February 12, 2007 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Lisa Hinchliffe (ex officio) – Chair, Melody Allison, Susan Avery, Paula Carns, Dawn Cassady, Lori Carroll, Karen Hogenboom, James Kelly, Emily Love, Lori Mestre, Stephanie Atkins (guest)

Members Absent: Christopher Hamb, Merinda Hensley

Additional Attendees: Jamie Fuller (Information Literacy GA)

1. Additions to the Agenda

None

2. 2006-2007 Meeting Schedule

• March 12, 10-11
• April 9, 10-11
• May 14, 10-11
• June 11, 10-11
• July 9, 10-11
• August 13, 10-11

3. Working Group Reports

Lisa mentioned how pleased she was with the work that has come out of the working groups and thanked everyone for their contributions. Multiple library committees have also started using this approach.

Community Outreach Planning Group

Stephanie Atkins reported that this group has a meeting Friday at 9. This first meeting will be to brainstorm ideas, with following meetings discussing funding, measuring outcomes, and implementation interest from the group members.

Outreach Innovations Working Group

This group has not met recently, but the subgroups have been active.

One subgroup (Leah Dodd and Nikki Wright) has been working on how the library’s online information looks on hand-held devices, particularly cell phones since most undergraduate students have these rather than PDAs.

The READ posters project has been turned over to Joyce Wright, who was already working on this in the Office of Library Development.

The third subgroup is looking at outreach to ILLIAC. Stephanie reported that Meg, Lisa and herself met with the Vice Chair Chris and the Professional Development chair Holly in order to brainstorm ideas. They are working on two approaches. The first approach is professional development for advisors. They are looking at the distribution list that spreads information about resources, events, etc. The other track is the newsletter for students with undeclared majors. This newsletter emphasizes resources, events, etc., butt also aims to give information about general literature, popular non-fiction, etc. The aim is to highlight fun collections, interesting books, and other non-research based resources as well as academic resources and services.

Graduate Student Information Literacy Needs Assessment

Melody Allison reported on this group. They met on Tuesday and talked about organizational matters, ideas for the group, and began a bibliography. They will meet on the fourth Tuesday of every month.

Professional Development for Teaching and Learning

Library faculty were encouraged to attend the Annual Faculty Retreat on Active Learning on Friday, February 9. The library had the highest proportion of participating faculty on campus. There was also a resource table in the poster section displaying library resources to faculty. Lisa reported this was very valuable and that many faculty stopped by and learned much about what is available to them.

Karen reported on the service learning session she attended. There are many opportunities for instruction and service and she made many connections through the session. Government documents will take the lead for the library with this campus group.

Emily attended the diversity session and also found the poster sessions to be helpful. There were many different opportunities on campus displayed and it could be incredibly helpful for all faculty to have librarians aware of the programs.

Lori commented on how the keynote speech had great content about how students now look at learning. It gave a good view on how library instruction can be different from normal classroom instruction. Whereas classroom instructors can find it difficult to get students to think differently and try new things, library instruction challenges students to solve problems, make new choices when something does not work, and try new ways of solving problems.

Lisa reflected on the keynote’s idea of ‘self authorship’ and also advocated that the resource table should be featured again next year with new ideas and a change in set-up to make it even more effective.

A comment was overheard in one of the sessions: “The librarians are everywhere. They’re going where they need to go.” This is a great affirmation of the library’s role in contributing to teaching and learning on campus.

Online Tutorials and Interactive Learning Working Group

Susan reported that this committee is meeting next week and she will have more to report after that.

Services for Students Webpage

There was some confusion about the purpose of this group. Lisa reiterated that Scott Walter had asked for a group to create a ‘Services for Students’ website. This link will be on the gateway as one of the ‘services for’ links. It will give students some coherent instruction on services they can use. There can also be a part that highlights extra services for graduate students specifically, which includes carrel availability and, if a graduate student has a campus office, having books mailed to them. The members of this working group are Susan Avery, Paula Carns (chair), Stephanie Atkins, and Jamie Fuller.

Awards

This group is still on hiatus pending direction from Scott Walter.

4. Proposed New Group(s)

International Education Week Working Group

Emily pitched the idea of this new group. March 9 – 18, 2007 is International Education Week and the campus organizing group is looking for library involvement. The International Education group works with both students coming to the U.S and students going abroad, as well as promotes internationalism on campus. Some ideas for activities for this week could include displays, film series, film nights, open houses, etc. This group would meet, discuss ideas, and identify the needed materials for activities. It would also work on recommendations for the future and facilitate on-going communication and contact between the groups. The members of this working group are Emily Love (chair), Paula Carns, and Dawn Cassady.

Illinois Immersion Program

Lisa announced that the library’s nominees for the Illinois Immersion Program are Emily Love and Nikki Wright.

5. Announcements/Discussion

Susan reported on ISCC PET (PAC Education Team). They have been looking at the poor placement of the link to handouts on how to use the catalog. They also have been looking at the timing of their workshops (6 per semester) on how to use the catalog. Looking at the best times, best attendance, etc. they have determined that it is better to offer the classes close together in time. This semester, people signed up for all the offered times, yet there were still sessions when no one attended. It was suggested that these classes be pitched towards specific colleges, since using this idea for RefWorks classes has produced high turnouts. It was then suggested that the advertising materials state exactly who these classes are for, faculty and graduate students, to signal to those thinking of attending that the class is indeed meant for them.

Lisa gave Merinda’s update. The RefWorks workshops are doing well, but attendance is down. This could be due to the fact that the last batch of workshops did not appear in the campus e-week newsletter. Merinda is working to incorporate RefShare and RefGrab-It into the next set of classes. She is also connecting with the Graduate College in an attempt to pitch a class just for graduate students, to advertise a workshop on how to find dissertations, and to design a class on ‘How to Be a Better Research Assistant.’

Respectfully submitted,
Jamie Fuller