Recent Reading (CPD)

I know, I know.  I do use Twitter a lot.  However, in my own defence, it’s a great way of keeping abreast of professional developments.  So my Twitter feed has more current awareness, research, educational and musical content than fluffy kittens (although there certainly are a handful of cute animal accounts – just to lift the spirits!).

Interesting educational links that I’ve encountered in the past few days?

• The myth of the ‘Growth Mindset’
• Flipped Classrooms: a Review of Key Ideas and Recommendations for Practice (it seems that the concept may not offer as many benefits as sometimes promoted – but having said that, a couple of my best teaching sessions came after setting students a small home assignment before the seminar, so I still think it’s worth pursuing!)
• ‘He had never heard anything so amazing’: why one 15-minute class is changing lives (the incredible benefits of regular instrumental music tuition to seven-year olds)
• Deadlines, distractions and difficult books: how uni differs from school (an education article in the Guardian)

I have always been keen to share what I find with colleagues – hopefully most find it an endearing rather than an irritating habit!  I do the same with alerts that I’ve set up to notifiy me of new research articles.

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Information Literacy in my Profession

The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals – my professional organisation and to which I’ve been elected a Fellow – has a group specifically dedicated to Information Literacy, so there’s plenty on the CILIP website that is worth my attention!  For example:-

 

“Information Literacy Group | CILIP

https://www.cilip.org.uk/about/special-interest-groups/information-literacy-group

A CILIP Special Interest Group which encourages debate and the exchange of knowledge in all aspects of Information Literacy.

Information literacy | CILIP

https://www.cilip.org.uk/tags/information-literacy-0

The Information Literacy Group is pleased to announce a forthcoming workshop called “Play, Games and … What’s happening with World Book Night this year?

6 suggestions for teaching information literacy | CILIP

https://www.cilip.org.uk/blog/6-suggestions-teaching-information-literacy

22 Aug 2016 – The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (the Association of …. Teaching Information Literacy Reframed – book cover … “

Indeed, I saw a flyer for a new book which very much appeals to me, but it won’t be published until later on this summer, so it may be too late for me to make use of it in my PGCert project:-

KEVIN MICHAEL KLIPFEL and DANI BRECHER COOK, Learner-Centred Pedagogy: Principles and Practice (London: Facet Publishing, 2017) Details here

Recent Reading

I thought I’d glance through my Diigo and Mendeley accounts to track recent serendipitous reading.  Here goes!  These all reflect my professional preoccupations, not surprisingly – information literacy, online learning, point-of-need ‘learning experiences’ – whether a podcast, blog, screencast or whatever – learning styles, distance learners …

 

• CILIP Information Literacy Group: a forthcoming event in Aston (2017-07-12) that comes too late for my project, but maybe I might come across a similar one in Scotland some day:- ‘Supporting online learners, what works? A discussion of innovative methods in providing distance learners with information literacy and library skills.’ An Aston University Library Teachmeet.  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/supporting-online-learners-what-works-a-discussion-of-innovative-methods-in-providing-distance-tickets-33991143425?utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=order_confirmation_email&utm_term=eventname&ref=eemailordconf
• Earp, Jo, Classroom layout – what does the research say? (Teacher Magazine), 2017-03-16 [Australia] https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/article/classroom-layout-what-does-the-research-say  My annotation:- About collaborative learning spaces, in schools.  A couple of times, Earp cites an earlier scholarly article:- Fernandes, A. C., Huang, J., & Rinaldo, V. (2011). Does where a student sits really matter? The impact of seating locations on student classroom learning. International Journal of Applied Educational Studies, 10(1), 66-77.  Perhaps not surprisingly, seating arrangements contribute to different environments – in rows, to paying attention and not much interaction.  In groups for collaboration and engagement in an activity.  Other factors, eg draughts, daylight/overhead lighting, even seating position in a classroom where pupils sit in rows, can have an effect.  However, as I’ve mentioned before, I generally have no say in room arrangement, and only limited opportunities to encourage collaborative group work.
• Amy Mollett, Cheryl Brumley, Chris Gilson and Sierra Williams, By producing podcasts you can reach wider audiences, occupy your niche and create new items of research (London School of Economics blog), 2017-05-16  http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/05/16/by-producing-podcasts-you-can-reach-wider-audiences-occupy-your-niche-and-create-new-items-of-research/ – My annotation:- a podcast is basically ‘on-demand audio’, and enjoyed a renaissance with a radio podcast, Serial, itself a spin-off from an American radio programme, This American Life.  Everyone has a mobile phone so potentially large audience.  Here’s a summary of reasons why to podcast research:-  Now, I sometimes worry that I’m too prone to be negative.  I don’t see myself as negative so much as just tending to spot where things might go wrong/ not be an ideal fit.  However, whilst I can see the value of an audio podcast for my research, I can’t see it working well when I’m teaching students how to access an online resource, construct a citation, or practice search skills.  I need the visual element.  Moreover, some of the comments in my project survey quite specifically ask for more visual formats, cartoons, video, webcasts, etc.  The authors cite ‘what writer Chris Anderson calls the “long tail”, with a plethora of novice and niche podcasts sitting at the tail end of digital audio offerings.’  So, we’re looking at podcasts as having a place in a diversity of audio formats, and reaching out to new audiences.  There was also mention of the podcast interview as a form of research in itself, an interesting idea but not applicable in the present context.
• Pun, Raymond and Meggan Houlihan,  Game On: Gamification in the Library (Credo Reference Blog, 2017-02-19) http://blog.credoreference.com/2017/02/game-on-tips-tools-to-make-instruction-more-engaging – My annotation:-  I often read about activities like these – quite complex, and involving quite a lot of preparation –  and reflect that it would be difficult to construct a game that could be included in a 15 minute presentation in our usual live delivery context – a lecture theatre or seminar room.  Firstly, I can’t set assignments.  I couldn’t imagine students willingly doing a collaborative project using Googledocs, uploading answers and photos, all in the name of gaining information literacy skills.  Secondly, I have a much wider remit than the author of the article, who is responsible for first year student engagement, whilst I am responsible for the information needs of any musicians in the entire institution, and anyone else who needs my assistance.  And thirdly, I still recall the year when I was persuaded to set up a library quiz using QR codes, all tucked into copies of textbooks on the library shelves.  When it came to it, I wasn’t left enough time to get the students to upload QR code readers to their phones, so by the time we got to the library, no-one was able to access the QR codes to make a start on the treasure-hunt.  Am I being negative, or realistic?!  And yet, I don’t deny that these are innovative and modern ways of tackling longstanding problems.
• Rempel,  Hannah Gascho and Anne-Marie Deitering, Sparking Curiosity – Librarians’ Role in Encouraging Exploration – In the Library with the Lead Pipe (blogpost), 2017-02-22 http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2017/sparking-curiosity  – My annotation:- about information literacy, students selecting topics, referencing, writing style.  This is written in the context of American first year students selecting a research topic for their rhetoric and composition class.  However, our students don’t have a written ‘composition’ component (think essay, not music) and don’t study rhetoric.  The paper is interesting and well-written, but doesn’t really sit comfortably alongside the kind of learning expected of our students, or the kind of information skills teaching expected of the librarians.
• Screencast-o-matic – recommended by our learning technologist, whom I consulted when one of my survey respondents said that the links were very big to download. My annotation:- Fred suggested that another time, he could render the videos into “best quality”, average, and small-size file, so users would have a choice.  Another respondent asked for more technically complex videos than I had produced, so I sought advice to help me make a better product next time.  Despite my feeling that a powerpoint-with-commentary would be technically straightforward and much more informative than a podcast, it seems that some readers have more demanding requirements – they wanted to see my face simultaneously; they wanted cartoons or animation; and they wanted screencasts of search techniques or using bibliographic software. All good suggestions for future “learning experiences”, so this link should prove very useful:- Help Tutorials: http://help.screencast-o-matic.com/
• Tech skills are seriously lacking in universities – take it from the IT guy | Higher Education Network | The Guardian 2017-05-26  (By an anonymous learning technologist, includes concept of gamification.)  My annotation:- I think I would need to collaborate with our learning technologist, and I’d first need to work out one particular problem that would lend itself to experimental gamification.  (A game about using bibliographical referencing tools?  I’d have a ball, but the mind boggles when it comes to getting the students to join in collaboratively in a game-like way.)  The author is right about there only being pockets of interest in technical solutions.  I like the summary at the end of this article, especially the very last sentence:-

“Alongside the reading list, how about a list of games to play? I have not yet thought of a subject that could not be taught through games. Instead of an essay submitted in Microsoft Word, how about an Adobe Spark digital multimedia story? When degree programmes are being developed, how about having a technology adviser present from the start?

“Get technology at the heart of every programme specification, and get students and lecturers using it every day. Only then will skills truly develop.”

• Weale, Sally, Teachers must ditch ‘neuromyth’ of learning styles, say scientists (The Guardian. Teaching.  2016-03-13) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/13/teachers-neuromyth-learning-styles-scientists-neuroscience-education?CMP=twt_gu  My annotation:- If learning styles are a myth – and they might well be – then the concept is deeply embedded into many teachers’ and learners’ psyches now.  I note that from the responses to my survey, with learners stating that they learn best if they imbue information a particular way or in a particular medium.  In a sense, we can’t argue with individual preferences.  However, I’ve always thought that we probably all benefit from a blend of different learning experiences, depending on the topic, setting and circumstances.  It is a little alarming, if learning styles have become a ‘neuromyth’ – pop psychology, if you like.

Excuses, Excuses

Falling over my own shadow

This week didn’t go quite according to plan.  Thursday morning saw me flying gracelessly through the air and landing awkwardly on one hand and the opposite knee, as I was walking along the side of my workplace. I survived work (because I didn’t want to take time off), took a choir practice, spent four hours in A&E, and walked home at 2 am with my hand in a splint.  Somewhat sleep-deprived, I got through Friday at work and did spend some time over the weekend revising my not-yet-complete project proposal, but not as much as I hoped.  All I can face now is to reread the instructions for the project proposal and familiarize myself with exactly what’s needed under each remaining heading.

Inspired by a TED talk: Nancy Duarte

I have, however, watched an interested TED talk by the author of one of our new library books that I catalogued on Friday.  Nancy Duarte’s The Secret Structure of Great Talks might not be of much relevance to e-resource interventions, but it is certainly informative as regards delivering inspirational presentations, so it it was time well-spent.  (I watched it three times!)  The basic message seems to be, contrasting “how it is now” with “how it will be with my great idea”, and ending up with “the bliss”, ie positive high-note to finish on.  I’ve been pondering how to incorporate this into the talk I’m booked to give at the University of Oxford next month.  The talk is virtually written, but I’ll be revising it! I always try to write my talks sufficiently early to be able to put them aside then revisit them a few days later, and I still have to put a PowerPoint together.

New book-stock for Education students

I’ll list my new cataloguing below – it might be useful to someone!  I ordered one of the books on Amazon for myself, as it looked so interesting, but I can’t go buying them all, so I might just borrow the Duarte book tomorrow!

Did you know, the homepage of our catalogue has a link to our latest books:- click the link at the bottom of the pink square:- https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/rcs/

• Catmull, Edwin, Creativity, Inc: overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration (2014)
• Cron, Lisa, Wired for story: the writer’s guide to using brain science to hook readers from the very first sentence (2012)
• Duarte, Nancy, Resonate: present visual stories that transform audiences (2010)
• Gilbert, Elizabeth, Big magic: creative living beyond fear (2015)
• Griffith, Andy, Engaging Learners (2012)
• Griffith, Andy, Teaching Backwards (2014)

 

First Actions 18th January

I have my “to read” list, but I wanted to go back through my postings and see what I have actually  read already!  This formed the basis of my Resource Context and has been copied across to the project page.

 

Project Reading, and ResearchGate

Ah, the weekend! I sit in a chaotic dining room (which doubles up as my office), while things sit in relocated heaps because three different parts of the house are being decorated!  It’s hard to concentrate on anything (and my PGCert is just one of the things I should be concentrating on this weekend), but I can just about manage to blog, and read in between interruptions.  It’s either that or the ironing!

Credit-Bearing Instruction

So, checking my emails I discover that a librarian from Canada has responded to my ResearchGate conversation about user education.  William Badke is at Trinity Western University Canada, and he is in  favour of credit-bearing instruction.  Now, when I did my own PhD at the University of Glasgow, we all had to pass a library/IT module, but it wasn’t exactly credit-bearing. Satisfactory completion was just essential.  I was exempt from much of it, being a subject librarian myself at another institution.

Graduate Attributes: What should a Graduate “Look” Like? (Not Literally!)

In my own job, I give irregular seminars to students at any level if their teachers request this. As I’ve mentioned before, I find it’s best given at point of need, eg when an essay or project has to be handed in!  However, although training is kind of compulsory if we’re attending a scheduled lecture or seminar, there’s no compulsion in the sense that credits have to be earned or a “library training” box ticked as part of the students’ studies.  In our own situation, we’re quite proud of the amount we are now involved in teaching compared to how things were even three or four years ago.  Prior to the redesign of our Bachelors’ degrees, I did encounter one comment that students ‘didn’t want to be trained in information science’ – after all, they’re at a conservatoire.  Nonetheless, degree-level study, or study towards a degree, demands degree-level (or heading for degree-level) information handling skills. Not as a librarian, but with the aim of becoming a competent information-seeking graduate. I’ve been attending programme committee meetings this week, and one thing that resonated with me was that programme designers and educationalists know what they want a typical graduate from our institution to ‘look like’; however, from the students’ point of view, they want to be performers, and to that end they want to spend most of their time performing.  They don’t yet see the need for acquiring the kind of graduate attributes that will, actually, turn out to be useful.

Networking by Social Media

But back to William in Canada – he has just shared with me his own website for library teaching resources, which is very generous of him. And I see he has also published a book on the subject.  So, that’s two more things to go on my reading list – the website and the book! Maybe we could even consider getting the book, if it suits the Conservatoire context.  I am really grateful for the generosity of fellow-researchers and librarians on ResearchGate.  I’m getting so much useful discussion, not to mention recommendations for reading or websites to visit.  (And in my day-to-day work as a librarian, last week I contacted a professor in a totally different discipline to ask about a paper she had listed but not yet uploaded, because one of our students couldn’t access it by any other means.  This week, she kindly uploaded it!  The research scene is so very different from pre-internet days – it’s great!

So, here are Williams’s resources:-

Badke, William, Research Strategies: Finding Your Way Through the Information Fog, 5th Edition (iUniverse, 2014) – it’s available as paperback on Amazon

Badke, William, Teaching Resources (used at Trinity Western University, Canada) [website, accessed 2017.01.14]  http://williambadke.com/TeachingResources.htm

I’ll add these to the reading list I compiled earlier this week, and to my full Resources page.

Another Night for Reading

Today was a research day.  I have almost written the first draft of my next paper. I’m a guest speaker, so it has to be good!  I’m a bit surprised to find I wrote just under 3,000 words, so that’s quite a decent output for one office day.

But tonight I must get back to my PGCert reading. I’ve annotated four of the items I have set aside to read. The links to my blogposts are inserted so that it will be easy to refer back to them later.

Here’s the list.  Some hope of getting through it all!  Two articles, by Tinto, were added just as I read the Bowskill item. And later, I added the two Badke references. (At some point I will need to stop collecting and just get on with reading – after all, I have a project proposal to complete soon!)

1. Badke, William, Research Strategies: Finding Your Way Through the Information Fog, 5th Edition (iUniverse, 2014) – it’s available as paperback on Amazon

2. Badke, William, Teaching Resources (used at Trinity Western University, Canada) [website, accessed 2017.01.14]  http://williambadke.com/TeachingResources.htm

3. Bowskill, Nicholas, Student-generated induction: a social identity approach. A Staff development guide.  (Nicholas Bowskill, 2013) [Started and blogged about briefly – to continue]  I have now read enough of this book – basically a script for a workshop on induction using this approach.  The link to my notes is an earlier blogpost, ‘Project Planning’, dated 25th August 2016, which I’ve just extended:- https://wordpress.com/post/karenmcaulay.wordpress.com/3200
4. Brabazon, Tara, ‘Press learning: the potential of podcasting through pause, record, play and stop’, Knowledge Management & E-Learning vol.8 no.3, Sept 2016, 430-443 [have read, blogged, intend to reread]  I blogged briefly about this on 16th September,  ‘Can’t you do a podcast?’:- https://karenmcaulay.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/cant-you-do-a-podcast/
5. El Hakim, Yaz, et al, ‘The impact of RefME on the student experience’, report on research by University of Greenwich and Sheffield Hallam University, 2016, 11 pp. I now see that I did blog about RefME – ‘When a tweet provokes thought’, 18th December:- https://karenmcaulay.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/when-a-tweet-provokes-thought/  and I remember my frustration. I truly do think RefME has a lot of potential, but if I can’t scan ISBNs on my phone, can’t search for typed ISBNs, and can’t get a response to either helpdesk calls or tweeted appeals for help, then I am not going to recommend it.  I like Mendeley. I trust it.  I believe Zotero is equally good. I’m sorry, RefME – I won’t be recommending you.  It’s a shame.
6. Fabri, Marc, ‘Thinking with a new purpose: lessons learned from teaching design thinking skills to creative technology students’, Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015, 32-43 [have read, intend to reread, full citation probably on Mendeley but too late to find just now!]
7. George, Sarah, and Tasnim Munshi, Making Students Eat Their Greens: Information Skills for Chemistry Students (Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Fall 2016)  http://istl.org/16-fall/refereed1.html
8. Library Impact Data Project, Focus Group Write-Up blogged by Graham Stone, December 20, 2012, reporting observations by Martin Philip at the University of Huddersfield https://library3.hud.ac.uk/blogs/lidp/ [to read properly]
9. Macfarlane, Eric, Who cares about education? … Going in the wrong direction (s.l. : New Generation Publishing, 2016) [recommended in a blog by Evelyn Glennie – purchased last week]
10. Maxymuk, John, ‘Online communities’, The Bottom Line, vol.20 iss.1, 2007, 54-57 [to read]
11. Maynard, Sally, and Emily Cheyne, ‘Can electronic textbooks help children to learn?’, The Electronic Library, Vol.23 iss 1, pp.72-81 [hyperlink is available – to insert later.  Still to read this]
12. Moon, Jennifer, A Handbook of reflective and experiential learning: theory and practice (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004) [Bought, not yet read]
13. Salmon, Gilly, Etivities: the key to active online learning (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003, 2004) [To read]
14. Sheridan, Mark, and Charles Byrne, ‘Transformations and cultural change in Scottish music education: historical perspectives and contemporary solutions’, paper presented at 32nd World Conference International Society for Music Education, Glasgow, July 2016 [have read, intend to reread]
15. Shirley, Rachel, ‘”Not an ogre”: adult music learners and their teachers: a corpus-based discourse analysis, poster session.  https://www.academia.edu/30303232/Not_an_ogre_adult_music_learners_and_their_teachers_a_corpus-based_discourse_analysis  This is unrelated to library instruction, but I like the suggestion that a student’s comments about their teacher or their teacher’s observations might reveal underlying anxieties. Worth bearing in mind.