I'm delighted to report that this is no longer the case: the University of Michigan-based implementation of the ECCO-TCP texts can now be fully explored by the general public: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ecco/.
This paper investigates the similarities and differences between two important ideas in information processing and knowledge utilisation. Those ideas are [critical thinking] and [information literacy].
This suggests that [information literacy] and its associated procedures could significantly augment current instruction in [critical thinking] and indeed, the possibility has been explored by some authors in the current literature. A merging of the two ideas would involve [information literacy] providing tools and techniques in the processing and utilisation of knowledge and [critical thinking] supplying the particulars and interpretations associated with a specific discipline. This type of integration could lead to instructional programs similar in concept and application to those in research methodology where methods from statistics are integrated with the techniques and skills associated with a specific discipline. The development of a curriculum of this type would change functions and perceptions from private, individualised mentation, now associated with [critical thinking], to a more easily learned and practiced process suitable across the breadth of disciplines.
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.
"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.
Of the many experiences students expect to have in an academic library, play probably never comes to mind. Seeing a coffee shop within the library probably feels familiar, as do comfortable chairs, and of course they expect librarians, study rooms, and books, and Wii…wait, what?!
Ah! I must read that. Perhaps an article on the topic? I've been keeping halfway decent records of reference/computer questions. Combine that with anecdotal evidence from you and we might have a nice little read...
Articles
Copyright: Regulation Out of Line with our Digital Reality?
PDF
Abigail J. McDermott
7-20
Library Use of Web-based Research Guides
PDF
Jimmy Ghaphery, Erin White
21-31
Investigations into Library Web-Scale Discovery Services
PDF
Jason Vaughan
32-82
Usability Test Results for a Discovery Tool in an Academic Library
PDF
Jody Condit Fagan, Meris A. Mandernach, Carl S. Nelson, Jonathan R. Paulo, Grover Saunders