Monday, June 23, 2008

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

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