ELD Conference Notes

2011-06-29T14:19:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-29T13:33:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-28T15:51:00.001-04:00

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

2011-06-28T15:46:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-28T15:35:00.002-04:00

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

2011-06-28T15:07:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-28T14:45:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-27T21:27:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-27T21:11:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-27T01:08:00.000-04:00

Check the ELD website for useful information:

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.

Passports, Please: Are You Ready for Vancouver?

2010-10-20T09:30:00.003-04:00

If you're planning on attending next year's ASEE conference in Vancouver (and I hope you are), now is a good time to make sure that your passport is in good order. Since June 1, 2009, everyone traveling between the U.S. and Canada by land, sea or air is required to present a valid passport, NEXUS card or enhanced driver's license (MI, NY, VT and WA only) at the border. Here are a few resources that may be helpful in planning your trip to Canada:

Call for Papers, ASEE 2011, June 26-26, Vancouver, BC

2010-09-08T22:06:00.006-04:00

The summer of 2010 is winding down. It's hard to think about next summer when the leaves are just starting to change, the days are growing shorter and students are streaming back to campus for the start of another academic year. But planning is already underway for the 118th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, which will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, June 26-29, 2011.

The Engineering Libraries Division invites papers for technical and poster sessions and abstracts for panel discussions. Below is a list of proposed session topics for the 2011 program. Most of these ideas were suggested by you, the membership of ELD, during this year's conference in Louisville and in our post-conference survey. Please note that this list is not exclusive. If you have an idea that doesn't seem to fit in any of the categories below, please feel free to suggest it by contacting me at michael.white@queensu.ca.

1. Sunday Workshop Ideas

Introduction to data curation and management
Preparing for the ABET accreditation process
Teaching standards
Engineering librarianship 101: introduction to sources

2. E-Science and Data Curation

E-science in the engineering context
Role of engineering librarians in facilitating e-science and data curation
Educating faculty about the importance of archiving and managing scientific data
Library data management services for small-scale research projects
Emerging standards for archiving and disseminating research data

3. You Can't Do That On Facebook! Ethical Issues and Plagiarism

Ethical challenges created by new technologies, e.g. social networks, smart phones, etc.
Working with faculty to develop effective ethics and plagiarism policies
Educating undergraduate and graduate students about ethics and plagiarism
Library responses to specific problems, e.g. Ryerson University Facebook case

4. Out With the Old, In With the New: Reinventing the Academic Engineering Library

Stellar success stories and frightening failures
The incredible shrinking library: space planning, space sharing
Developing the library's virtual presence using Web 2.0, Second Life, social networks, etc.
New tools and techniques, e.g. mobile technologies, etc.
Library services for the 21st century engineering student and faculty

5. International Perspectives on Engineering Librarianship

Canadian Engineering Landscape
Librarian perspectives on the new Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
Role of librarians in the CEAB Accreditation Process (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board)
Library services for foreign students studying at Canadian and American universities
International library partnerships and programs
Engineering libraries worldwide

6. Collection Development and Access

Developments in e-book content, platforms and tools
Library support for e-book readers, e.g. Kindle, etc.
Patron-driven acquisition models
Collaborative collection development, e.g. university consortia, multi-campus coordination, etc.
Supporting new programs and niche disciplines in difficult economic times
Promoting access to electronic materials, e.g. online research guides, pathfinders, etc.

7. Scholarly Communication Issues

Social networks for professional engineers
Library support for faculty research profile systems, e.g. VIVO, etc.
New tools for promoting scholarly communication, e.g. publisher websites, open access tools
Educating faculty and grad students about predatory open access publishers
Promoting open access to engineering faculty and researchers

8. Information Literacy, Professional Skills, and Life-long Learning

Assessment of course-integrated library instruction
Librarian-faculty partnerships
Programs for graduate students
New tools and techniques for delivering tutorials, e.g. course management software, video tutorials, etc.

9. Digital Collections

Ongoing developments in institutional repositories (IR)
Library support for electronic theses and dissertations
Free or fee? Striking a balance between access and financial sustainability
Obtaining funding for digital projects
Local technical report collections
Rembrandts in your attic: identifying and preserving rare engineering materials

10. Developments in Engineering Librarianship

Embedded librarians: old wine in new bottles?
Successful librarian-faculty collaborations
Innovative library outreach programs
Mentoring the next generation of engineering librarians

11. ABET/CEAB Accreditation

The role of librarians in the accreditation process
Preparing for an accreditation visit
Educating faculty about the role of the library in accreditation

12. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Issues

IPR training for engineering students and faculty
Copyright training for librarians
Developments in open access
Patent search tools and techniques
Open source software

You may submit abstracts for papers, posters and panel discussions beginning today, Wednesday, September 8, 2010. The last date for abstract submissions is Friday, October 8, 2010. Please remember that all posters and presentations require a paper in accordance with ASEE's "publish to present" policy. Papers will be peer-reviewed for acceptance into the conference proceedings. Exceptions to the paper requirement include guest speakers and members of panel discussions. I will be contacting potential reviewers in the next few days.

Again, here are the important fall deadlines to remember:

Sept. 8 - Abstract submission opens
Sept. 8 - Abstract review process begins
Oct. 8 - Abstract submission closes
Nov. 12 - Abstract review process ends
Dec. 3 - Abstracts Accepted/Rejected

If you're interested in submitting an abstract, please review the information in the Author's Kit located at http://www.asee.org/conferences-and-events/conferences/annual-conference/2011/program-schedule/AuthorKit.pdf. I also encourage you to take advantage of our Mentoring Committee's Paper Review Service.

Please note that ASEE has replaced the SmoothPaper paper management system with a new system designed by in-house staff. I will be learning the new system with you and will do my best to make the submission and review processes as straightforward as possible. To get started, please go to http://www.asee.org and click the "log in" link in the upper right hand corner to log into the paper management system or to set up your account.

The ELD Program Planning Committee looks forward to working with all ELD members over the next ten months to create a strong program for ASEE 2011 in Vancouver. The Program Planning Committee is:

Craig Beard, Publications Chair
Amy Buhler, Director (1st year)
Aleteia Greenwood, Member of the Awards and Nominating Committees
Bob Heyer-Gray, Chair
Doug McGee, Treasurer/Secretary
Adriana Popescu, Director (2nd year)
Megan Sapp Nelson, Scholarly Communications Chair
Larry Thompson, Development Chair
Michael White, Program Chair/Chair Elect

If you have any questions or ideas, please contact me at michael.white@queensu.ca. (E-mail is best as I am on parental leave until early November.)

Thank you,

Michael White
ELD Program Chair, 2010-2011

ASEE 2011 - Vancouver, BC, Canada

2010-06-24T20:37:00.001-04:00

Save the date: June 26 - 29, 2011
Start thinking of papers, topics, or workshops for next year. Michael White will be sending out a survey soon for your input on future ASEE Engineering Library Division conference topics.

Join the American Society for Engineering Education in Vancouver, BC, Canada
for the 118th Annual Conference & Exposition!

Faculty/Librarian Liaison Relationships (your librarian is your friend, or the double-L value-add)

2010-06-24T20:27:00.002-04:00

James Bradley Clarke, Miami University of Ohio – A Case of Vague Identities
At this point, I feel like I should be writing a mystery story. Clarke supports 1000 engineering students. The MU library provides 100% of first year engineering students with information literacy training. Academic librarians can have a vague identity on campus. He feels students and faculty may be confused by our roles on campus so he’s working to clarify the role and elucidate the vague identities. Some time way back in 1971, ACRL stated that academic librarians and professors are equal, should be paid the same, treated the same. So Clarke feels the role of liaison librarian is to have an aggressive outreach approach. Offering course guides, attending events, providing workshops, offering many communication venues for users. To get past the routine things librarians do Clarke writes articles about ABET and how the librarians can support the accreditation process. He also attends senior capstone events and informally comments about the projects and how they can be improved, which faculty welcome. The liaison relationship extends beyond the library. His outreach extends to attending campus ballgames and bringing his colleagues along.

Megan Sapp Nelson, Purdue University - Question to Find Gaps and Concerns
Three librarians support thousands of engineering students. One of her goals is to extend the boundaries of the physical library with “outreach reference” locations along with other initiatives to get librarians more embedded on campus. She started with traditional meetings with faculty but quickly moved beyond to embed herself into Purdue’s teaching environment through involvement with engineering projects and community service. As a teaching faculty, she grades students work. Involvement in this way has helped develop rapport with other faculty and students. Nelson helped develop new curriculum for this program including early conceptual design for EPICs. Right now one of her value-added services is creation of a structured process for students when they come to her “with the best idea ever for an engineering project that no one in the world has ever thought of before.” Sound familiar? The research process she’s developing will guide students through literature searches for their design ideas. Nelson feels successful faculty relationships can be developed by asking them what problems they face. This approach can bring forward opportunities for librarians or integration of information skills into the curriculum. This led to teaching ethics to students and for another detailed example, see her ASEE 2010 paper on tying creativity with IL.

Karen Vagts, Tufts University - Infiltration with a marketing mindset
Vagts supports around a thousand School of Engineering students and faculty. Tufts program has many interdisciplinary aspects, with some faculty straddling management and engineering. Affiliated with Tisch Library and she also supports math and business. Tufts librarians are not tenure track. Faculty are not always aware of what librarians do. With a business background, she views her outreach efforts as a marketing issue and decided to penetrate the market by segmentation of her audience. Due to interdisciplinary nature of the programs she target sub-groups based on interest areas (water, etc.) vs. by department. She has some success asking faculty to visit class for 10 minute to market the library and the assistance she can provide. There is no required information literacy instruction for engineering students at Tufts at this time. Focused areas for IL instruction are first year and capstone courses where research intensive courses are offered. She targets campus efforts for improving educational research and tries to become involve with development of new programs. Centers and research institutes including career development are other areas she has outreached to. Her communications range from emails, newsletters, and pushing resources out to target groups but “serendipitous meetings with faculty lead to great things.” Develop of individual relationships are most important in addition to successfully navigating the range of attitudes of faculty members.

Najwa Hanel, USC Libraries - Get out there and meet & greet
Hanel supports such a large number of students, faculty and research centers/institutes can be challenging but rewarding. She suggests going to faculty “to offer something, not ask for something.” They target department heads, all new faculty, and collaborate with other librarians to support across disciplines. One incentive for new faculty is a $500 for collection development (not serials). Hanel described in detail her methods of encountering faculty outside of the library. Participation on curriculum committees and new faculty orientation are essential activities for liaison librarians. Partnerships with faculty to support student learning is our reason for being there.

Discussion

What do we do when requests for instruction surpass our ability to support them? At Purdue there’s a move towards embedded librarians where instruction is delivered over multiple course sessions esp. in business school. Cross training with other librarians to help support instruction across disciplines. Develop supplemental workshops. Use online tutorials. Tap into local library school students. Hire graduate students from the discipline to teach orientations and do RefWorks sessions. At Queens they are discussing writing memorandum of understanding with departments to formalize the liaison program. At WPI, we have begun shifting staff roles in order to support our 50% increase in instruction sessions over the past 5 years.

Outreach to parents & students: some librarians are involved with summer orientation activities and have come up with creative ways to outreach to parents and students.

At MIT the librarians create a “new faculty toolkit” that helps library liaisons approach new faculty, talke with Angie Locknar for further details.

How do we reach senior faculty? Some mention through assistant in dealing with data sets and management of information. Another idea is to work with development and/or grants offices.

Distinguished Lecture: Problem Solving in Engineering Education

2010-06-24T20:26:00.000-04:00

David Jonassen, Missouri University
Problem solving ability is more important then ability to write an exam in a blue book. If you want student to learn take the numbers away. What kind of problems do engineering students learn to solve? Story problems taught by worked examples where they learn to mimic process not meaning. Students are not learning what the equations mean and they need to understand the problems qualitatively. Jonassen’s feels there are issues with conceptual understanding due to over reliance of instructors on quantitative processes.

To help students he suggests instructors represent problems as structure maps, asking students to relate concepts together. Understanding nature of the problem is often superfluous for students who are focused on the answer and the grade. Ask them to step back and look at problems conceptually. Use analogies. Help them understand causal relationships using animations, simulations, causal diagrams, asking causal questions. Get them to transfer concepts to solve everyday problems. Simulations alone are not enough for learning so build in reflective and causal modeling. Causal diagrams or chains can illustrate problems for students. Follow up with causal reasoning questions such as prediction and argumentation.

They use ASK systems, TeachNET: A Resource for Engineering Teachers, real world examples and case studies. Structure a dialog with reflection in action.

Now for an example. Within a radiation protection technical curriculum instructor’s created a series of questions about the daily work, common tasks and knowledge required of a technician. Responses are provided with videos of professionals. A standard learning outcome for any course is to get students to ask meaningful questions.

Another strategy is to get students to build models or model problems with concept maps. Students can be charged with building expert systems where a demonstrated need to articulate questions and rules is needed. Serious conceptual brain work for students and but can be time consuming! Systems modeling is also difficult but meaningful for students.

Argumentation another method to try, one example he used is code enforcement for learning engineering ethics. Instructor’s presented different perspectives and theoretical approaches and gave students a task to review and develop meaningful argumentation. This is a remedial strategy for correcting misconceptions on well-structured problems (see his recent paper on this topic for more detail). Help students create counterargument and rebuttal.

Questioning students for metacognition forces students to reflect and regulate their own understanding. Have you solved similar problems, what strategies, or steps are needed to solve, and so on. Ask students to classify problems/questions. Text editing problems can be useful and provide impactful learning. Add extra or remove information from a question or specific problem then ask students if there’s sufficient information to respond. He suggests giving students practice first at “text editing” problems. These are very challenging for students.

Problem posing seems like a fun way to reinforce learning. Show picture and ask students to develop problem around it (for instance, soccer player on field in play and what physics concepts are also at play).

Problems engineering face don’t have right answers. Types of problems include design, dilemmas, troubleshooting, planning, and most come down to decision making. Most real problems are ill-structured. Use problem-based learning, real work problems from engineers and case studies. Stories allow case based reasoning and are meaningful, allow for transferability. For assessment consider having students construct story or scenario. Stories, Jonassen stresses are a key component of student learning. The difference between novices and experts are that experts have a story bank to withdraw from and make decisions based upon. This conference, Jonassen tells us, is all stories. Every presenter is telling a story about how s/he are personally working to improve engineering education.

Librarians out there, take heed. In reflecting upon this distinguished lecture I concluded that our realm is really all about the “ill-constructed problem.” We help people come up with creative ideas, keywords, phrases, search strategies to solve them. How have people dealt with the problem in the past? What can we learn from them? In helping our users find these stories of the past, new ones are being written. Stories that actually make people think.

LibGuides, Open Access Publications in 3 Engineering Disciplines, Digitization Project Management, Citation Analysis for IL Assessment

2010-06-24T20:25:00.000-04:00

Using LibGuides as a Web 2.0 Content Management System and a Collaboration Tool for Engineering Librarians - Richard Bernier
Bernier gave an overview of Rose Hulman library’s use of LibGuides. Many libraries use the LibGuides content management system (CMS) which provides a simple web platform for library research guides. Informational boxes and tabs can be shared and quickly updated across the guides and it’s easy to borrow information from other libraries (if permission is granted). Bernier found that with the embedded chat 30% of their reference questions come in this way.

Managing a Digitization Project: Issues for State Agency Publications with Folded Maps - Karen Andrews and Carol LaRussa
One fine day a grant funding opportunity was presented that was too good to be true. Even though time constraints where part of the package, this was an opportunity to provide a goldmine of unique digitized content for researchers worldwide. Karen Andrews stepped forward and shared her digitization wish list.

University of California Davis librarians worked with Internet Archive to digitize old sets of state publications. These government documents are in the public domain, are still in demand and have broad interest. The Internet Archive provided grant funding so they were able to partner to digitize more than 1000 volumes:

1. California Division of Mines and Geology Series – dating back to 19^th century includes guidebooks, information on mines and geologic history
2. CA Division of Water Resources - 780 volumes published from 1922-2004

The water resources series had large foldout maps and this was a first attempt at this type of project. The maps varied in size, creased, or even cracks in some cases and pose an obvious digitization challenge.

Challenges

· description issues: volumes with different titles, series title changes over time, agency name changes

· sub-series and some errors in existing library catalog records

· tight deadline

· involved staff in 4 units with conflicted project demands

· staff utilization: involved a few key staff to do the bulk of the work

· missing volumes (obtained from UC Berkley to provide as complete a set as possible)

· OCLC catalog records were sometimes hard to find, sometimes they had a draft, office copy of some of these government documents, so they wanted to include all versions/revisions as they may be of future use to researchers

· Preservation staff were brought in to evaluate book condition

Metadata Issues

· Project Inventory: spreadsheet for each item, stages of processing and notes; ended up keeping two spreadsheets; evening Access Services staff member worked on this project

· Internet Archive staff did the production. If binding was too tight they could unbind, with the large maps they did overview and overlapping quadrants.

· IA metadata fields not set up to accommodate monographic serials and they made accommodations but this could still be an issue with future projects

· Wonderfetch – hoping this tool will allow update of needed metadata

· UC Davis staff helped with quality control for IA. Staff developed a procedure for QA, a few problems with digitization were identified (pages had to be replaced in some cases, some maps had quality issues but UC Davis will retain original documents).

One thousand volumes were digitized and they tracked 600 uses within days of being posted in the Internet Archive. “There’s gold in them hills!” Check this collection out at archive.org.

Lesson to all: generate a digitization wish list. You never know when an opportunity may pop up for mass digitization.

Open Access Availability of Publications of Faculty in Three Engineering Disciplines - Virginia (Ginny) Baldwin
Looked at Mechanical, Civil and Environmental, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering selected recent faculty publications. University of Nebraska uses Bepress (branded as Digital Commons). She looked at journal article availability and recorded locations (on their own web site, institutional repository (IR), pubmedcentral, and so on). Baldwin did all searching from outside of the UNL IP range, and defined open access as “complete full text of an article or manuscript in some state in the publication cycle that can be downloaded from the internet.”

She compared with other academic institutions and found the University of Nebraska Chemical Engineering department has the greatest deposition by far. Why? This department hired graduate students to put their publications in the IR. She encourages we suggest this approach to our own campus departments.

Baldwin discussed with faculty why deposits into IRs are so low overall, some issues with equations, graphs, and so on and generating a pre-pub that could be posted. Timing, publisher restrictions, and other issues are at play. When analyzing by journal title, she searched Sherpa/Romeo to determine archiving policies.

Roles of Librarians

· Promote Google Scholar and ROAR

· Advise faculty on copyright & publisher archiving policies

· Provide alternate and assistance with publisher negotiation for retaining rights

· Encourage deposition into institutional repositories

· Warn about publisher restrictions and suggest open access journals

· Folllow up with similar research projects in other disciplines

Citation Analysis of Engineering Design Reports for Information Literacy Assessment - Dana Denick, Jay Bhatt, and Bradley Layton
Drexel librarians assessed first year design projects for information literacy outcomes. Course sequence: ENGR 101-103 includes projects on reverse engineering (they use a $2 camera which they take apart then put back together & use CAD), green house design, and nanoenlightenment (simulating a nanorobot). In ENG103 student teams design anything but need to start with research. Nine hundred students take course. Students need to find books, articles, technical handbooks, patents, and how to cite information. Self-guided tutorials seem to be included in the research education.

Citation Analysis
Student deliverables include a team project report. Bhatt and Denick reviewed a sample of the bibliographies and used a categorization scheme to analyze types of resources and the context of their use. Sample included 135 students or around 15 papers or so and they analyzed 234 citations.

Findings: 38% websites, 28% journals, 14% technical papers, 12% books, 4% conference papers. Students had some problems citing technical handbooks and websites and have a preference for citing websites.

Librarians aligned results of the citation analysis and data from a student self-assessment with performance indicators (based on ACRL IL standards). Mapping with outcomes helped them determine whether they are meeting initial IL goals. Only 78% of students could create an appropriate search so they found another area for instruction reform. This past spring they solicited a sample of draft papers before the students due date. Librarians then provided feedback which students could incorporate into their final reports. Data on whether or more labor intensive approach worked is forthcoming. Drexel librarians will continue with an outgoing multiple assessment strategy but this citation analysis is one facet they found useful.

Challenges, Vision, and the Role of Academic Libraries in Building Institutional Repositories

2010-06-24T20:23:00.000-04:00

Moderator: Scott Warren, Syracuse University Library

Panelists:

Jay Bhatt, Drexel University;

Mel DeSart, University of Washington;

Maliaca Oxnam, University of Arizona;

Peter Zuber, Brigham Young University

Goals of Institutional Repositories (IRs) include providing scholars with method of global access and preservation of research.

· Time investment for staff, only one (BYU) mentioned they have dedicated state for their IR

· Utilize student staffing is possible

· Initial discussions with faculty extremely important

· Focus on specific campus collections:

o Drexel: student posters

o ASU: Tree ring research

o BYU: Herbarium, Historical clothing, student work (portals for each collection)

· Policy decisions for consideration:

o Types of materials collected (student work or not?)

o Unmediated depositions or not? ASU mentioned faculty want to be empowered to add their own collections, but the librarians set up the structure for them; most support and recommend unmediated user submission

o Length of time items will be collected

o When faculty deposit then leave an institution

o “closed” collections – for institutional only or embargoes for specialized research

· Infrastructure & support varies. Some librarians partner with IT to build/support

· Develop campus partnerships: copyright office, departments (note also that Ginny Baldwin found at her institution ChemEng department hired students to add their scholarly output)

Space Planning and Changing Library Landscapes & a bit about the 4 ELD posters too

2010-06-22T23:32:00.001-04:00

Student users get their say: Library space redesign with students in mind - Mary Strife, West Virginia University

Surveys, focus groups and interviews of students were used to help redesign the library space. Dr. Cindy Beacham helped with Mary with the design process. Also they were able to enlist faculty to help. One faculty brought her entire class for a focus group.

During focus groups they used color coded index cards as well with focus group questions such as “what would you suggest to improve” and then gave cards back to students and asked them to work together to categorize the cards. Then the facilitators used the categories as the focus for discussions. Dr. Beacham recommended also bringing some “jumpstart” questions in case they are needed. Another question they used to solicit information and discussion from students was: “what characteristics would you like to see in a facility that would become the heart of the campus?” To capture student input they recorded and video recorded the students in order to create a report on their findings.

Students asked for many things. They were actually able to add: study rooms, color, individual spaces, more comfortable seating, more desktop and laptop computers, wireless connection extended outside of the building, and so forth. Students wanted design/display space to share their work with the entire campus. They shrank down their journal and reference shelving, improved furnishings, and now that have one service desk.

Stanford Engineering Library —Envisioning an Evolving Facility - Sarah Lester, Stanford University

In 2005, Stanford School of Engineering started fundraising for new student-focused, technologically-advanced showcase center. In addition, they will be focusing on innovation through cross-disciplinary collaboration. In parallel, the University Librarian began a visioning process for the library. The vision for the future library included: digital focus, less space with more staff, innovation and more technology. The library is moving into the Huang Engineering Center which in addition the library will include a café, lab spaces for students, and breakout rooms with flexible furnishings. They'll be moving into this new space later this summer.

Within the library, they have designated zones, quiet area & stacks, group study & brainstorming islands, and front entrance zone with offices and circulation. The library is moving from 16,000 sq ft to 6000 and they will maintain a collection of 20,000 print books and supplemented with 40K+ ebooks. They have no bound print serials and only have 100 print browsing. The overall plan includes: ejournals, ebooks, and moving fully to electronic theses and dissertations. Many of their print serials were sent to off-site storage which has 24 hr paging service. The Stanford Physics Library is closing, so librarian supporting Physics will move into this new engineering library space.

A few cool things: RFID tags for all books, self-checkout system, librarians no longer have offices, they will be in cubicles in the open area of the library, all furniture movable, they are lowering stacks to optimize lighting. They retained a special collection of the history of science and technology.

New Library technology: digital bulletin board, ereader checkouts (Kindle/Sony are very popular with students and they may buy and add content to them, but deleted upon return), touch screen info kiosk, iPhone for reference questions, iPad for content experimentation.

They are rolling out a new service & outreach model, being more embedded and going where the students are. Offering more classes and workshops. All librarians have laptops so ability to go “mobile” and to the users. They are now helping faculty and students on management of unique collections and digital content and data management. See their web site for more details.

Spaces, Relocation and Subject Synergies When a Subject Libraries Change - Jill Powell, Cornell University

The library that is the fastest growing on campus is the Annex Library. At Cornell, libraries are in transition due to financial issues, library budget reductions, and serials inflation among other factors. The strategic plan focused on collections and selectors.

The Physical Sciences librarian was cutting journals that got more than 300 uses per year, so was fine with consolidation with another campus library. They could then have funds to provide journals faculty/students need. Arts, Architecture and Visual library was identified as important to maintain as a browse-able collection. Management, Entomology, Engineering, Ornithology, Hotel, Physical Sciences, and Industrial & Labor Relations libraries are merging with others.

The vision for the engineering library was to keep services in place, but to move books and journals and staff. Moves will not happen until next summer, although the Physical Sciences Library has already relocated staff and collections. The Engineering Library has 500 reserve books and 350,000 gate count per year. More ways of generating revenue or saving money are in place. They sold their duplicates to a sister university in China for instance. Also, Cornell implemented Amazon print on demand. A new revenue model for ArXiv was devised to help support this global site.

In the engineering library, the librarians remain for the most part, but there will be some layoffs. Also, the study hall and computer lab will remain open and they are moving many books to Annex. For collections, like Stanford, there’s a shift to online content. They implemented MyiLibrary for purchase-on-demand which seems fairly seamless for users to view an ebook they are interested in.

Should libraries that are consolidating remove and/or also consolidate their web sites? At Cornell they haven’t removed the libraries from their web site it seems.

For journals that come with online equivalents, they will display for 6 months and then discard them. Make, Oil & Gas Journal are a few that Cornell has figured out how to “script” into these for their users online (some are one user at a time).

The good news is that cost-savings due to library consolidation will allow librarians (and users) to buy research materials needed as budgets shift and transitions take place. With the relocation of books there are many possibilities for creating new spaces for group study and collaboration areas.

It was recognized at the highest level that the librarians provide a lot of value and more instruction opportunities have out of this process.

ELD Poster Sessions:

Seeking and Finding the Aerospace Literature from 1996-2010: And, the Winner Is . . . Google - Larry Thompson
Thompson looked at STAR items (mostly tech reports and memoranda) and found google to be the most useful in sleuthing out the full text.
The Engineering Index: The Past and the Present - Nestor OsorioA timeline was presented, the history of this index.

AVS: Science and Technology Virtual Museum – Susan Burkett, Cameron Patterson, and Nicholas A. Kraft A student project involving development of a web site for a museum.

An Analysis of ASEE-ELD Conference Proceedings: 2000-2009 - David Hubbard
New Knovel Interface - Sasha Gurke

Panel on ASME Vision 2030 Task Force Future of Engineering Education

2010-06-22T23:16:00.000-04:00

Robert Warrington, Michigan Tech. & ASME Center for Education
Future of mechanical engineering and building on Grand Challenges and Opportunities – 21st Century Needs. 3 Phases, they are in phase 1 now. Goal: Develop case for change

Survey and personal interviews with mechanical engineering department heads and industry professional at a management level to match between education and industry in the United States.

Jim Plummer at Stanford wants kids who have “wider world view.” We need to attract them to the engineering profession. Students are creative and inventive but not innovative, which takes leadership. – Dan Mote at U of Maryland

A few resources (& there are many more from NEA, etc to build upon)

• Millennium-project.org grand challenges.

• Sustainable future institute

• Engineering workforce has failed in certain areas

Case for Change

• Increase expertise & communication, leadership skills

• New knowledge blurring disciplinary boundaries

Survey/Interview Findings so Far

At entry-level identified areas of weakness. Work is needed in communication, practical experience (how devices are made/work) for instance. Product creation 34% in industry feel skills are weak in this area. They can compare industry and department head responses which seem to vary widely.

Post BMSE coursework, is it needed? The majority of industry and department heads feel this type of post bachelor of science education is needed. When looking at years of formal education, ASCE looked at years of formal education for various professional degrees. Is an another 30+ semester hours needed? Only 20% of mechanical engineers feel this is necessary. 45% of academic ME departments heads feel this additional coursework is needed.

Making Room in the Curriculum for Leadership, entrepreneurship, active & discovery based learning.

Seering study at MIT looked at 30 year old graduates and found half the material they learned used, half forgotten. High frequency use showed up for higher order thinking skills such as independent thinking, communication, teamwork, personal skills and attributes, professional skills and practice. Beyond the university, where are the 30 years learning what they need to know: grad school, on-the-job, and self-directed learning. MIT is developing a more flexible curriculum that has more professional skills embedded into their curriculum to produce leaders of the future.

Faculty availability (time) was high on this list of barriers to change. Options being formulated include the possibility of a 5 year professional degree beyond the BS. The task force is still working on developing recommendations but integration professional skills throughout the curriculum and grand challenges in the design spine seem obvious from the results thus far.

Outreach and Beyond: New Roles/Relationships for Librarians

2010-06-22T23:13:00.000-04:00

Summer Engineering Experience for Girls (SEE): An Evolving Hands-On Role for the Engineering Librarian - Donna Beck, G. Berard, Bo Baker, and Nancy George

Lesley Farmer, a librarian, wrote Teen Girls and Technology: What’s the Problem and Where’s the Solution, a book highly recommended by Donna Beck. All parents, teachers, librarians have a role in changing the stereotypes that are created about engineers and scientists. Gender Inclusive Engineering Education is another recently published book that is recommended.

Beck shared her experiences and involvement with SEE (Summer Engineering Experience) a 2-week program provided for ~22 middle school girls at Carnegie Mellon University each year. A research component is provided by CMU librarians. Topics cover a broad range of energy research. Librarians used AccessScience and their energy quiz. Compared a library research databases to FBI fingerprint database and steps to library research, but their teaching with the young woman has evolved over the past few years. The following year they worked more on defining a lesson plan and hands-on activities. Third year librarians were included in planning activities for SEE and librarians were participating in 3 sessions and helped to mentor the students. They provided citation help (bibme/knightcite), creating their PowerPoint slides, and it was an enhanced experience for all.

Tips:

• Purchase women and engineering books

• Express willingness to contribute to outreach programs

• Be compatible with program and its evolution

• Help inspire middle schools to consider engineering as a career choice

Academic Librarians' Roles in Attracting & Recruiting Students to Their University - Nevenka Zdravkovska, Jim Miller, and Bob Kackley

Jim Miller, from University of Maryland Libraries described how librarians work with K-12 students and the potential for librarian involvement in university recruitment efforts. Over the past year ~22 sessions were offered to area high school and home schooled students, so they have a lot of interaction with HS students. He found there is not much research on libraries playing role on recruitment. UM recruitment efforts include:

• Maryland day

• Special collections state-wide history day

• Performing Arts Library assists home schooled students and music lessons

• Academic Achievement (TRIO) involvement – UM Librarians assist provisionally accepted minorities

• Various summer activities with special groups

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Library partners with many of UM outreach programs such as ESTEEM, Project Lead the Way, among others. They instruct PLTW Inventor’s campers on patent searching. Student teams find hovercraft patents (good example for getting students to use classification searches). See ASEE First Bell for daily examples on how universities are doing K-12 outreach.

Creating an Outreach Event with e-Resource Providers - Pauline Melgoza

Science/Engineering Library held an event in fall 2009. They held an outreach fair in their engineering building lobby. Over 500 researchers and students attended.

Melgoza suggested we partner with database vendors to market the event, train and also provide financial support. Texas A&M requested items from vendors posters, training guides, giveaways for students and raffle prizes to draw people in and ask vendors to come and staff a table. Some vendors sponsored competition or drawing (Knovel Challenge & IEEE regional student paper contest are two examples). Some vendors will help fund food or provide financial support. Melgoza selected top use database vendors as well as some that have low use but should have higher use. This fall they are considering doing web-conferencing. With curtains around the IEEE section, Melgoza felt this created a mystique that enticed students to check the area out (they could also smell food).

Planning Tips

• contact vendors a couple months in advance

• talk with peers for ideas

• consider location, location, location (captive audience in engineering building but took more coordination)

• check university policies and keep administration in the loop (some university’s cannot do vendors fairs due to conflict of interest)

• If you get materials from vendor, but no vendor, train library assistants to staff tables

• prizes are a big draw for students, also food; incorporate survey with raffle entry

• if you cannot plan a larger event, one librarian mentioned success with inviting one vendor and setting up demo’s in different locations on campus

• Count attendees & take photos to share

• Tie in with faculty: one librarian mentioned that a faculty member asked students to attend with specific questions

2141 - Standards for Future Engineering Practitioners

2010-06-22T23:09:00.000-04:00

Standards for New Educators: Guide to ABET Outcomes and Standards Availability in Libraries - Charlotte Erdmann

See ABET: 3b, 3c, 3e, 3f, 3i, 3h, 3k

• Libraries buy standards that best meet needs of their customers

• Prior surveys indicate libraries are providing codes and standards in print, online, or some buy-on-demand; smaller libraries cannot provide as much as larger libraries due to publisher pricing issues

• Useful overview of standards, see chapter of Scientific & Technical Information Sources (1981)

o Current book: Hunter (2009) Standards Conformity Assessment and Accreditation for Engineer (See paper for additional background sources)

• Professionals continuously revise old & develop new standards

• Teaching idea: use current projects happening at your university (boiler install, concrete pavers, etc.) to illustrate standards and their applications

• Standards education considerations:

o Identify course(s) – subject, outcomes

o Work with librarian to develop collection and research education sessions

o Case Study example: Hose connections to fire hydrants (Boston in 1870s hose couplings didn’t match up)

What Do Employers Want in Terms of Employee Knowledge of Technical Standards and the Process of Standardization? - Bruce Harding and Paul McPherson

Global impact of standards: why & how does your cell phone work? Important to prepare future workforce and keep up with changes.

McPherson and Harding surveyed engineering professionals at the manager level to determine their use of standards and perceptions of skills of entry-level engineers. Over 50% use very often or quite often (a few times a week). They feel it’s important for students to learn about standards but not all were interested in working with local educational institutions to set up a standards education curriculum. Other world regions have course including standards within the curriculum but McPherson found only 4 universities n U.S. offer these types of courses so McPherson feels that U.S is far behind in this area. However, this doesn’t show how many universities are integrating standards education within the curriculum.

Challenges

• cost of databases

• fitting course into existing curriculum

• lack of industry support.

Ideas to overcome these challenges

• two term multidisciplinary introductory course

• long term design-type project where students develop products and applicability to the product

• Independent study projects

• Internships & post-internship – students working with industry to become more familiar

McPherson followed up with a survey of Purdue alumni Spring 2010. Findings include that 89% felt standards are extremely important for overall growth and success of their company. 84% feel students entering the workforce need to understand how to find and apply standards. June 2010 ASME survey found that 40% of mechanical engineering department heads feel that curriculum coverage in this area is week. 50% of ME practitioners feel entry-level skills in this area are weak, and more than 80% feel that short case studies could be a way to introduce exposure to codes and standards.

Leveraging the Internet and Limited On-Campus Resources to Teach Information Literacy Skills to Future Engineering Practitioners - Charlotte Erdmann and Bruce Harding

Need: to fill students’ standards knowledge gap
Treasure Hunt Case study: Harding teaches a required Production Design and Specifications course. This activity is integrated into the end of the course. One half of the questions initially came from Machinery’s Handbook but now students must seek out other standards sources and technical handbooks. Students get assigned random questions from a bank of over 1000 to complete or teams of 2 get around 20 questions. Teamwork became mandatory in the past year and librarians found students were working on the assignment earlier. A conference attendee questioned the activity, whether or not it’s just finding the standards and less about interpretation of the actual standard found and how they should apply it to their problem. Some questions do have component where they students need to apply a calculation to come up with the answer, so it does go beyond just “finding” them.

Since 1986 librarians have worked with Harding to provide students with baseline information and a bibliography of suggested sources, not there’s an online standards subject guide which Erdmann created.

Around 1999 librarians created question framework: what, why, who would create this information, etc. to assist students and later developed an expert system used by students to determine appropriate databases or sources (see past ASEE conference proceedings).

The standards treasure hunt has received positive ABET commentary. The Purdue librarians continue to focus on continuous improvement.

New Collaborations in Engineering Libraries

2010-06-21T22:41:00.000-04:00

Journey to the Center of a CV (Curricula Vitae)
Judy Hoesly and Anne Rauch

At University of Wisconsin Madison librarians developed an institutional bibliography within Bibapp which compliments their institutional repository. The software has five majors connected parts: works, groups, people, publications, and publishers. This tool seems similar to VIVO, which was developed at Cornell, and allows development of individual researcher profiles. Also allows listed of faculty by department, which links to higher level, College of Engineering for instance. Could be useful for departments when creating annual reports. They started with engineering physics which has 27 faculty members. They mapped workflow and relied on student employees and library liaisons, they tapped into technical services staff for quality control. The students searched Google Scholar and engineering databases to find items on each CV. Google scholar didn’t offer great citations, but the links into the native publishers obviously offered. Goal: to find 80% but only found around 70%. They used citation managers.

The librarians developed the departmental structure and established authorities. They are hoping that liaisons will set up citation alerts and update the database going forward, as well they can grant access to researchers or their assistants for updates.

Benefits: librarians aware of current research and publishing trends within the departments they support. They can extract and repackage reuse data. Next up: Health Sciences Library has been collecting information to add to this tool. The initial goal was to allow library staff to feed current publications into their IR, they founda bout 30% were unfindable so the IR can allow them to make the research papers, PowerPoints, publications findabilty.

BLOGGERS NOTE: ResearcherID.com is a web-based tool developed by Thomson Reuters which allows researchers to develop their own researcher profile. ResearcherID ties in with ISI, EndNoteWeb and cited references, if institutions subscribe to ISI Web of Science, may provide an alternate to local development of similar software or adopting an open source version. Community of Scholars is another subscription-based database that provides researcher profiles. See also Cornell’s VIVO at vivoweb.org. I also think that Faculty 1000 in Biology and other tools are allowing more researchers to develop and share personal profiles with publications. All told, there’s a perceived benefit in having more compete picture of our faculty research within our institutional repositories.

Engineering Librarian Participation in Technology Curricular Design
Megan Sapp Nelson and Michael Fosmire
At a meeting with the ECET department chair in Fall 2009 Purdue librarians learned students had a gap in their learning. Specifically, the chair felt they were lacking creativity skills. This turned into a conceptual design for a “total curriculum overhaul.” Nelson joined a small curriculum committee where ongoing discussions of information literacy and its relation to creativity and lifelong learning ensued. At first faculty were unsure why Megan was there but her broad perspective on the Purdue curriculum and information literacy allowed her to infiltrate. The goal was to look at existing role of classes and broader outcomes and infuse “creatively” throughout.

Nelson helped the faculty understand what “lifelong learning” means and espoused the virtues of IL and how they relate to creativity. She pointed them to Shuman et al’s definition and ACRL’s the developed a comparison chart of ACRL IL for Science and Engineering/Technology performance standards and ABET. For those related to creativity see ACRL: 3.3 & 3.7, 4.4. The ACRL standards provided concrete, measureable outcomes which faculty could use as examples when redesigning their curricula.

An ECET faculty (aka “IL convert “) presented these ideas to the department and helped to develop IL outcomes throughout the curriculum. Concepts of IL and creativity are often too abstract for faculty and can be challenging to teach. The team discussed lab notebook expectations, prescribed citation formats, and also use of citation organization in senior design. In the proposed redesigned curriculum, IL is spiraled throughout however it’s been put on hold due to department head staffing changes. Stay tuned, we hope for future updates from Megan Sapp Nelson. During Q&A she mentioned that student portfolios may be one method of accessing student’s development over time of creativity skills.

Lesson: librarians need to be part of curriculum redesign teams. Also, need to review those standards and this new “creativity” spin to figure out how we can use this at our own institutions.

Librarian Learns with the Students: LibGuides, Video Tutorials for Instruction
Mary Strife at West Virginia University Library
Strife discussed how WVU Chemical Engineering students helped design and shape the delivery of research instruction. She initially used libguides and video tutorials for senior seminar. You can view her videos at libraries.wvu.edu. During Q&A librarians suggest linking this tutorial in many ways: other libguides, a specific guide on “using the library catalog,” perhaps chunking up more, posting on YouTube. They are worth the investment and we have an information literacy wiki for ELD where we can share these tutorials. Larry mentioned at Vtech they have a 1 credit online course and these tutorials are all online, which other libraries may link to. He argues that we can just do them extemporaneously and then send them along to the professionals for editing and smoothing out. Another librarian suggested more modularization is better, since interfaces change so much and the tutorials need continual updates. At ASU they use ScreenR but you can upload to Twitter and YouTube with a simple click.

ELD Get Acquainted Session: Library Lightning Rounds

2010-06-21T22:29:00.001-04:00

Jill Powell from Cornell – myiLibrary patron driven ebook purchasing.
Advantage: save money, price ceiling, selection criteria which disallows purchasing of popular books. They tap certain publishers.

Libguides Page for Senior Capstone Design Classes, Tom Volkening at Michigan State Libraries gets wide use by the students. May be using this with students/classes who don’t have library research sessions.

Ginny Baldwin talked about their extensive material deselection at her engineering library. Obtained load estimate in order to squeeze books in one area. They created a process by which they evaluated books and criteria for retention (see her handout) but they include: usage, historical use, local interest, value as work, and classics. Consulted Books for College Libraries, and also brought in faculty to review decisions. For serials: duplicates with other libraries, online access vs. print.

Tutorials made easy with screencasting – Sheila Young from Arizona State shared insights on the library staff work to create online videos for students using Screenr. Demos, online courses, to support specific homework assignment. They are also used for on-the-fly reference. See ASU libraries web site. It’s tied in with twitter. See their article in istl.org online.

Kevin Drees from Oklahoma State teaches students about standards and specifications. Big picture: standards are as important as design is to the curriculum. See James Olshefsky article from 2010 ASEE on Standards Education Bridging the Gap Between Classroom Learning and Real World Applications.
A few useful links:
· Standardslearn.org
· ASTM – standards on campus, etc. check with Kevin for more.
Librarians’ role? Facilitate access to what we have in our own collections.

Jill Dixon from Binghamton University Libraries ponders the one search box ,which really isn’t always a one search and offers too many options for students. She looked at various web sites of libraries and fould 60% offer discovery tools. Four libraries using only discovery tool, all the others use multiple search boxes. What’s best for libraries? You decide.

Nancy Linden from University of Houston PowerPoint is your friend. She starts with evocative images to get students to discuss. She used PPT for small quiz type questions that are engaging, like a contest. She also has giveaways (1 GB drive) which gets students excited and into the activities. She uses a visual for high risk/low risk sources and the quadrants related. She also uses real life scenarios about being an engineering, which can illustrate why they do lit reviews. She tells students they shouldn’t reinvent the wheel.

Maliaca Oxnam updated us all on TRAIL the tech report archive. Over 772,000 hits over the past year. 993 reports were downloaded 89,600 times. This material is still heavily used by researchers. Coming soon technicalreports.org and winning an ALA Govdocs award this coming week! Congrats

Linette Koren Rochester Institute of Technology discussed their use of scvngr for their library. They purchased a license & a couple iTouch which students can checkout. It’s an app from itunes which users can download onto their phone and they have set up challenges for touring through the library. BTW- There is an active hunt for ASEE in Louisville.

MIT reorganization: Angie Locknar shared the new org chart for the MIT Libraries which is a new function based structure vs. by library. Research & instructional services (includes user experiences librarians, specialized content including GIS, etc.), information resources, information tech strategy, Administrative Services each with little bubbles which you can read all about later. See Angie for more details.

See Spot Run! Grand Valley State University, Debbie Morrow and the staff at the library in Grand Rapids, MI are celebrating a 10 year birthday party for their automated storage retrieval system (ASRS) named Spot. How cute. It’s been successful despite lack of browsability. So successful, they are putting another one in their new library. Cool. Libraries. Robotics.

Najwa Hanel discussed another 10 year anniversary for their student written, peer reviewed magazine and her work mentoring and advising them.

I also talked briefly about our use of Twitter for outreach (see PDF of PPT): try it & oddly, people will follow. Get students to help generate content (we have a Student Social Media Content Developer). See twitter.com/WPI_Library

Well, Can We Accelerate the Rate of Change in Engineering Education?

2010-06-21T22:24:00.001-04:00

Karan Watson, Interim Provost & Executive VP of Texas A&M University

She has a plum ’56 Chevy Truck, which she thinks is beautiful but she tells us “I don’t expect it to take me where it can’t take me any longer.” We cannot accelerate change unless we reframe what we are doing. We can deal with how students need to deal with challenges versus topics. She references Nalib Tassem’s book Black Swan. Black Swan events are outliers and unpredictable. Our representation of reality ceases to apply but we don’t know it. Watson feels our process in engineering education is not rapid enough. Faculty behavior change is needed for educational reform. Throughout history science has progressed in non-rational ways but these ideas never get funded and rarely get praised. Don Tapscott in his article on the Impending Demise of the University suggests that the lecture at the podium will not work for these students. Tapscott doesn’t agree that Google is dumbing down this generation but argues that they can handle information overload better than we can. They are active and demanding as inquirers. They find out what they need to know on their own with Google and Wikipedia.

Engineers are pushing society with technology at an ever accelerating rate. “We are failing society if we are not leading the way with the educational transformations that need to take place.” Engineering educators need to move from “tinkering phase” or “trial and error” with education innovations to wider adoption of these new ideas surfacing in the engineering education literature.

Use your resources:

· ASEE Journal of Engineering Education
· Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education
· Center for the Advancement of Scholarship in Engineering Education - National Academy of Engineering
· Literature on change, not just on engineering education

Managing strategic change literature suggests we need to avoid quick fixes. Also individuals must disengage from the past to move forward. “A tempered radical” wants to stay in the boat but rock it (and not go so far as to blow it up). Malcolm Gladwell in Tipping Point tells us that change is like a virus. It is contagious, takes energy, enthusiasm and personality. There has to be stickiness in change (bloggers note: see also new book Made to Stick). Nothing sticky about working harder than you ever, but you have to see a small incremental benefit, so there needs to be an appropriate reward system.

She refers to Edward Schein, author of Organizational Culture and Leadership. You can tell culture of organization by artifacts and espoused values. Underlying assumptions disconnected with values.

Unfortunately there is deeply embedded resistance in some cultures. Find the “bell cows” in your cultures who should be followed. The way to make the changes we need is to continue experiments with students and provide research data, pay attention to it, but real change will be in the efforts we put into the change of faculty. Change your own behavior.

Q&A

·
Watson believes that ABET will not hinder change if you get them on board with your initiatives.

· Disciplines frame discourse in different ways but we can learn a great deal from sociologists, and others.

· Academic reward structure limits change (education reform). There has to be incentives and people have to believe there’s a safe place to land if they go through this behavior change.

·
Bringing discussion of change into classroom: some of our best students are resistant to change because they can work alone well and take tests well. Students change fast, help students learn about learning. We have to find ways to weave into our courses about learning and change, as well we need to teach our students ethics so when they face situations in the future they know how to react.

· You don’t have to be bad to get better – “whether change or improvement, starting out by insulting everyone who needs to change is not a very good strategy”

· Advice for new untenured faculty: refers to Art of War. Think about the terrain you are in, if you are in a dying terrain then fight quickly. If your enthusiasm doesn’t match your institution you may be better off somewhere else.

· Changing funding paradigms: slowly, Watson believes in shared governments, you can lead but not in a way that no one will follow, ask the right questions. Dynamic discussion with faculty about how we can evaluate their teaching is the first step. Set aside $2M in base funding for high-impact experiences such as service or international learning, could be research-based. These should result in deep learning for the students.

· Engineers as educators: there’s a difference between being researcher of education and a great teacher. Positive deviance is the idea that some people get great results from some resources while others don’t.
All engineering educators need not become researchers of education.

· Engineering world = have your data or dead on arrival. We have to tell good stories, people don’t change because of data but good stories.

And yes, in case you were wondering and are still reading, Watson does own a second vehicle. Is it a learjet?

ASEE 2010 Louisville Underway

2010-06-21T22:05:00.002-04:00

Essential Links:

Session 1341 -- Get Acquainted Session - Outreach/Marketing Cluster

2009-06-19T11:26:00.001-04:00

Methods to reach faculty and students
· Georgia Tech participates in new student orientation and finds that works well as a fun way to get involved in students’ community from the beginning.
· Megan (Purdue) approached the Civil Engineering department with the news of a digital repository for them – good opportunity to market library and added services, develop working relationship on which to build.
· John ( U Minn.) Developed web pages for each class – didn’t wait for faculty to ask or approve but presented as fait accompli.
· Gretchen (Temple) - vendor fairs work well; attract mostly graduate students and faculty; got great feedback; nice having vendors demo databases and promote new features and opportunities. Patterned after Dartmouth model; held from 11-2; provide food; solicit vendors for financial support and raffle items
· Pasty (Auckland) Use summer vacation to good effect to market latest services, find out about new courses and information needs. Be precise and firm about setting up a meeting: “May I stop by Monday at 2:30? No, then how would Tuesday at 10:00 work?”
· Provide a display area in the library that is dedicated to faculty research – “1,000 people walk by this spot every week – would you like to see your work featured?”
· Provide grant-writing sessions, develop library resources to help (mixed results noted from participants)
· Maliaca (Ariz): Good success generating interest with more general programming (a la public library services). At homecoming, sponsored a Junior Scientist Day. Departments could bring their student groups to feature work; helps faculty fulfill their outreach mission. So many groups wanted to participate, had to restrict numbers. Offers book clubs as a community building program. Developed a speaker series – faculty excited to talk about their research outside their departments.
· Willie (GA Tech)– focus on ABET requirements – ethics tutorials that provided a significant boost to faculty relations
· Provide reference services in the department? Megan noted mixed results. Student lounge is better venue; food key. Impact on staff time is an issue.
· Dave (UCSD), Bring in relevant student projects for display in the library; feature competitions/research
· Scientific art on display – builds community -- and covers bare walls (!)
· LibGuides – don’t ask, just tell you have already completed it, welcome feedback; using WebVista, Moodle
· Get invited to college curriculum committee meetings. Consider what resources they will need, develop presence with faculty, especially new faculty who may not appreciate all the resources available. Help set up keyword alerts, feeds for their research.

ASEE 2009 Conference Papers Online

2009-06-18T10:01:00.004-04:00

Check the ASEE Conference Proceedings web site for access to full text of all ASEE 2009 papers (even though it doesn't say 2009 yet, they really are there when you search).

For ASEE ELD presentations and handouts, check the ELD web site and for presenters who haven't already sent their presentation to be added, email them to Julie Cook, julesck(at)u.washington.edu.

Special Interest Groups: Assessment of libraries, of learning

2009-06-18T08:26:00.005-04:00

Our small group discussed ideas on assessment and tools/strategies used:

... of learning:

Outcomes-based, some libraries create outcomes for their overall information literacy programs, some at the course-level, some at the instruction session level. At course-level, one example involved librarian-faculty collaboration to implement 7-question pre and post-test, print journals was an area students have trouble with locating, others mentioned using quizes, looking at projects/papers, getting faculty feedback on improvement in student learning
Student self-assessment tied in with larger institutional instruments (a few questions on information literacy are incorporated)
One idea is to study how recent alumni have transferred their information literacy knowledge from the university to the workplace
Citation analysis of papers/projects
Working with faculty on assessment of projects, esp. literature review sections
Importance of collaborating with faculty, directors of writing centers and first year programs and tying in with AbET, NEASC and other regional accreditation self-studies, etc.
Bruce recommended taking a look at Mark Emmons work at U of New Mexico
We joked about using a Facebook quiz. "Everyone would take it."

... of libraries and services:

some participate or will soon in the following standardized: MISO: Merged Information Services Organizations, LibQUAL+® for service quality, and homegrown tools
Other tools we briefly discussed: project SAILS, ETS iSkills Assessment
For reference assessment some use in-house surveys, also a online link within after virtual reference to a satisfaction survey, other ideas that came up include mystery shopper in collaboration with marketing students, as well as observation assessment of students at the reference desk.

Bats, Bats, and More Bats - A Few Facts (Ain't cha got no rhymes for me?)

2009-06-17T09:46:00.003-04:00

Where: Austin downtown under the Congress St. bridge (built 1980). The bats moved in soon after (also, in a more natural setting near San Antonio 20 million bats roost at Braken Cave)

Mexican free-tailed (Tadarida brasiliensis) : 1.5 million under the bridge all day, feeling groovy (visitors during the day can hear them chirping). Visitors at dusk can see them wisping away across the sky.

They eat at up to their body weight in moths and other insects each night

Estimated total consumption for Congress St. bridge colony per night: 10-15 tons of insects. Yum!

Size of these little gals: around 4-5 inches with 12-14 inch wingspans

Travel time when leaving: ~60 miles per hour

Travel distance: a couple miles from roost

In August the bats in this "maternity colony" each have a cute little pink pup (they all live in Austin only from around March to November before momma & pup heads South for the winter)

Life span of up to 18 years

They return to the bridge at dawn, but do they all come back at once? Can any early risers comment?

Sources: Bat Conservation International (based in Austin), Organization for Bat Conservation, Bats in American Bridges, and image from Wikipedia

So, are we Meeting the Needs of Engineering Faculty, Researchers, and Students?

2009-06-16T18:51:00.005-04:00

We are working hard and certainly trying to by analyzing collections & surveying users to make sure we have the "best fit" resources and services for our campuses.

Using Engineering Theses and Dissertations to Inform Collection-Development Decisions, Especially In Civil Engineering
Patricia Kirkwood, University of Arkansas, performed an analysis of Master of Science and Ph.D. projects to determine the percentage of items cited held by the library. She found that 85.7% of serial articles referenced were available at the university library. However, they held only 45% of the referenced books/monographs. Another finding: 1/3 of the citations of the civil engineering citations were incomplete or incorrect. Opportunity for instruction here.

This study helped her determine what additional resources the library should be considering for their collections. Kirkwood was surprised by the results, for the 3 Ph.D. dissertations that were analyzed, 64% of cited sources were grey literature (technical reports, standards, other non traditionally published materials). For the 22 MS theses, 33% of the referenced items were journal articles.

Kirkwood has been able to use this data to change their government depository profile. She’s added state level documents, such as transportation department publications, and cataloged specialized web resources and added them to library web guides. Also, she’s reviewing non-traditional publishers that were referenced and teaching new tools such as TRIS (Transportation Information Research Service, U.S. Department of Transportation) and TRB, Transportation Research Board, of the National Academies.

See also:
Materials Used by Master's Students in Engineering and Implications for Collection Development: A Citation Analysis by Virginia Kay Williams and Christine Lea Fletcher, Mississippi State University

As well her Kirkwood's other 2009 paper:
ROUNDING UP THE COLLECTION: THE STORY OF TRAIL DIGITAL CONTENT COLLECTION (digitization of technical reports)

Library and Information Use Patterns by Engineering Faculty and Students
William Baer and Lisha Li, from Georgia Institute of Technology, conducted an online survey of Civil/Environmental and Mechanical Engineering students and faculty in order to determine their use of the library and information.
They found that the undergraduates come to the library at least once per week and for most faculty who responded, they visit at least once per month. Top reasons undergrads come to library: individual study, group study, check email, word processing.
For graduate students, top reasons are to access books and journals, followed by checking out books, individual study, attending class/seminar or use of printers.

Google effect: Baer and Li asked if “Google is sufficient” for their research needs and more undergrads agree with this statement, however graduate students tended to disagree. For use of information resources undergrads choose Google first, while grads report use of databases as their first choice for searching. Researchers asked students to choose “best databases.” They found that graduate students selected evenly choose both Web of Science and Compendex as their top choices followed by ScienceDirect then Google Scholar. Several other resources were included in their student, see their paper for additional details. The engineering faculty chose Compendex as their first stop for information.

Baer and Li asked students to report how well they feel they know the databases, ranging from expert to no-knowledge. Librarians will use this data to help create instruction for students, especially in areas the students are reporting “no-knowledge.” The training method preferred for both graduate and undergrad students is “online tutorials.”

Finally, researchers asked library users to comment on one thing they would like the library to improve, suggestions included to gain access to more ejournals, faster ILL, among others. Since the study they have implemented rapidILL document delivery service. Overall, more outreach is needed to promote library resources and services as well as training on various research tools.

Download their presentation (PPTX)

Changing Library Vendor Contracts: A Case Study in Acquiring Ebooks from an Online Book Vendor
Charlotte Erdmann, Purdue University, first described her mindset, to get the materials that best fit the users of Purdue library. She mentioned various research studies on ebook selection which can be found referenced in her paper. Erdmann analyzed usage data from ebook usage over multiple years in order to get the best selection for Purdue students and faculty.
Ebook advantages: convenience, full text searches, broader selection
Since March 2005, Purdue began bargaining for ebooks and initially chose, due to user preference, ProQuest Safari. With only two simultaneous users they had 1000s of turnaways so found funding to increase number of users. By the end of 2007, they went with a “slot plan” to purchase certain amount of titles, which Purdue staff base on the four most popular publishers that made sense to Purdue based on prior usage data. They also take faculty input on selections of titles.

Assessment of IL at Smith College: ABET, ACRL, & within First Year Engineering Course

2009-06-16T18:26:00.008-04:00

Assessing Information Literacy In Engineering: Integrating A College-Wide Program With Abet-Driven Assessment
Donna Riley, Smith College, described how they formalized their information literacy program in fall 2003 and are moving towards an institutional-wide program that incorporates assessment of discipline-specific measures. At first they tapped into the first year writing intensive course. Their IL program has grown into a discipline-by-discipline curriculum-integrated approach based on ACRL information literacy standards and science and technology standards. Around 40% of the departments have developed department-specific IL outcomes already, others are working on theirs. They are now at phase two and collecting data to assess student learning. The engineering faculty wanted their outcomes to dovetail with ABET criteria so they have hybridized the ACRL/ABET. ILST performance indicators are highly detailed and ABET outcomes are broader so faculty needed to design an assessment plan that could work for both. The literature shows that each institution develops their own outcomes even though there have been some papers, including some within ASEE-ELD in past years that have dealt with alignment, or mapping ABET to ACRL standards.

At Smith, they decided to map their own standards with ABET/ACRL in various focus areas related to information literacy. First mentioned is lifelong learning which Smith has developed more detailed performance goals that are measurable. The second area of focus on is ethics as stated in ABET broadly as “an understanding of professional and ethic responsibility” which related to ACRL 4/ILST4. They developed their own outcome and again, performance criteria that embodies this. Communication is the third focus area Riley mentioned and showed specific performance criteria that includes “student exhibits clear writing style,” etc, see paper for details. The final area of focus for Smith Engineering is experimentation which does not map well with ABET so they added wording into their performance criteria “finding and using information” in addition to “data.”

Riley discussed how their use of e-portfolios allows for assessment of their performance indicators in the aforementioned categories. Student assessment also occurs within courses, for instance students produce final portfolio instead of taking a final exam in her course. At the program level, assessment occurs after sophomore year by review of the portfolio and later near graduation a panel of faculty review the e-portfolios. Possible evidence for IL: annotated bibliographies, ethics case analyses related to information, reports from design projects, and so on.

Riley thinks that ABET should revise 3(b) to include language that addresses need for information literacy and makes suggestions for how they could do this in their paper.

Riley followed up by presenting another paper, Integrating Information Literacy Into A First-Year Mass And Energy Balances Course, co-authored Smith College librarian Rocco Piccinino. Smith’s curriculum-integrated approach to IL is sequenced throughout students college career, however this paper focuses on one specific course, a first year second semester course which is required of all engineering majors. Course objectives include engineering calculations, mass/energy balances, as well as engineering ethics, and information literacy which revolves around a life cycle assessment project.

Riley assigned a reading and held discussion with her students prior to the library research session. The reading (Graham, L. and Metaxas, P.T. (2003). “Of course it’s true, I saw it on the Internet”: Critical thinking in the Internet era. Communications of the ACM 46 (5):70-75.) is about students’ performance on an information literacy test showed that they tend to be over confident in their research abilities. Riley felt this helped her students check their own over confidence. She also asked students to do a homework assignment to practice information retrieval and access, in addition incorporated a question on her mostly content-intensive mid-term exam about IL. She mentions the importance for faculty to integrate and reinforce IL skills but throughout the course. She has her students put skills into immediate practice and makes them accountable by ensuring students are using appropriate documentation, creating annotated bibliographies, and so on in an iterative way.

Assessment of student learning included various components. First, they used a one minute paper at the end of the session, which students rated learning experience as excellent or good, mentioned that highlights were learning about databases, navigating web site, full text icon, etc. but students did not mention the in-class group activity or evaluation of sources, so they may revise assessment to determine value of these components.

Second, Riley performed focus groups and of the 24 students invited, 9 participated in 2 sessions. She had three guiding questions not specifically related to information literacy and 4 of 9 mentioned information literacy and the value to their learning and at least one related IL to critical thinking.

Third, a course survey, or student self-assessment of initial course objectives, which showed that IL was on high end, though “it wasn’t most central it made an impression on them.”

Fourth, analysis of Student Work including homework, tests and projects showed from an initial quiz where students performed poorly on information literacy after research session and projects, students showed significant improvement. Still one of their biggest difficulties was determining holding for a journal with both online and print formats.

Riley feels factors contributing to student learning include:
- Librarian inclusion
- Reinforcement by faculty member
- Iteration
- Integration – accountability across coursework

This approach may be more resource intensive but authors recommend featuring and sharing faculty work in these areas, gaining faculty buy-in and creating incentives for participation. Most important is developing relationships to make this happen.

Annual Meeting Notes

2009-06-16T17:41:00.005-04:00

There are a couple of related items which had interest and general conversation during the business meeting.

One of the items mentioned by our PIC IV chair, Noel Shultz, mentioned was the ASEE Statement on Sustainable Development Education, initially created in 1999. I has recently become part of the conversation within ASEE, and part of that process will include a review and revision of the existing statement. I have succeeded in locating the statement, it is included on the ASEE webpage and can be found here : http://www.asee.org/about/Sustainable_Development.cfm

The other topic of interest and broader discussion was around ELD choosing to green our portion of the conference by supporting and promoting environmentally friendly practices. This would benefit the member of ELD, but will allow us to set an example and promote these practices to ASEE for larger implementation at the conference. This conversation has been happening in other library organizations and perhaps among university conference planning units. We would like to gather information and input from all of those people who interested helping. So if you would like work for and with the division in this capacity, let me know and I'll work to get a group started.

Some of the ideas generated on greening the conference are below:
* no handouts at sessions, link to e content on webpage
* member pledge for green practices during the conference
* an opt out option for no paper conference book
* get rid of the conference CD - the papers are all online
* green hotel options (those hotels that have greener practices)
* Local and green food options
* virtual conference options
* online / electronic session evaluations - no more paper!
* have convention center set the temperature higher (less AC)

Possibly partner with other divisions in ASEE for leading this effort. Good candidates may be the Environmental Engineering Division and the Energy Conversion and Conservation Division.

Additional resources:
EPA page on green meetings:
http://www.epa.gov/oppt/greenmeetings/
"Green" Hotels Association: http://greenhotels.com/index.php

The list of ideas above will be sent to our PIC chair to provide her information to speak on at the Board of Directors meeting on Wednesday.

ASEE Austin Photos

2009-06-16T09:51:00.003-04:00

Here's a link to my photos from yesterday: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ieee_client_services/sets/. I do edit before posting (and remove at request). But there are some lovely moments captured -- enjoy!

Kris Fitzpatrick
k.fitzpatrick@ieee.org

ASEE Conference Blog

2009-06-16T00:43:00.001-04:00

Here is the Link: ASEE Conference Blog
See highlights of our Sunday evening picnic at Stubbs BBQ Restaurant.

Add-ons, Toolbars, & Videos, Oh My

2009-06-15T18:41:00.003-04:00

Academic Library Internet Information Provision Model: Using Toolbars And Web 2.0 Applications To Augment Subject Reference
E. Michael Wilson, Ohio University, proposed a new library internet provision model which is very complex and has many pathways for users to find information. He compares this model of information retrieval to a proposed Google Research Model: Google > Search > Results.

Staff at OU administered a University Technology Survey in 2008 which 17% of their students participated in to gather information from students. Results indicated that students almost 80% of students were interested in using a toolbar to access research tools. So, since Wilson is a programmer he created a browser toolbar add-in which allows users to get to library chat and wiki easily as well as to simplify their research process. The toolbar includes the ability to perform searches in many engineering research databases, the calalog, etc. Some databases “are bootstrapped through metalib” their multi-search tool in order to make it work students see results within the metalib interface. Wilson also created an engineering wiki which is where users can download the toolbar. They have had 210 installations of the toolbar since 2008, or a little more than 1/3 of the engineering population at OU. Wilson has built in a proxy check to determine whether or not users are on or off campus. This toolbar does require some maintenance of links, etc. but overall Wilson feels it’s a good use of time to develop a subject specific toolbar for researchers. His toolbar can be adapted for use by other libraries.

His model of the subject toolbar information provision model demonstrates a much more simpler method of information retrieval than the typical library web site:Search Toolbar > Search > ResultsWilson used to spend 35% of his instruction time teaching students how to locate resources, he’s been able to trim down this time by referring students and faculty to the toolbar.

Check out their EngrWIKI .

Pimp My Browser: Next-Generation Information Literacy Demands Control of the Browser
Andrew Wohrley from Auburn University Libraries discussed browser add-ins, which extend browser capabilities and may be open source so could be customizable. LibX, Zotero, and Google Translate have been adopted at AU Libraries. See their installation page for LibX which they've dubbed "Auburn Anywhere."

Wohrley also recommends Google Translate which is a free translation plug-in which supports most languages. Upon browsing the AU Libraries web site during the session, I found the folks at AU have linked from various flags on their home page Google translations of their portal. It’s not perfect he warns, but very useful nevertheless.

Finally, he suggests use of Zotero for open source citation management. Zotero supports various output styles, instant footnotes and bibliographies, instant downloading of citations and documents/articles.

FYI: It came up in Q&A that Zotero and EndNote may not play well together. You may need to turn off Zotero in order to use EndNote on a computer. People were interested in the variations and benefits of EndNote Web, EndNote, Zotero, and RefWorks, among other citation management tools. A new version of Zotero coming out may allow users to collaborate and store references remotely vs. on the computer they are using. For anyone actually paying attention, this would be a great paper topic for next year!

Online Tutorials in Engineering Libraries: Analysis And Discussion
Yue Xu from Mississippi State University Libraries described her research analyzing libraries using online tutorials. Benefits of tutorials include providing opportunity for self-paced learning, 24/7 access, releasing the challenges of staffing shortages, and they can also supplement classroom instruction. Xu’s research focuses on web-based instruction in engineering libraries in order to help librarians develop tutorials.

Characteristics of good tutorials, according to Nancy Dewald ‘s paper Transporting good library instruction practices into the web environment: An analysis of online tutorials include use of active learning, media, navigational aids. In addition, those that are course-related, collaborative, and offer instruction on concepts vs. mechanics are good practice. Xu compared ELD libraries to find out if they had online tutorials and the types of tutorials that were created for the engineering libraries. She found that 69% of engineering libraries provide online tutorials, she looked only at library’s web sites so some may not have been discovered due to inclusion within course management systems. Tutorial content included six categories ranging from information literacy, to advanced research skills or course related.Engineering subject categories covered included: specific engineering databases such as PubMed, Web of Science, etc. and topics included patents, standards & specifications, engineering web sources, and one was found on engineering staff training.

Active Learning Components: 15 libraries included features such as interactive quizzes and exercises within. Xu suggests librarians modify existing tutorials, increasing active learning, and adding games for instance to add engagement for tutorial users. She suggests checking out U of Louisville Libraries tutorial which incorporates a game.

BTW, I found while surfing during the session the interesting and kinda fun Library Squares Game on the U of L libraries site. Some librarians mention that they include their tutorials into YouTube and other university video streaming sites which gives you the benefit of grabbing embedded code to post these tutorials easily in various sites.

See also: Dewald, et al article on Information Literacy at a Distance and Hrycaj’s 2005 article Elements of active learning in the online tutorials of ARL members. Also, check out ANTS, Animated Tutorials Service and include your tutorials if you wish to share them for reuse.

Michael Wilson suggested that using “video help” and other terms instead of using the term "tutorial" on the library’s web site makes more sense to students, as they analyzed how users got to their video tutorials at OU.

All points are good ones: let's share and collaborate if possible to reuse tutorials and toolbars that will benefit our engineering library users.

From the New Engineering Librarians Perspective: Collaborations & Online Tutorials

2009-06-15T18:31:00.005-04:00

Collaboration with faculty: What they don’t teach you in library school

Sarah Jane Dooley presented various strategies for connecting with faculty, from the perspective of a new librarian. Dooley suggests getting to know department faculty, familiarize yourself with subject area and specialties of faculty, as well as discipline specific resources and publishers. It’s important to consider varying interpersonal and communication strategies of the faculty you are working with. Don’t pass on any opportunity to attend social events on campus. This is great way to network with other faculty and meet future collaborators. Librarians must create their own opportunities to network by being visible on campus, taking every opportunity as it presents itself using both online and offline approaches.

Dooley recommends that the workplace should develop documentation for new librarians and be good role models. A mentoring program for new staff could help. Library School’s could include more education on best practices for networking outside the profession. In working with faculty, she suggests that technology presents interesting opportunities to collaborate, even allowing faculty to use libguides themselves and use of facebook for promotion. Contact Sara Jane Dooley at sdooley@dal.ca and for a copy of her handout which including the above strategies and more as well as a bibliography.

Continuing Library Instruction via Online Tutorials
Megan Tomeo, Arthur Lakes Library, Colorado School of Mines
Challenge: Librarians don’t get enough contact with students in order to help them develop their research skills.

Solution: Mini-grant from university to build online tutorials which are delivered through partnerships with a sophomore-level course (a continuation of their existing first year level instruction modules which CSM talked about at last year’s ASEE Annual Conference). Also, they collaborated with the senior level capstone sections.

Benefits: No space or face-time needed for virtual learning. Can be designed while at reference desk where they have installed Captivate to create the tutorials. CSM librarians created many modules with similar look and each incorporated at least one competency from CSM and integrated quizzes. In the future, they hope to enhance the tutorials with more interactivity.

Assessment: Tomeo administered a three-part survey, one portion was a self-assessment of student learning. The pre-survey was administered to help staff understand student recall from the first year research instruction. A post-survey later assessed learning within the sophomore/junior year. They used a control group and these students took the surveys but were not directed to use the online tutorials. Survey return rate was 52% but less than 30 pre- and post-pairs were ultimately useful for analyzing the pre- and post survey results.

Results: Test group improved scores by 13% but control group had a slight negative change. Tomeo feels the tutorials are impacting learning in a positive way. In 2007, at University of Washington, Whang, et al. study on evaluating student bibliographies could be another approach, but in the future she hopes to consider if given consent by students involved.
To view the tutorials connect to http://library.mines.edu/reference/epics251/
After August 1, 2009: Library.mines.edu > Services > Library Instruction > Online Tutorials
Another point to ponder: students commented that they preferred the 50 minute session in-person with the librarians vs. the online tutorials.

Teaming with Possibilities: Working Together to Engage with Engineering Faculty and Students
Janet Fransen and Jon Jeffryes, Engineering Libraries, University of Minnesota
Fransen and Jeffryes both support hundreds of faculty in the school of engineering and more than 3000 students.

Overview of three engagement strategies:
1. Marketing
a. Have a web presence: they create a page for each librarian, news for each area (mechanical, biomedical) and uses flickr to find interesting photos/images to include.
b. Use social media: they created a twitter account (umsciref), they also suggest you search twitter for your library’s name to get the pulse, if any. They created a facebook page and import their twitter feed into fb, they have also used fb ads to promote their page.
c. Measure results: they use bit.ly (cool and seemingly useful URL shortener) when they post URLs do they can collect data on number of clicks on the links you create (they created a spreadsheet using bit.ly API to grab click stats)
d. Be present: visiting seminars on campus, etc.

2. Instruction
a. Course-based live: They work with senior level engineering courses and since there are more than 100 students they are looking into team teaching
b. Library workshop series: EndNote, Zotero, Engineering: find better information faster, etc. check their web site for more. They have also started recording and posting screen captures as a supplement. They are often team-taught and can create a dynamic atmosphere. They use Moodle pages for workshops and this can be a time saver for staff. Users can refer back to these pages for instruction and future self-help.
c. Course-based online: Jon built 90 unique course pages for each class (without asking first!) and this worked well for him.
d. Tutorials: they created one on patents

3. Scholarly Communication & Institutional Repository (UDC)
a. Posted professor’s papers and they provide the faculty member with statistics on downloads
b. IR gives librarians an opportunity to get out and talk with faculty and by viewing their publication listed they can determine whether or not they are a good candidate for including papers within their digital repository.

Three Rules for Great Presentations

2009-06-14T22:35:00.005-04:00

Sunday June, 14, 2009 2-5pm
Lee Andrew Hilyer, University of Houston Libraries, author of
Presentations for Librarians: A Complete Guide to Creating Effective, Learner-Centered Presentations

Hilyer started by discussing learning theory. He mentioned that Dr. Richard Mayer, UC Santa Barbara, guru on multimedia learning, derives seven principles and most important is that people learn from words and pictures, not text alone. The human memory system involves multiple parts of the brain. Working memory (formerly know as "short term") has two channels for processing speech and visuals:

Auditory: handles speech and has limited capacity
Visual: Handles images, requires attention before our brains perceive

Bottom line: Our brains process both channels when attending presentations where speakers include both text and images. Text-filled slides that also have images get processed in the visual channel and then go into the auditory, therefore this is the central problem with PowerPoint. This cognitive overload doesn't lead to the best learning.

What is Learning? Knowledge is stored as networks of concepts, or schemas. Hilyer uses dogs as an example -- "pug" is a breed, its features, emotional aspects, whether they are cute or ugly, each represents a different schema.

Three Simple Rules for Presentations

Say the words, present your evidence
Show the pictures
Text is for take-away

Aside: Hilyer, of course, uses images relevant to his points, as I blogger I have limited time to snip and include them, so check out his blog, which may have the visuals to make this point.

When developing presentations, don't jump right to PowerPoint, work in a notebook or word processor. PPT forces presenters to go directly to chunked information and you may miss the most important points. He also recommends presenters consider his three main points and to keep in mind that learning is individual, each person will learn differently depending on existing knowledge and schemas they've built. Give homework as learning often occurs elsewhere, not necessarily during a presentation.

Another interesting tip: People perceive from left to right, he suggests that speakers should stand on the left of the slides (from the audience point of view).

Assertion Evidence Slide Theory by Micheal Alley
Learn more about Alley's research by reading his book The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical Steps to Succeed and Critical Errors to Avoid (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2003).

See also Alley, Michael, and Kathryn A. Neeley, "Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides: A Case for Sentence Headlines and Visual Evidence," Technical Communication, vol. 52, no. 4 (November 2005), pp. 417-426 and Alley's "Rethinking the Design of Presentation" (pdf).

Presenters using this approach make one point per slide with limited text and use a relevant graphic to reinforce the point. Hilyer suggests converting at least a few of your slides using this approach. Retention increases 55% if you include pictures in addition to words, this is known as "picture superiority effect." Use high quality and relevant images. Printout a few blank 3 PPT slide handouts and use to create your own storyboard, boxes for sketching image that matches your text.

Resources for Images

Life Magazine Archives
Flickr Commons
See Hilyer's blog for more suggestions

If you cannot find a relevant image, don't include one. You could possibly create an image yourself or use a flipchart to sketch a graphic to make your point. He also suggests using the "B" keyboard key while using PowerPoint to toggle screen to go blank, then step to center of screen to make your verbal point. Another librarian mentioned she puts "this slide was made intentionally blank." Sometimes using an printed handout of an article or other instructional materials and lead attendees through sections of text you wish to highlight or focus on. Wait 25 seconds after asking if there are any questions before moving on.

Hilyer also recommends the following books:
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds
Beyond Bulletpoints by Flip Atkinson
slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott Mccloud

See also:
Multimedia Learning by Richard E Mayer
The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning by Richard E Mayer

Handouts or no handouts? His last point, text for takeaway, means that the audience should be taking the textual information with them for later use or learning. However, one librarian pointed out that her students don't take the handouts. As an alternative a few librarians mentioned they work with faculty to post online handouts, libguides or other materials electronically to the course site. Hilyer suggested the handouts need to have a value-add and relevance. Using screen shots or even creating virtual demonstration using Pointer, Jing, TechSmith SnagIt, etc. to highlight sections of a web page or features of a database may help add value to these documents.

Materials for the workshop published on his Presentations4Librarians blog (password: threeRules)

Contact Lee Andrew Hilyer at lhilyer@sbcglobal.net.

CUEBALLS

2009-06-08T10:20:00.002-04:00

Welcome one and all to the Completely Unofficial Early-Birds And Leftovers Line-up Squad, aka the CUEBALLS. The CUEBALLS were formed over a decade ago as an unofficial (just like the name says) group organizing optional ELD social activities for each year's ASEE conference. Only trouble is, for the last few years, that "group" has just been me, and I seem to get later and later each year with sending this out. This year is an all-time high (or is it low?) in lateness.

Here are the ground rules (they're pretty simple). Come join whatever you wish as long as it doesn't interfere with your other conference-related obligations. See, told you it was simple.

Saturday night

Meet in the lobby of the Hilton Austin (400 E. 4th Street) at 6:45 for a 7:00 p.m. departure in search of food and drink. I have a number of options re: possible locations, but have a number of opinions on what might be the best bet. More on that front as we get nearer the start of the conference. Oh, just fyi, my flight isn't due to arrive in Austin until about 5:35, so I might be cuttin' it close getting to the Hilton by 6:45 myself. If you're going to be getting in that evening and want to catch up with us (wherever the heck we are) just call my cell (email Mel for his cell #, I didn't really want to post it to the world).

For the beer aficionados among you, there are a number of pretty good options for micros (for later Saturday evening or elsewhen during the time we'll be in Austin) that are reasonably close to the convention center / hotels. Two among them are Maggie Mae's and the Ginger Man, but both have somewhat limited food options, making them perhaps good places to hit later in the evening, after a tasty meal elsewhere.

Sunday

Sunday was all over the board - doing the trails got the most votes (5), but there was one biker, one jogger, and three hikers in that five-some. Bats got three votes, although that's not tied to Sunday specifically. As for museums, none got more than two votes (Mexic-Arte and LBJ), while three more got single votes (Austin Museum of Art, Harry Ransom Center, and the Texas State History Museum), and among those, some expressed interest in more than one museum, so even those numbers are in some cases partial votes. Based on those low numbers, I'm not going to try to organize anything specific for Sunday.

Mel put the biker/jogger/hikers in touch with each other, as well as the batty threesome. Amy VE is coordinating this, so if you want to join in, email her or reply to this post. If any of the rest of you are interested in either of those options, please let Mel know and he'll fold you into that communication string.

Not necessarily limited to Sunday

Congress Bridge bats (yep, bats, as in a bazillion and six of the little devils)
(www.austincityguide.com/content/congress-bridge-bats-austin.asp)
(www.austin360.com/search/content/events/special/bats.html)

For those of you who want to get your road work in, there’s the Lady Bird Hike and Bike Trail (www.austinexplorer.com/Hiking/HikeDetails.aspx?HikeID=4)

For something a bit out of the ordinary (like if the bats weren't enough for you), for those of you who are familiar with Whole Foods – Austin has the mothership – at 80,000 sq ft it’s the largest Whole Foods store in the chain. It's so big and fancy they do tours.
(www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/lamar/)

Wednesday night

Blues on the Green 2009 (Waterloo Park - only about a nine block walk from the convention center) http://www.kgsr.com/Other/blues/
Wednesday, June 17th, Cyril Neville (yep, one of the Neville Brothers)
http://www.kgsr.com/Other/blues/artists.html#cn
Show (it's FREE, by the way) starts at 7:30, so plenty of time to get there after the last ELD conference session is over. Limited food options and non-alcoholic beverages will be available in the park.

For the non-blues crowd, meet at a pre-determined location (maybe the Austin Hilton lobby again) to venture out for a nice relaxing dinner with friend and colleagues. Still to be determined, more info once we're all in Austin.

ASEE conference approaches!

2009-06-08T08:16:00.004-04:00

With less than a week until ASEE 2009 in Austin, the final details are being hammered out on what should be a wonderful conference for ELD members.

The schedule is available at http://depts.washington.edu/englib/eld/conf/conf09.php.

We have 25 papers for ELD, a record! They are spread out over seven technical sessions and the poster session.

On Sunday, there are two workshops sponsored or co-sponsored by ELD. At last count, 15 faculty and librarians were signed up for the morning workshop and 16 for the afternoon. There is still time to register on-site for either or both workshops. Fill out the fax registration form found online and bring it to the registration desk at the conference. Unfortunately, you will have to pay the on-site rate.

Our Directors, Linda Whang and Nancy Linden have been working hard on the Monday night Welcome Reception (at the McKinney Engineering Library at UT-Austin) and the Tuesday Night Annual Banquet (at the historic Driskill Hotel).

ELD thanks all the sponsors who help make the program possible. In addition to Knovel, Institute of Physics Publishing, IEEE, IET/Inspec, Morgan & Claypool, Ei/Elsevier, and ProQuest, ELD may be getting another sponsor this year.

Bob Heyer-Gray will be soliciting your ideas for ASEE 2010 in Louisville. Please take the time to let him know what topics you would like to see covered.

John Teleha
Eld Program Chair
Austin 2009
teleha@ncat.edu

ASEE ELD on Facebook

2009-06-07T22:46:00.003-04:00

Please consider joining ELD's facebook global group ASEE/ELD which was recently created.
One more way of increasing ELD's visibility worldwide. SLA's Facebook group is very active which has (as of this writing) 1,780 members on the group. Networking is another advantage and also members can share blogs, interesting and useful sites, create and participate in discussions and much more. I have been able to stay in touch with a past ELD member (who had provided a lot of inspiration to me during my earlier years in ELD)through Facebook. A great feeling ineed!

Simply go to http://www.facebook.com and search for ASEE/ELD group.

ASEE 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, TX June 14-17

2009-05-29T10:23:00.004-04:00

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the ASEE 2009 Conference & Exposition in Austin. Bloggers are encouraged to add information and notes about conference experiences and programs.

Testing Disqus

2008-09-05T13:56:00.001-04:00

I'm playing with a hosted add-in to Blogger that should allow for threaded comments.

Since I'm admin on this blog, I'm using it to test before suggesting it as an option for a class I'm in that is using a blog and wanting threaded comments instead of the usual long list of comments that comes with Blogger.

Best Poster Award for 2008

2008-07-17T20:58:00.003-04:00

Announced at ASEE Session 3541, ELD Professional Issues Forum by Alice Trussell, Moderator (and ELD Awards Committee Chair)

Best Poster Award:

ELD Best Poster Award for 2008 is given to the work that is well-organized and communicates the content, presentation, and enthusiasm of the presenter(s). With only five posters in the running, three posters rose to the top and one stood out above the rest.

The person who received this year’s award reminded Alice of an allegory entitled “Of Wolves, Sheep, and Sheep Dogs.” The essence of the message was that there are three types of people in the world: the sheep, or people living in the world, trying to make a living; the wolves, who threaten the lives or the livelihoods of the sheep; and the sheep dogs, the protectors of society, who are constantly vigilant - always on the lookout for the wolves (or their ilk) who threaten the sheep. This year, the ELD Best Poster Award is awarded to Larry Thompson, ELD’s very own sheepdog, for his poster entitled SAE DRM: What’s Happening?

Through his dogged determination, Larry has kept on top of the SAE DRM issue. Larry hounded ELD membership, surveying them to determine whether or not SAE’s DRM policies had any effect of their decisions to purchase, retain, or cancel the SAE Digital Library. Over the last year, SAE has modified their original DRM (in response to ELD members and other folks) and Larry nipped at the heels of ELD members again to see if those modifications changed the member’s original purchasing, retention, or cancelation decision.

The poster was clearly and simply displayed and communicated well that “SAE just does not get it!” The ELD Poster Session proved to be an excellent forum for reaching a large number of ASEE faculty regarding this important issue.

Congratulations Larry!

By-Laws Changes Considered During Annual Meeting

2008-07-16T09:12:00.003-04:00

Mel DeSart opened the discussion concerning By-Laws changes that will be voted on later this summer. Four copies of the proposed changes have been placed at each table and copies were distributed to the ELD membership 30 days prior to this meeting.

Two of the three changes are mandates from the ASEE Board of Directors. Article XI, Sections 4 and 5, provide language required by the ASEE Board. “Amendments approved by the Division (in section 4)/Executive Committee (in section 5) shall be submitted through the PIC IV Chair for approval by majority vote of the ASEE Board of Directors and shall take effect only upon such approval.”
Article XI, Section 3 includes language regarding the distribution of proposed amendments to the ELD membership. Current wording ties any consideration of these amendments to this Annual Meeting and ties the distribution to the ELD electronic discussion list, ELD-L, and the mail. These proposed changes would permit the ELD Executive Committee more flexibility and simplify the language.
Addendum 1, Section 11: Liaisons: Language has been adopted by the Executive Committee to place the Liaisons chair on track with the other Committee Chairs.
The first question from the floor addressed the need for ASEE approval. Does this not take away some autonomy we have as a Division? As the question was being asked, Mary Anderson-Rowland, outgoing PIC IV Chair and representative to the ASEE Board of Directors, arrived and Mel turned the podium over to her for her answer. Mary explained that all Divisions of ASEE have been required to include such language in their By-Laws. ELD is not being singled out. The ASEE Board believes that this consistency of language will strengthen the Society as a whole and not weaken any Division.

After answering this one question, we then went out of the normal order of business to allow Mary Anderson-Rowland to proceed with her PIC IV Chair Report (not listed here).

Having completed her PIC IV report, Mary Anderson Rowland excused herself to attend another Division Annual Meeting. We then resumed the normal order of business and Mel DeSart continued our By-Laws discussion.

Concern was reiterated regarding By-Laws changes being forced on Divisions by ASEE. One member will vote against the changes on principle and concern that such action leads to homogeneity within the Society. The irony is that they just established a Diversity Board. Mel responded that the main reason for the language added to our By-Laws (and all Division By-Laws) is to ensure that Division By-Laws do not violate the Society’s By-Laws.
Another member asked how often the ASEE Board meets? The ASEE Board meets twice a year, at this conference and in February. They met Sunday and approved By-Laws then and will meet Wednesday. Like ELD, they are looking at ways to streamline the By-Laws voting process (electronic voting).
Another member questioned the wording in section three – why was “distributed” changed to “made available?” Mel responded that the language was “fuzzed up” on purpose. The new language permits consideration of By-Laws changes at times other than the Annual Meeting. Thirty days notice would still be required before consideration. Consideration would still be necessary before a vote. “Distributed” ties the hands of the EC to the ELD Discussion list. The new language permits distribution or notification of proposed amendments through means not yet dreamed of without having to change the By-Laws to accommodate every future means of communication.

Voting on these By-Laws was not held at this meeting. Look for details about the voting to be sent out in the near future over ELD-L.

ASEE/ELD Conference Highlights

2008-07-10T19:06:00.004-04:00

HIGHLIGHTS - ASEE/ELD Conference – Pittsburgh, PA, June 22-26, 2008

Main Plenary Session - Engineering Education for the 21st Century, Dr. Charles Vest, President of the National Academy

Our new century will be determined by nano and bio technology issues concerning energy, water, food and sustainability:
+ Decline in share of R&D in the U.S., fewer U.S. engineering grads and
China dominating the numbers of graduating engineers
+ New connections (Thomas Friedman, “The World is Flat” -- “jobs are now just a mouse click away”), open innovation (“globally integrated enterprises” Foreign Affairs, The Globally Integrated Enterprise, IBM’s Samuel J. Palmisano, May/June, 2006) … MIT’s new Open courseware initiatives
= Engineers facing grand challenges to creative problem-solving: Energy, environmental sustainability, manufacturing and communication logistics, improving medical and healthcare, reducing vulnerability to threats (both natural and people-caused) and expanding the human capacity for joy. Engineering a prime career for today's young people and women who say they want jobs in fields where they can "help people and make the world better."

Sustainable Energy Issues in Education: Developing a Practical Applicable course in Sustainability – an Engineering Challenge.

Florida Gulf Coast University is introducing a new program (2009) in the Whitaker Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics on Sustainability in Education: Interdisciplinary studies to focus on water, energy and civic engagement , ethics, consumer communications, case studies to encourage lifelong learning and critical thinking … Partnering with Florida Solar Energy Center, University Central Florida for solar technology study and public problem solving … Four- semester course series: 1) World views and water .. 2) Energy /Shelter .. 3) Food/Agriculture … 4)Waste, Health, and Pathways to Sustainability. Lectures, small group meetings, field trips.

Engineering Librarian’s Basics Boot Camp – Engineering librarians discussed their information literacy efforts: Business tools (Company/market research, UN & Census demographic data, financial and competitor data, Yahoo Finance, executive/industry profiles, SWOT analysis, NAICS … ASME Tech Papers (Use of Linda Hall Library for Science, Engineering and Technology Information in Kansas City (http://www.lhl.lib.mo.us/) ) … Cultivating Grey Literature & Older Engineering Literature ( Be careful about tossing old engineering indexes and literature, language and terminology differences in past, older indexes, work from engineers in foreign countries useful today (i.e. Texas A&M has engineering studies about Nazi use of alternative fuel) … NTIS to introduce a new interface this summer ) … Your students are Pod People, But that’s Alright ( Handout of web links for Instructional Websites on Podcasting, Audio/video Editing Software and Further Readings.)

Millennial Behaviors and Higher Education Focus Group (Jam-Packed!) Richard Sweeney, New Jersey Institute of Technology focus group among Millennials, discussing these young people's characteristics: Direct, confident, inclusive and tolerant … Abstract thinkers, adaptive, organized and self-disciplined … READ LESS, digital natives/ gamers, want practical consumer choices and personalized/customized products … Impatient multi-taskers, experiential learners who seek balance in their lives. Focus group held among 12 college Millennials (born 1979-1994).

For more pictures in/around Pittsburgh, UPitt, the Incline and Pat, Charlott and Beth pigging out on desserts @ Monterey Bay atop the incline, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/watkinspatricia1/PittsburghASEEELDConference

ICE Virtual Library Competition Winner

2008-07-10T10:36:00.001-04:00

"We [ICE] are pleased to announce that the winner of the competition was Alice Trussell from Kansas State University - many congratulations!"

Alice won an iPod Nano.

2009 Author Guidelines - Dates

2008-07-09T16:30:00.005-04:00

2009 Annual Conference Publication Deadlines (as distributed to program chairs in Pittsburgh)

Monday, Sept 8 – Friday, Oct 10, 2008	Abstract Submission Process Open
Friday, January 9, 2009	Abstract Accept or Reject Decisions Deadline
Friday, January 9 – Friday, February 6, 2009	Draft Paper Submission Process Open
Wednesday, January 21, 2009	Registration and Housing Opens
Friday, February 27, 2009	Draft Paper Decision Deadline
Friday February 27 – Friday, March 13, 2009	Final Paper Submission Process Open
Friday March 13 – Friday, March 20, 2009	Paper Accepted Pending Changes Final Upload Phase Open
Friday, March 27, 2009	Paper Accepted Pending Changes Decision Deadline
Friday, April 3, 2009	Author Registration Deadline, Proceedings Fees & Copyright Transfer Due

Publish to Present - Session 3541

2008-07-09T16:28:00.001-04:00

As most of you know, ASEE has chosen to move to a Publish to Present model for all technical sessions and posters. The reason presented to us by our current PIC IV chair (Mary Anderson –Rowland), is that ASEE made this choice to make the conference proceedings, and publishing in them, more reputable, since they are all reviewed.

It was pointed out that there was no discussion about the reviewing process or expected paper content outlined by ASEE to help with this perceived increase to the proceedings reputation. All divisions are responsible for the review of their own papers, and setting expectations for content of those papers.

During the Professional Issues Forum those of us still at the conference on Wednesday afternoon had a lively discussion about what this means for our division, which has previously been what was called an “abstract only” division.

The first order of business during the session was to make sure all members of the division had a complete understanding of which sessions would be effected, what we have control over as a division, and what exists for potential work-arounds.

As requested during the session, I’m going to write up my comments (as best I can remember them 5 days later) for all division members who were not present, and as a reminder for those who were there.

- First, all presentations during technical sessions and the division poster session are required to include a paper in the conference proceedings. Presentations during panel sessions, guest speakers and distinguished lecturers are not required to publish a paper.

- Technical sessions are all those where presenters have suggested their paper and been assigned to a session which was designated as a technical session. In a technical session all presenters are members of ASEE.

o This has always been the bulk of the sessions offered by ELD.

- Panel presentations can include both papers suggested by authors through abstract submission and/or invited guest speakers.

o As an example, our Biomedical Informatics session in Pittsburgh was a panel presentation.

§ Mary Lou Klem was an invited guest speaker.

§ The other two presentations were submitted as abstracts.

- Division poster sessions: this is the Wednesday morning session, when all posters from all divisions are presented. Any posters presented during this time would need to have published papers accompanying them in the proceedings.

o The benefit of this session, and our participation in it, is that we have the opportunity to present our posters in a situation which allows non-librarians to review our information.

o Posters are not considered second tier publication or presentation options at ASEE. The posters provide an opportunity for divisions which receive too may quality papers on a topic for one session to have the ‘extras’ presented in the poster session.

There is one potential mechanism available to get around the need to publish a paper in order to present during the conference. The panel presentation option would allow ELD to receive abstracts for a session, place them all in a panel presentation, and the authors would not be expected to publish a paper with ASEE. This option could also be used for a local poster session which would not include published papers. In this example we would assign a collection of abstracts to a session, have all the posters displayed around the room and have each presenter give an approximately 5 minute presentation on their poster. The rest of the time could be used for people to mingle and ask questions of the authors.

- There was a concern that panel presentations would not have authors and titles listed in the program. Unless there are changes to SmoothPaper, any abstracts submitted that are assigned to panel presentation, will continue to have their title and author information reflected in the conference program.

- This option was maintained specifically for divisions like ours, where publish to present has not been the way we have operated and requiring papers could be a hindrance to our future conference participation.

As mentioned above, the reviewing process for papers is the responsibility of each division. This means we can set our own guidelines for what we are expecting in submitted papers. A bit of additional discussion about this topic during the EEC (Extended Executive Committee) meeting on Wednesday afternoon, brought up the point that the publications committee has guidelines it uses for review of submitted papers. As a starting point, these guidelines will be posted for ELD members, so they can be aware of what the reviewers are looking for when they read the papers.

Author Rights

ASEE is still unclear about our concern regarding their required copyright transfer in order to publish your paper with them. Mel DeSart, the chair of our Scholarly Communications Committee, will continue to work with our incoming PIC IV chair, (Noel Schulz) our representative to the ASEE Board of Directors. The goal will be to get a generic author rights addendum, applicable for all ASEE authors. More information on the progress in this area will be forthcoming from Mel.

Teaching Patent Applications and Issued Patents: Specialized Databases of the United States Patent and Trademark Office - Charlotte Erdmann, Purdue

2008-06-30T14:53:00.002-04:00

Erdmann suggests looking at the PAIR data for Dean Kamen’s US7370713 Personal Mobility Vehicle and Methods 1999 as a interesting example.

PAIR (http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair) includes the history of patent and assignments of published application including “file wrapper” which in the past could be purchased. She finds that the application number is the most effective way to search however there are other fields that can be (control #, PCT #Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/mpep.htm) if you really wish to know how this process works.

To use PAIR you will need to navigate the tabs along the top of each record. Transaction history gives a rundown of dates and activities associated, including “non-final rejection,” “Request for Continued Examination” etc. The image file wrapper includes all files associated which users can download. Continuity data includes reexamination of certificate and some claims may be cancelled.

Finding ASME technical papers – Scott Curtis, Linda Hall, Head of Reference

2008-06-30T14:43:00.001-04:00

Why ASME technical papers? Because they are fun! Published since 1880+ and c.1928 there were even “misc papers,” evolving identification schemes, engineering societies library, and inconsistent indexing. Scott tells us that the ASME paper number didn’t appear until 1944. Example: 76-GT-105 (year, gas/turbine, paper number). There are over 50 letter codes put into use in 1945-1960 alone. The Linda Hall Library has card file on ASME papers (~1946-1990) and also has annotated papers. Contact them with any questions on this, they are glad to help you decipher and track down ASME and other technical papers.

15 links to useful or interesting stuff from ASEE 2008

2008-06-30T14:40:00.001-04:00

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (2007) Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309100399
Patent Lens - www.patentlens.com
Patents at Mach 2: Workshop wiki - http://patentsatmach2.wikispaces.com/
PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval ) - http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair
TRAIL-Technical Report Archive and Image Library: a collaborative project to digitize, archive, and provide persistent and unrestricted access to federal technical reports issued prior to 1975: http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/techreports/
Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering - http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12187
Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, published by the National Science Board, provides a broad base of quantitative information on the U.S. and international science and engineering enterprise http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/
Management & Economics Library Business Research Concept Map at Purdue: http://www.lib.purdue.edu/mel/bizmap/BusinessResearch.html
Engineering Libraries Division Conference 2008 – Schedule/PowerPoints & handouts - http://eld.lib.ucdavis.edu/conf/conf08.php
ASEE ELD Blog – Conference Notes - http://asee-eld.blogspot.com/
NSPE Code of Ethics and the Engineers' Creed - http://www.nspe.org/ethics/index.html (Wichita State U library incorporated into their online tutorial)
Vivo: Cornell’s Research & Scholarship portal - Vivo.library.cornell.edu
Richard Sweeney’s Millenial 2-page overview handout - http://library1.njit.edu/staff%2Dfolders/sweeney/Millennials/Millennial-Summary-Handout.doc
John J. Meier and Thomas W. Conkling, Google Scholar’s Coverage of the Engineering Literature: An Empirical Study, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, May 2008. John is working on a follow study to determine where the references are coming from. - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2008.03.002
Entrez – the life sciences search engine - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/gquery

Thoughts on improving conference papers -- an interesting posting by an ASEE member on blog

2008-06-26T00:48:00.004-04:00

Just came across this blog entry 'Alice's late-nite pointers to writing conference papers"
on a blog titled 'Science and an Engineerbeing the change we want to see.' The author, Alice Pawley, in this post asks, 'What are your thoughts on what would improve conference papers?'. There are some interesting comments posted underthat, I think, will make a useful reading.

The author points out three shortcomings in many ASEE papers. One of them is:

"... Lots of papers seem to set out good arguments at the beginning for trying to figure certain things out, but then never return to that set of arguments in the methodology and the conclusion".

Today, during the Professional Issue Forum, we all witnessed the dyanamic and spirited discussion on 'Publish to Present' issue led by Amy Van Epps.

So, I thought this post will make an interesting reading for everyone who may consider writing and presenting a paper during the 2009 ASEE conference in Austin, Texas.

BioMed Informatics and Engineering Libraries

2008-06-25T11:38:00.003-04:00

“Informatics: A Primer”
• Dr. Mary Lou Klem, U. Pittsburgh
• “The study and use of information and communication systems” – Coiera, 2003
• “Analysis and dissemination of data using computers” – NLM, 2005
• “Interdisciplinary study of the design, application, use and impact of IT” – UCI ICS
• Practice: informational and computing sciences (info retrieval, ontology/vocabulary, evaluation/research methods, cognitive/human factors and interfaces, database design, etc.) – Friedman, NIH/NLM, 2004
• Why such a hot topic in health sciences?
• #1 Information explosion – 16 million records in Medline
• 1881: NLM Director predicted geometric progression of medical publication – would require all those not writing it to catalog/index it
• #2 Growth of molecular databases – http://nodalpoint.org
• Librarian role: collection development, education/training, communication – Helms, 2004
• Collections: manage site licensing vs. multiple licenses - 05/06 estimated savings = $200,000
• Education/Training: workshops & consultations in use of molbio software/databases; http://search.hsls.molbio portal utilizing Vivissimo cluster software (tabbed: databases/software, filtered PubMed articles, NCBI genes/proteins, pathways, protocols, recommended articles)
• Communication: hired Head of MolBio Service with PhD in biochemistry, assistants with PhD in biology or neuroscience (and maybe MLIS)
• Search tools:
• Evidence-based practice – clinicians need to consult the “best” evidence when making a patient decision (prognosis, therapy), not what their colleagues or teachers said
• Best = current and most rigorous published studies, varies by type of question
• Few health care professionals have these search skills
• McMaster U. – developed “search queries” or “hedges” – canned searches that were tested for relevancy, accuracy, precision
• Therapy (individual randomized controlled trials) = “clinical trial” in Title/Abstract OR clinical trials in MeSH OR linical trial in Publicatio Type OR random* in Title/Abstract OR “random allocation” in MeSH OR “therapeutic use” in MeSH Subheading
• Prognosis (individual cohort studies or follow-up studies that assess morbidity mortality or survival) = “Incidence in MeSH OR mortality in MeSH OR follow up studies in MeSH OR prognos* in Title/Abstract OR predict* in Title/Abstract OR course* in Title/Abstract
• PubMed: Search by Clinical Study Category – etiology, diagnosis, therapy, prognosis, clinical prediction guides; scope: narrow & specific or broad & sensitive

“Bioinformatics and Engineering Libraries”
• Amy Stout, MIT
• “using computers to solve bio problems, usually on molecular level”
• “new phase in genomics - making bio discoveries not at lab bench but at a computer terminal”
• sequence alignment, evolutionary biology, genome annotation
• Data intensive - mining huge data sets, high through-put data
• Engineering: synthetic biology, sequencing microbes, computational neuroanatomy – circuit diagram of neurons in brain tissue
• Libraries: support researchers and students, data coming under purview of academic libraries, databases like any other (but tools require more specialized knowledge)
• MIT: hired bioinformatics specialist, created website, strengthened collection development, online tutorials, 1.5 hour session on introductory bioinformatics, expert speakers
• Entrez, PubMed, Gene, CoreNucleotide, BLAST (ex: gabra1)
• CoreNucleotide – library catalog-like; each gene has a “bibliographic” record, but also includes actual GATC sequence
• BLAST – find analog to gene in animals (ex: human) other than the one in which you originally found research record (ex: mouse)
• Gene – like review or encyclopedia articles for gene sequences – associated functions (ex: alcohol dependence, history of blackouts, age at first drunkenness, etc.) with links to scholarly literature backing it up

“Biomedical Informatics in Engineering”
• Sheila Young, ASU
• ASU: Dept. of Biomedical Informatics, under School of Computing & Informatics, under School of Engineering
• Bioinformatics (molecular/cellular processes), imaging informatics (tissues/organs), clinical informatics (individuals), public health informatics (populations)
• Bioinformatics: “develop computational tools for the analysis of biomedical data and systems”
• Clinical bioinformatics: “develop novel IT, CS and KM methodologies for disease prevention, treatment, patient care delivery, knowledge access”
o Medical record construction – loss of anecdotal data?
o Medical decision-making
• Imaging informatics: “develop IT and computational tools to manage and analyze biomedical images”
• Public health informatics: “systematic application of information and CS to public health practice, research and learning”
• Engineering – have done similar work for systems biology (modeling and model analysis)
• Computer science, physics, and engineering literature, in addition to PubMed – various thesaurus terms and classification areas
• New interdisciplinary journals
• “Publishing” the data, as well as the narrative

Q: Where does translational science fit in? ISI is releasing a database, new journals, NSF funding.
A: NIH putting huge emphasis on it, funding centers. Pulling researchers from bench to bedside and forcing them to talk to one another.
A: Translational genomics - personal gene reports.

Q: How do the canned searches handle changes in MeSH terms?
A: Assume McMaster is monitoring.

Q: PubMed vs. Medline
A: PubMed contains all Medline records, plus additional or more recent records, from a variety of fields (some may not get indexed) – engineers love how PubMed maps from one database to another.

Q: How handle the $200,000 issue?
A: My understanding is that the library took over the cost from the labs; there are more restrictions on research funding driving this.

Engineering Resources Off-the-Beaten-Path

2008-06-25T11:36:00.001-04:00

“Conference Proceedings at Risk”
• Tracy Gabridge, MIT
• Refworks account of faculty conference publications
• Vulnerable = less collected expensive proceedings, degrading CD-Roms, ephemeral online proceedings, annually changing procedures/policies
• [ideally, faculty would deposit to IR upon acceptance]
• Some publishers deposit in 3rd party archives
• Some small conferences have published directly through libraries
• At risk: 31% of 1,037 conference proceedings in their study
• Variation among disciplines
• # conferences (high to low): EE, Aero, ME, CS, Mat, CEE, NE
• Per faculty (high to low): Aero, EE, CEE, ME, ChemE, Mat, NE, CS
• At risk (high to low): Chem E (52%), Nuclear (50), Mat (45), CEE (44)…
• Can advocate for better publishing practices – create guides for organizers
• Can cooperate to create endangered list
• Can educate our own faculty
• Can support policy development for institutional repositories
• Promote successful models of preservation or open access
• Monitor trends
• Comment: some conferences are conduits to journal publication (knowledge is preserved)
• Comment: British Library good in cproceedings

“Tracking Patents and Applications”
• Charlotte
• Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) - USPTO made available within past 5 years
• $200 to get file wrapper to see entire document
• “Patent Assignments” database tracks ownership changes
• Patent filed in 1999 was just recently issued (7370713)
• Questions about whether a patent’s term has expired, and what influences that event
• Independent inventors are the only ones who file their own patents – not recommended
• Very detailed transaction histories available – received, verified, forwarded, rejected, etc.
• If you don’t pay maintenance fees on time, your patent expires before 20 years – announced in Patent Gazette

“Google Scholar vs. Compendex”
• John Meier, Penn State
• Available on Slideshare and ELD site
• What GS searches is nebulous – can’t be measured, no list (although some in news releases)
• Some just citations, others abstracts or full text links
• Databases cost thousands, tens of thousands of dollars – every year
• Some other disciplines/databases have been compared to GS
• 1950-2007, keywords in 8 subject areas [problematic]
• Percentage discoverable in GS increased over time in all subjects, approaching 90% in last two decades
• Best = Aero, NE, CS, EE
• Weaker in early decades = Eviro, Civil, ME, Industrial
• It’s about where GS gets data from – open access
• Aero: CSA, NASA tech report server, stormingmedia site, STINET, NASA ADS, ci.nii.ac.jp, NASA Langley server, e-data-center.com
• Civil: STINET, publisher sites, ci.nii.ac.jp, scholr.ilib.cn…
• Computer Engineering: Publisher sites, ACM, IEEE, link.aip.org, CSA, domino.watson.ibm.com, adsabs.harvard.edu, eric.edu.gov, OSTI, cat.inist.fr, SPIE, ieice.org, elecdesign.com
• EE: IEEEXplore, CSA, link.aip.org, NASA ADS, publisher sites, cat.inist.fr, freepatentsonline, OSTI, search…
• Environ: CSA, Springer, pubs.asce.org, awwa.org, ncbinlm.nih.gov, OSTI, baes.bireme.br, cheric.org, desline.com, nlm.nih.gov, nrel.gov, scholar.ilib.cn
• Industrial: ci.nii.ac.jp, publisher sites, CSA, SAE, STINET, IEEE, PubMed, cat.inist.fr, scientificcommons.org, Google patents, personal websites
• ME: deepblue.umich.edu, publisher sites, Google patents, CSA, NASA ADS, cat.inistfr, ci.nii.ac.jp, link.aip.org, Google books, …
• NE: publisher sites, OSTI, IEEE, adsabs.harvard.edu, link.aip.org, aps, CSA, cat.inist.fr, arxiv.org
• All decades: publisher sites, heavily government information
• International bibliographies contribute to all but Enviro
• Pre-prints and repositories – expected more
• Strongest = publishers and societies, including Elsevier

Ethics in Engineering Education (non-ELD session)

2008-06-25T11:28:00.002-04:00

[note: this session may be of interest to some members, though it wasn't sponsored by ELD]

Engineering Ethics & Climate Change
• Joseph Herkert, ASU
• Little written about ethics and climate change
• Gardiner 2004:
o Uncertainty = red herring: issue isn’t lack of smoking gun, it’s how we act in absence of smoking gun
o Not either/or – we have to take action to minimize climate change, AND we have to adapt to climate change that is going to happen
• Codes of Ethics as written aren’t the answer: “paramountcy clauses,” environment/sustainability, intergenerational equity (future), objectivity/truthfulness, public understanding
• Codes: written with microethics perspective, not macroethics

“Web-based Professional Ethics Modules”
• Byron Newberry (Baylor U.) and Greta Gorsuch (Texas Tech U.)
• Professional ethics and regulations vary by culture
• Includes intellectual property, plagiarism, data integrity
• Brought in an applied linguist
• MS Word statistics – writing to 9th/10th grade level = shorter sentences, limited vocabulary, embedded definitions [ex: ConceptTutor]
• Indexing software – substitute more frequently used, common words for more infrequently used, more complex words

“Lowering the Barriers to Achieve Ethics Across the Engineering Curriculum”
• Kristyn Masters (BME faculty) and Sarah Pfatteicher (Asst. Dean), UW-Madison
• Big, research-focused university
• Want to increase instructor comfort for teaching ethics
• Students and instructors more comfortable with numbers - measurable outcomes
• Sarah gets asked to give a guest lecture on ethics, to address ABET requirement
• Module in ethics problem-solving that is reusable
• Case study ethical problem, students given 20 min. quiz to “solve”
• Control group: full lecture and open-ended answer, expeimental groups: full lecture and DISORDER framework, b) short overview and DISORDER framework
• A) NIH constrains hESC strains you can use – not very good; b) Federally funded equipment can’t touch non-approved lines, c) Privately funded stem cell lines in lab next door, and they’re willing to share (?)
• Open-ended responses = 65% a) keep using crappy cells and not get anywhere with research, or b) steal cells – unsatisfactory polarized answers
• DISORDER framework (from “Doing Good and Avoiding Evil”) – mimics design process; undergrads do 6 semesters of design, so very comfortable – bringing uncomfortable topic into their comfort zone
• Framework inspired huge % of students with alternative answers, and increased # alternative answers per student; final solutions chosen flipped to alternatives; zero illegal answers
• Paradoxically, more structure = more complex and innovative answers
• Even a short overview had a big impact
• 19 instructors – positive feedback
• Kristyn – funded by CAREER award (CBET – 0547374)
• Q: What does DISORDER stand for? A: Defining the problem, and gathering the Information were the most important steps – what questions would they ask the client for a design project?

“Preparing Engineering Grad Students for Ethical Problems in Research”
• UT-Austin
• Many ethical research issues in news lately
• ORI finds research misconduct more frequently among grad students than any other group
• Online materials and 4-hour workshop
• We talk about rules of research conduct as if they’re immutable; but they arose from humanities-baesd disciplines – therefore, cognitive dissonance or unwritten rules that are discipline-specific
• Engineers are averse to quotation marks, even for direct quotes – but they’ll cite sources
• Grad student plagiarism at Ohio University – 20 years of misconduct – plagiarizing the literature reviews of other masters theses – followed the model for 20 years
• What is “plagiarism”? Different in engineering vs. humanities? How paraphrase a process description – “readers don’t want to have to look this up elsewhere.”
• Engineers don’t see “words” as their product (intellectual property) – value lab research over “book” research
• Grad students are thrown on existing research projects and expected to produce – other students have done the lit review, so they never do
• We need engineering-specific standards, and not just for the lit review: Collaborative authoring, selecting data, presenting data – “nobody is addressing this, except maybe BME faculty”
• Q: I saw a lot of instances of faculty treating grad students inappropriately
• A: My question when grad students get accused is always, “where was the faculty advisor?”

Get Acquainted: Scholarly Communications discussion

2008-06-25T11:23:00.004-04:00

Recent activities:

UW-Madison - Scholarly Communications Committee (but not much faculty/campus admin participation), faculty resolution adopting CIC author addendum, institutional repository, BibApp tool (portal, open acess check ith Sherpa/Romeo, setting up for batch loads to repository), NIH public access law, liaison copyright retention and open access, CIC conference on e-research and data management

ELD “Punch list” of best practices (?) – interest in updating

ELD SC committee is dormant

Seeing many ads for SC librarians (in title) – are they being filled? is it a full-time job?
o Binghamton: hiring SC/grant writer
o MIT: half-time SC, half-time ?
o Julia Gelfand: Training/development, website, program development – don’t see as full-time, tech services is out of the loop
o University of Pennsylvania: SC librarian defining his job as he goes along, from humanities/social sciences background; may merge in data management
o U. Washington: only have 2 AULs which is on the light side; adding directors of topical areas that report to UL (Assessment – on ARL road show, Collections/E-resources & SC); IR is under IT
o UW-Madison: GLS IR Librarian, Ebling Library Assist. Dir. for SC, Wendt Library Collections/E-resources & SC
o ? – Assistant Dean for SC – defining his job as he goes along
o Colorado State U. – Assistant Dean for SC – acquisitions, collection development, public services; IR Librarian

Institutional repository issues

How convince faculty to deposit in IR? Better response if have mandate from admin?
o Brown U.: linking to papers, rather than “depositing” them
o What about author disambiguation? Big issue.
o Iberonke Q: Do you start with defining what goes into IR? If not, you could get a mishmash. A: MIT’s narrow scope backfired – turning into e-bookshelf – anything of interest to our researchers – not just MIT-authored
o Our researchers are interested in disciplinary repositories
o What is the definitive copy? (CIC conference)
o U. Washington: using Manikin; Asian bark drawing images – used for actual research; renaming ResearchWorks@Washington – creating portals to just interact with Faculty ResearchWorks, Student ResearchWorks; concerned about faculty reaction to mishmash
o CalTech: using e-Prints (not dSpace); grad students interested in updating bib for CV
o Can our IRs be used to help populate DRs? Vice versa? Anyone tracking what’s going into PMC etc.?
o MIT: beginning ethnographic study of researcher publishing practices
o Julia: Once they get the letter of acceptance, they’re done with that article and on to the next thing; we need tools like Madison’s [BibApp]
o How reliable is Sherpa/Romeo? Not completely up to date.
o Faculty response – there are already so many NIH rules and regulations, this is no big deal; Office of Sponsored Research has ultimate responsibility – they had no clue this was going on before libraries brought it to them – unfunded mandate
o Publishers are asking people to contact Congress against it; ALA the opposite
o Iberonke: sponsored a Faculty Research Day; invited NIH funded researchers and Office of Sponsored Research; made inroads
o CSU: Anyone using IR as PR tool? We use Fedora; library website team wants to highlight; very time intensive to review for author disambiguation
o Some faculty hand us their CV and say “do what you want”
o U. North Texas: Provost requiring “Faculty Profiling System” (unfortunate name) just for CV so can create institutional profile

ASEE “Publish to Present” requirement - no longer “Abstracts Only” option

ASEE publications require complete transfer of author copyright
o Costs money to submit to Smoothpaper
o Doesn’t affect guest speakers, panel sessions, ELD poster session (have to call it panel session)
o Will we still be able to post on ELD website? Don’t know.
o ELD has spoken with ASEE about adopting transfer of publishing rights only – response was NO.
o Flip side – May get ASEE to agree to author addendum, specifying what author does have rights to (laundry list)
o Current PIC IV chair does not yet understand this issue (she’s outgoing) – she said each individual can ask for their rights back when they need it [note: she spoke a bit on this issue at the ELD board meeting]

Why I love ELD?

2008-06-25T00:17:00.005-04:00

I just wanted to share some thoughts and reflections of my past 10-11 years of association with ELD.

I did not know when I attended the 1998 conference in Seattle for the first time, I would fall in love with ELD right away. ELD to me is like a big family with everyone is eager to support each other in a variety of ways. We share our experiences with each other, and in the process, develop a bond of togetherness. We try our best to come up with innovative ideas for implementation that benefit our profession tremendously. In every session, I learn something new. Creativity and talent shown by our members always inspire me to contribute in some creative ways in the field of engineering librarianship.

Our members are extremely proactive and they bring up many intellectual ideas for further discussion. It is this interactive dialog among us that really sparks critical thinking among ourselves allowing us to take ELD to the next higher level. This year's conference, workshops and various technical sessions truly reflect dedication and commitment of our members to this regard.

During the past 3 years, I garnered much support from our senior ELD members that truly helped me survive my ELD officer terms.

ELD has helped me grow..and it will continue to do so...ELD experience is the experience of my life-time, an experience that is so dear to me.

Thank you so much, ELD!

Jay

New Tools for Information Literacy

2008-06-24T10:39:00.005-04:00

Moderator Patricia Watkins introduced the speakers and a very full room sat in anticipation of seeing innovative tools. William Baer was the first to speak on Using Videos to Teach the Ethical Use of Engineering Information. He had early communication with faculty who were concerned about plagiarism and expanded the topic to include ethics, which is a particular focus by Engineering (Code of Ethics). His students had little experience writing citations, and he noted a special need by Graduate Assistants also. After working out some technical requirements, he recorded four short videos including tests in Blackboard and a worksheet. Assessment by pretest and post test showed improvement after the videos with notable early low score by students who had already completed an ethics course (!!) and greater improvement by female students.

Eric Resnis spoke next on Smart Searching: An Online Information Fluency Tutorial. At Miami of Ohio he saw a need for specialized tutorials for Engineers in addition to their general E-learn initiative. His tutorial included some notable innovations. First was a blog (for all sections) where he could remind students of their assignments regarding the tutorial. The next was rotating ads for library services and databases included on the website. Lastly there were quizzes available to grade the students after completing the tutorial. His results of studying the quizzes and homework from the students showed good scores in academic integrity, peer review, OhioLINK, but bad performance on Journal citations and Choosing resources. Scores have gone up after survey was revised, but the problem areas remained the same.

Adriana Popescu presented a non-technology based report on Exploring, Reading and Writing Scientific Literature in English. In an entertaining way she showed the difficulty of international students with library jargon and English scientific literature. They developed two non-credit 6 week courses that started with a reading assignment with posting reactions to a message board. The first choice of content was actually articles on the difficulties of non-native English students. This continued with more readings, discussions in class (slow with many accents, but she had one too!), and writing drafts for practice. The results of questions she asked about how they find articles frequently found Google in the answers.

Finally Lisa Dunn presented a unique program at the Colorado School of Mines in Flexible Information Literacy Strategies for Engineering Design in EPICS. EPICS (Engineering Practices Intro. Course Sequence) has a strong formal relationship to the libraries, it keeps librarians on their toes by having VERY interesting project topics that are decided very near to the library sessions with the project teams (5 teams of 5 for each of 18 sections in 1 week!) The team based library session had a diminishing lecture component, laptop work groups, customizable worksheets that provided multiple tasks for each team to complete in smaller pairs then share with their teammates. Interviews with faculty were positive, but included some contradictory expectations (also advice from Lisa to LISTEN when doing those interviews). She also made sure to address the planning of the project in the context of Marketing, which was useful and insightful.

Two items: 1. Importance of student feedback 2. Donna Beck winner of daily prize drawing

2008-06-24T00:44:00.005-04:00

I attended a portion of a session 1530: Design: Content and Context (Educational Research & Methods Division) in which presenters of a paper addressed issues dealing with the teaching of engineering design to undergraduates, as well as using a design paradigm in the context of curriculum enhancement. One of the issues that was discussed dealt with the importance faculty feedback to students on their submited responses to the given assignements. Just merely providing grades to students make them feel that the faculty members are 'not serious' about their learning or educational achievements. More meaningful and detailed feedback is absolutely necessary.

It reminded me of Sunday afternoon's workshop presentation on 'What Every Librarian Should Know about Assessment' by Gloria Rogers from ABET, in which she pointed out that providing feedback to students on their assignments is extremely critical and important. Good feedback inspires and motivates students to learn those subject areas in which they did not do well before.

I also saw on the ASEE blog that Donna Beck of Carnegie Mellon University won a personal DVD player in the daily prize drawings category. Congratulations, Donna!

ELD Photos 2008

2008-06-24T00:06:00.002-04:00

Thanks to everyone for letting me capture the day and evening activities on "film." Check back throughout the conference for additional photos at my Flickr site : http://www.flickr.com/photos/ieee-upp/sets/

New Tools and Techniques for Information Literacy

2008-06-23T12:38:00.020-04:00

"Using Videos to Teach the Ethical Use of Engineering Information"

William Baer, Wichita State University
Cornered by faculty, who were worried about plagiarism

NSF was also considering mandate requiring copyright education

Expanded the original topic to NSPE Code of Ethics, copyright, and citations

Classroom time is limited, faculty don't want to fit something else in; "WU-torials" were a good fit (WU is the university mascot)

Focused on educational objective, rather than entertainment

Wanted instructors to be able to insert into Blackboard course management system

4 shorter videos = faster download, faculty choice

Got permission to use an existing worksheet about plagiarism available online

Created a test in Blackboard, could be imported into faculty grading if wanted

U.S. citizens scored higher than non-U.S. on both pre/post; but both improved by same # of points, so bigger impact for non-U.S. citizens

Students with ethics class did worse on pre-test (?) but better than other students on post-test

"Smart Searching: an online information fluency tutorial tailored specifically to introductory engineering students"

Eric Resnis, Miami University

Existing tutorials: TILT (Texas Information Literacy Tutorial), Georgetown University's, ACRL's PRIMO (peer-reviewed instructional materials online)

Wanted an engineering-specific tutorial = "Smart Searching: Finding, Citing & Evaluating Information"

"Smart searching" is brand, includes variety of instructional modalities

Each module has: Introduction (learning outcomes), Tools, Techniques, Practice

Printable handout links from within tutorial

"A la carte" content: link to WordPress blog = timely information for students

Tutorial "ads" - worked with technologist librarian to create content management system, output would be clickable image for website that rotate every 10 seconds

2007: Quiz required; created question bank, randomly generated set of 10 questions

http://elearn.lib.muohio.edu/science/eas, /eas102

"Exploring, Reading and Writing Scientific Literature in English: The Non-Native English Speakers' Perspective"

Adriana Popescu, Princeton U.

Heart and soul tools, not technology tools

How librarians can help international students integrating into American educational system

Dictionary of American Idioms - "hit the hay," "hit the ceiling," "horse around," "smell a rat," "pay through the nose," "stick your neck out" - frustrating to communicate

Library terminology - many don't know what "reference" or "interlibrary loan" or "stacks" mean

Princeton: over half of engineering grad students are international; many international students in electrical engineering, economics, and chemistry

Bottom line: solid basic knowledge of resources and services available to them

Faculty want grad students to be able to write; seeing copy/paste problem; may not have had to write as undergrads in their countries

Combine Writing Program, Libraries, engineering college - but students not just in engineering

Goals: experience, understanding of technical communications, collaboration, critical thinking about research articles

Informal: online discussion board for reactions to readings

Formal: 1500 literature review

Met with Writing Center to help them learn about engineering literature - taught how to search databases, helped choose classic papers, talked about scholarly communication and publishing trends, plagiarism

Readings: 2 articles about international students (why less likely to take advantage of resources/services, interact mostly with people of same language/culture)

Asked them how they keep up with their field, how do you get from a citation to finding the paper? (Google)

Assignment: find out where your field conducts its business

Caught their attention: RSS feeds - you can get news from your country every da; Interviews - what were the latest papers published by your interviewers?

"Flexible Info Lit Strategies for Engineering Design in EPICS"

Lisa Dunn, Colorado School of Mines

Our EPICS (Engineering Practices Introductory Course Sequence) doesn't relate to other campuses

Library has formal teaching session for freshman EPICS course; informal support for rest

Information overload: how process and retain?

Projects with real clients; change every semester; information requirements vary

Variety of adjunct faculty - don't know what library can do

Smaller lecture over time, larger team activity component

Set up space with students facing each other, using laptops

Modeled after real world: each person gets a different piece of the project, then communicates with the others

Marketing - awareness (capturing information from your user - not a dialogue) + change + response (demonstrating the benefit) - Pat Wagner, Pattern Research, "Marketing As If Your Library Depended on It"

Generally, instructors noticed enhanced team environment, time on task, finding relevant information

Instructors asked us to do things that we were already doing - communication problem

Different instructors wanted different things

Plenary: Charles Vest, NAE President

2008-06-23T12:31:00.005-04:00

Challenges of the freshman engineering curriculum

1967: how to make 1st year exciting, communicate what engineers do, understand business processes, think about ethics and social responsibility
2008: all these things, plus nano/bio/info, large complex systems, new life-science base, computation/storage capabilities, globalization, innovation, leadership, teamwork across disciplines/fields/nations/cultures, experiential learning (conceive/design/implement/operate), entrepreneurship, product development/manufacturing, sustainable development

The global engineer is...

Technically adept, broadly knowledgeable, innovative and entrepreneurial, commercially savvy, multilingual, culturally aware, able to understand world markets, professionally flexible and mobile

Technology

20th century: physics, electronics, high-speed communications and transportation
21st century: biology and information, energy, water, food, sustainability
Payoff from bridging the frontiers: bio-based materials, biomemetics, personalized/predictive medicine, synthetic biology, biofuels, etc.

1986-2003:

U.S. declined: domestic R&D, scientific publications, S&E BS degrees, new U.S. patents, scientific researchers, new S&E PhDs

Industry

“Venture capital is the search for smart engineers” – venture capitalist friend
“Open innovation” – borrow best ideas from anywhere (Henry Chesbrough, Harvard Business School)
Employment growth driven by small and medium companies

Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering

Based on what works
Engineers are creative problem solvers
Engineering is not static – 21st century science/engineering/medicine interdependent, blending in new ways
Engineering is about systems: nanobio devices to (aging) largescale infrstructure to (adapting to warming) earth itself
Engineering is essential to our health, happiness and safety

Grand Challenges for Engineering

Doable in next few decades
"Advance Personalized Learning"
After 17 years at MIT, I’ve learned: Making exciting, creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding, empowering environments = more important than curricular details
Innovation: CDIO (conceive, design, innovate, operate), UROP/UPOPP (professional opportunity in small companies), WebLab (run real experiments from dorm room), new schools like Olin College, Second Life, mega multi-player games, business plan competitions (how to communicate clearly), studio learning, computer-assisted learning, projects, experiential learning
Digital resources for education: cyberinfrastructure, inexpensive/limitless memory, digital archives (JSTOR, ARTstor, Ithaka, PLOS, Google Library, etc.)
Learning isn’t just sitting in front of a box and listening; role of IT is multidimensional; role of neural/cognitive science – more than putting books on the shelf, even more amazing things to do with IT – very fast, can be modified

U.S. advantage

Rest of world is focused on engineering education as practical subject – U.S. has clear and unrecognized advantage within our universities that mix together arts, humanities, social sciences – adds component to thinking

Question: "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" controversy

National Academies halfway through “America’s Energy Future” study
One uniform document with technical and economic facts for each technology with likelihood of being major players – generation, distribution, conservation
Pursued huge range of funding – no one asked us to do this – didn’t want to be accused of bias based on funder
Taking on another study on global change, asked by Congress – state of science, adaptation strategies
Everything may be okay now, but it won’t be in the future if we don’t work on it now – America Competes Act

Question: What can we do?

#1: Urge you to talk to Congresspeople to keep K-12 education on the front burner
#2: Local action on energy and sustainability issues in health and security context; get young people involved

Get acquainted / special interest information

2008-06-23T08:03:00.004-04:00

Just in case you miss the comment from Patricia to the first post, here's the details on the info folks submitted in advance of this session.

A bit late, but the Member Update and Get Acquainted information has been gathered. I'm sending it out to the ELD list so you will all get it when you get back to your desks. A few copies will be available at the first special session tomorrow (Monday) at 10:30. Join us there and get reacquainted with your peers.

Here is a PDF copy of the gathered information from division members.

ASEE and global collaboration

2008-06-22T22:46:00.003-04:00

Today's PIC IV Division Business meeting reminded me of the new ASEE supported INDO-US Collaboration for Engineering Education initiative.

American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), along with academic and business leaders from leading US and Indian universities have launched an initiative to build US-India collaborations in order to make engineering education and research more relevant to the needs of the global society and to the aptitudes and aspirations ofnew generations of youth.

The 2008 Indo-US Engineering Faculty Leadership Institute commenced on the Infosys campus in Mysore, India on May 26, 2008. The goal of the partnership is to improve the quality and global relevance of engineering education in the U.S. and India.

Souce: ASEE Action Newsletter, June 2008

See also: INDO-US Collaboration for Engineering Education and IUCEE Initiative

Several white papers on topics such as collaboration, curriculum development and teaching engineering through case studies are available at: White Papers

Pictures

2008-06-22T10:26:00.004-04:00

I'll be taking pictures througout the conference. I'll add some of them to the blog, but the others can be found on my flickr site. The set for the conference in Pittsburgh can be seen at the following address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanepa/sets/72157605747656168/

Enjoy!

CUEBALLS Saturday night

2008-06-22T10:10:00.004-04:00

Several ELD members met and headed over to the Pirates game on Saturday night. The evening started quite nicely, and got a bit wet by the end of the game. We were under cover, so that wasn't bad, it was the walk after the game when we got wet.

The Pirates won 6-3 over the Blue Jays.

Workshop: Patents at Mach 2: Technology on the Cutting Edge

2008-06-21T23:41:00.002-04:00

In 2007, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office received a record-breaking 450,000 new patent applications. Worldwide patent filings are on the rise, with innovations in information and computer technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology driving much of the increase. This hands-on workshop will introduce you to advanced techniques and tools for searching patents using case studies from biomedical engineering, biotechnology, electrical and mechanical engineering. You will learn how to use the U.S. and International patent classification systems to improve your search results and explore new online tools for keeping up to date with emerging technologies.

Date: Sunday, June 22nd
Time: 9 am

Location: Benedum Hall, University of Pittsburgh
3700 O'Hara, 12th floor, Room 1221

For more information, handouts and further reading, please refer to:
Patents at Mach 2.0: Technology on the Cutting Edge

Transportation has been arranged so that workshop attendees meet at the Westin Convention Center Hotel, 1000 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA at 7:45 am and leave no later than 8 am. The main entrance to the hotel is on 10th Street not Penn.

Welcome to Pittsburgh!

2008-06-19T13:57:00.002-04:00

Here we are at the start of another ASEE annual conference, this year in Pittsburgh, PA, June 22-25.

Watch this space for updates on conference happenings, session summaries and commentary from members of the Engineering Libraries Division as the conference progresses.

Thanks in advance to all who add content to this blog over the next week and a half.

-Amy
ELD program chair, 2008