Another useful JISC article to follow up in due course!
By Jisc accessibility and inclusion on July 20, 2019
Another useful JISC article to follow up in due course!
By Jisc accessibility and inclusion on July 20, 2019
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?
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.
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
A CILIP Special Interest Group which encourages debate and the exchange of knowledge in all aspects of Information Literacy.
Information literacy | CILIP
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
22 Aug 2016 – The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (the Association of …. Teaching Information Literacy Reframed – book cover … “
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 …
“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.”
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.
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.
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/
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.