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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

New interactive teaching techniques | Harvard Magazine Mar-Apr 2012 - 0 views

harvardmagazine.com/...twilight-of-the-lecture

teaching learning education online-learning bcushare future

shared by Sara Thompson on 23 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • The epiphany came via an article in the American Journal of Physics by Arizona State professor David Hestenes. He had devised a very simple test, couched in everyday language, to check students’ understanding of one of the most fundamental concepts of physics—force—and had administered it to thousands of undergraduates in the southwestern United States. Astonishingly, the test showed that their introductory courses had taught them “next to nothing,”
  • “They had a bag of tricks, formulas to apply. But that was solving problems by rote. They floundered on the simple word problems, which demanded a real understanding of the concepts behind the formulas.”
  • More important, a fellow student is more likely to reach them than Professor Mazur—and this is the crux of the method. You’re a student and you’ve only recently learned this, so you still know where you got hung up, because it’s not that long ago that you were hung up on that very same thing. Whereas Professor Mazur got hung up on this point when he was 17, and he no longer remembers how difficult it was back then. He has lost the ability to understand what a beginning learner faces.”
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  • Reviewing the test of conceptual understanding, Mazur twice tried to explain one of its questions to the class, but the students remained obstinately confused. “Then I did something I had never done in my teaching career,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Why don’t you discuss it with each other?’” Immediately, the lecture hall was abuzz as 150 students started talking to each other in one-on-one conversations about the puzzling question. “It was complete chaos,” says Mazur. “But within three minutes, they had figured it out. That was very surprising to me—I had just spent 10 minutes trying to explain this. But the class said, ‘OK, We’ve got it, let’s move on.’
  • This innovative style of learning grew into “peer instruction” or “interactive learning,”
  • Interactive learning triples students’ gains in knowledge as measured by the kinds of conceptual tests that had once deflated Mazur’s spirits, and by many other assessments as well.
  • Peer-instructed students who’ve actively argued for and explained their understanding of scientific concepts hold onto their knowledge longer.
  • Interactive pedagogy, for example, turns passive, note-taking students into active, de facto teachers who explain their ideas to each other and contend for their points of view.
  • “Now, think of how you became good at it,” he says next. Audience members, supplied with wireless clickers, can choose from several alternatives: trial and error, apprenticeship, lectures, family and friends, practicing. Data from thousands of subjects make “two things stand out,” Mazur says. “The first is that there is a huge spike at practicing—around 60 percent of the people select ‘practicing.’” The other thing is that for many audiences, which often number in the hundreds, “there is absolutely zero percent for lectures. Nobody cites lectures.”
  • The active-learning approach challenges lecturers to re-evaluate what they can accomplish during class that offers the greatest value for students. Mazur cites a quip to the effect that lectures are a way of transferring the instructor’s lecture notes to students’ notebooks without passing through the brains of either.
  • So I began to ask my students to read my lecture notes before class, and then tell me what questions they have [ordinarily, using the course’s website], and when we meet, we discuss those questions.”
  • Students find a neighbor with a different answer and make a case for their own response. Each tries to convince the other. During the ensuing chaos, Mazur circulates through the room, eavesdropping on the conversations. He listens especially to incorrect reasoning, so “I can re-sensitize myself to the difficulties beginning learners face.” After two or three minutes, the students vote again, and typically the percentage of correct answers dramatically improves. Then the cycle repeats.
  • ‘We’ve never done a problem of this kind.’ I tell them, ‘If you had done a problem of this kind, then by definition, this would not be a problem.’ We have to train people to tackle situations they have not encountered before.
  • “It’s not easy. You get a lot of student resistance,” he continues. “You should see some of the vitriolic e-mails I get. The generic complaint is that they have to do all the learning themselves. Rather than lecturing, I’m making them prepare themselves for class—and in class, rather than telling them things, I’m asking them questions. They’d much rather sit there and listen and take notes.
  • In addition to student resistance, there is architectural resistance. “Most classrooms—more like 99.9 percent—on campus are auditoriums,”
Sara Thompson

Harvard Seeks to Jolt University Teaching - Teaching - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

chronicle.com/...130683

teaching learning bcushare innovation students education

shared by Sara Thompson on 16 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • In large part, the problem is that graduate students pursuing their doctorates get little or no training in how students learn. When these graduate students become faculty members, he said, they might think about the content they want students to learn, but not the cognitive capabilities they want them to develop.
  • Such approaches would demand much more of students and faculty. Students should be made to grapple with the material and receive authentic and explicit practice in thinking like an expert, Mr. Wieman said. Faculty would need to provide timely and specific feedback, and move beyond lectures in which students can sit passively receiving information.
  • Higher education once was immune, he said, until the spread of online learning, which will allow lower-cost providers to extend into the higher reaches of the marketplace. "Higher education," he said, "is vulnerable to disruption." And, while students are changing, several speakers described conventional teaching approaches as being ineffective.
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  • "We assume that telling people things without asking them to actively process them results in learning," Mr. Wieman said. The conference, which also featured demonstrations of innovative approaches to teaching, was the first event in a new Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching
  • Take, for example, the lecture, which came up for frequent shellacking throughout the day. It is designed to transfer information, said Eric Mazur, professor of physics at Harvard. But it does not fully accomplish even this limited task. Lectures set up a dynamic in which students passively receive information that they quickly forget after the test. "They're not confronted with their misconceptions," Mr. Mazur said. "They walk out with a false sense of security."
  • The traditional lecture also fails at other educational goals: prodding students to make meaning from what they learn, to ask questions, extract knowledge, and apply it in a new context.
  • Asking students to explain concepts or to teach one another the material they have just learned are also effective.
  • Writing is often an effective pedagogical tool, too, several speakers said. For his history of psychology course, Mr. Roediger asks his students to send him short essays before each class meets. They respond to the reading. (Others at the conference who use this method said they sometimes ask their students to identify outstanding questions or relevant areas of their reading that have been left unexplored.) Mr. Roediger reads the one-page essays before class and works their thoughts into his comments.
fleschnerj

Bridging the Gap: Understanding the Differing Research Expectations of First-Year Stude... - 0 views

ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/...17172

libraries first year freshmen

shared by fleschnerj on 24 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • fleschnerj on 24 Sep 12
     
    Objective: This study sought to better understand the research expectations of first-year students upon beginning university study, and how these expectations differed from those of their professors. Most academic librarians observe that the research expectations of these two groups differ considerably and being able to articulate where these differences are greatest may help us provided more focused instruction, and allow us to work more effectively with professors and student support services. Methods: 317 first-year undergraduate students and 75 professors at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, NS were surveyed to determine what they each expected of first-year student research. Students were surveyed on the first day of term so as to best understand their research expectations as they transitioned from high school to university. Results: The gulf between student and professor research expectations was found to be considerable, especially in areas such as time required for reading and research, and the resources necessary to do research. While students rated their preparedness for university as high, they also had high expectations related to their ability to use non-academic sources. Not unexpectedly, the majority of professors believed that students are not prepared to do university-level research, they do not take enough responsibility for their own learning, they should use more academic research sources, and read twice as much as students believe they should. Conclusions: By better understanding differing research expectations, students can be guided very early in their studies about appropriate academic research practices, and librarians and professors can provide students with improved research instruction. Strategies for working with students, professors and the university community are discussed.
Sara Thompson

Should We Really ABOLISH the Term Paper? A Response to the NY Times | HASTAC - 1 views

hastac.org/...h-term-paper-response-ny-times

learning teaching education innovation bcushare blogs

shared by Sara Thompson on 25 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • And for my own account of the decision not to use term papers when I taught at Michigan State, you can check out a piece I published in Academe in Sept-Oct 2011.   In some ways, it is more assertive on this issue than Richtel's piece, and is highly critical of the establishment English Department that too-often forgets its own importance as society’s “keeper” of two of the three R’s of traditional literacy, namely “reading” and “‘writing.’”   I won’t rehearse my critique; here's the link:  http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2011/SO/Feat/davi.htm).
  • She is also working with composition teachers around the country who are documenting similar findings that, in fact, this generation comes in reading and writing more and better–and, yes, differently–than earlier ones, not worse.  Lunsford uses the same metrics to assess these students as were used to evaluate past ones.  Her website is:  http://www.stanford.edu/~lunsfor1/
  • We have a Word Press class website.  Students blog every week about the reading and project-based assignments they create.   The two students charged with leading the class that week have to respond to every blog.  The students respond to one another.  
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  • When I put their semester's work into a data hopper, even I was shocked to find out that they were averaging around 1000 words per week,
  • I argue that the open architecture of the Web is built on the principle of diversity and maximum participation--feedback and editing
  • Students learn to evaluate one another's thinking and challenge one another--and, far more important, they learn from one another and correct themselves.  I cannot think of a better skill to take out into the world.
  • I respond more too.  Like my students, I feel like I'm not spending as many hours reading and grading term papers, but, I know, from the end-of-term data crunching again, that, in fact, I have spent more time responding to their writing than I used to. 
  • the tipping point in these classes is when someone the student doesn't know, an anonymous stranger, responds to their work.  When it is substantive, the student is elated and surprised that their words were taken seriously.   When it is rude or trollish, the student is offended.  Both responses are good.  The Internet needs more people committed to its improvement, to serious discourse.
  • As I often do with classes, I did a diagnostic, found that many of my students were woefully lacking in basic writing skills.  I asked them what they most wanted from a writing class, and quickly transformed the class into a "writing as if your life depended upon it" workshop.
  • The "final" in the class was for each student--with lots of readings by me and the rest of the class--to apply for three or four summer jobs and internships.  That year, every student landed a position. 
  • More recently, I asked graduate students why they often left their term papers until the end and, with sadness, they confessed it was often because the whole exercise of writing a research paper is so debilitating and terrifying they often developed writer's block or writer's anxiety and needed the deadline to motivate them to write.
Sara Thompson

Embedded Librarianship in the LMS Survey Results - 1 views

Some interesting comments from a listserv message... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Burke, John J. <burkejj@muohio.edu> Date: Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 9:03 AM Subject: [...

instruction LMS libraries info-literacy

started by Sara Thompson on 19 Mar 12 no follow-up yet
Sara Thompson

NCSU Libraries Mobile Scavenger Hunt: RIS: NCSU Libraries - 0 views

www.lib.ncsu.edu/...scavenger.php

libraries training instruction evernote apps examples assignments

shared by Sara Thompson on 23 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • The NCSU Libraries Mobile Scavenger Hunt is designed to allow maximum mobility of student teams as they explore the library, while the librarians hosting the hunt keep score in real time from a central location. Each team is supplied with a clue sheet with 15 questions about the library and its services, a map of the library, and an iPod Touch for entering clue answers. Students are given a brief introduction to the activity and its rules, as well as basic instruction in use of the iPod and relevant apps, before being sent off to answer their clues. Teams are allowed 25 minutes to explore the libraries and answer the questions before returning to the starting location to review correct answers, learn which team won, and receive prizes.
  • The teams' iPod Touches are equipped with the Evernote multimedia note-taking application, which the teams use to submit text- and photo-based answers to the clues. Each team's Evernote account is shared with a master account monitored by the librarians running the show; through the Evernote web or iPad app, librarians can see each team's notes in real-time as they are created. Scorekeeping is performed using a Google Spreadsheet, which is configured with the expected answers for each question. As teams submit their notes, the librarians are able to mark which questions were answered correctly by modifying the corresponding spreadsheet cells. Scores are tabulated automatically based on which questions are marked correct.
  • NCSU Libraries Mobile Scavenger Hunt: information for instructors4 Complete implementation documentation (pdf)5 Sample introduction slide show (pdf)6 Sample scavenger hunt questions (pdf)7 Scoring sheet template (Google spreadsheet)
  • Sara Thompson on 23 Aug 12
     
    "The NCSU Libraries Mobile Scavenger Hunt is an interactive, technology-rich way to introduce students to the library. Developed in response to student and instructor feedback collected in 2010-2011, it leverages the motivating power of situated learning and the fun of team game dynamics to orient students to the Libraries' spaces, promote the use of emerging technologies, and foster confidence in using the Libraries' collections. The activity is run using iPod Touches and several free apps and online tools. Students answer Scavenger Hunt questions using Evernote, a free app for multimedia note-taking, which is installed on the iPod Touches distributed to the Scavenger Hunt teams. Librarians are able to monitor students' answers in real time as they are entered into Evernote, keeping score on a Google Docs spreadsheet."
Sara Thompson

Flow - A Measure of Student Engagement « User Generated Education - 0 views

usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/...-measure-of-student-engagement

teaching education assessment psychology students

shared by Sara Thompson on 31 May 12 - No Cached
  • The characteristics of “Flow” according to Czikszentmihalyi are: Completely involved, focused, concentrating – with this either due to innate curiosity or as the result of training Sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done and how well it is going Knowing the activity is doable – that the skills are adequate, and neither anxious or bored Sense of serenity Timeliness – thoroughly focused on present, don’t notice time passing Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces “flow” becomes its own reward
  • (http://austega.com/education/articles/flow.htm)
  • Intellectual challenge was measured by Csikszentmilhalyi’s theory of flow. (Source for the following http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/sorting-students-learning)
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  • In the past it was often assumed that disengaged students were easy to identify: they were the young people at the back of the class, the ones making their way to shop or special classes, or those lingering down the street well after the bell had rung. Data from What did you do in school today? suggest that disengagement is not – and may never have been – limited to small groups of students or as visible as we once thought. Over half of the students in our sample (n=32,300) – many of whom go to class each day, complete their work on time, and can demonstrate that they are meeting expected learning outcomes – are experiencing low levels of intellectual engagement.
  • Sara Thompson on 31 May 12
     
    "The Canadian Education Association's (CEA) released a report What did you do in school today? - a three-year research and development initiative designed to assess, and mobilize new ideas for enhancing the learning experiences of students. Intellectual challenge was measured by Csikszentmilhalyi's theory of flow."
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.
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  • 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

"I need three peer reviewed articles" or the Freshman research paper | Information Want... - 0 views

meredith.wolfwater.com/...or-the-freshman-research-paper

instruction info-literacy libraries writing education

shared by Sara Thompson on 08 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • And every year, I become more and more convinced that having first-year students use peer-reviewed literature in their research is a terrible idea that takes the focus away from what is important for them to learn.
  • Expecting a first-year student to be able to grasp literary criticism and science articles written for other PhD’s seems crazy to me.
  • It becomes more about finding an article that is at least somewhat related to their topic than finding good evidence for their argument.
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  • I understand perfectly that faculty want their first-year students to find quality resources and they want their students to have an understanding of scholarly communication. But is the best way to do that forcing them to find scholarly articles for a research paper? That requires so many different skills that many of these students don’t have yet: 1. The ability to turn a topic into a search strategy 2. The ability to search in library databases 3. The ability to look at a citation and determine whether it is a scholarly journal or not (or maybe they’ve just checked a box in a database which means that they never need to learn this important skill) 4. The ability to read an abstract and determine whether the article is relevant to their topic 5. The ability to read a scholarly journal article and synthesize information from it 6. The ability to integrate evidence from the scholarly literature into their paper 7. The ability to write effectively
  • Another thing that the focus on requiring students to only find peer-reviewed sources does is that it distances them from research and information literacy.
  • But when the focus is on telling students that the only quality stuff comes from the peer-reviewed literature, we are distancing what students learn in school about information literacy from what they will do in the real world.
  • I also love the idea of giving all students in a class peer-reviewed articles from different disciplines and have them analyze them together. It can not only help them to understand and dissect peer-reviewed literature, but it can also show them the differences in scholarly communication in different disciplines.
Sara Thompson

Classroom.NEXT: Engaging Faculty and Students in Learning Space Design | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

www.educause.edu/...232846

buildings bcushare bcuedtech education design surveys

shared by Sara Thompson on 14 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Sara Thompson on 14 Oct 11
     
    The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Texas Wesleyan University undertook a project to find out what a classroom would look like if it were designed by faculty and students-and then to build that classroom. The goal was to promote innovation in learning space design and to advance instructors' understanding of how classroom design impacts teaching and learning. Classroom.NEXT initiated a campus-wide dialogue on the design of informal and formal learning spaces, and faculty, students, and administrators identified flexibility and interactivity as key attributes to be promoted in all Texas Wesleyan learning spaces. Collaboration, particularly student-faculty collaboration, was a central component of the success of Classroom.NEXT. Faculty participants commented that they learned as much from their students about learning space design and technology as they did from the research.
Deb Robertson

How Nik Osborne Plans To Disrupt Class - 0 views

campustechnology.com/...ne-plans-to-disrupt-class.aspx

Etextbooks

shared by Deb Robertson on 23 May 12 - No Cached
  • Deb Robertson on 23 May 12
     
    The institution negotiates a deep discount off the list price of the textbook in order to have access to an e-text edition. In return for the discount, the university guarantees that every single student in the course will buy the e-text, which is charged like a lab fee. This is a definite change from the current textbook model, in which each student is personally responsible for showing up to class armed with the textbook, either in printed or digital form. As schools are discovering, as the prices of printed textbooks rise, so does the number of students who avoid buying the textbook. When we made this arrangement, we were considering, what does the publisher need to have, what does the author need to have, and what does the student need to have? You have to create a model, I think, that works out for all three of those pieces.
Sara Thompson

Students and Technology Infographic | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

www.educause.edu/udentsAndTechnologyInfographic

infographic education surveys students statistics edtech

shared by Sara Thompson on 18 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Sara Thompson on 18 Oct 11
     
    Some surprises for me:  39% of students wish instructors would use email more?? I've often heard the same from instructors, so... ? 31% of students wish their instructors used e-books 88% of students reported using the institution's library website wait a minute... 48% want to learn programming languages? Who are these people?  73% still think printers are important for academic success ::sigh:: 
Sara Thompson

Can You Put that in the Form of a Question? | Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...can-you-put-form-question

libraries info-literacy instruction teaching assignments research education

shared by Sara Thompson on 02 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • One of their assignments is to interview a researcher in their field. This year, since the students had a nice mix of majors from across the curriculum, we used reports from the interviews as an opportunity to analyze on how research traditions vary from one discipline to another and how these experts’ processes differ from those of non-experts.
  • One thing that many students remarked on as they reported on their interviews: the activities that define research are enormously varied from one discipline to another. The process a researcher goes through to examine the historical context in which Shakespeare wrote one of his history plays is a world apart from what a researcher does to develop a new vaccine or what an ethnographer does when studying an isolated culture in Brazil.
  • The scientists all had co-authors; the social scientists were a mix of solo and collaborative projects, and the humanists all performed solo acts. And yet, it became clear that all of them were working within an ongoing conversation. None of them was doing work that didn’t draw on and respond to the work of others.
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  • Every interview subject conducted some sort of a literature review as part of any research project
  • Every researcher described some strategies for keeping up with new developments in their area of expertise, all of which involved some scanning of new publications and some personal contact with individuals exploring the same territory.
  • For most, presenting research at conferences was a common part of bringing their research to completion. For all, writing up results for publication was an important final step, and they seemed acutely aware of the pecking order for publication venues in their field.
  • (In contrast, undergraduates mostly encounter articles within databases, called up by key words, not as artifacts within a particular journal which carries clout.)
  • One thing the students all gained through these interviews was an appreciation that research is not a matter of finding answers in other people’s publications. Every scholar interviewed described how they had asked a question that nobody had asked before, a question they couldn’t answer themselves until they had completed the research. It struck me that so much of what undergraduates experience as “research” is very nearly the opposite, a process of uncovering answers others have already arrived at.
  • I’m also thinking about what these interviews said collectively about how real research is conducted. It makes me a little crazy when students abandon a truly interesting question because they can’t find sources to quote that provide the answer, or when they change their topic based on what they can find easily. Or (shudder) when they say they've written their paper, but need help finding five sources to cite. Clearly, they are not learning how to do research; they aren't even learning what research is.  What I would really, really like is to figure out how to give every student the experience of not worrying so much about getting the right answers, but learning how to ask a really good question. The kind they won't find answered in the library.
  • Sara Thompson on 02 Jun 12
     
    "I teach a course in the spring called Information Fluency... It's an upper division undergraduate course pitched to students who are planning to go to graduate school, giving them a chance to learn more about the way the literature of their field works as well as generally how to use library and internet tools for research."
Sara Thompson

The Learning Black Market - 0 views

tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/...the-learning-black-market

info-literacy search training education research students

shared by Sara Thompson on 12 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • In simple terms students personal use of the internet is generally very effective for their education but they are nervous that their practices are not valid and don’t reveal them to their tutors.
  • The learning black market exists largely in the Personal area of the map. Our data from the Transitional education-stage (Late stage secondary school + first year undergraduate) is indicating that learning activity in this area has two main elements
  • I suspect that Facebook IM is used extensively for homework as it’s convenient and immediate. It’s also private and a very low risk way of collaborating with a fellow student.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The debate should be around how we evolve educational processes to take advantage of or to account for these new forms.  We cannot continue to teach the literacies that have been the mainstay of the educational system in their current form because the web smashes traditional paths to understanding.
  • A search on Google to help complete an assignment commonly returns a Wikipedia article. As we know Wikipedia articles are pitched at an ideal level and length to get a handle on a new subject which is something our Transitional students have to do a lot. The problem is that most of the students in the Transitional education stage we have spoken to in the US and the UK have been told not to use Wikipedia and so keep this practice a secret.
  • This is generating the learning black market in which is it all too easy to simulate understanding for coursework and formal assessments. Worse still, it is a market in which genuine learning can take place but is not being recognised because resources and practices are not seen as valid and therefore do not become visible to the formal education system.
  • I think what you are describing here is more accurately a grey (or parallel) market “the trade of a commodity through distribution channels which, while legal, are unofficial, unauthorized, or unintended by the original manufacturer”.
  • I chose the name ‘Learning Black Market’ because of the way in which I think current approaches are pushing students learning practices ‘underground’ (as Jo’s experience would indicate). It’s the clandestine aspect of the phrase that I’m interested in. The ‘goods and services’ are not in themselves illegal but they are being treated that way by students.
  • Sara Thompson on 12 Dec 11
     
    "The messages or lack of messages from educational institutions on these practices is generating a learning black market which masks the sheer scale of these new modes of engagement."
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

M.I.T. Expands Free Online Courses, Offering Certificates - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ses-offering-certificates.html

education online-learning courses prof-dev professional

shared by Sara Thompson on 19 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • “The technologies available are much more advanced than when we started OpenCourseWare,” Mr. Agarwal said. “We can provide pedagogical tools to self-assess, self-pace or create an online learning community.”
  • While access to the software will be free, there will most likely be an “affordable” charge, not yet determined, for a credential.
  • The certificate will not be a regular M.I.T. degree, but rather a credential bearing the name of a new not-for-profit body to be created within M.I.T; revenues from the credentialing, officials said, would go to support the M.I.T.x platform and to further M.I.T’s mission.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • And because the M.I.T.x platform will be available free to people around the world, M.I.T. officials said they expected that other universities would also use it to offer their own free online courses. Mr. Reif said that M.I.T. was investing millions of dollars in the project, and that it expected to raise money from foundations and others.
  • Sara Thompson on 19 Dec 11
     
    "M.I.T. led the way to an era of online learning 10 years ago by posting course materials from almost all its classes. Its free OpenCourseWare now includes nearly 2,100 courses and has been used by more than 100 million people. But the new "M.I.T.x" interactive online learning platform will go further, giving students access to online laboratories, self-assessments and student-to-student discussions."
Sara Thompson

[PDF] Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Roche... - 0 views

www.ala.org/...Foster-Gibbons_cmpd.pdf

research libraries students casestudy data

shared by Sara Thompson on 11 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Sara Thompson on 11 Jan 12
     
    Ebook of research report from ACRL about how students use libraries. "we were interested in how students write their research papers and what services, resources, and facilities would be most useful to them"
Mark Lindner

» Differences in Discovery Tools An Anthropology of Algorithms - 0 views

www.andrewasher.net/...differences-in-discovery-tools

academia search research libraries

shared by Mark Lindner on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Mark Lindner on 22 Jun 12
     
    One of the main conclusions of this research is that students are outsourcing much of the evaluation process to the search tools themselves, and because of this the search algorithms that drive these tools are functioning to determine what resources students use.  Differences in resource use attributable to differences in the design of the discovery tools' search algorithms could be directly observed in the data collected from students.
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."
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