Welcome to the Real World: Showing the Value of Information Literacy Beyond the Classroom 

John B. Napp, University of Toledo started his career as a librarian at an engineering firm. When he started as an academic librarian, surveyed engineering firms to find out how many have librarians (very few). His goal is to make sure the engineering students are capable of finding the information they need when they start their engineering careers, since they may not have librarians to assist them.

Resources:

• Learning to Solve Problems: A Handbook for Designing Problem-Solving Learning Environments by David H. Jonassen (2010)
• Hsieh, C. and L. Knight. 2008. Problem-Based Learning for Engineering Students: An Evidence-Based. Comparative Study. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2007.11.007
• Yadav, et al 2011 PBL in Electrical Engineering found that students who were taught using PBL performed better. 

Napp decided a problem-based learning would be a useful approach to build in ACRL IL & ABET outcomes. Working with engineering faculty and students, they devised a team-based PBL assignment. He surveyed students on their use of information types as well as perceptions. 41% felt they would still be able to find everything they need on Google. Check out the paper for more findings.

What Information Sources Do Engineering Students Use to Address Authentic Socio-technical Problems?
Eugene Barsky, Annette Berndt, Aleteia Greenwood, and Carla S. Paterson from University of British Columbia discussed their work with an applied science course, Technology and Development, The Global Engineer. Instructors work with a local community partner, a social entrepreneur Charlotte Kwon (maiwa.com) who works with global artisans. The students focus on authentic problems of rural artisans in India. One example is the potential use of solar energy to power sewing machines. Students are required to produce a formal report proposing technological and socially appropriate solutions. The problems are ill-defined and students have to move into areas they are unfamiliar with. One of the course outcomes is to get students "to develop a tolerance for ambiguity." 

Librarians worked with these students to teach them research skills. To assess they conducted 3 student surveys, a pre, post and one after the formal reports were complete. Librarians and faculty also reviewed the reference list of the reports. In the pre-survey they found that 90% of students plan to use library resources, 70% mentioned library books, and 40% mentioned library journals and databases. After completing the project 55% of students reported using library resources, 15% books, and 50% library databases and journals.

People are an important source of information for engineers. Some students reported talking with academic experts, a few to librarians, and they expressed a desire to have more contact/communication with the project sponsor/contact in India.  

Their post-survey and paper review confirmed high use of non-academic sources. Overall only 20% of sources were academic sources. Due to lack of clarity and vagueness of project, one student commented that internet search engines are a good place to start. 75% of students reported that presentations by librarians were useful to them. 60% of students reported subsequently using advanced search commands presented by librarians.

Authentic problems as “high engagement, high impact” (Kuh, 2009) activities lead to co-creation of new knowledgebases.

Gauging Workplace Readiness: Information Behavior and Preparedness of Engineering Students in Cooperative Education Programs

Jon N. Jeffryes, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, collaborating with another librarian surveyed co-op students to find out what types of information they are using “on the job.” Out of 42 co-op students, 36 responded. Almost all were mechanical engineering students, most junior/senior level.

Not surprisingly, the librarians found that everyone had to find information on the job. Three areas the data will guide:

1. Portfolio program: six skills students need for their careers, many gleaned from their literature review, putting together this program and used survey findings to help make the case for this initiative.

2. Teamwork workshop: piloted 90-minute workshop already, drop in workshop, not required. Sent to faculty and some strongly requested that one student from each team attend. Focus on team skills and library tools that can assist with teamwork, recent physical space improvements aid with this effort, many active learning/collaborative learning labs. Discussions are now underway on how to incorporate into the curriculum.

3. Information literacy integration: survey data will help and provide examples to engage students within large lecture format IL session for engineering students.

It's a Wrap: a Real-life Engineering Case Study as the Focus of an Online Library Tutorial
Patsy D. Hulse at University of Auckland working with subject librarians D. Dantang Han, E.I. Melnichenko, and S. Brookes developed an online tutorial that incorporates a real-life engineering case study. The idea for this was to fill a research education gap within the engineering students third year. This class has 550 students so an online tutorial was the best approach for an already overstretched staff. They needed to create this within 4 months. Six modules cover how to find the information the students need. Module 4: Time to do testing, is the finding standards part of the tutorial, is one example where they create a scenario that outlines the information need and provide information on how to use databases for finding standards. They created a bank of around 80 assessment questions, and there is a test is worth 3% of the final grade.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the online tutorial they used direct observation, a feedback form, test results, paper evaluation during lectures to get higher response rate (also offered a raffle prize). Found 24% of students learned about patents for the first time. They made changes after student feedback, such as adding video times/sizes, improving navigation and fonts.  Side benefit: Librarians were able to use some of the videos within other courses at the graduate level. 

Check the tutorial out at their website.

Aside: UofA’s Engineering Library has a neat creativity center, with building materials and a large engineering firm sponsors a model building competition.  

Engineering Information Literacy: Theory and Practice

Gaming Against Plagiarism: A Partnership between the Library and Faculty 
Amy G. Buhler, M. Leonard, M. Johnson and B. DeVane;
Problems with plagiarism at University of Florida prompted Buhler, et al to create a game to help students learn to avoid plagiarism. This project is grant-funded. Using ADDIE and instructional design principles, they constructed a project plan to create this game. Phase 1, content development has completed and now the librarians are in the design phase. Content-building team, Don McCade from Rutgers, a well known researcher on plagiarism in higher education, and others. Content is broken into 3 levels of understanding, based on six outcomes. Level one is foundation knowledge which is to identify major types of plagiarism, basic rules to avoid, and identify data fabrication and falsification. Level two explains consequences, three complexity. The design team, from digital design institute at UF.  The design team is developing small mini-games, incorporated into meta-game that will help students achieve the outcomes. Using Bloom’s taxonomy, game one will allow students to “identify,” two “manage,” and three an investigator will “argue” within a plagiarism mystery, thus using higher order skills.

Once the prototype is developed there will be a 3-week test cycle and librarians hope to do 3 test phases with end users. UF partnered with various institutions who will be using and testing this game within their courses over the next year.

Follow the progress of the game at blogs.uflib.ufl.edu/GAP {note: link doesn't work today so need to check on this}

See also Games in Libraries Blog for posts on education games in libraries, including some other examples of plagiarism games.

Finding Your Way around the Engineering Literature: Developing an Online Tutorial Series for Engineering Students – Janet Fransen

In order to reach graduate students at University of Minnesota Jan developed a series of online tutorials, “consumable and short bursts.” She wanted the students to have a compelling reason to do these tutorials so performed some citation analyses on prior student work at UM in order to make the case to students.

In selecting a tool, they wanted some interactivity and quizzing options so selected Adobe Captivate  and Audacity for audio recording. She created a template for the tutorial series and included information about subject librarian(s). Using engineering examples her citation research on electrical engineering peers, the tutorials are focused on graduate students information needs.

See tutorials at:
z.umn.edu/englit
z.umn.edu/ececites

Collaborative Information Behaviour of Engineering Students in a Senior Design Group Project: a Pilot Study 
Nasser Saleh, Queens University

Assumption that info seeker is an individual, interested in looking at behavior of groups. Saleh wanted to find about collaborative information seeking.

See Dervin’s Sense-making Theory

Two case studies within 4th year design course, 2nd case study he did interviews with students.

For this pilot study, first interested in task formulation/initiation.  He surveyed students to understand clarity, interest in project, ability to find background information and so on. Students reporting that finding information for their project was an ongoing activity, which could be important for engineering librarians to be mindful of. Students reported using people as information sources (93%) such as client, instructor, and librarian. When asked for reasons for collaborative information seeking, complexity of project was one factor. Are students assigning roles? Almost 76% reported they are in order to increase productivity. They meet, split to search, then come back to reconvene to discuss findings.

See also Talja, Hansen "Information Sharing" chapter within Information Sharing in New Directions in Human Information Behavior Seeking (2006).

Keeping the Conversation Alive: Maintaining Students' Research Skills Throughout Their College Careers
Jay Bhatt with L. Milliken, L. Ackert, and E.J. Goldberg
At Drexel, Bhatt was teaching first year and senior engineering research skills, but there were issues with students retaining these skills. He wanted to find a way within their sophomore or junior year to embed information literacy. To intervene within the mid-academic career, Bhatt performed a careful analysis of the engineering curriculum and found that HIST285: Technology in Historical Perspectives was often taking by students in the junior year. Collaborating with the Humanities librarian and professors of this course, Bhatt was able to infuse IL into this course. For the final research assignment students needed to find scholarly sources, books, and primary historic documents. In the future these sessions will be recorded and made available online for students via Adobe Connect.

In the future they are considering a field trip to the Franklin Institute Museum can help students generate ideas for research on inventions or innovations.

Rethinking PowerPoint - Deviation from ELD but Worth a Gander at Assertion-Evidence Slides

Assertion-evidence Slides Appear to Lead to Better Comprehension and recall of More Complex Concepts
Kerri Wolf, Penn State & Dr. Joanna K Garner, et al at Old Dominion University asked whether or not assertion-evidence slides are better for communicating technical information. Two groups of students viewed different PPTs with same recorded scripts on MRIs. Researchers then assessed knowledge retention with immediate essays and then tested on their retention of the information two weeks later via a quiz.

Assertion-evidence slides have an assertive statement, a large image, and focused labels via layers. They found A-E slides worked better than the traditional bulleted list which tend to have more text/noise. Use of PPT layers or animation can help students visualize. Over 20% increase in understanding of technical concept was seen with the assertion-evidence slides. Students wrote an essay right after the presentation on the process of MRI. Researchers used a rubric to grade the essays, for the common practice 42% and for assertive-evidence students attained 59%. The common practice students also led to more misconceptions.

These slides do take longer to construct, but worth the time investment! 


Informed Influence: Preparing Graduate Students to Present with Power instead of Just PowerPoint
Christine G. Nicometo & Traci N. Nathans-Kelly from University of Wisconsin, Madison discussed the shift from textual to visual slide design and ability for presented to engage audience or students. They teach in Master of Engineering in Professional Practice, which is primarily on online program, and students have been in industry for at least five years.

Teach students to make assertive statement on their slides along with visuals. They also recommend the use of archival/speaker notes, especially useful when sharing presentations. Their professional students are required to record and view their presentations in order to practice and improve, and they have found the powerful impact of using assertion-evidence based presentation slides.

Information Literacy Programs for First Year Engineering Students

Lifelong Learning and Information Literacy Skills and the First Year Engineering Undergraduate: Report of a Self-assessment – Meagan C. Ross with Michael Fosmire, Ruth Wertz, M.E. Cardella, and S. Purzer

Meagan C. Ross, discussed first year IL and assessment projects at Purdue University. This particular project was funded by an Engineer 2020 grant.  Ross, et al found engineering students self-reported lack of gains in “lifelong learning.” ABET Outcome 3i Lifelong Learning and information literacy are connected. Librarians found they had a hard time teaching IL skills as well as a difficult time assessing these skills. Looking to develop an easy to administer test for librarians and engineering faculty to use. Guglielmino developed a self-directed learning readiness scale (SDLRS), a SDLRS for Nursing education, as well as Shinichi, et al who created a more generic 13 question instrument.

Purdue wished to develop an instrument that would be more focused on engineering. They also desired to bring in Kuhlthau (2004) Information Search Process (ISP). First year students who took their information skills assessment reported being good at task definition, citation, reflection/self-assessment. The weakest areas included exploration of alternative sources, ability to locate information effectively, and these correlate with Kuhlthau’s ISP.

Junior level data shows they are more humble than the first year students. Instructors created an authentic “memo” assignment where they found one weak area for the juniors was citing sources.

They are looking for partners, they have designed three instruments and will be further developing them. They are looking for partners, so feel free to contact them. See also other presentations by this team at ASEE.

Implications
• Future work, continue developing instrument (circumvent ‘novice effect’)
• Librarians should address beginning part of ISP

Embedded Assessment of Library Learning Outcomes in a Freshman Engineering Course 
Larry Schmidt and Melissa Bowles-Terry from University of Wyoming described their experience with IL inclusion within their engineering first year courses. Students are required to perform research on an assigned topic such as autonomous robots then work on a related engineering challenge. Librarians have one-short session and they now have electronic classroom. Short in-class assignments, but they did not know what students were coming away with. They narrowed down to 3 learning outcomes: identifying appropriate research databases, using appropriate vocabulary/keyword choices, and differentiating source types. Started with pre-test (online form), developed worksheet and rubric to assess student keyword choices, and a post-test (online form) to assess databases choices and defining scholarly sources.

Using a constructivist learning approach, they start where the students are by teaching Google then move to Wonderwheel and Scholar, then to an engineering database. Showing search process from general to more specific, and how to modifying search terms.

On the pre-test, almost half of 192 responses had not ever used a database and half were familiar with Academic Search, but this is offered in the Wyoming schools/libraries. For learning outcome 1 (databases) librarians categorized into beginning, developing, exemplary based on the students’ reasons for choosing a specific database. For keywords, librarians created a small rubric, based on quantity of keywords (will be moving to quality in the future, this rubric will be revised). They found most of the students with beginning proficiency in keyword selection were non-native speakers. For learning outcome 3 (source differentiation) students were asked to identify characteristics of a scholarly article, they found the students did not do well.  Self-reported confidence levels increased during the 1-hr session. Future idea: taking research paper samples and matching with student confidence levels. They would also like to give a presentation to the engineering faculty with these findings.

The Research Studio: Integrating Information Literacy Into a First Year Engineering Science Course 
C. Michelle Baratta, Alan Chong and Jason A. Foster

At University of Toronto, two engineering design instructors worked with Baratta, a librarian to develop new active learning method of incorporating IL skills, which they call a “research studio.”

Students have three major design projects within this course. One project has a research assignment with real focus, to design pedestrian bridge to cross a ravine in Toronto. Students need to incorporate technical load/structural engineering concepts and go beyond and think about issues of usability and sustainability. This assignment involves site visits as well as secondary research. Instructors wanted to introduce students to reference handbooks, building codes so they brought in the librarian to assist.

LOGISTICS: Three hundred students visited the library over 3 days, one hundred at a time. They were required to visit up to six stations per team (minimum of 3 spending 30 minutes at each stop). Part of the goal is to foster mutual interdependence, not all teams visited the same stations. Instructors developed a 28 page handout.

STATION EXAMPLE: Evaluating Information
Students were asked to view and evaluate websites about specific bridges. Reflections questions such as “would they use these web sites in their daily lives,” or “would they use this site for an academic research project.”

At the Search Strategies stop students constructed searches and learned about/constructed Boolean searches. For non-traditional sources, students wandered the library to find examples of non-traditional sources.

Instructors found students are now providing longer reference lists, more credible sources, but they feel that the students still do not strategize (but this is a program level issue). Question about how the students are using the references, but have not had opportunity to do this yet.

In the future they will be adding codes/standards, trying to slow students down, reducing structure/overload (like their 28-page handout), and they plan to “gamify” this activity. Students did not like the mutual interdependence, they wanted to know the information themselves. Progressive disclosure based on attainment of skill, moving from using a screwdriver to a Dremel tool.

NSF Funding & New Data Initiatives: Library Repositories on the Leading Edge Panel

Research Data Management Services at the MIT Libraries
Amy Stout

“Science changes the tools and the tools change science.”

“Our ability to create data has outpaced our ability to organize and store it.”

What can librarians do? Stout suggests we learn as much as possible about our departments and their data. We can respond to these changing environments, we can understand the fields we support, we know how to organize, make accessible, and preserve data. You can have an understanding of how to deal with the data, without really understanding the specific data.

Since 2006, study group formed at MIT Libraries, in 2008 brought in a social sciences data librarian and geosciences/GIS expert. For Stout, this is 30% of her job. Services offered:

• Web site:  Data Management and Publishing 
• Education: Managing Research Data 101 (4-5 times per year), new presentation coming soon 
• Bioinformatics for Beginners (team taught with bioinformatics librarian) – using NCBI resources, especially BLAST 
• One-on-one consulting: format migration, DM plans, working on template which will be on their site soon
• Radish: dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/62236 – data set collection example. Small pilot which libraries helped faculty member bring data from another institution. Raised questions such as how to handle non-MIT contributors. Still working on this issue! Also, brought up file type issues: multiple/zip file issues (need software to unpack on server and repack on server, not yet integrated with IR). Inconsistent metadata, much of it esoteric, what is needed? Working through this issue too. 
• Creating data profiles of individual researchers and data audits of entire departments.  
• Developing service model for assisting researchers in the lab. 
• Liaison librarian outreach: developing discipline-specific knowledgebase
  

Stout suggests librarians “try new things, just call them pilot."

Active Data Curation in Libraries: Issues and Challenges William H. Mischo & Mary C. Schlembach At University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Mischo and others are working to embed data curation within the scientific workflow of researchers. Solutions that library IT and others are campus will have a great impact on librarians and libraries, at UIUC librarians are focusing on connecting data to literature, determining their role within the knowledge creation process, and creating GrIPs (Group Information Profiles) on faculty centers. These profiles are online and linked to Scopus, Google news, as well as specific faculty publications and links to searches in their focused areas of research. They also integrate their custom metasearch box within these search profiles.

What data should be curated? They suggest librarians check out federally funded projects such as DataNet, Data Conservancy, DataONE, and Purdue Data Curation Profiles. What levels of data and streams need to be saved? Raw, calibrated, image products which visualize data, derived data, all of this or only some. Also, instrumentation data and metadata must be saved.

For NSF Data Management Plans (DMP) be sure to see varying requirements for engineering directorate, raw data not required to be archived for instance. Check out UIUC Grainger library website and template for DMPs. They are strongly encouraging use of the institutional repository to deposit data. Recent grant was funded, the NSF Ethics CORE Digital Library so stay tuned for more information on this. Mischo and others are working on Responsible Conduct of Research requirement database and wizard to help researchers.

Developing a Data Program at Stanford University
Bob Schwartzwalder pointed out there’s been a surge in interest in reusing data and there is a great economic value in doing this. Librarian’s jobs are changing as there is a packaged approach to information acquisition. At Stanford, there is a wonderful opportunity where librarians “can provide value and benefit not only to communities but society at large.” Leveraging current work with digital repository, partnerships with faculty, and building on existing expertise. Recently, librarians have expanded expertise in the geospatial area.

Establishing integrated data service meets needs of their organization. Metadata issues are critical, especially with the potential of data reuse. Metadata standards are a “mixed playing field.” Some arenas have advanced metadata protocols, while others have none. Data is a “collection issue” and at Stanford revamping collection development policy to support storage and reuse of data. Context may be needed to translate and utilize these data.

For NSF DMPs, librarians at Stanford right now are offering one-on-one consultations to learn needs. Changes in staffing are underway, for instance in 2010 created Associate Director position for STEM data, also a Data Librarian in 2011, and other future plans for staffing shifts are underway.

SUL’s technical infrastructure has three layers. The Stanford Digital Repository as the base with  users/librarians getting info in through the digital object registry (hydra), as well as get info out though the digital delivery system (SUL use Blacklight, searchworks).

Schwartzwalder’s crystal ball: he sees more changes in staffing and focus, a need to build program to assess faculty practices, design technology, need to develop pilot projects and new polices, as well as a need to develop tool sets to “use” data. Tool sets are still an unexplored area with much potential.

Conversations with scientific publishers are also needed, could be assumptions on whether (or not) data included are also peer reviewed.

Q & A
Role for librarians who don’t have institutional repositories?
Promoting the inclusion of data into public repositories. Offer distributed data services, education, not storing data. In the future more collaborative portals will be available for researchers to archive data.

 See ICPSR for example for Social Science data, this data is more homogenous so it’s easier.

Some confusion expressed over goals/commitment involved with ARL eScience Initiative which kicks off in July with a webinar, some uncertainty of what level of commitment, time and outcomes for this program, but this requires a lot of staff commitment.

Get Enlightened! A Few Notes from ELD Lightning Talks

At University of Michigan, engineering librarians partner with health and business librarians to train students on research tools. This allows them to make contacts across campus and develop a joint libguide. Assessment data showed students learning resources they needed to complete multidisciplinary project work. See their online research guide at http://guides.lib.umich.edu/heb.

Caroline Smith at U Las Vegas, Engineering & Architecture Library worked with faculty collaborators to develop a laboratory for educational media exploration. A 3D immersive environment will be created in one of their former study rooms. Students will be able to do software simulations in this space. Positive response from students already about this space. The room will double as a group study space.

Tom Volkening from Michigan State University experienced a sudden renovation project, so surveyed ASEE ELD and 13 of 15 libraries who responded retained the print engineering index. Most libraries put these indexes into off-site storage. MSU are  withdrawing 150 feet of print indexes due to redundancy with online subscription sources.

Eugene Barsky from University of British Columbia shared his info about mining life cycle in this region and symposia. They digitized and provided them free online via the UBC institutional repository. Usage is higher than expected, 5,000 per year. Next step is to work on other conference materials, such as Tailing and Mining Waste.

Jay Bhatt, Drexel, discussed his work with graduate students and teaching information skills. They found first year graduate students were not aware of the research databases within their field of study. Bhatt is working with 12 students, from under-represented populations to bridge them to Ph.D. They created series of six lectures ranging from literature review, current awareness, to citation management.  Delivering in-person through active learning. Assessment includes 2-3 page paper with references using citation management tools. They gave presentations and librarians provided feedback (see Bhatt’s SLA 2011 Poster presentation). Check out the Drexel online tutorials as well.

Amy Van Epps, Purdue University created a workshop “best practices in ethical writing” geared towards graduate students within a teaching course. Van Epps used Wiggins & McTighe's Understanding by Design as basis with “end in mind." Students created concept map with all of the pieces they wanted to teach then asked them to label need to know, good to know, or get familiar with to aid them to prioritize educational content. She tied in “plagiarism” education within this course, and help “ensure understanding” by differentiating between paraphrased, quoted sources.

David  Hubbard from Texas A&M University Libraries offers weekly office hours in the Chemistry building. He offers weekly topics often based on student/faculty questions, sometimes new features/updates, and sharing his own experiences with effective database use. This outreach endeavor serves also as educational opportunity for himself, since he needs to come up with 16 weekly topics. This information is added to the ChemE Librarian Blog and Twitter as a supplement his outreach efforts, and are geared towards graduate students and faculty.

Karen Vagts from Tufts University discussed her collaboration between the library and career development center. Building relationships with career staff can benefit the students, and staff can cross-promote their services.

Bob Schwartzwalder from Stanford discussed digitization of maps, as they are seeing a growing interest in maps and geospatial information. This project is at the “fusion of library’s and IT.” A rare map collection will be digitzed using their new map digitization faculty and a suite of services will be offered. 3D maps with fly-through, 2D maps with ability to compare, resize, and view various thematic views, also, geo-referencing maps in Google Earth.

Karen Andrews at UC Davis, worked with a professor to create small modules using Camtasia to help students learn library resources, such as using Web of Science or Avoiding Plagiarism.

Tracey Primich from Vanderbilt U enthusiastically shared her plan of attack when working with “the dreaded freshmen seminar” for the library-required session.  She gave it a new twist by calling it "Visual Display of Quantitative Information" and uses Edward Tufte’s book. Each assignment required the use of library resources. Had fun teaching students to “lie with data.”  Leveraged Tufte’s opinionated text to foster discussion with students. High student ratings ensued. Allowed Primich to build more interactions with School of Engineering.

Daureen Nesdill, Data Curation Librarian at U of Utah shared her knowledge of ELN or Electronic Laboratory Notebooks, which have been used in industry but not adopted widely within higher education. “This is the lab bench of the future.” The people-side, ELN allows for provenance, validation (date, time stamps, e-signatures), and sharing data with colleagues. Researchers who oversees labs can use this data from the ELN to take a bigger picture look at the researcher happening in his/her lab.
Librarians role? Well, we are already helping with data management plans, institutional repositories, and so on. We need to move back a stage to assist researchers at the grant and data generation phase.

Debbie Morrow at Grand Valley State University has an ABET visit coming up, so library came into the picture with ABET3, lifelong learning. The library had developed IL Core Competencies and worked with curriculum coordinator of engineering 220 course to embed information skills.

Najwa Hanel, from University of Southern California discussed her work with a large population of international students and collaborations with other departments on campus to ensure that these students succeed.

Martin Wallace, University of Maine, offered a brief ACRL IL standards and STEM standards comparison. STEM 3 areas of emphasis:
1. Rapid pace of change within disciplines, need to maintain currency
2. STEM information pose challenges in identifying, evaluating, acquiring, and using information (varied formats, specialized software, etc)
3. Competencies extend beyond IL to software, simulations, etc. 

Why is this important? Mapping with ABET and helps us focus on these more specialized standards for assessment.

Julia Gelfand from UC Irvine discussed her numerous outreach venues and librarians' transitions to new roles. They support engineering societies on campus, connect with student groups and associations, engage students during National Engineering Week. They are now working with Engineers without Borders on campus. She leads journal reading groups for alumni. The “payoff not only in dollars but commitment.” Ask what you can do to extend your own library services.

Photo Gallery

The photos I took throughout the day yesterday are posted here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ieee_client_services/sets/  If there is a photo you don't like, just email me the number and it will be removed.  Conversely, if you want a high-res copy, let me know the same. 

Kris Fitzpatrick
k.fitzpatrick@ieee.org

Engineering Education Innovation ASEE 2011 Main Plenary

To sum up, make it active, incorporate collaborative learning, problem-based learning, formative assessment and reflection, possibly even "look ahead homework" instead of just readings and guess what? Students learn more!

Resources to check out:

• Jamieson & Lohmann (2009) – Creating a Culture for Scholarly & Systematic Innovation (see part 1 report) and their Innovation Cycle of Education Practice and Research , final report will be presented Wed. 10:30am
• CLEERhub Collaboratory for Engineering Education Research

Active/Collaborative Learning
Michael Prince – Bucknell
Active Learning Continuum – instructor vs. student centered
Student centered learning includes structured team activities, problem-based learning.

Does is work? Research using “pause” procedure to enhance lecture recall found that with the pause students could recall 108 correct facts vs. 80 without the pause. Less can be more. Another study shows that active learning is twice as effective as lecturing. See Hake 1988 article in American Journal of Physics which  shows students learn twice as much when instructors used active learning techniques. Often variation in student questioning can help students learn. For instance, instead of picking one students to respond, ask all to reflect for 60 seconds. When working with teams, Prince gave us a scenario to reflect upon the problems with a team-based assignment. Collaborative learning (CL) using structure to improve teamwork. Regular self-assessment, positive interdependence with individual accountability. Give students complex activities where they need each other to complete the learning activities. Springer, et al (1999) Effects of Small Group Learning paper showed CL works.

Khairiyah Mohd Yusof from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia described Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Model is an inductive model of teaching and learning. Three critical elements of PBL include: instructors as designer/coach/facilitator, realistic problem, student as problem solver (Tan, 2003). Students show effective learning outcomes with PBL in the areas of knowledge retention, skills, positive attitude, among other metacognitive skills.

See Woods 1994 students cope with change and instructors need to explain and rationalize, as students go through a grieving process since PBL is so different that traditional learning. Suggests instructors move from informal collaborative learning to macro-level PBL.

First Year Engineering Design
Jacquelyn Sullivan discussed student-focused engineering design education. First year design began to infuse in early 1990s to provide students exposure to the real world of engineering. Helped students make leaps from science & math to engineering. Project-oriented education requires synthesis from many disciplines.
Early design experiences share confidence and allows them to experience mastery experiences (see Stevens, Hutchinson-Green). Learning happens between people, see research of Stevens. Suggests we reimagine engineering as socio-technical work.

Robin Adams and colleagues research focuses on entwinement, which is what design education is all about. Deborah Kilgore and others found female college students to be more ready for engineering design.

Self efficacy & the fuzzy stuff: Hutchinson-Green and colleagues found conference in ones abilities to perform tasks and achieve success in the engineering environment. Research links positive self-efficacy and persistence, achievement and interest. Highlights need for students to experience and confirm mastery within first year. At University of Colorado, Boulder they found when looking at six year graduate rates, women are 25% more likely to persist if they have first year design experience.

Engineering the Future
Arnold Pears, Uppsala University, CeTUSS (national center for pedagogical development in technology education in a societal and student oriented context)

Interdisciplinary projects

• “authentic problems cross disciplines” - Sherra Kerns, Olin College
• Integrative project work achievable model for many institutions.

Challenges:
• Bannerot 2010: establishment of these types of courses hard to establish

Successful Interdisciplinary Project:
- Integrates knowledge/skills from team
- Builds additional competence in project management, virtual teamwork, cultural and interdisciplinary teamwork
- Allows students to complete project lifecycle from conception  delivery
- Opportunity to learn professional skills with close mentorship in secure setting, at least twice during their education

Assessment of Conceptual Understanding
David L. Darmofal, MIT AEROASTRO
Conceptual Understanding– see Perkins 2006 for definition but basically “understanding principles governing domain.”

Ozdemir & Clark, 2007 – see for Organization of conceptual knowledge

Forms of Assessment Used:
- Concept Inventories: to assess understanding within physics, etc.
- Oral interviews and exams: useful in identifying misconceptions, but can be time consuming, but improves likelihood of accurate assessment, about ½ of MITs ugrad use oral assessment within at this point
- Concept Questions & Peer Instruction: focus on single concept, multiple choice, more than one plausible answer (using electronic poll system to get responses)
- Student Preparation: Look-ahead homework – used to give only reading, now they also give homeworks that are due before discussion of concept within class

Teaching/Learning System
Anne Dollár, Miami University
Hattie, John. 2009 Visible Learning shows formative assessment has high impact on student learning.
- feedback to students: on progress, non-threatening
- feedback to instructors: on both individual and class performances
- opportunity to close gap between current and desired performance

Open Learning Initiative: Example within Engineering Statics
Learning by doing, electronic system with electronic feedback, scaffolding and hints, if students don’t ask for hints, they may be moved further along while others get more opportunity for practice.

Inverted classroom, where first contact with materials students are studying electronically prior to class and come prepared to be engaged in more intense activities. Instructors monitor to determine where students are struggling, so this learning dashboard allows instructors to focus on target areas that need elaboration and reinforcement.

Evolving Engineering Libraries: Services, Spaces and Collections

Connecting with Data: First Steps toward an Emerging Area of Library Service

Megan R. Sapp Nelson discussed the need for librarians to learn and work with faculty and graduate students to develop data management skills. She indicated there is a need for distance learning for professional librarians in this area. At Purdue librarians are working with faculty to determine needs, practicing with their own large data sets starting this fall, and working towards development of data management education for graduate students. See the paper for useful references and a guide to get up to speed in this area. Check out Purdue’s Data Curation Profiles.

Start conversations with faculty about their graduate student’s data management practices, as well helping faculty with data management plans, especially helping them to keep within the two page limit.

See also portal April 2011 for article on Determining Data Information Literacy Needs by  Carlson, Sapp Nelson, Fosmire & Miller.

Dark, Dim and Daring – Anne C. Glorioso
Wendt Library staff at University of Wisconsin faced a challenge last year to reconfigure and relocate over 1 miles of their print collection. There was no existing withdrawal policy so they had a develop one. Last summer the collections management team used weeding criteria and considered factors such as electronic duplication (see PowerPoint or paper for criteria). During the process they developed an electronic journal back file wish list. Since they did not have a storage facility available they used various criteria to determine what would be kept. Library student employees were given instruction on updating Voyager records as the resources were relocated. Librarians verified the catalog records. Five hundred boxes per week were removed or 1.38 miles from their 4^th floor. Changes in organizational structure at the Wendt Library may be of interest, as the School of Engineering merged support units. The reconfigured space will be for a Teaching & Learning Center opening this fall. Check with Wendt Library staff about the dark, dim, and daring details of this project.

A Library Instead of a Lab: Forging a Space Partnership in a New Building

Jeff McAdams described how University of Texas San Antonio recently added two new buildings to their campus, due to growing demand in the Bio-Sciences and Engineering (2006) and Applied Engineering and Technology (2010). Partnerships with librarians paved the way for the library to incorporate a “library lab,” now the branch AET Library. The new space has collaborative study spaces, printing, and ten computers. There are no print materials in this particular space but McAdams reassures us they still have print materials in their main library. The group study rooms with large display monitors and whiteboard walls prove to be popular as well as small areas with lounge seating. Staffed by science and engineering students, librarians serve as backups and are available for research consultation. At the service desk, students can ask questions, book/check out study rooms, check out eReaders (they have six, various kinds, but not too many checkouts so far), troubleshooting, tutoring, and consultations. Staff record their interactions and use survey monkey to do this, with a shortcut on their desktop. Eighty chairs in the facility with ~400 users a day. Smaller number of reference questions, more technical questions. This area is new and sounds like the potential of this new space is still being realized by engineering students and faculty.

Why call this a library? Librarians are there to foster use of the virtual engineering library.

Informing Collection Development through Citation Examination of the Civil Engineering Research Literature  Scott A. Curtis, now at University of Missouri, Kansas City, performed a study to determine if there are differences in citation patterns among varying disciplines. With a focus on civil engineering, he wanted to know if a high proportion of grey literature was being cited by researchers. He was also interested in web resource adoption by civil engineers. Research draws upon previous results (Musser, 1997, 2007; Kirkwood, 2009; Eckel, 2009). He used Journal Citation Reports to find the top CE journals by impact factor and number of citations. Using a May 2008 time period one finding is that the average of almost citations per article increased since a prior study, with 28 citations per article (range 3 to 62). Citations were coded and can be found within the University of Missouri, Kansas City’s data repository. Analysis of citations by format show variations, for instance he found hazardous materials researchers using more citations to journal articles, so even within sub-disciplines there are citation variations. Aging of cited materials analysis show engineers continue to use literature with a “long tail” or over time showed more citations to papers. Read the paper for details.

Defining grey literature: Curtis included tech reports, standards, theses/dissertations, patents, software/manuals, product literature, and unpublished materials.

Gaining Intellectual Control over Technical Reports and Grey Literature Collections
Adriana Popescu at Princeton University suggests engineering librarians learn from archivists and special collections professionals to bring special technical materials we own to light. At Princeton they have processed materials and published finding aids to enable “access” to these materials. Describing with contextualization to made this information findable and useful to researchers worldwide.

Working with archivists, she developed a processing plan and hired a student help to make their reports and technical drawings accessible. Popescu learned Encoded Archival Description (EAD) standard and used Archivists Toolkit (AT). They also added MARC records into their library catalog. Popescu and her student processed 30 collections and the cost was $6000 for student help and her own time. Since posting these finding aids online, they show increased use of these collections, including interlibrary loan requests.

Popescu reminded all to check out TRAIL Technical Report & Image Archive.

Made it to Vancouver: Information for Engineering Librarians

Check the ELD website for useful information: 

• 2011 ELD Conference Program
• 2011 Program brochure (PDF) 
• Mobile version of program
• Information for conference presenters and moderators

Also, conference proceedings will be online at the ASEE Conference Proceedings search. 2011 papers do not seem to be up yet.

For the full program, see the ASEE 2011 Conference Overview site.