Tuesday, June 28, 2011

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.
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