Engineering Information Literacy: Theory and Practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See Dervin’s Sense-making Theory

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

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

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

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

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

Information Literacy Programs for First Year Engineering Students

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

New Collaborations in Engineering Libraries

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.

New Tools and Techniques for Information Literacy

"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