Science Librarian at Penn State

reading Reflective Learning, Effective Teaching

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:24:12 -0500

I have decided to blog my activities and reflections while reading Char Booth's Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning: Instructional Literacy for Library Educators. Partially to keep with the theme of the book and also so I don't write in this copy; it's on loan from IUP.

Reflections on Teaching with Technology

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:19:50 -0500

I have created an online teaching portfolio as part of the Penn State Teaching with Technology certificate program. In additional to serving as a record of my teaching, it also has example documents and learning objects I have created as a science librarian.

Overall I would say that my teaching has followed a strategy of rapid prototyping and iterative design that I learned as a computer engineering student. This concept involves swift design decisions and the willingness to take chances and has often been called the "perpetual Beta test." I believe that as a research practitioner, it is my professional responsibility to experiment and refine my teaching techniques toward effective student outcomes.

My online teaching portfolio shows a few examples of this, but this approach runs throughout my teaching. I have used post-instruction assessments of students to find areas to work on and adapted my instruction before teaching that class again. Even if there was no feedback to go on I have integrated a new technology, example, or teaching technique in each class in order to improve my teaching effectiveness. I have had to be willing to try new things, even if failure is a real possibility, in order to move forward or even keep up with changes in higher education and information technology.

Easy Research

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:43:23 -0500

I have been tortured by the need to find ways radically change some of the ways librarians as researchers handle research, authorship, peer-review, and publication. As information professional we should be innovating in these areas and yet at least tenure-track librarians are in the same or worse boat as other faculty members in the Titanic of scholarly communication. Sure there are bright lights, but in general and in practice we aren't practicing what we preach. So perhaps we need to pick some low hanging fruit in the library literature.

One "easy" thing to do in the library literature involves surveys. Boy do librarians love surveys, it is so much a staple of our research that my only MLIS research methods course was basically all about surveys. So I recently read an article in an old issue of College and Research Libraries on "Librarians' Attitudes Toward Knowledge Management" published and concerning librarians in Israel (there are over 5,000 there!) The author suggests replicating the study in other countries and given the methodology is explained in detail and the instrument is published in the paper this should be "easy."

But should one librarian in each country or state/province or each large institution or subgroup of librarians repeat the study and republish the results in another scholarly journal? Doesn't the technology exist to do this in scale? Don't librarians love SurveyMonkey? We need to accept that there are scales of scholarly accomplishment and that something can be worthwhile and still only exist on a blog post or open data set.

January 2011 C&RL - Comments and thoughts a long time coming

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 11:24:33 -0500

Yeah, so this entry has been "A Long Time Coming", but I am using Penn State's spring break 2012 to catch up on research and that means reading (though soon I may rant about that "practice of information literacy")

Guest Editorial "Distinctive Signifiers of Excellence": Library Services and the Future of the Academic Library by Scott Walter - How could I miss this? Not only does it address a core belief I share, that libraries can no longer be measured by collection size and other collection metrics for 'excellence' but it also gives a shout out to ODSP. Points off Scott for linking to a non-public ARL wiki in his Notes.

Library on the Go: A Focus Group Study of the Mobile Web and the Academic Library by Seeholzer and Salem at Kent State - great study and well presented. It makes our mobile site fit the basics (at least for KSU students) but has implications for our next step: a total mobile site. I wonder if it is possible to have a Rapid Prototyping lab of library services complete with structure for user focus groups. Currently we have a great Website Usability team, but right now they mainly do individually monitored usability studies. Minor negative, there did not need to be 3 pictures of basically the same KSU Libraries website in the article.

Unheard Voices: Institutional Repository End-Users by St. Jean, Rieh, Yakel, and Markey - 21 pages! I am going to have jackflaps read this one.

Knowing Where They Went - Six Years of Online Access Statistics via the Online Catalog for Federal Government Information by Christopher Brown at the University of Denver - "users prefer online content over print for both newer and older documents" Done! I mean, I trust the editors of C&RL and the author for a nice abstract.

Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy by Mackey and Jacobson - may seem an abstract thought piece, but winds up being a pretty good review of the literature and summary of various "literacies" out there (visual just got its own ACRL standard). I am concerned about a move away from skill based approaches, but as long as we as a librarian profession can set real learning outcomes based on the ocean of metaliteracy skills, we'll be okay. Note that does not mean it is necessarily possible.

Facebook as a Library Tool: Perceived vs Actual Use by Terra Jacobson - not sure I am on board with the methodology of this paper, but it does bear out reality in the conclusion that a library page on Facebook needs regular attention and is best used for announcements and marketing. Personally the literature review helped me figure out my research in the use of Facebook FOR research by librarians is undiscovered country.

Reframing Academic Leadership (first 100 pages)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:39:10 -0500

These are some thoughts about a book I am reading for the Penn State Library Leaders group. The book Reframing Academic Leadership by Bolman and Gallos is relatively short and focuses on the dissection of higher education leadership using a model of environments and roles for administrators.

One of the early points that has stuck with me is how leaders can take one of two approaches to interactions and communication: advocacy (where you speak to convince) or inquiry (in which you speak to discover). Advocacy is easier for me than inquiry though I am getting good at active listening. It would be great to learn more skills that combine advocacy and inquiry at same time or in same situation.

The first framework of academy that seems appealing to me at first is the structural approach. That problems can be addressed by changing organizational structure and roles. Maybe because I am an engineer.

The second structure uses a confusing "jungle" metaphor, limited resources and many independent groups competing for it. This chapter does introduce politics in higher education is a very understandable way, but the example is off putting (President Quixote?) and they forget to mention what the resources administration controls that is useful in deal making.

Servant and caregiver is also a favorite metaphor, perhaps due to the role of the libraries on campus. But moreso I think because it focuses most on individual job satisfaction and the work environment. I have seen in my short career MUCH more effective work out of a happy and content unit than a demoralized and confused one. This may seem obvious, but I think leaders often write off personal feelings and experiences in the face of professionalism and privacy.

TED Talks - Liz Coleman on liberal arts education

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:53:42 -0500

I am most intrigued by the problems a community of experts creates. I see librarians as educated generalists, which she mentions as key to higher education.

Success in Teaching, or my presentation proposal for the ACRL Spring Virtual Institute

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:23:43 -0500

Here is my proposal just submitted for a 20 minute webcast in the spring of 2012 to the ACRL Spring Virtual Institute (with a significant finding in bold)

Traditional one shot information literacy sessions when only one class period is devoted to the library is still common. Librarians try to fill most of this time with the dissemination of information even though some active learning techniques are incorporated, it is still the smaller portion of time used. This presentation showcases a method of "flipping the classroom", changing a standard information literacy session into a ten minute lecture and a forty minute hands on activity. This can be done with no additional access to students before or after the session as long as the class can be held in a hands-on computer lab.

The information literacy lab was conducted by introducing only one library information resource, the discovery search tool (Summon). to the students. Its features were showcased and critical evaluation of information sources was also introduced as a concept. The remainder of time is devoted to a group assignment on evaluating information sources both on the Web in comparison to the information resource.

Students worked in groups of two to complete the assignment which was handed out on paper. The first part explained again criteria for evaluating information sources while the second part gave 4 example sources from a Wikipedia article. Students were asked to identify the type of information source (scholarly journal, news, book, website) and the authors with their credentials. Then the students were asked to infer the intended audience for the information source and the usefulness of the information for their coursework later in the semester. Finally, the students were asked to located an item in the library's discovery search interface that was of high quality in the characteristics they had explored.

Student outcomes were assessed at the end of the semester following library instruction in different sections of the same class. A survey was administered in three sections where traditional instruction was delivered, in another a more hands on approach was used, and in another the class was "flipped". The questions assessed:
Did students use library resources in the class and which databases were used?
Were they more critical of information sources on the World Wide Web?
Did the library instruction help them with their assignments?
Were library resources easy to find and use?
Did the library help to improve their grade in the class?

Results of the survey were similar for a few questions, but there was a dramatic increase in positive student response in two area for only the class with the hands-on instruction lab. 71% of those students indicated that they were more critical of information on the web compared to only 48% in the traditional information literacy class. Also 96% of students responded that the the library instruction helped them with their assignments compared to 70% in the traditional sessions. This clear improvement in two areas with no loss in others is strong data to support the hands-on information literacy lab approach.

Notes on Library Instruction

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:37:30 -0500

These are a few notes I had taken on teaching information literacy...
Student Learning Outcomes are the first step to an information literacy program
- create learning outcomes for a class
- create a cycle of teaching an assessment
Teach a concept early then test students in a similar area (like a database interface) - prepare searches ahead for successful delivery
Ask questions (if you say "Any questions?" to no response, ask a student about what you just discussed) Ask "What is better about these results/articles?"
Use instructor of student examples "Try your own last name."
Step by step instructions on all hands on assignments

November C&RL with my impressions and thoughts

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:05:11 -0500

I want to keep my summary of College and Research Libraries articles going, hopefully to benefit colleagues with no time to read every bi-monthly issue, but also perhaps to express my opinion on the research therein.

How Unique Are Our Users? Comparing Responses Regarding the Information-Seeking Habits of Engineering Faculty by Sarah Robbins, Debra Engel, and Christina Kulp - Survey across 20 institutions of over 900 engineering faculty finds statistically similar attitudes and behaviors concerning libraries. That means practitioner research librarians can publish local studies that may be generalizable to similar user groups at other institutions.

The Information-Seeking Habits of Engineering Faculty by Sarah Robbins, Debra Engel, and Christina Kulp (yes the same three, and I did reorder their names and the article order in the journal) - See my mini-rant below, but this study did find some interesting user behaviors about Engineering faculty including less than half did patent information searching (but still 47%). I would love to see the primary data from this study put in an open access data repository. Drool!

Information Literacy Instruction and Assessment in an Honors College Science Fundamentals Course by Corey M. Johnson, Carol M. Anelli, Betty J. Galbraith, and Kimberly A. Green - I really liked the assignment and exam approach here with very good examples. Collaboration between librarians and teaching faculty was key and produced significant learning of science information seeking behaviors. Still some difficulty in applying their approach at other institutions, and I think some of the questions may have used library jargon or allowed only one retrieval approach.

Academic Libraries in For-Profit Schools of Higher Education by Jinnie Y. Davis, Mignon Adams, and Larry Hardesty - Some things I didn't know but you can see a great deal of their observations by looking at a job ad for librarian positions at these institutions. Good points about interaction with other academic and public libraries.

"Changing the Way We Talk": Developing Librarians' Competence in Emerging Technologies through a Structured Program by Mark Pegrum and Ralph Kiel - Would love to implement as librarian and staff training. Just the scale seems a bit large to handle. Could I #makeithappen? Also you may note the article only lists 26 numbered references, so how could it be published in C&RL. Well, I found that most of the endnotes contained two or more references, so it meets the regular 50-100 for the journal.

Mini-rant: So in How Unique Are Our Users they admit that their data analysis shows you CAN use survey data from similar populations, but then go on to conclude "So what?" you can do "Very little." with that. Other than sinking what I thought was a very important point for research/practitioners (me and other Penn State librarians) they also somewhat poke a hole in their other paper in this issue of C&RL. THAT article by the way looks at the same data from the same survey in order to make a general point, which is basically that the ITHAKA study is right - academic faculty really DO want more electronic resources. By the way the conclusion in this latter article has 19 sentences of which 7 are questions including if the findings about engineering faculty are generalizable to other engineers!

Teaching Growth (actually just productivity)

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:19:00 -0500

I was updated our digital dossier program with my instructional statistics, when I noticed a nice pattern. Growth...

Predicting the Winners of the 2014 Fields Medal

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:44:03 -0500

I am currently working on a research article on the Fields medal and Abel prize in mathematics. What is interesting is the large clusters of winners around certain factors such as nationality, alma mater, affiliation, and focus of study in mathematics. So I am putting my projections based on that for the four winners of the fields medal. Please feel free to combine these features (one from each line) to determine if you could be a potential winner!

Nationality: France, Russia, UK, US
Alma Mater: Ecole Normale Superieure, Moscow State University, Princeton, University of Cambridge
Working at: Institute for Advanced Study, Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, Princeton
Publishing in: Algebraic Geometry, Functional Analysis, Manifolds and Cell Complexes

Oh and you should probably be 35 years old... so good luck Kai-Wen Lan at Princeton (one example).

Reference trends from 1970s to 2000s

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:29:48 -0500

I did a quick and dirty analysis of the library science literature (using the LISA database) on some reference concepts to see how they trended. Because many libraries are headed to a central services area called a commons, ours is the Knowledge Commons. Specifically I searched for the phrases "General Reference", "Subject Library Reference", and "Commons" and looked for the distribution of each over time. I was somewhat surprised since here at Penn State, general reference predates subject libraries in some form (from what I have heard) that subject library reference trended before general reference. The commons model is obviously the latest trend. What else could I toss in here? What reference concepts have come and gone?

Library Instruction with 48 hours notice

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:04:56 -0500

So I had to negotiate an information literacy session with less than 2 days notice. Scheduling a room, getting the assignment and feedback from the instructor all at the last minute. I actually wound up getting a HEAP from the instructor, which is great but means I can't do a canned presentation. So I am winging it. Here it goes. I am going to try Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction as a framework.

Gain attention (bring out the book I just got a chapter in, since it is just like their assignment)
Today we will... (They will locate and describe resources in a specialized area of science or engineering and become familiar with two government resources in particular)
Remember when...? (They already did web evaluation, that skill is transferable)
Watch me. Here's how it's done. (Show Green Engineering research guide, explain Engineering Village - index of sources, what it searches incl. dates and docs., Perform advanced searching tips)
Here's a guide for you to follow (Show the entire list of research guides, how to search it)
Now you try it (Give them 5-10 minutes to explore their subject area and record what they find)
Okay, you need to (Ask 2-3 students what index they chose and to describe it)
It's time for the test (Still wondering how to do this, poll Everywhere?)
Now let's try it over here... (Go into the GPO Catalog and show searching)

The Assignment is to create an Internet Resource Guide, which used to be called an annotated bibliography (they will be using "library resources")

Digital Storytelling and Scholarship

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:14:05 -0500

Workshop (beta) during the Learning Design Summer Camp.

Developed as a class for students (and faculty) in use of the Knowledge Commons

- similar approach to writing a scholarly paper: Research + Engaging Narrative

- Finding sources - not just information but multimedia sources

- Narrative structure - structure of a scholarly paper (3 acts = setup, confrontation, resolution)

- Narrative style - chosen at the beginning and can lend themselves to differences in communication

Video and podcasts do some things well - story can be told in change in POV

- add narration (NPR does wonders with ONLY audio)

Fair Use discussion (too murky? Actually her two examples are the ones I would use)

- Multimedia resources - Creative Commons at Flickr and Youtube. Library databases (ARTstor, AP Photo Archive, Digitized Collections, Simply Map)

Teach citation responsibility (or methods) at this point.

Sample Topic - Pick one new technology or idea and argue for why it is important to the classroom of the future

Upward Bound Science - Reflection

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:59:11 -0500

Session went well, though did not seem to engage the students very much.

Pros: Began with Lionsearch, ended with Lionsearch, was a solid message and saw over half of the students looking at their results as I wandered the rows.
Asked a question that was answered by someone in the class "Are you doing a presentation?" Yes they are, so perhaps next time could add Creative Commons discussion.

Cons: Went about 10 minutes short again, really need an activity at the appropriate level.
Went pretty fast through PubMed and Proquest Nursing, demoed Access Science but was cut off from content.