Library Learning

A lot of conferences for information literacy are in places far from Champaign-Urbana, making them at times prohibitively expensive. The Information Literacy Colloquium, set for Aug. 3 in New Albany, Ind., is neither. Close by and low-priced, this two-day event highlights a variety of teaching methods for library instructors.

The theme for this year’s breakout sessions is “Learning Out Loud: Information Literacy Pedagogy for the Non-Shushing Librarian.” The breakout sessions planned for the weekend certainly revolve around this:

• Louder than Words: Using Visual, Auditory, and Tactile Methods to Enhance Library Instruction
• Creating Infographics: Teaching Data Visualization to Undergrads
• The Games Librarians Play: Using Interactive Strategies to Stimulate Information Literacy Learning
• Learning out Loud in a Communication 101 Classroom: Speed Dating with the Librarians
• Bringing Reality TV to Library Instruction: Non-traditional Activities for Teaching Traditional Library Concepts
• “We Didn’t Start the Fire”: How Billy Joel’s song can motivate student learning and deeper engagement

These are just a few of the sessions scheduled for the colloquium. Other subjects covered include the first-year experience, assessment, strengthening faculty partnerships, library anxiety, visual literacy, government resources…

It’s nearby, and it’s low-priced. However, registration can only accommodate 100 people, and will close after July 8, so get online soon!

http://libguides.ius.edu/content.php?pid=315130&sid=2578727

The American Library Association’s much-anticipated annual conference ended last month. If you are one of the lucky librarians who traveled to sunny Anaheim, you might have taken a part of some of the programs that deal with information literacy. The ALA designated these sessions as “Transforming: Teaching & Learning” for librarians to explore the skills that need to be taught to folks in the years ahead.

While the author wouldn’t mind if people who did go were up for interviews, there is some help for those librarians who stayed home this year. The Powerpoint lectures and handouts of several lecturers have been made public on the ALA website, at http://ala12.scheduler.ala.org/sessions/handouts. You might not have been able to attend, but you can get some sense of what happened. We particularly recommend these sessions for materials on information literacy.

• Happy RAILS to You: Using Rubrics for Authentic, Reliable, and Convincing Learning Assessments
• Making a Good Thing Better: Increasing Demand for One-on-One Information Literacy Instruction at Grinnell College
• Research Forum (ACRL)
• Information Literacy: Working Outside the Curriculum to Work Your Way In
• Learning Styles: Fiction, Nonfiction, or Mystery?
• Let the Data Talk: Communicating Assessment Results to Stakeholders
• Academic Librarians as Faculty Members: A History and Guide toward the Future

That’s hardly all that’s available, but these are among the most relevant sessions for information literacy. If anyone attends and wants to report on their experience, please contact me at saschmd2@illinois.edu. Mouseketeer hats or G.R.R. Martin autographs are also acceptable.

If it’s not already on your calendar, set the date for this Monday, July 9, for the User Education Committee Meeting. From 10-11 a.m. in Room 428 in the Main Library, members of the committee will meet to consider a wide range of topics related to the education of library patrons – something that certainly includes information literacy.

The meeting minutes for the committee can be found here, as can the committee’s site.

The group’s charge is as follows: "The User Education Committee provides guidance and advice to the Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction and the University Library by formulating and reviewing plans, goals, priorities, strategies, policies and procedures related to user education; identifying temporary and ongoing instructional issues; promoting awareness of and participation in information literacy activities within the Library and the University as a whole; gathering information and encouraging research and discussion about information literacy, information seeking, and user education; creating and assisting with instructional development programming; and responding to requests for assistance or advice about user education and information literacy issues.”

See you there!

For the teacher tired of watching his or her students drift off during the latest PowerPoint lecture, the Center for Teaching Excellence is putting on a workshop next month highlighting some best practices for lecturing with technology. Chris Migotsky and Robert Baird will put on “Theories, Strategies, and Tips to Improve Your Classroom Presentations: PowerPoint and Beyond” on July 18 in Illini Hall.

This workshop isn’t meant to push one form of technology over another, be it PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Docs, etc. Rather, the aim of Migotsky and Baird is to encourage teachers to think about what they know in terms of student learning styles and cognition – and how to keep that in mind when they design their classroom presentations. This workshop is a joint collaboration between the Center and CITES Academic Technology Services. Register (it’s free) here.

Between the talks at the ALA Conference and the eTextbook Unconference in Champaign, e-books are coming into their own, both in terms of popularity and in workability. But which e-reader should you use for them? Further to that, how will you select an e-reader that is most compatible with your library’s collection – and how will you explain to owners of new e-readers how to work their new gadgets?

If you’d like some help navigating the world of e-readers, try the E-Reader Extravaganza, set for tomorrow in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, in room 131. This workshop will allow librarians to get a sense of what e-readers are out there, and to try to work them on their own. This event is free, and set from 1-2 p.m. For more information, click here.

Just a quick update - today's User Education Meeting has been canceled. The next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 13.

The American Library Association is looking for its 2013 class of Emerging Leaders. Seventy-seven librarians were chosen last year, and now the ALA needs a new group for the seventh year of its leadership development program. Participants in this program may have an opportunity to work with an ALA “division, chapter, or roundtable committee, taskforce, or workgroup, as well as other library-related groups upon completion of program.”

You have to meet the ALA’s selection criteria to even be considered for the program. You must be under age 35, or be new to the library profession with less than five years of professional experience. You must be able to attend both ALA conferences and work virtually in the time between them both, and be prepared to serve the ALA in a division, committee, workgroup, etc. You must also be an ALA member. No more than one person from an institution can be chosen in the same year.

After leaders are selected, the ALA Emerging Leaders program kicks off at the Midwinter Meeting. Afterwards, participants will work virtually on the aforementioned ALA groups, and on a poster session for the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.

Interested in applying? Hurry, because the deadline is Aug. 1! Click here for more information.

The Special Library Association will be holding its annual conference in Chicago, beginning this weekend and stretching into next week, much of it dealing with corporate librarianship. This may sound a little off-topic, since the general aim of this blog is for academic librarians. The two aren’t so dissimilar, however – what kind of information literacy will students need once they graduate and enter the workplace? What if they don’t have corporate librarians?

It’s a question that more than a few people have worked to answer. The topic came up at the recent CILIP meet, in which Mark Hepworth of Loughborough University came up with a very worthwhile presentation. This April, in the Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship (full citation below), James Sokoloff compared ACRL standards to the experiences of employers and their new staff. He found that most employers had problems realizing that information literacy is a skill, that most employees have to use only the information they are given (and are discouraged from seeking out others, especially with a subscription attached), and concluded that there were a few disconnects between the ACRL competencies and what is actually expected of the graduated student in the workplace. He recommends a “better balance between core information literacy standards and direct preparation for the experience of information usage in the workplace.”

What do you think?

Sokoloff, Jason. "Information Literacy in the Workplace: Employer Expectations." Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship 17.1 (2012):1.

It’s safe to say that libraries are in a time of extreme change – rapidly changing technology, demographics, and new practices to become literate in. Today’s average patron is far different from the one that walked in the library doors ten years ago (walking through the door is no longer necessary). Generally speaking, the libraries best-equipped to deal with these are the ones with strong and effective leaders. The Association of College and Research Libraries is offering a Leadership Institute for academic librarians this Aug. 5-10 in Cambridge, Mass. at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

This five-day institute is designed for college and university librarians with management or leadership responsibilities, library deans and directors, and other campus administrators – people who will be leading and managing their libraries into the future. The institute is organized around three concepts – planning, organizational strategy, and transformational change and learning. It will also address two main questions – “How well positioned is your organization to meet current and future challenges?” and “How effective is your own leadership?”

The institute is limited to applicants with significant administrative responsibility, or those who “show high promise.” Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, and the fee of $2,700 covers everything but some meals and transportation there. The fee is $2,500 if you are already a member of ACRL. Check it out here for more information.

It’s daunting enough to be in front of a classroom on some days, and even worse to be in one where you aren’t sure your voice will carry to the back row. The CITES Academic Technology Services and the Center for Teaching Excellence are partnering to create a class for just this problem – “Technology Can Help You Teach Large Classes.”

In this session, Alan Bilansky of CITES will present to teachers on strategies for classes with large enrollments, and how technology is being used to overcome the challenge of size. Teachers will discuss technologies like the graders in Illinois Compass and Illinois Compass 2g, Wikis for group work, and perhaps most importantly, how to check student understanding – when there are so many students to assess.

This event is scheduled to be held from 2-3 p.m. on July 19 at 23 Illini Hall. Registration is required, so sign up here.

Haven’t heard about the microlecture? The term is becoming quite popular among educators, especially those in large lecture classes. Essentially, what it boils down to is a video clip, about a minute or two in length, in which the instructor introduces the concept and summarizes the main points. This falls in line with the concept of “flipping” the classroom – changing the format of the classroom so that students complete their homework in class with instructor support after watching the lecture at home.

The microlecture format is being used by UIUC instructors, especially after CITES gave a call for microlecture proposals in 2010 – take a look at these microlecture uses and responses in two different disciplines.

Think you can use a microlecture for information literacy? Take a workshop sponsored by CITES Academic Technology Services in making screencast microlectures on July 25, from 1-3 p.m. at 23 Illini Hall. This class will help teachers in making screencasts for face-to-face, blended, or online classes. Best practices and tools will be covered, and teachers will have produced a small microlecture by the end of class. Teachers are welcome to bring a laptop or thumb drive with their own lecture content.

Register here, and learn more about the microlecture format here.

It’s likely that most people reading this in the Chambana area won’t have attended the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals’ “Information Literacy Executive Briefing 2012” earlier this month. That doesn’t mean that we can’t benefit from it.

CILIP’s annual briefing on information literacy allows professionals to speak on a number of panels on different facets of literacy, implementation, assessment, and best practices. While we may have missed the talks themselves, the presentations are now online, available for your perusal.

All of these presentations are great to look over, but of particular interest is the “Information Literacy: the cure for health information obesity,” “Digital Literacies,” and the “Sir LearnALot and Lollipop” presentations. The health information presentation makes an interesting distinction between health literacy and health information literacy, with a good plan of action for implementation. The Digital Literacy presentation also makes a good distinction between the concepts students and librarians associate with digital learning, and how to engage students with their literacy development. The Sir LearnALot presentation is just plain fun, and features a beautiful concept map for information literacy.

No dates have been released for the 2013 conference, but keep an eye on the CILIP page!

Our own Paula Kaufman, Dean of Libraries, has been listed as ACRL's Member of the Week this week! Read the interview here, and write a note of support! Kaufman is also the winner of this year's ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year.

The ACRL's Summer Immersion program is well underway in Burlington, Vermont. Though the deadline for entry is long past (as is the one for the immersion program set for November - that's how popular this program is!), it's worth remembering what these immersion programs are about, and the ways that we're able to follow the one currently going on.

The ACRL Immersion programs allow instruction librarians to eat, sleep, and breathe information literacy for a few days. Until July 27, the librarians in Vermont will be working with new tools and techniques to develop and update the information literacy programs in their institutions. The ACRL offers a "Teacher" and "Program" track in the summer (right now), and an "Assessment" and "Intentional Teaching" track in the late fall. Click here for a list of faculty teaching these immersion programs (including our own Lisa Hinchliffe and Beth Woodard!)

To keep up with the program as it progresses, search for #imm12 on Twitter.

Will you be missing out on the IFLA Conference this August? Console yourself with a visit to Purdue University on Aug. 13, when Dr. Christine S. Bruce, of the famed “Seven Faces of Information Literacy” paper. Bruce will be the keynote speaker of Purdue’s Information Literacy Research Symposium. Bruce will be leading “Six Frames for Informed Learning” from 1-5 p.m. that day, in Hicks Undergraduate Library, Room B848.

Bruce’s talk will center on how librarians can teach undergraduates to use information in ways that support college-level learning. The six frames model is “designed to allow reflection on and analysis of how students are taught to use information within a discipline-focused classroom.” There will be group-work in this session, so come prepared to design example learning modules!

It’s free to attend, but register by Aug. 3! Move quickly, because the symposium is limited to 75 participants.

In the meantime, however, read up on Bruce’s Six Frames model in “Informed Learning,” available in the Main Stacks, with call number 370.15 B83i. If it’s checked out, then read one of her latest papers:

Bruce, C., Hughes, H., & Somerville, M. M. (2012). Supporting Informed Learners in the Twenty-first Century. Library Trends, 60(3), 522-545.

They aren’t written by Janet Evanovich or Hilary Mantel, but these books (available in our library system or through I-Share) could potentially give you a new idea or two before the fall semester begins.

E-Reference Context and Discoverability in Libraries: Issues and Concepts
By Sue Polenka
Call number: 025.524 E108 (Main Stacks)

It’s the hot topic for librarians at the moment – how to integrate e-books into the library. But setting aside issues with publishers, there’s the problem raised at the ALA Conference – how do you make people more aware that these resources are out there? This text gives academic librarians some ideas on where to start.

Transforming information literacy instruction using learner-centered teaching
By Joan Kaplowitz
Call number: Currently in Library Processing

Learner-centered teaching is on the rise in higher education. But is it for you? More importantly, is it for your students? Check out these perspectives and practice tips.

Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0
Edited by Peter Godwin and Jo Parker
Call number: Currently in Library Processing

You’ve been integrating social media into your teaching, helping students to use these interactive features to increase their information literacy. But what effect is it having on the students? What’s happening internationally? What new ideas are out there, and how can librarians pick up new skills?

Information Literacy as a Student Learning Outcome: the Perspective of Institutional Accreditation
By Laura Saunders
Call number: Surprise! It’s an e-book!

Information literacy outcomes aren’t just essential for students – they’re crucial for the institutions that those students attend. This book takes a look at the six different accreditation areas in the United States and profiles institutions working to meet the student learning outcomes for information literacy in those areas.

The latest issue of Reference Services Review has come out, and there are a few new papers that shed some new light on aspects of information literacy and library instruction.

“A LibGuides presence in a Blackboard environment” by Aaron Bowen

This article describes current practices for applying and assessing research guides in Blackboard online learning systems. Bowen found that students valued access to library resources from a convenient link, and were more inclined to use it before other information sources. Bowen concluded that the study supported placing library research guides in a permanently visible area in Blackboard.

“Post-graduate health promotion students assess their information literacy” by Catherine Hodgens, Marguerite Sendall, and Lynn Evans

This paper examines post-graduate health promotion students’ assessment of their own information literacy skills before and after completing an online tutorial. The researchers found that there were perceived improvements in information literacy skills, but that some students still had trouble locating authoritative and necessary information and in plagiarism.

“Relationship Building with Students and Instructors of ESL: Bridging the Gap for Library Instruction and Services” by Julia Martin, Kathleen Reaume, Elaine Reeves, and Ryan Wright

This paper examines how academic librarians are reaching out to an underserved group at many institutions – ESL students. The researchers found that building relationships between librarian teachers and ESL instructors helped the students feel more comfortable in seeking out the assistance of their institution’s librarians.