Workshop: Information Literacy in Institutional Assessment

The presenters from LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, NY did a wonderful job with this workshop. They were invited to present at WILU after one of the organizers heard them speak at a library assessment conference. The presenters were Francine Egger-Sider, Charles Keyes, Cecilia Macheski, and Alexandra Rojas.

Opening Keynote: Thinking vs. Knowing: Where Does Information Come in?

by Rick Salutin

A pretty typical Salutin talk, rambling, discursive, lots of digressions but interesting and engaging. Salutin starts by telling us he’s going to talk to us a student, teacher, reader, writer and a parent, he’s going to talk about teaching and writing, information, knowledge and understanding. He notes that he learns as much from teaching as being taught, something his teaching mentors told him would happen. You learn the most from magic moments with the profs, more than from their books. He spent a lot of time in libraries as a student and has recently rediscovered libraries and librarians with his young son. He wonders if books are a way to escape from people, because they are who we truly learn from via discussion. People come to librarians for help, as suplicants for a session of “laying on of the hands.”

His great teacher Harold Innes strongly emphasized the oral tradition and practically founded media studies. Of the oral vs. the written, Innes greatly preferred the oral tradition. Written tradition has a bias towards information and facts while the oral can find truth via back and forth, round & round in an exchange that can get quite deep. The oral dialectic is the best way to discover new information and is the best and only way to truly explore the deepest ideas. But, of course, it’s not the best way to disseminate those ideas. Plato’s Dialogue though poorly written gave some intimation of the complexity of discussion, books are a pale shadow of dynamic, vital interaction. The Talmud also gives some idea of the vitality of oral tradition.

What’s happened to the oral tradition? Has it gone away? It truly remains in two modern institutions: teaching and therapy, both of which are irreducible, which much happen live and in person (although Salutin surmises that there must be some forms of online therapy out there to gowith attempts at online and correspondance education). Salutin has taught all his life, since he was a teenager. He’s done a half course at UToronto for 30+ years; teaching is part of what it means to be fully human, we all do it in our lives especially with our kids. The oral tradition has no definitive model for this human interaction, it can’t be formalized. He had Conrad Black in one of his recent class session and was impressed with Black’s presence, the way he made a kind of presence in society real for his students in a way that contradicts all that lesson plan/methodology stuff. No one knows what we want from education, we only discover that in open ended moments of human interaction.

On the content side, the print tradition, kids can read the same book a hundred times (or watch the same movie). Perhaps we should take their example and instead of always trying to read something new we should just select the best texts and go over them repeatedly, gaining new understanding each time. We’re not good at knowing, we’re a lot better at thinking/pondering. Hannah Arendt said, “we mistake the urge to think for the urge to know.” We should just continue to use our minds.

What kind of an institution should a university be? Should it be in the service of social wealth and power or should it be a source of criticism, thought and outside the power structure? Marcuse: the “power of negative thinking” can be a positive force. Fighting against bad things is a positive action.

It’s worth noting that many of the speakers for the rest of the conference mentioned Salutin’s oral/print tradition dichotomy and it’s implications for instruction.

Posted by John Dupuis

FOUND: WINDBREAKER

A black nylon windbreaker with a grey stripe (size large) was found in 106.

Contact the Schulich info desk at (416) 736-2100 x 44602 8am-4pm EDT if it is yours.

A visual archive of WILU on Flickr

Over a hundred great photos of WILU have been uploaded to the new WILU group on the photosharing website Flickr. You may have noticed some designatedphotographers floating snapping pictures at the breaks, lunches, social events and sessions. We are hoping these photos capture some of the lively mood and bright faces of the conference over the last few days. This is a public photo sharing group. We encourage you to upload your photos and add them to this Flickr group (you will first need a free Flickr account). The more the better! Also feel free to leave comments.

Accomodation in Residence

Hi,

Well, I imagine that everyone else has pretty much the same to say about the Pond Road Residence – what a disappointment for the money we paid!

Most of us probably ended up with “single” rooms, which we paid $93 and a change a night for – that got us a bed with a mattress that would probably make anything in Kingston Penitentiary seem like the Ritz by comparison, two towels, a face cloth, one WAFER of soap and a plastic glass!  The bedding consisted of a paper-thin sheet with a terry cloth “blanket” on top, and a small pillow that was basically fluff. Like many others, I FROZE on the first night – it felt like the beddspread was taking OUT the heat, rather than keeping it IN! I was so cold that I wrapped myself in my raincoat, and the two puny towels, and didn’t get to sleep until well after 2am! I managed to request a second blanket, which did make Thursday night more bearable, but I was up by 5:24 this morning – freezing again! (And I have one of the 8:45 presentations to give!)

I went out to our lovely underground parking lot/cold war bunker-feel hallway around 6:50am and it smelled like diesel exhaust, as though the whole place was being vented by the air uptake from a bus garage!

The only “convenience” was not having to fret about transporation to Schulich, other than that, the accomodation is a rip-off! I just could not see myself being the poor first-year student who has to live in Pond Road for 8 months straight – especially in the November-March bleak period!

Opening Plenary: Changing Learning, Changing Roles: Collaboration at Every Angle

by Patricia Iannuzzi (University of Nevada Las Vegas)
We as librarians are campus leaders, we are generalists and should be proud of if, we understand the connections between disciplines and are strong collaborators.  The agenda for the session is first to talk about the Berkeley/Mellon project, then to talk about campus collaboration models then a little about librarians as campus leaders.

The Mellon library/faculty collaboration project at Berkeley is about a culture shift on campus and within the library, from a strong faculty governance, a highly entrepreneurial culture.  The library culture is a research-based culture, collection centric with the library as yet another campus silo.  Collections are at the centre with circ, reference, ILL, doc delivery and reserves as spokes from the collections hub.  But there is a different model with the user at the centre, with collections, access, instruction and content creation as the spokes.  “Patti’s Model” sees a flow from collections connecting to users with the connection being through access, content creation, instruction and consultation.  There is a shift from a collections model to a connections model, it is our responsibility as librarians to connect our collections to our users, not just building th10 them not to be used.  This reflects a shift in higher education, see the Boyer commission report and the 10 principles about teaching and learning strategies.

The library role in higher ed: from centre of campus to centre of student learning, scale instruction from working with small classes to whole institution by working with faculty to get IL concepts into the curriculum.  It is less about teaching students than it is about teaching faculty to do our work for us, to work with them in course and assignment design.  Some a/v quotes from faculty (go to Berkeley/Mellon project web site for more videos).  Law faculty member: bring ugrad research into course, get critical thinking at the beginning of the research process.  A faculty fellow said ugrads should do research but that they need training, that they are not automatically good at it.  Where do they learn it, who should teach it.  Who is responsible for this learning?

Some partnership models: The pre-Mellon model: students related to the instuctor with the library, IT, teaching centre on the side.  The objectives are to support a community of faculty serving as change agents.  Collaboration for campus partnerships, for research based learning, a scalable and sustainable model.  They got a pilot project grant to strengthen research-based learning, to place library collections at the heart of courses through assignment design in large gateway courses.  Target early adopters in faculty who are willing to give up a bit of ownership of their courses and they will influence other faculty, create  habits of collaboration.  To get progress, you need to get the admin on board to get resources and committement, get the faculty of large enrollment courses on board, give them a stipend to encourage partnership, to profs as well as their depts.  The new model is to get faculty researchers to encourage ugrad researchers, get faculty to pose questions and the ugrads to select among the questions, to learn the methodology that the profs model and to be directed towards the right sources.

A quote from a prof in ethnic studies: students are more likely to question the profs research and the research presented in class if they have their own experience of doing research.

Expand ownership of courses beyond just instructors to IT, teaching centre, librarians and others.  Some partnership models include one where the instuctor and TA are at the centre and the teaching centre, librarians, student services, and IT are the spokes.  Another is a more linear model with IT feeding into instructor/ta feeding into library.  Another is teaching centre -> ins/ta -> lib.  Another is ins/ta at the centre with gen ed, teaching centre, ugrad research as spokes.  After the pilot project, sometimes gaculty get lots of conflicting advice, lots of redundant & overlapping expertise on assignment design, instructional tech, content management, learning strategies, course design.  A proposed team model is the course at the centre with instructors, design, online learning, IT, content management, student support as the spokes.  collaboration must happen at various levels in the org, not just at the line level but at dean level too, you want to influence dept chairs.  Objective is to create a sustainable and scalable model.

At University of Nevada Las Vegas, librarians need to engage issues on campus, how can we help these issues resolve, such as student engagement, environmental literacy, service learning, civic engagement, active learning, critical thinking: we need to speak the language, get involved in professional associations and societies.  So, we need to step up to leadership roles, on campus and beyond, to speak at conferences of non-librarians, create a committee of culture of teaching and learning at our institutions.  Librarians need to recognize the things that make us special.

Posted by John Dupuis

The Credit Card Vote is In! It Was Very Close.

The session: Searcher’s Bring Your Credit Card: An Exciting New Development in Information Literacy or The Beginning of the End? was presented as a spirited debate. For those who could not stay for the vote count, Saira won the debate 24 votes (Searchers leave your credit cards at home),  to 17 for James (Searchers bring your credit cards). The tally was much closer than was predicted. We’ll have to see how this idea evolves in the years to come. 

James Buczynski

Workshop: Teaching on the Edge of Chaos

by Bryan Miyagishima and Robert Hautala (Western Oregon University)

The session started with a group discussion where we got a chance to talk with our neighbours about what student groups we work with, what a typical session is like and what we do well and what we would like to do better. They showed a typical IL lesson plan with items like Intro (5 min), how to navigate the library web page, books vs. journals, active learning activity and how to find books. Most recognized themselves in this very stereotypical IL session plan. They then talked a bit about the Madeline Hunter Model and the ASSURE Model as alternatives ways to structure a lesson. How else could it be done?

Using the example of a little kids basketball camp, the presenters showed how students can be challenged to learn a good way of doing things slowly, by starting with a variety of tasks, some easier and some harder. The example was kids using a wide range of basketballs and a wide range of heights for the nets. They keep on trying new things, starting with easy tasks that they can have some success with. This is dynamic systems theory: the tension is a pyramid with the different corners being the individual, the environment and the task. The model takes into account constraints such as the strength of 5 year olds.

The application of this model: How to you change and individual’s constraints, such as physical conditioning. How do you change environmental factors such as stability, predictability and space. How to you change the task: speed, accuracy, distance, force, type of equipement. We did a group session where we can pick a skill and manipulate 3 aspects of the dynamic system, such as hitting a baseball.

The dynamic systems teaching model has 4 aspects:

1. Establish task goal: structure the environment, give info about the task but do not demonstrate
2. Provide choices: one size doesn’t fit all, have selection of skills, movements and equipement, allow safe student decisions
3. Modify the variables: restructure the environment, for the group and for individuals who are ready
4. Provide instruction: only after first 3 steps, instruct about skills students have selected, instruct about teacher prefered skills

Quesitons/Problems: you need time to do this, you need to think about what students are really learning and the effectiveness of learning. How much chaos can you handle? Our question to think about during the coffee break was to find potentials for this model in IL.

We want to model a desired behavior (choose a database), a research task (find a scholarly article) and we want to change the task (on a specific topic; by a specific author; peer reviewed; different discipline). An interesting problem was to try and use this model for a desired behavior like: demonstrating an understanding of the search process. Our next exercise was to use this model for our own desired behavior. Finally, we discussed using this model over the long term, looping the 4 aspects over and over to refine our dynamic system.

I would encourage others at the session to add further posts to fill in what I missed.

Posted by John Dupuis.

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Welcome to WILU2007!

The WILU2007 blog is open to anybody attending WILU2007. We encourage you to add content as you wish, including your summaries and feedback of what you’ve seen, suggestions of things to do, or just some random thoughts. There are computers available in the Bronfman Library in the Schulich Business School where you can access the Internet if you want to post content.  We are also happy to add content if you have written notes.  Have a great conference!