The actual program described in the "C's of our Sea Change" article by Blowers and Reed sounded like great fun. While I was a bit iffy about the facilitators' decision to allow anonymous blogging (it seemed like an invitation to trolling, as far as I was concerned), their idea to reward participants with MP3 players was genius. Not only did it provide a tangible motivation for learners to complete the course, but the choice of prize actually tied in perfectly with the goals of the course. Actually, this seemed to be a constant in all three of the articles--success depends on providing the right kind of carrot. As Fontichiaro noted, teachers in her explorations course got 10 professional development hours, and participants in the Fusion program received a stipend of up to $500. I also now realize where our professor probably got the idea to make us blog about our readings every week.
The actual writing style of the Blowers and Reed article put my teeth on edge, however. The cutesy alliterations and puns, as well as little asides like "see if you can say that three times fast" made me take the authors much less seriously. Apparently they developed a good program as our own professor later modeled on of her own on it, but I think the experiment would have perhaps gotten wider recognition if it had been written in a more professional manner. My reservations aside, however, the authors did present some fairly convincing anecdotal evidence as to the effectiveness of their program. I had no idea librarians sometimes put "out of order" signs on computers because they didn't know the password! If Blowers and Reed were only able to stop this practice, I would still consider the program a success. In reality they went much further, teaching "late bloomers" about Flikr, YouTube, blogging, RSS feeds, downloadable content and more. While their hierarchy of four core competencies seemed a bit lenient (come on, everybody should know how to use a spreadsheet, not just those in public service), the great detail they went into when determining them speaks to a sophisticated understanding of the needs of librarians.
I also really liked their emphasis on "play". This is how I and everyone I know my age learns about new technologies, but people my parents' age seem to be stuck repeating a set of proscribed steps. For example, an older woman I used to work with always kept a notebook on her with numbered lists for a certain program. Every time she had do do something on the computer, like notify a patron that their hold had come in, she would open up her notebook, find the appropriate topic, and then just follow the steps-- 1, 2, 3, 4. If anything unexpected happened, she would either start over from the beginning or just give up. Encouraging exploration and creativity in problem-solving really takes a lot of the scariness out of computers, I think. Once you learn the new lexicon of procedures and phrases inherent to computing, you can apply them in thousands of different ways. Even learning that there is often more than one right way to do something, or that shortcuts exist for a variety of commonplace actions, teaches beginners that the key to successful computing is not memorization, but actual use. Like learning to play an instrument, the more you practice scales and chords, the better you become at improvisation.
On the surface, the Semadeni reading held the least relevance to me as a prospective public or academic librarian. Being explicitly geared towards professional development in the field of primary and secondary education, it focused on some aspects of the teaching career that has no analogue in that of the library. Like teachers, however, librarians have to constantly update their skills and look at new ways of reaching patrons. Learning new teaching strategies for conducting book clubs, webinars, and workshops is just as important for LIS specializations as SLMs. Her comment that with this program "Teachers expenence professional development as an opportunity to learn wiih colleagues rather than something to resent or fear" brought me back to where Blowers' and Reed's "late bloomers" were before their training. It seemed as though they were both afraid of Web 2.0 tools and resentful of their intrusion into the library sphere. By using collaboration, however, all three of these programs made learning new skills less frightening and more exciting. Semadeni's discussions of the laid-back group study sessions divided the time between conversation, discussion, advising and reporting, which seemed to suit the participants just fine.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Webinars and U(seless warranties)
This post is... late. Very late. My computer conked out on me again last weekend (faulty adapter this time) and it took me until Wednesday to get the part shipped in. The process was expensive, frustrating and worrisome, not to mention redolent of deja vu. If you'll recall, something similar happened to me earlier in the semester, immediately after my computer's warranty expired. As far as I'm concerned, this was no coincidence. Of course, all this hand-wringing doesn't explain why I didn't get around to writing until today, but as I don't really have a good answer, we'll just go with shock and trauma--definitely not that I was writing the final paper for 500 instead.
Naturally, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Not only did I conduct my first-ever webinar, but I got to listen to the majority of my class's first forays into this brave new world as well. I've got to say, you all did much better than I. My group's troubles began with a previously-undiscovered incompatibility between Elluminate and Keynote and, despite some fancy footwork, we had a hard time working out all the bugs and getting the presentation underway. I know its rather late in the game for such advise, but if you happen to listen to my group's archived presentation you can probably just skip about the first five minutes as its just us whispering to each other about how to get the webcam working. Add in a healthy dose of public-speaking jitters and the fact that I thought my teammate was mouthing "wrap it up" when he was actually asking for a bit of back-and-forth, and my performance could best be characterized as amateur. So, sorry, teammates and classmates. We're just going to have to chalk this one up to the learning curve. Oh, and speaking of learning: my biggest takeaway was definitely to come prepared for questions. If you don't know, you can always prevaricate or suggest other resources, or, as a last resort, just say so.
Due to my troubles, I wasn't able to participate in any of the webinars live, so I went to the archives on the Wikispace when I finally got my computer back in order to listen to what everybody else had to say. These are the order I watched them in:
The "Three Blind Mice" tutorial also dealt with an underserved sector of the population and had a lot of interesting observations about the library experience of a blind or low vision person. Many of this group's suggestions were eminently practical and insightful. These included such common-sense dictates as "clean up the aisles" and "don't pet the guide-dog" as well as "introduce yourself" so that the patron can later ask for and identify you by name. Following this, I listened to the "Pow-Wow at your Library" webinar, which actually addressed some of the same issues, like sensitivity and the importance of storytime. Other issues were unique to this population. Since Native Americans are not as visible a minority group as others in this country, many libraries still have materials that may be offensive or inaccurate. Stories like "The Bernstein Bears Give Thanks" or "The Indian in the Cupboard", which we all grew up reading, actually contain messages that, upon reflection, do not portray Native Americans all that accurately. I also heard some echoes of my own group's presentation in the Pow-Wow group's exhortations to identify the subgroup living in the library's community. For us, that meant figuring out which country our immigrants came from, while for them it had more to do with specific tribes and reservations.
Lastly, I felt like I should shake things up by including a copyright webinar, so I watched the open access presentation by Amanda, Kayla and Joanna. They had some really interesting things to say about "copyleft" and creative commons, as well as the development of open-access journals. I was especially excited to hear about Senator Lieberman's bill to make publicly-funded research publicly available until they said that he'd been introducing it over and over for years. More heartening was the speed at which open access journals have so far developed readership as opposed to print journals. Even with the "permission crisis" of publishers restricting distribution rights from libraries, I think this trend can go a long way towards making Sen. Lieberman's dream come true.
Naturally, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Not only did I conduct my first-ever webinar, but I got to listen to the majority of my class's first forays into this brave new world as well. I've got to say, you all did much better than I. My group's troubles began with a previously-undiscovered incompatibility between Elluminate and Keynote and, despite some fancy footwork, we had a hard time working out all the bugs and getting the presentation underway. I know its rather late in the game for such advise, but if you happen to listen to my group's archived presentation you can probably just skip about the first five minutes as its just us whispering to each other about how to get the webcam working. Add in a healthy dose of public-speaking jitters and the fact that I thought my teammate was mouthing "wrap it up" when he was actually asking for a bit of back-and-forth, and my performance could best be characterized as amateur. So, sorry, teammates and classmates. We're just going to have to chalk this one up to the learning curve. Oh, and speaking of learning: my biggest takeaway was definitely to come prepared for questions. If you don't know, you can always prevaricate or suggest other resources, or, as a last resort, just say so.
Due to my troubles, I wasn't able to participate in any of the webinars live, so I went to the archives on the Wikispace when I finally got my computer back in order to listen to what everybody else had to say. These are the order I watched them in:
- Is Access a Civil Right?
- Three Blind Mice
- Pow-wow at Your Library: Serving Native American Youth
- Open Access: Less Money, Less Problems
The "Three Blind Mice" tutorial also dealt with an underserved sector of the population and had a lot of interesting observations about the library experience of a blind or low vision person. Many of this group's suggestions were eminently practical and insightful. These included such common-sense dictates as "clean up the aisles" and "don't pet the guide-dog" as well as "introduce yourself" so that the patron can later ask for and identify you by name. Following this, I listened to the "Pow-Wow at your Library" webinar, which actually addressed some of the same issues, like sensitivity and the importance of storytime. Other issues were unique to this population. Since Native Americans are not as visible a minority group as others in this country, many libraries still have materials that may be offensive or inaccurate. Stories like "The Bernstein Bears Give Thanks" or "The Indian in the Cupboard", which we all grew up reading, actually contain messages that, upon reflection, do not portray Native Americans all that accurately. I also heard some echoes of my own group's presentation in the Pow-Wow group's exhortations to identify the subgroup living in the library's community. For us, that meant figuring out which country our immigrants came from, while for them it had more to do with specific tribes and reservations.
Lastly, I felt like I should shake things up by including a copyright webinar, so I watched the open access presentation by Amanda, Kayla and Joanna. They had some really interesting things to say about "copyleft" and creative commons, as well as the development of open-access journals. I was especially excited to hear about Senator Lieberman's bill to make publicly-funded research publicly available until they said that he'd been introducing it over and over for years. More heartening was the speed at which open access journals have so far developed readership as opposed to print journals. Even with the "permission crisis" of publishers restricting distribution rights from libraries, I think this trend can go a long way towards making Sen. Lieberman's dream come true.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
I Keep Running Out of Characters
Like everybody else, I signed up for Twitter last week in order to have something to write about in this blog post. To be honest, I had a twitter account even before this, but I had used it a total of two times-- once to post something to the display in the SI lounge and once because I thought, like Facebook, you needed an account in order to access other people's comments/tweets. This is the first time I've actually explored any of the features. The first thing I noticed: its really hard to say something substantive in 140 characters! I kept running out and then having to go back over my tweets and either abbreviate words or take out whole phrases. I also didn't know that hashtags and other users' names counted towards this limit so I'd go right up against the wall and then remember that I had to include #si643. I also wasn't entirely certain what the content of my tweets should be. I mean, the famous people that I started following apparently have no problem telling the world about their illnesses or cursing their spellchecker, but surely if this is an assignment, I should be discussing weighty matters of professional practice? Not so! After ten minutes on Twitter, I now know that where my classmates will be spending their Sundays, what their opinions are on April Fools Day jokes, and how much they love flossing (actually, I don't think the last one had an SI hashtag, so it probably doesn't count).
Visiting the links that everybody's been putting up has been fun, although this format kind of feels like an expanded version of si.all. The jury's still out on whether I would use twitter regularly in my library career but I did just recommend the other day that my pastor (who's a total Facebook addict) use it to get the word out on her service opportunities and study sessions. Generally, this format--tweets generated by an organization instead of an individual-- seemed more useful to me. As celebrities tweets are constantly getting them into trouble and judging by the amount of personal information I've seen posted in my network, it seems that people have a hard time fully understanding just how public their random thoughts will become when they hit the "tweet" button. Twitter accounts controlled by so-and-so's marketing department, on the other hand, really get that they represent the public face of the company/institution/organization they're tweeting about, which tends to make their posts both more boring and less trivial.
As for class last week, I quite enjoyed the heated discussion on embedded librarianship. I agree that this really is an issue more of use to academic libraries than public ones, but it was still interesting to hear about different people's opinions. I'm still not convinced that sending a librarian with a physician to do rounds is going to make much of an impact unless said librarian also has a medical degree, but I can also see where it would be of great benefit to specialized collections and insular academic communities such as a music library or business school. Also, I agree with Kristen that the book club assignment was more geared in our (prospective public librarians') direction, so everything balances out.
Even though Courant already presented in SI 500 and we had to read one of his articles for class, I really enjoyed him taking the time just to answer questions. People came up with some really interesting ideas, and he had really interesting answers. Its obvious that he's thought about all this stuff in depth and has formed deep opinions about how to keep libraries viable. Also-- the Espresso Book Machine is AWESOME. 'nuff said.
Visiting the links that everybody's been putting up has been fun, although this format kind of feels like an expanded version of si.all. The jury's still out on whether I would use twitter regularly in my library career but I did just recommend the other day that my pastor (who's a total Facebook addict) use it to get the word out on her service opportunities and study sessions. Generally, this format--tweets generated by an organization instead of an individual-- seemed more useful to me. As celebrities tweets are constantly getting them into trouble and judging by the amount of personal information I've seen posted in my network, it seems that people have a hard time fully understanding just how public their random thoughts will become when they hit the "tweet" button. Twitter accounts controlled by so-and-so's marketing department, on the other hand, really get that they represent the public face of the company/institution/organization they're tweeting about, which tends to make their posts both more boring and less trivial.
As for class last week, I quite enjoyed the heated discussion on embedded librarianship. I agree that this really is an issue more of use to academic libraries than public ones, but it was still interesting to hear about different people's opinions. I'm still not convinced that sending a librarian with a physician to do rounds is going to make much of an impact unless said librarian also has a medical degree, but I can also see where it would be of great benefit to specialized collections and insular academic communities such as a music library or business school. Also, I agree with Kristen that the book club assignment was more geared in our (prospective public librarians') direction, so everything balances out.
Even though Courant already presented in SI 500 and we had to read one of his articles for class, I really enjoyed him taking the time just to answer questions. People came up with some really interesting ideas, and he had really interesting answers. Its obvious that he's thought about all this stuff in depth and has formed deep opinions about how to keep libraries viable. Also-- the Espresso Book Machine is AWESOME. 'nuff said.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Webinars: For When You Need to Have Class in a Snowstorm
In honor of our other readings this week, I chose a webinar from EdWeek called Virtual Challenge: Creating Quality E-Courses. Since it was an archived webinar, I basically got to watch a PowerPoint slideshow with a voice-over, but it was still interesting. Honestly, I've never been in a college class that's taken advantage of these resources for their on-line classes, and my grades have suffered for it. The entire time I was in undergrad, I took a couple of on-line classes over the summer while working. I can tell you right now that every one of these courses averaged an entire letter-grade lower than my face-to-face classes and I still blame them for keeping me from graduating with honors (I was 0.02 points away!).
Anyway, this was a really well put-together webinar moderated by Michelle Davis, somebody I've never heard of but Kristen probably rode in an elevator with once. There were two other presenters as well--Greg Marks and Debbi Crabtree, and they presented a really in-depth study that to be honest I kind of tuned out but which they seemed really excited about. While the types of on-line courses they were talking about were not the sort I had any experience with, being primarily aimed at younger learners, some of the quality-control measures they proposed really made sense to me. One thing they emphasized over and over was motivational framing--making the student want to complete the course without having a teacher actually there to get in their face about it. This was especially important because a lot of the kids they were targeting were ones who had failed a class during the regular school year and had to retake it during the summer. In Crabtree's study, 83% who enrolled successfully completed their courses. Crabtree and Davis also emphasized the importance of making students feel unique, not just like one of the crowd. Teachers could do this by sending out emails which addressed the student by name, or giving them in-depth feedback on assignments (also something I never received).
As for the Matos reading: a) I had never heard of embedded librarianship before this and b) I now really want to know more about it. Honestly, I'm not sure its for me, though, as schmoozing faculty members and getting my name out there really isn't my strong suit. I know I'll have to interact with real people as a librarian, but I'd hope not to this extent, maybe? (Yes, this is totally unrealistic. Yes, I was one of those kids who thought being a librarian meant reading books all day. Yes, I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that this is not the case. Give me time.)
Then there's also the Montgomery and How People Learn readings, but I'm kind of running out time and I'd really like to finish up by talking about our workshops last week. So: maybe our workshop didn't kick all the butt I thought it would, but it was still pretty darn cool. I was glad that we went with the all-pictures slide show, since making our fellow students do a lot of reading in the six minutes (six minutes!) we'd allotted for the lecture section seemed a bit much on top of our very detailed scenario questions. I did most of the talking for that first six minutes, and luckily did not have one of my deer-in-the-headlights moments. There were a few more "ums" and "ahs" than I was comfortable with, but generally I think I conveyed the information that I set out to. The scenarios discussions were likewise very lively and engaging. I'm glad people really seemed to get into them. We tried to make them both as open-ended as possible, but one participant reported that his/hers seemed closed. Maybe we could do some tweaking, but I'm pretty satisfied with how that part went. The lecture section, however, proved problematic in feedback. I've come to the conclusion that given the short amount of time we had, we might have been better off to cut it all-together as I was only able to do a very surface gloss on the subject. Honestly, I don't think I gave them much in the way of new information. In order to do that, we would have needed to cut the scenarios all-together, and I think they were the stronger of the two sections. They certainly garnered some interesting results.
Anyway, this was a really well put-together webinar moderated by Michelle Davis, somebody I've never heard of but Kristen probably rode in an elevator with once. There were two other presenters as well--Greg Marks and Debbi Crabtree, and they presented a really in-depth study that to be honest I kind of tuned out but which they seemed really excited about. While the types of on-line courses they were talking about were not the sort I had any experience with, being primarily aimed at younger learners, some of the quality-control measures they proposed really made sense to me. One thing they emphasized over and over was motivational framing--making the student want to complete the course without having a teacher actually there to get in their face about it. This was especially important because a lot of the kids they were targeting were ones who had failed a class during the regular school year and had to retake it during the summer. In Crabtree's study, 83% who enrolled successfully completed their courses. Crabtree and Davis also emphasized the importance of making students feel unique, not just like one of the crowd. Teachers could do this by sending out emails which addressed the student by name, or giving them in-depth feedback on assignments (also something I never received).
As for the Matos reading: a) I had never heard of embedded librarianship before this and b) I now really want to know more about it. Honestly, I'm not sure its for me, though, as schmoozing faculty members and getting my name out there really isn't my strong suit. I know I'll have to interact with real people as a librarian, but I'd hope not to this extent, maybe? (Yes, this is totally unrealistic. Yes, I was one of those kids who thought being a librarian meant reading books all day. Yes, I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that this is not the case. Give me time.)
Then there's also the Montgomery and How People Learn readings, but I'm kind of running out time and I'd really like to finish up by talking about our workshops last week. So: maybe our workshop didn't kick all the butt I thought it would, but it was still pretty darn cool. I was glad that we went with the all-pictures slide show, since making our fellow students do a lot of reading in the six minutes (six minutes!) we'd allotted for the lecture section seemed a bit much on top of our very detailed scenario questions. I did most of the talking for that first six minutes, and luckily did not have one of my deer-in-the-headlights moments. There were a few more "ums" and "ahs" than I was comfortable with, but generally I think I conveyed the information that I set out to. The scenarios discussions were likewise very lively and engaging. I'm glad people really seemed to get into them. We tried to make them both as open-ended as possible, but one participant reported that his/hers seemed closed. Maybe we could do some tweaking, but I'm pretty satisfied with how that part went. The lecture section, however, proved problematic in feedback. I've come to the conclusion that given the short amount of time we had, we might have been better off to cut it all-together as I was only able to do a very surface gloss on the subject. Honestly, I don't think I gave them much in the way of new information. In order to do that, we would have needed to cut the scenarios all-together, and I think they were the stronger of the two sections. They certainly garnered some interesting results.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
I Have Five Minutes to Talk at You, So Listen Up (pleez)
My group is finishing up our preparations for the workshop as I speak and the thing that struck me the most about getting ready is just how little time we actually have. Joanna, Brett and I figured that what with activities, introductions, evaluations, etc. we'd only have about five minutes of pure info-dump time at our disposal. Believe me, we intend to make that time count. I even made a useless little PowerPoint to give our participants something fun to stare at as I motormouth.
I have to admit, reading the Mosley article a week late was actually kind of beneficial for me (plus, her first name is actually Pixey, which just about made my week). It helped me put things into perspective as we threw together all the last-minute touches on our workshop. Don't get the idea from all this talk of night-before planning that we procrastinated on this assignment. No, we met last Wednesday and last Saturday. I would just like to reiterate: I got up on a Saturday for 643. Our workshop is going to kick butt.
As for last week's class, I'm still in the "ooh, shiny new technology" phase as far as elluminate is concerned. It was really useful to get a feel for what our webinars will look like on the other side when the time comes. I also took a peek at a couple other classmates' blogs before writing this, and I think I agree with most of what they said about the experience; namely, that the conversation got a little chaotic and we might have gotten more out of it if we could have used all of elluminate's features. It was pretty weird for her to be able to see but not hear us and for us to be able to hear but not see her. On the other hand, we got to talk to a real-life library blogger who was knowledgeable and articulate and totally didn't treat us like children. You know you've grown up when the grown ups take you seriously.
I have to admit, reading the Mosley article a week late was actually kind of beneficial for me (plus, her first name is actually Pixey, which just about made my week). It helped me put things into perspective as we threw together all the last-minute touches on our workshop. Don't get the idea from all this talk of night-before planning that we procrastinated on this assignment. No, we met last Wednesday and last Saturday. I would just like to reiterate: I got up on a Saturday for 643. Our workshop is going to kick butt.
As for last week's class, I'm still in the "ooh, shiny new technology" phase as far as elluminate is concerned. It was really useful to get a feel for what our webinars will look like on the other side when the time comes. I also took a peek at a couple other classmates' blogs before writing this, and I think I agree with most of what they said about the experience; namely, that the conversation got a little chaotic and we might have gotten more out of it if we could have used all of elluminate's features. It was pretty weird for her to be able to see but not hear us and for us to be able to hear but not see her. On the other hand, we got to talk to a real-life library blogger who was knowledgeable and articulate and totally didn't treat us like children. You know you've grown up when the grown ups take you seriously.
Anecdata
...is my new favorite made-up word, a la Jason Griffey! Obviously, the HarperCollins/Overdrive debate has generated a lot of blow-back by librarians who feel that the doctrine of first sale is under attack (I mean, even Neil Gaiman is involved!), as well as calming voices and outright HC supporters. My favorite posts, however, came from Griffey and the awesomely-named BeerBrarian. The first posits that the 27-patron cut-off will have very little effect on most libraries bottom lines, as few books ever really circulate that often. The second contends that in the digital age, why do we need publishers, anyway? I must admit, I was a bit skeptical of this theory, until I heard an explanation from one of the panelists at the Day in the Life of a Forward-Thinking Librarian presentation last Friday. According to him, authors--like musicians before them--are soon going to start realizing that they can make more money selling $0.99 e-books to more people than by using the inflated pricing systems that publishers are currently pushing on them to make e-book analogous to print books. Judging by the success of established artists like Coldplay, who recently released their latest album on the web, I can see this trend accelerating in the near future. With the way the internet is currently blurring the lines between traditionally-vetted and self-published authors/ artists/ musicians, it makes sense that ye olde publishing industry is flailing around trying to find solid ground--even if that means violating the sacred statute of first sale.
Jason Griffey's post, on the other hand, I found to be much less useful, especially in light of the Pioneer Library System's YouTube demonstration. Griffey, as he freely admits, makes use more of "anecdata" than statistics. Additionally, his library seems to have unusually low circulation rates, in addition to being an academic library, which receives fewer checkouts of each title anyway. The PLS video, on the other hand, provides concrete and compelling--if cherry-picked-- data as to the longevity of popular HC print books versus their ebook counterparts. One hardcover, which admittedly had some spinal damage, had circulated 120 times. Of the five books profiled, the library would have had to buy 12 additional copies if they had been e-books. That's pretty convincing evidence of the arbitrary and unscientific nature of the 26-checkout rule.
As to the other readings, Mosley and the ALA code of Ethics, I'm not quite sure what to make of them. The Mosley reading is old enough that some of the specifics of her workshop has lost relevancy (students don't use the library in the same way today as they did in 1998). On the other hand, the need to liaise with professors handing out "library assignments" remains high, and the overall report provides a great example of a successful workshop, which was probably the reason we had to read it anyway. The article also made me think back to my favorite library assignment in undergrad, where my film instructor told us all to go out and watch a movie from the 1930s and then find the press-packet associated with that film (which our library had on microfilm), scan the materials into a PDF document, then write a paper on the marketing of that film and submit along with the PDF.
The Code of Ethics wasn't especially earth-shattering, either. It said basically what I expected it to, taking a hard line on censorship and patron privacy, as well as all other best-practice stuff that can be found in just about any institution's mission statement. I did, however, really appreciate statement VII: "We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources." If only pharmacists had to adhere to this doctrine, instead of being able to deny birth control and Plan B to customers because of their religious beliefs. Libraries, like the medical system, have a duty to the public that goes beyond our own petty biases and preconceptions.
As for last week's class (actually two weeks ago because this post is mega-late), I quite enjoyed my group's book discussion. Between the nine of us, we took up the entire three-hour bloc, which speaks, I think, to our appreciation of the material. I especially enjoyed preparing the passage from Ovid, and that group's insightful questions. In evaluating our own performance, my group identified several areas we could improve upon for the upcoming workshop.
Jason Griffey's post, on the other hand, I found to be much less useful, especially in light of the Pioneer Library System's YouTube demonstration. Griffey, as he freely admits, makes use more of "anecdata" than statistics. Additionally, his library seems to have unusually low circulation rates, in addition to being an academic library, which receives fewer checkouts of each title anyway. The PLS video, on the other hand, provides concrete and compelling--if cherry-picked-- data as to the longevity of popular HC print books versus their ebook counterparts. One hardcover, which admittedly had some spinal damage, had circulated 120 times. Of the five books profiled, the library would have had to buy 12 additional copies if they had been e-books. That's pretty convincing evidence of the arbitrary and unscientific nature of the 26-checkout rule.
As to the other readings, Mosley and the ALA code of Ethics, I'm not quite sure what to make of them. The Mosley reading is old enough that some of the specifics of her workshop has lost relevancy (students don't use the library in the same way today as they did in 1998). On the other hand, the need to liaise with professors handing out "library assignments" remains high, and the overall report provides a great example of a successful workshop, which was probably the reason we had to read it anyway. The article also made me think back to my favorite library assignment in undergrad, where my film instructor told us all to go out and watch a movie from the 1930s and then find the press-packet associated with that film (which our library had on microfilm), scan the materials into a PDF document, then write a paper on the marketing of that film and submit along with the PDF.
The Code of Ethics wasn't especially earth-shattering, either. It said basically what I expected it to, taking a hard line on censorship and patron privacy, as well as all other best-practice stuff that can be found in just about any institution's mission statement. I did, however, really appreciate statement VII: "We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources." If only pharmacists had to adhere to this doctrine, instead of being able to deny birth control and Plan B to customers because of their religious beliefs. Libraries, like the medical system, have a duty to the public that goes beyond our own petty biases and preconceptions.
As for last week's class (actually two weeks ago because this post is mega-late), I quite enjoyed my group's book discussion. Between the nine of us, we took up the entire three-hour bloc, which speaks, I think, to our appreciation of the material. I especially enjoyed preparing the passage from Ovid, and that group's insightful questions. In evaluating our own performance, my group identified several areas we could improve upon for the upcoming workshop.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Hearts, continued
Sorry, I apparently forgot to comment on the Card Catalog Poetry Project in my previous blog post. So, quickly: the entries by Robin Harris consist of four short free-verse poems written on catalog cards. Some refer to the books indexed on the card while others are more concerned with the melancholy nostalgia involved in trading in file cabinets for computer files. To be honest, I couldn't quite decipher her handwriting on number 3, and having never used actual cards in my library work, didn't identify much with the sentiment. Harris does seem to have a gift for growing imagery out of a sparse crop of words, however. What I really want to know is what the multi-colored recycling stamps mean, though.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Is This Your Card? Hearts Book Club
As my assigned suit is hearts (and I have nothing better to do over spring break), I prepared the following materials for our book clubs and socratic seminars next Monday:
I also had some background knowlege of the events referred to by Penelope in her letter to Ulysseus (isn't this ususally spelled Odysseus? As in Odyssey?), but apparently not enough to understand anything in the second paragraph. After a little research into Antilochus, Menoetius, and Tlepolemus, I think I get that Penelope was worried for her husband during the Trojan war. Honestly, I'd never really thought about her plight while her husband was off battling cyclops and lotus eaters for, what was it, fourteen years? I wonder if it would be sacrilege to compare Ovid to some sort of ancient fan fiction writer.
- "Hansel and Gretel" by the Brothers Grimm
- "Heroides 1 (Penelope to Ulysseus)" by Ovid
- Robin Harris' contributions to the Card Catalogue Poetry Project
- and, of course, my own group's offerings: Tiger by William Blake and Design by Robert Frost
I also had some background knowlege of the events referred to by Penelope in her letter to Ulysseus (isn't this ususally spelled Odysseus? As in Odyssey?), but apparently not enough to understand anything in the second paragraph. After a little research into Antilochus, Menoetius, and Tlepolemus, I think I get that Penelope was worried for her husband during the Trojan war. Honestly, I'd never really thought about her plight while her husband was off battling cyclops and lotus eaters for, what was it, fourteen years? I wonder if it would be sacrilege to compare Ovid to some sort of ancient fan fiction writer.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Take-away: "The World Is Too Much With Us" Is Not About Natural Disasters
Okay, I'm going to vary my format a little bit this week, since there's just so much going on. I'll just give you some of my reactions to the writings as I read them, instead of trying to do an in-depth summary and analysis on one or two. This is probably the way I should have been doing things from the start, but I've always had a hard time following directions.
Let’s start with Robert Darnton's "The Library: Three Jeremiads". Not really a fan of Mr. Darnton's. First of all, I had to go look up the word jeremiad, and while I'm all for word-of-the-day calendars, putting something so obscure and classical in your title just makes me think you've been trapped in the ivory tower too long. Secondly, Monsieur Darnton apparently didn't know what a business plan was until 1999. How on Earth could he be president of the American Historical Society and not know this?! Libraries and museums are not exempted from having to deal with money and planning for the future just because they give out information for free. Lastly, he just didn't have anything original to say. Anyone in library school can tell you that the terrible price-gouging perpetrated upon libraries by serials publishers is a grave injustice. Yes, creating a national digital library is a good idea. The only people who are going to argue with you about that are the ones you've already pissed off by calling (justifiably) terrible price-gougers. No, Google doesn't necessarily have the best interest of libraries at heart; they're a multi-national, multi-billion-dollar company (admittedly, one whose unofficial motto is "don't be evil"). These are not particularly new problems and don't, in my opinion, require 4000 histrionic and self-congratulatory words in the New York Review of Books. Instead of dusting off the old lamentations, we as librarians need to swallow our outrage and figure out how to survive, even thrive, in this brave new unfair world.
I'd like to preface my discussion of the next reading by acknowledging that I have knee-jerk reaction to disagree with opinionated authors. While I found Metzger's "Teaching Reading" to be condescending and gimmicky, I can acknowledge that her repurposing of the Socratic seminar for use in High School classrooms has had an impact on the teaching of the humanities. If I hadn’t participated in sessions such as these myself as a High Schooler, I might have been more skeptical because of my dislike for the author’s tone. I especially disliked the way she referred to her students as "outrageously confused", once laughed aloud at their interpretations, and offered many "amusing" anecdotes about their mistakes. Additionally, her set-in-stone declaration at the beginning of the piece (“Five years ago I solved the problem”) reminded me uncomfortably of the blithe testimonials offered by infomercials and weight-loss plans.
In contrast, Tredway’s take on Socratic seminars came from a much more optimistic place. Even though Metzger asserted that literature cannot be treated like a math problem, consisting of only one right answer, she had no problem saying, “although the boy’s enthusiasm was cute, his notion was wrong” when a student exclaimed about the universality of literary meaning. Tredway, on the other hand, has a much more lenient view on what is right and what is wrong in literary analysis. I cannot imagine her laughing at her student’s interpretation of Ozymandias. Something that she just briefly touched on, but which has come up in previous readings, also intrigued me: “contrary to popular notion, self-esteem ‘training’ will not bolster academic achievement”. YES. I’ve thought this for years, so it’s great to finally get some backup. Students (whether in a school or a one-shot workshop) achieve confidence through succeeding and speaking up, not just being told that they’re valuable human beings no matter what they do. We’re all born with value—what matters is how we stretch and challenge ourselves.
In response to “The Book Club Explosion”, I’ll simply remark upon the fact that I had not previously thought of the complexities of getting 20 free copies of the same book in the same location at the same time. Kudos to the creative librarians who thought up book club kits and having members of a group read several different books for the same discussion.
Re class last week: loved the pervasive reminders by dead-faced children that we were spending Valentine's Day evening in the basement of North Quad. Also, the example about the High School teacher using the Egyptian protests to compare and contrast with the French Revolution really clarified the issue of transference for me.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Story Problems, or How I Learned to Stop Imagining and Love the Math
Just so you know, I hate math. I love Dr. Strangelove, but I hate math. The only thing I hate more than math, however, is story problems. You know what I'm talking about. Story problems are those questions you get at the end of the exam, when you're discouraged and your hand is cramped and you're thinking exclusively in numbers, that suddenly ask you who will get to Baltimore first if Mrs. Bennett leaves on the 6:35 train from Hartford traveling at 60 miles an hour and Mr. Darcy leaves on the 7:10 train from New York traveling at 75 miles per hour. You don't have to answer that. In fact, please don't; my intention was never to spread the misery of the story problem.
Anyway, imagine my surprise when I did the readings for this week's class and discovered that the poor story problem is actually considered superior to many other methods of teaching. In fact, the story problem is something of an innovation in getting kids to transfer "school learnin'" into everyday experiences. Looking back, I guess the problem I always had with story problems is that, despite the desperate attempts of their writers, they seldom had anything to do with real life. I can assure you that never in my life will I need to know the area of grass a goat tied to the side of a barn can eat (this was an actual question from a high school geometry exam). The worst, however, were the names. The writers seemed to assume that I would be more motivated to solve the inane questions of fictional children if they were called Lakshmi or Tomeeka or Nell. Being as I was a rather fanciful child, I spent much more time constructing back-stories and personalities for my carefully multicultural new friends than discovering the most cost-effective blend of lemon juice, sugar, and water for their lemonade stand.
My nostalgic annoyances aside, there's no reason why learning designed to create understanding and transfer can't be fun or effective. I think the biggest objection I had to story problems as a child was the lack of effort and creativity they exhibited. The technique of relating abstract ideas to instances from everyday life looses all flavor when made trivial or general enough to be understood by the entirety of a textbook audience. Luckily, for us future librarians, we'll be doing most of our teaching where no textbook has gone before. Whether in face-to-face instructional workshops or even through chat messaging or webinars, we'll be able to assess our audience beforehand, ask questions of them to determine their current knowledge of the subject, and apply it in ways that could very well have a meaningful impact on their lives. After all, our students don't have to be there--they're responding to internal motivations and actually want to learn.
If I were, for example, teaching a group of senior citizens to use EBay (thanks Prof. Fontichiaro, this will now always be my go-to example), I would start by comparing it to an auction house or estate sale--something that they already understand and can use as a base for further learning. Then, after a quick description of the basics (how to get to the web page, how to create an account and navigate the site), we could jump right into learning by doing. This is also where the personal contact and feedback come into play--the teacher has to be available to provide (this should be familiar) formative assessment and individual help.
Oh, and P.S.: On a completely different note, since I'm apparently supposed to have been referencing the lectures all along (sorry!), here's a few thoughts/ things that stood out from last week:
I used the names Mrs. Bennett and Mr. Darcy in my problem specifically because of the JaneAustenAtTheSuperBowl tweet--video games can change the world--always use an even number of options when giving surveys to nice people--I really want to be in the position someday where I can make people do the human thermometer--and, on a serious note, my Big Hairy Audacious Belief is that libraries are where story problems go when, having led a good life, they die and are reincarnated as literature.
Anyway, imagine my surprise when I did the readings for this week's class and discovered that the poor story problem is actually considered superior to many other methods of teaching. In fact, the story problem is something of an innovation in getting kids to transfer "school learnin'" into everyday experiences. Looking back, I guess the problem I always had with story problems is that, despite the desperate attempts of their writers, they seldom had anything to do with real life. I can assure you that never in my life will I need to know the area of grass a goat tied to the side of a barn can eat (this was an actual question from a high school geometry exam). The worst, however, were the names. The writers seemed to assume that I would be more motivated to solve the inane questions of fictional children if they were called Lakshmi or Tomeeka or Nell. Being as I was a rather fanciful child, I spent much more time constructing back-stories and personalities for my carefully multicultural new friends than discovering the most cost-effective blend of lemon juice, sugar, and water for their lemonade stand.
My nostalgic annoyances aside, there's no reason why learning designed to create understanding and transfer can't be fun or effective. I think the biggest objection I had to story problems as a child was the lack of effort and creativity they exhibited. The technique of relating abstract ideas to instances from everyday life looses all flavor when made trivial or general enough to be understood by the entirety of a textbook audience. Luckily, for us future librarians, we'll be doing most of our teaching where no textbook has gone before. Whether in face-to-face instructional workshops or even through chat messaging or webinars, we'll be able to assess our audience beforehand, ask questions of them to determine their current knowledge of the subject, and apply it in ways that could very well have a meaningful impact on their lives. After all, our students don't have to be there--they're responding to internal motivations and actually want to learn.
If I were, for example, teaching a group of senior citizens to use EBay (thanks Prof. Fontichiaro, this will now always be my go-to example), I would start by comparing it to an auction house or estate sale--something that they already understand and can use as a base for further learning. Then, after a quick description of the basics (how to get to the web page, how to create an account and navigate the site), we could jump right into learning by doing. This is also where the personal contact and feedback come into play--the teacher has to be available to provide (this should be familiar) formative assessment and individual help.
Oh, and P.S.: On a completely different note, since I'm apparently supposed to have been referencing the lectures all along (sorry!), here's a few thoughts/ things that stood out from last week:
I used the names Mrs. Bennett and Mr. Darcy in my problem specifically because of the JaneAustenAtTheSuperBowl tweet--video games can change the world--always use an even number of options when giving surveys to nice people--I really want to be in the position someday where I can make people do the human thermometer--and, on a serious note, my Big Hairy Audacious Belief is that libraries are where story problems go when, having led a good life, they die and are reincarnated as literature.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
I Never Knew Grading Was So Complicated
In summation, our readings for this week dealt largely with the idea of "formative assessment"--essentially, teaching students to evaluate their learning and take steps to square it with the goals of the course over a period of study. In contrast to summative learning--the traditional letter or percentage grade that students get at the end of the year-- formative assessment seeks to get learners interested in their own progress. By helping them to identify the metacognitive processes at play in their learning experiences, Sadler, in his 1989 essay "Formative Assessment and the Design of Instructional Systems" thinks students can better "bridge the gap", as he says, between merely mediocre or formulaic work and well-crafted, creative products. For the most part, he addresses these issues in terms of student compositions and essays, where the line between what makes a good and a bad piece of writing becomes somewhat "fuzzy". Teachers should, he advises, start out with a solid framework: a set of expectations described through examples and standards. The criteria that teachers then use when grading these assignments are a significant secondary topic for Sadler, and he goes into great detail describing the thought processes and strategies behind making these "multicriterion judgments". The most important topic, however, is what happens after--how instructors communicate areas for improvement to their students and help them bring their work up to snuff. Since the article is almost entirely theory and philosophy, Sadler doesn't offer many practical tactics to achieve this, instead saying, "providing guided but direct and authentic evaluative experience for students enables them to develop their evaluative knowledge". He concludes by implying that in order to close the gap, students simply need to gain experience--to fail often enough, and in different enough ways, that they can identify all these different detractors in their work during future endeavors.
The How People Learn chapter offers much more concrete advise. In "The Design of Learning Environments", the authors discuss the importance of integrating learner-, knowledge- and assessment-driven learning. In addition to taking into account the developmental and personal abilities of individual students, they present several examples of cultural misunderstandings and effective teachers using the cultural and community backgrounds of their students in order to make learning connections. They also address formative assessment more loosely, as feedback, and stress the importance of integration in all aspects of learning.
I can see where formative assessment would be of great use in a library instructional setting. In one-shot workshops and information literacy tutorials, most of the librarian's students won't be sticking around for more than a few sessions. Giving them letter grades at the end of these classes would be completely ineffective, whereas allowing them to build on and learn from their mistakes could result in a higher rate of comprehension. Additionally, most of the library patrons likely to show up to such a session would be doing so voluntarily--the often-necessary motivator of grades would have no bearing.
In this scenario, the How People Learn reading is, at least on the face of it, much more useful to library instructors than Sadler's. After all, the first refers almost exclusively to assessment of written works (which, while perhaps found in some library environments, would not be the main focus of instructional programming) while the second offers concrete, practical advise on how to relate to students of different culture and integrate the things they learn into their community life. However, Sadler's theories better describe the inner life of the evaluator, and how her implicit judgments seem to migrate, as if by osmosis, to her students. Taking into account his exhortations to provide examples, criteria, and specific task definitions, as well as the ongoing teaching tactics provided by How People Learn, I feel I have a much better idea now of how to teach my hypothetical future library patrons with their learning aforethought.
The How People Learn chapter offers much more concrete advise. In "The Design of Learning Environments", the authors discuss the importance of integrating learner-, knowledge- and assessment-driven learning. In addition to taking into account the developmental and personal abilities of individual students, they present several examples of cultural misunderstandings and effective teachers using the cultural and community backgrounds of their students in order to make learning connections. They also address formative assessment more loosely, as feedback, and stress the importance of integration in all aspects of learning.
I can see where formative assessment would be of great use in a library instructional setting. In one-shot workshops and information literacy tutorials, most of the librarian's students won't be sticking around for more than a few sessions. Giving them letter grades at the end of these classes would be completely ineffective, whereas allowing them to build on and learn from their mistakes could result in a higher rate of comprehension. Additionally, most of the library patrons likely to show up to such a session would be doing so voluntarily--the often-necessary motivator of grades would have no bearing.
In this scenario, the How People Learn reading is, at least on the face of it, much more useful to library instructors than Sadler's. After all, the first refers almost exclusively to assessment of written works (which, while perhaps found in some library environments, would not be the main focus of instructional programming) while the second offers concrete, practical advise on how to relate to students of different culture and integrate the things they learn into their community life. However, Sadler's theories better describe the inner life of the evaluator, and how her implicit judgments seem to migrate, as if by osmosis, to her students. Taking into account his exhortations to provide examples, criteria, and specific task definitions, as well as the ongoing teaching tactics provided by How People Learn, I feel I have a much better idea now of how to teach my hypothetical future library patrons with their learning aforethought.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Wacky Screencast Week
Check out my screencast assignment: SI_643_Screencast,_International_Children's_Digita
The information literacy articles I consulted for this week’s class are all from the Library Quarterly, probably because its the only library journal archived in JSTOR. Full citations are as follows:
Bertot, John Carlo, Charles R. McClure and Paul T. Jaeger. “The Impacts of Free Public Internet Access on Public Library Patrons and Communities,” Library Quarterly 78/3 (2008).
Julien, Heidi and Cameron Hoffman. “Information Literacy Training in Canada’s Public Libraries”, Library Quarterly 78/1 (2008).
Patterson, David. “Information Literacy and Community College Students: Using New Approaches to Literacy Theory to Produce Equity,” Library Quarterly 79/3 (2009).
Contrary to my initial assumptions, the first article (“Impacts of Free Public Internet”) does not take the stance that free public internet access at public libraries is a universally essential and positive service. Mostly, this comes down to budgetary concerns. The authors of the article clearly believe that libraries can better use their money to buy print materials instead of maintaining the hardware and infrastructure necessary to provide a particular community with an outlet for free internet. Furthermore, they contend that other community and governmental bodies should share the burden of providing this service, both through funding and staffing. Surprisingly, the subtext of this article seems to accuse patrons of taking internet access at the library for granted and acting ungrateful. While it is never explicitly stated, and the concluding sentence exhorts librarians to look for creative ways to maintain this service, the authors appear to have a certain resentment of change, and especially of being forced to shoulder the burden of this change alone.
The second article, "Community College", was heavy on the french philosophy and short on facts. I kept wanting the author to provide me with some statistics to back up his evaluations of community college students as almost universally victims of the "digital divide", but instead he seemed more interested in the "magnificent" musings of De Certeau, which state that reading creates "gardens that miniaturize and collate a world". Poetic, certainly. Helpful? Not really. I'm not sure I understood more than 50% of this article, and even though it takes a significant amount of obfuscation and purple prose to confuse me, some of the author's digressions made little sense. His frequent referrals to the ancient catalogs of Hittusas and Nippur--quite apart from being somewhat discordant notes in an article that also discusses Wikipedia--take on much more significance than they are due. One sentence on librarians as historical gatekeepers of information would have been fine, but I think hyperbolic section headings like "The Hattusas Catalog, Hostile Encounters and Disqualified Knowledge" really distract from Patterson's message, which is, simply, that librarians in community colleges have the potential to help their students succeed at transitioning 4-year universities by giving them a sophisticated grounding in IL and taking a look at their own power structures.
The last article ("Canada's Public Libraries") takes an almost completely opposite approach, but ends up with essentially the same conclusion as the other two--information literacy training is most important to the most disadvantaged and public libraries shouldn't have to bear the burden of providing internet access all on their own. Instead of Patterson's disconnected philosophical ramblings, however, the team of Julien and Hoffman take an eminently practical approach--they conduct a study. The concrete, quantifiable results of the study are presented with contextual information and explanation of results. This is by far the best-structured, unbiased, and most useful of the three articles I read.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Readings, Week 2 (Online Learning)
I'd like to start out by acknowledging that my response to this week's readings will almost certainly be influenced by a tragic event in my personal life: namely, the attempted murder of my beloved laptop. Infected by a malicious virus this weekend, it has gone into a coma and can only be awoken by the kiss of an IT professional. Anyway, the upshot is, I'm typing this entry on an XP computer running Internet Explorer in the middle of the undergraduate library. Its noisy, crowded, and, I suspect, not entirely sanitary here at the Shapiro, and the atmosphere significantly impacts my attitude towards online learning. Not only has my self-esteem suffered from my inability to first diagnose and then cure this malady, but has reawakened a particularly hidebound love of learning through physical books. Furthermore, this incident has made real to me the difficulty of ensuring consistent access to internet-based teaching modules. With face-to-face and textbook learning, the only requirements are time and space--the ability to be in the right place at a specified time. Teaching via the web requires not only a secure uplink but an expensive, fractious, and incredibly complex piece of technology to process the connection. Take away either one--the computer or the high-speed connection--and you're pretty much out of luck. The argument expressed by Johnston that long-distance learners experience a greater net benefit from these tactics is not without its detractors as well. Even in modern-day first-world countries, it can still be difficult for rural dwellers to get an affordable high-speed connection. My parents' ongoing battle with HughesNet--the only provider in their area-- provides a prime example of this, and while I could describe the history and substance of their dispute in depth, suffice to say that HughesNet knows they have a monopoly and are not afraid to charge exorbitant fees for even the most basic service. Of course, the flipside to this, and the point that Johnston was undoubtedly getting at, is that long-distance learners (including people living in rural areas) are by definition going to have to go through a lot more in order to be in the right place at the right time-- in other words, to participate in a traditional learning experience.
For this reason, online learning presents a viable--if not perfect--alternative. Apart from the "gee whiz" factor of new technology and methods of communication, which information professionals should be wary of, pod- and screencasting can prove useful in these scenarios. The availability of free software, such as Jing, Trailfire, Wink, and Slideshare, makes it possible for even the most cash-strapped of libraries to provide learning modules for their patrons based solely on the investment of human capital. Were these librarians to use the ADDIE model in developing their lessons, these could subsequently be repurposed and customized for years to come, allowing for them to be taught by even inexperienced library personnel. Several case studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of these tools in teaching computer literacy as well. As the Johnston and Yelnick et al. readings demonstrate, self-paced modules for both college and high school students have proved successful in the past.
I would contend, however, that these scenarios were not the unadulterated successes that their chroniclers have suggested. The product that Yelnik et al. created using Captivate MenuBuilder for the SusQ-Cyber Charter School met with less-than-glowing feedback and in evaluative testing, 20% of the focus group answered more than 35% of questions incorrectly. Yelnik and colleagues later made adjustments to the contents of the tutorial, and even I can agree that it was better than the system previously in place to orient students to courses. The small size of the group of students tested on the tutorial makes the evaluation somewhat problematic, however, and this trend is only magnified in Johnston's study. Of the 100 social work students who took the internet searching skills module, only a quarter reported back. Of these, over half responded with "neutral" when asked whether they had gained an "improved understanding of information literacy". Both studies admitted that students often performed better and preferred being taught face-to-face. In my opinion, online learning of this sort can best be deployed when supplementing classroom instruction but shouldn't replace it all together. Information professionals such as librarians would definitely benefit from learning how to create modules like these, if only so that they might decide for themselves if and when to implement them.
For this reason, online learning presents a viable--if not perfect--alternative. Apart from the "gee whiz" factor of new technology and methods of communication, which information professionals should be wary of, pod- and screencasting can prove useful in these scenarios. The availability of free software, such as Jing, Trailfire, Wink, and Slideshare, makes it possible for even the most cash-strapped of libraries to provide learning modules for their patrons based solely on the investment of human capital. Were these librarians to use the ADDIE model in developing their lessons, these could subsequently be repurposed and customized for years to come, allowing for them to be taught by even inexperienced library personnel. Several case studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of these tools in teaching computer literacy as well. As the Johnston and Yelnick et al. readings demonstrate, self-paced modules for both college and high school students have proved successful in the past.
I would contend, however, that these scenarios were not the unadulterated successes that their chroniclers have suggested. The product that Yelnik et al. created using Captivate MenuBuilder for the SusQ-Cyber Charter School met with less-than-glowing feedback and in evaluative testing, 20% of the focus group answered more than 35% of questions incorrectly. Yelnik and colleagues later made adjustments to the contents of the tutorial, and even I can agree that it was better than the system previously in place to orient students to courses. The small size of the group of students tested on the tutorial makes the evaluation somewhat problematic, however, and this trend is only magnified in Johnston's study. Of the 100 social work students who took the internet searching skills module, only a quarter reported back. Of these, over half responded with "neutral" when asked whether they had gained an "improved understanding of information literacy". Both studies admitted that students often performed better and preferred being taught face-to-face. In my opinion, online learning of this sort can best be deployed when supplementing classroom instruction but shouldn't replace it all together. Information professionals such as librarians would definitely benefit from learning how to create modules like these, if only so that they might decide for themselves if and when to implement them.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Reflections on Chapters 1 and 2 of How People Learn
Essentially, How People Learn concludes that experts differ from novices not only in the amount of information they possess on a particular topic, but how they access and think about that knowledge. They draw on a number of studies (most of them conducted in the 1970s) in order to make this claim, using experts in the fields of physics, history, mathematics, and chess. The chess study, for example, discovered that a Grand Master differs from an A Class player not in the number of possible moves they consider, but simply the effectiveness and suitability of these moves. In other words, they don't try out every possible permutation before deciding on a move, just the ones that their brains have already cross-referenced for deployment in this scenario. Less experienced players, on the other hand, are much more likely to take a sequential approach for considering plays.
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