September 9, 2002 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Cindy Ashwill, Paul Callister, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (ex officio) – Chair, Jing Liao, Allison Sutton, Cindy Shirkey, Joseph Straw

Members Absent: Karen Hogenboom

Additional Attendees: Ely Anderson (User Education GA)

1. Welcome/Introductions

Committee Members and Ely Anderson (Graduate Assistant)

2. Lisa’s Semester Goals (Division Meetings, Statistics, etc.)

Lisa informed the committee of her goal of visiting all division units and asking for their cooperation regarding the upcoming changes and innovations related to user education in the libraries. Lisa has already attended four division meetings.

Lisa’s second goal is to meet with 1/3 to ½ of all individual library units.

Next, Lisa informed the committee of her plans to begin a statistics project. This project would involve documenting what libraries are doing regarding user education and who these services are being provided for. An automated system would eventually be devised in order to enable staff and faculty to enter descriptive information about instruction sessions. This would allow better understanding of how and if goals are being accomplished, as well as permit the further implementation of new goals.

Lisa’s fourth goal consisted of a curriculum-mapping project. In order to address where instruction should be accomplished in the curriculum and then target instruction within certain courses. She referred to creating an environment that pursues effective instruction, not more instruction.

Finally, Lisa indicated the need to indicate what content we are teaching to first-year undergraduates. After this determination is made, librarians involved will need to set informal competencies. After informal competencies are developed and maintained, the committee, along with the departmental libraries, can eventually start to develop formal competencies. This is a long-term process.

A brief question and answer period concluded this discussion Paul asked if there was a formal mission statement, or centralized efforts, towards the advocacy of the user education on campus. Lisa responded that there are no current advocacy practices at the campus level within the graduate program; however, she will search out possible opportunities.

3. User Education Materials for Voyager

A discussion was held in order to define what types of user education materials departmental libraries were creating in response to the implementation of the Voyager system.

Jing informed the committee of the creation of a brief help page that can be located under the “What’s New” portion of the Art and Architecture Library WebPages.

Cindy indicated that the undergraduate library’s GA’s are researching the ILCSO Libraries in order to determine what other libraries are doing within the realm of user education and instruction for voyager. This information should be available next week.

Joe, of the Reference Library, told the committee of his efforts to create a basic Voyager handout.

An announcement will be made on LIBNEWS-L in order to give other libraries the opportunity to share their Voyager awareness efforts among patrons.

All of this information will help a sub-committee create a set of general, centralized handouts for patron usage.

4. WebVoyage Usability Testing

Junghae Lee, a GSLIS student, is conducting a usability test of the OPAC as her final project. She has agreed to share her protocol to enable the User Education Committee to run a WebVoyage usability test with other groups. The committee hopes to test 5-7 graduate students who are not students of GSLIS, as well as a group of faculty. A demo account will be set up for the testing. A sub-committee was formed consisting of Allison and Paul. These individuals will be working along with some members the PIT committee.

5. Professional Development Programming

The Teaching Alliance, which is a joint program of GSLIS and the Library, provides professional development programs related to teaching. The Teaching Alliance sponsors two to three events per semester. Topic ideas for these events were discussed. Topic ideas include: student evaluation of the teacher, web tutorials, web design, web instruction, team teaching techniques, evaluation of information literacy skills, outcomes of teaching, and active learning strategies. These topics will be discussed further at a later date.

6. Open Discussion

Paul asked about the possibility of user education lunches. Lisa will talk with Sue Searing and Bob Burger about this.

Respectfully submitted,
Ely Anderson