyze, a profound, needed, and overdue cultural change in our colleges and universities.
  • 1. The widespread acceptance and application of a new and better touchstone for decision-making in higher education, linked to a strong framework of essential, core principles. A touchstone is a standard, or criterion, that serves as the basis for judging something; in higher education, that touchstone must be the quality and quantity of learning. A touchstone and a clear conceptual framework link our advocacy for change to a powerful set of ideas, commitments, and principles against which to test current policies, practices, and proposals for reform.
  • 2. A comprehensive re-evaluation of undergraduate education and experience guided by those core principles. This must occur both nationally, as an essential public conversation, and within the walls of institutions of all types, missions, and sizes.
  • 3. The leadership and actual implementation and renewal of undergraduate higher education needs to be led by the academy itself, supported by boards of trustees, higher education professional organizations, and regional accrediting bodies alike. Such rethinking ought to be transparent, informed by public conversation, and enacted through decisions based on the new touchstone, improving the quality and quantity of learning.
  • 4. Learning assessment must become inextricably linked to institutional efficacy. The formative assessment of learning should become an integral part of instruction in courses and other learning experiences of all types, and the summative assessment of learning, at the individual student, course, program, and institution levels should be benchmarked against high, clear, public standards.
  • Cultural problems require cultural solutions, starting with a national conversation about what is wrong, and what is needed, in higher education. The country should reasonably expect higher education to lead this conversation. For real change to occur, discussions about the quality and quantity of learning in higher education and the need for reform must occur at multiple levels, in many places, and over a significant period of time -- most importantly on campuses themselves
  • If enough change occurs in enough places, and if our public expectations remain high and consistent, learning may become the touchstone for decision-making; the quality and quantity of learning -- documented by rigorous assessment -- may become both each institution’s greatest concern and the basis for comparisons between various colleges and universities
  • Richard P. Keeling is principal, and Richard H. Hersh is senior consultant, for Keeling & Associates, a higher education consulting practice. They are authors of the recent book, We’re Losing Our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), from which this essay is partly excerpted.
  • Sara Thompson on 20 Apr 12
     
    The core explanation is this: the academy lacks a serious culture of teaching and learning. When students do not learn enough, we must question whether institutions of higher education deliver enough value to justify their costs. Resolving the learning crisis will therefore require fundamental, thoroughgoing changes in our colleges and universities.
Sara Thompson

Student success courses catch on, slowly, at community colleges | Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...atch-slowly-community-colleges

education instruction transliteracy teaching

shared by Sara Thompson on 03 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Sara Thompson on 03 Apr 12
     
    Community colleges can improve graduation rates by offering a course that teaches students how to navigate college with lessons on study skills, time management and how to find the bursar's office. Yet while "student success" courses are increasingly common, resistance remains strong at many community colleges.
Sara Thompson

Ithaka :: Taking Steps Toward "Interactive Learning Online" - 0 views

www.ithaka.org/...ystems-in-u-s-higher-education

teaching online-learning data assessment surveys research education LMS

shared by Sara Thompson on 01 May 12 - No Cached
  • “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in US Higher Education,” an Ithaka S+R report released today and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, highlights the challenges to be overcome by institutions so that they can take advantage of online learning technologies, and explores why highly interactive online systems have yet to take hold in any substantial way. 
  • “As online learning systems of this kind are developed, however, a critically important question will be who is going to control the student usage and performance data,” added Mr. Guthrie. “On the web, all actions and behaviors can be tracked and analyzed. These data are critical to refinement of these systems and to our overall understanding of how people learn. These data should not be privatized.”
  • “Barriers to adoption of these systems vary greatly. Perhaps most importantly, most current systems that are highly interactive do not allow faculty to customize content to suit their specific needs. Faculty are also concerned that online education might distance them from their students. Finally, very little good data exist on the effectiveness of existing highly interactive online systems.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • While this is a time of great experimentation in the use of educational technologies, with almost as many approaches as there are colleges and universities, the report highlights several challenges that are common across all sectors. First, faculty at every type of institution take great pride in their ability to select content and craft a learning process for their students; they want to have the ability to continue to customize that learning experience in an online environment. Second, while a number of institutions are capitalizing on online learning to generate net revenue by expanding their offerings to new and non-traditional students, colleges and universities generally find it very difficult to employ these technologies to reduce costs in their traditional residential curriculum.
  • The report offers academic leaders strategies—rewarding early adopters, offering incentives, providing technical support, sharing incremental revenue, experimenting with new administrative structures—to facilitate the adoption of online learning,
  • two system-wide issues emerge from the report that require careful consideration: the need for open, shared data on student learning and performance tracked through these new systems, and the need for sustainable and customizable platforms that can be used across higher education.” 
  • Sara Thompson on 01 May 12
     
    "The report summarizes and provides analysis based on the experience and impressions of senior administrators and deans from a range of institutions including research universities, small colleges, and community colleges."
Sara Thompson

Information Literacy: A Neglected Core Competency (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

www.educause.edu/...199382

info-literacy instruction libraries education transliteracy

shared by Sara Thompson on 12 Mar 12 - Cached
  • The findings are troubling. College students think of information seeking as a rote process and tend to use the same small set of information resources no matter what question they have: The primary sources they use for course work are course readings and Google. They rely on professors to be "research coaches" for identifying additional sources. They use Google and Wikipedia for research about everyday life topics. They tend not to use library services that require interacting with librarians.
  • The Association of American Colleges and Universities identified information literacy as one of the essential learning outcomes that prepare students for 21st century challenges.2 The"2010 Horizon Report," a collaboration between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium, indicated that the need for training in the related digital media literacy is a critical challenge in education for the next five years. The Council for Independent Colleges offers annual workshops for chief academic officers, librarians, and faculty on integrating information literacy at their campuses.3
  • Sara Thompson on 12 Mar 12
     
    Researchers at the Information School at the University of Washington released an important and thought-provoking report in late 2009: "Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age."1 The study confirms and expands on the results of other reports. Its particular value is the size of the population studied, the diversity of institutions represented, and the use of both a survey and follow-up interviews for data collection.
Sara Thompson

Surveys of Provosts and Presidents - their concerns, the Value report, and po... - 0 views

www.acrl.ala.org/value

surveys edtech education management libraries assessment

shared by Sara Thompson on 18 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • The two reports of interest are: The 2011-12 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers http://www.insidehighered.com/download?file=finalCAOsurveyreport.pdf Presidential Perspectives, the 2011 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University Presidents http://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/archive/storage/files/SurveyBooklet.pdf
  • The CAO survey had 1081 participants, while the survey of Presidents had 956 participants.  There is no information that can confirm that both the CAO and President from the same institution were in the majority for the respondents. So, the respondents for each report could be from different institutions.
  • nly one category — library resources and services — did a majority of all presidents (and a bare majority at that: 51 percent) rate the technology investment as “’very effective.’”  You can read the entire article here:  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/survey/president2011
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  • One of the contributing factors as expressed in the Value report in terms of  why students choose to leave an institution is the issue that they don’t develop a personal connection with their institution. 
  • Sara Thompson on 18 Apr 12
     
    In March, Inside Higher Ed released an "inaugural" Survey of College & University Chief Academic Officers.  This report was the fourth in a series of surveys of senior academic leaders with the three other reports conducted in 2011 focusing on admissions officers, chief business officers, and presidents.
Sara Thompson

Blogs vs. Term Papers - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-the-term-paper-tradition.html

wrtg315 blogs writing teaching learning education bcuedtech

shared by Sara Thompson on 03 Feb 12 - No Cached
    • Sara Thompson
      Sara Thompson on 03 Feb 12
       
      It almost sounds like he's saying that term papers, by their very nature, must be NOT interesting.
  • Her conclusion is that students feel much more impassioned by the new literacy. They love writing for an audience, engaging with it. They feel as if they’re actually producing something personally rewarding and valuable, whereas when they write a term paper, they feel as if they do so only to produce a grade.
  • “The sad thing is, he’s now convinced there is brilliance in the art world, brilliance in the multimedia world, brilliance in the music world and that writing is boring,” Professor Davidson says. “I hated teaching him bad writing.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • He proposes what he calls the “page a year” solution: in first grade, a one-page paper using one source; by fifth grade, five pages and five sources.
  • The National Survey of Student Engagement found that in 2011, 82 percent of first-year college students and more than half of seniors weren’t asked to do a single paper of 20 pages or more, while the bulk of writing assignments were for papers of one to five pages.
  • “Writing term papers is a dying art, but those who do write them have a dramatic leg up in terms of critical thinking, argumentation and the sort of expression required not only in college, but in the job market,” says Douglas B. Reeves, a columnist for the American School Board Journal and founder of the Leadership and Learning Center, the school-consulting division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “It doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting blogs. But nobody would conflate interesting writing with premise, evidence, argument and conclusion.”
  • The debate about academic writing has given rise to new terminology: “old literacy” refers to more traditional forms of discourse and training; “new literacy” stretches from the blog and tweet to multimedia presentation with PowerPoint and audio essay.
fleschnerj

Essay liberal arts colleges should ignore reformers and reinforce relationships | Insid... - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...rs-and-reinforce-relationships

Liberal Arts higher education future

shared by fleschnerj on 19 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • fleschnerj on 19 Apr 12
     
    I was seated in the bleachers at an away football game when the father of a student-athlete approached me. He was eager to welcome me as the new president of Central College.
Deb Robertson

DigitalCommons@Macalester College - Library Technology Conference: Library Data and Stu... - 0 views

digitalcommons.macalester.edu/...28

library impact Macalester College higher education retention

shared by Deb Robertson on 28 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Deb Robertson on 28 Jun 12
     
    Does the use of library print and digital collections correlate with course pass/fail rates, grades, or GPA? How does use of instructional tools or attendance at instruction sessions or workshops correlate with student success in the classroom? Using circulation data, online resource usage records, workstation login data, workshop registrations, and more, the University of Minnesota Libraries are attempting to answer these questions. To access the full presentation for this session, click on the "Download" button on the right.
fleschnerj

New Study Shows E-Textbooks Saved Many Students Only $1 - 1 views

chronicle.com/...34793

ebooks textbooks $1

shared by fleschnerj on 04 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • fleschnerj on 04 Jan 12
     
    Despite the promise that digital textbooks can lead to huge cost savings for students, a new study at Daytona State College has found that many who tried e-textbooks saved only one dollar, compared with their counterparts who purchased traditional printed material.
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