Librarians in Course Management Systems

Digest for the ACRL/Instruction Section from the 2007 ALA midwinter conference

E-Learning Spaces: Librarians in Course Management Systems
or in PDF.

To my eye, there is not much new here, but a pretty good summation of where we (librarians) are at in working with or integrating services into CMS systems. Under the Pedagogical Implications section I was interested to see that

“Student feedback on CMS suggests that the most popular and widely-used tools are the syllabus and reading lists, with online discussion tools ranking much lower.”

Hmmm, threaded discussion just isn’t sexy enough as a blog, perhaps? And obviously at the end in Where Will CMS take Us?, the need for integrating “new social ‘web 2.0′ tools and behaviors” is called out as a key area of change. The implications I would imagine would give a re-birth to CMS systems in general.

I am actually surprised by some of the ” successes” and “future plans”.  Not to toot our “library horn”, but we have been doing most of those for a couple years.

Playing catch up!

Have had quite a few things happening this last week.

First, the bad news. The information literacy class designed for grade 5-12 educators has been cancelled due to lack of students. This is the 2nd semester in a row. I think a “rethinking” of how we promote this class in the online course catalog is in order. I also wonder, as someone has suggested, that Monday nights may not be the best time for the class. Unfortunately, Mondays are about the only time I can get free to teach a class. So, a little disheartening, but as always, gives me and my colleague to rethink a few things. Not just in trying to get people to take the class, but on some ideas I would like to incorporate, like discussion about wikis, social tagging, and other web 2.0 type stuff, which we have not included yet.

I other news, CLIC, the consortium Bush Library is a part of, had a workshop sponsored by the Reference Community of Interest, which I am a part of. Our workshop was entitled The Actor in the Classroom. We had an actor, Shanon Wexler, who also teaches at one of the schools in the CLIC consortium come in and discuss acting and how it relates to teaching/presenting. Her focus was that we all have “a style” and that we need to explore it, being aware/mindful of our physical bodies, such as breathing, gestures. OR, being mindful of the space that we are using and the props we use. What I liked about it was the use of declarative statements, such as “If you remember one thing it should be…..” A lot of this is simple stuff, but good stuff we tend to forget after a few years of teaching. As for me, it is always good to rethink my presentations in terms of incorporating ideas or that some ideas work for some groups but not for others.

Of course I had to teach last night just after the workshop and found myself trying to incorporate ideas….which turned out horrible. Ruined my timing and performance. I need to make sure I have things thought out more before I go all “gung ho” into a BI.

Added Flickr

See sidebar widget for images.

I also created an account for the library.  I will hopefully get most of the pictures up in the next week or so and then maybe add them to the library maps I created in Visio a while back.

Currently reading

Currently re-reading How Choice, Co-Creation, and Culture Are Changing What it Means to be Net Savvy from EDUCAUSE.

It is wrongheaded to think that undergraduates – because they have grown up in a digital age- are better at understanding the technology they use as it relates to researching information.

Questions/musings to myself?

• When we see them at the college/graduate level is it too late?
• For my IL class, how can I incorporate social bookmarking and Library Thing into our discussion on classification?
• Can we trust our own content? I am reminded about something about a lawyer and “a fool for a client”

Also…..

Gross, Melissa (2005) The Impact of Low-Level Skills on Information-Seeking Behavior: Implications of Competency Theory for Research and Practice. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 45(2), 155-163.

Baird, Derek E. & Mercedes Fisher (2005-06) Neomillenial User Experience Design Strategies: Utilizing Social Networking Media to Support “ALWAYS ON” Learning Styles. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 31 (1), 5-32.

Wiki restrictions at Middlebury College

As reported from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Middlebury College History Department Limits Students’ Use of Wikipedia.

Members of the Vermont institution’s history department voted unanimously in January to adopt the statement, which bans students from citing the open-source encyclopedia in essays and examinations
_____

“Students are responsible for the accuracy of information they provide, and they cannot point to Wikipedia or any similar source that may appear in the future to escape the consequences of errors.”

Maybe with more of a movement to something like Scholarpediawould help? Not too surprised by this action.  I have personally talked to more than one professor that the students have started to cite wikis as sources in their work.  All of this has been from undergraduate professors mind you and I have yet to hear from any of my Grad Ed faculty…….yet.

The article is concluded with an interview with Don J. Wyatt, the chair of the history department. 

Struck by this line

We decided that we didn’t want to ban students from using a particular resource; we wanted them to be able to use it with greater discrimination and more discretion.

Sounds like a demand/need for information literacy skills to me.