Inquiry based learning in undergraduate modules

Today I gave a session on the above topic at the First Year Experience in Higher Education conference in Hobart, Australia. I put a posting on on the CILASS IBL blog giving links to material on the two modules (in our BSc Information Management) I was talking about. This blog entry is here, and I am doing a couple more blog entries on that IBL blog. The extended abstract of my session is on this page (you need to scroll down). The discussion included questions about "What was Web 2.0" and people giving some more examples of having students produce posters as output from projects, and having events around the poster displays (our first year students produce posters about their projects and this has worked well).

The delegates at the conference were mostly from Australia and New Zealand, and a mixture of educational developers, student services people, first year coordinators, academics in specific disciplines etc. There is a big literature about the First Year Experience in Higher Education, including some valuable reports from the UK, and as usual it is interesting/ depressing to see that often there is not much crossover of people with different interests. For example, although there was some mention of information literacy and working with librarians by different speakers, there was a lack of awareness of (for example) the amount of work that libraries have done in developing innovative learning spaces. By the same token, I think that the FYHE literature could be tapped into more (perhaps) by the library sector.

There is work on current projects about the first year experience in Scotland appearing at http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/ (with a useful links page) and a 2006 literature review at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/lr_2006_harvey
Photo by Sheila Webber: Bridge over the Derwent, Hobart, Australia, June 2008

Using SL in an undergraduate class

There is a transcript of the session on Using SL in a first year undergraduate module held on 15 May 2008 on Infolit iSchool in Second Life (the virtual world) online at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=291
In this session Lyn Parker, Vicki Cormie and I talked about the class aims, the nature of the intervention etc. and our thoughts about its impact. There was quite a lot of good discussion, I think, and the picture shows the discussion in progress. The module is "Information Literacy" which is where it gets relevant to this blog ;-)

I also realise that I haven't blogged a presentation I did on an overlapping topic at the CILASS Staff-Student Symposium we had here at Sheffield University on 2nd May. The subject of the presentation was Inquiry in Second Life, and I was describing the use of Second Life in this first year class and also with Masters students. One of the Masters students, Tim Zijlstra, also contributed. This symposium is innovative, in that students and staff present together about experiences of inquiry-based learning, and indeed there were two presentations just from students. There have been a number of posting about it on the IBL blog and the CILASS Student blog. Anyway, this was our presentation on 2nd May:

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LOEX presentations

The main US conference on information literacy, LOEX, has taken place and there are powerpoints and other material on some of the presentations at http://www.loexconference.org/
2008/sessions.htm I will just pick a few out - not quite at random - but certainly there was a good deal of interest on the LOEX webpage!

We Go Together: An Integrated Information Literacy/English Composition Learning Community by Val Ontell, Instruction Librarian, San Diego Mesa College. Very detailed account of the integration - including various bits of documentation and the students grades! There is the ppt and a copy of the syllabus.

Nine Thousand Freshmen; One Common Foundation by Leslee B. Shell, Joseph Buenker, and Julie Tharp, Arizona State Univesity Libraries. Includes a presentation and an instructor guide. "In this breakout session, librarians from two ASU campuses will describe how they worked with an instructional designer to create an interactive component on academic integrity that could be taught in both online and face-to-face formats." There is a link in the presentation to a narrated Marcomedia Breeze presentation on academic intergrity at https://www.asu.edu/courses/asu101
/breeze/academic_integrity_intro/index.htm in which you can hear Buenker and Sjhell in person.

There was a session on usin wikis for information literacy and accompanying wiki at https://loex2008collaborate.pbwiki.com/FrontPage (you need a password, and I guessed it - um, think of the name of the conference ;-)

In Pamplona I was talking about our own Information Commons at Sheffield and there is an interesting collection of material at http://www.acu.edu/academics/library/
learningcommons/resources.html relating to the presentation Learning Infused Libraries: Honest Talk About What It REALLY Takes to Create a Learning Commons given by Laura Baker, Library Learning Commons Coordinator, Abilene Christian University Library

I also noticed Lesson Study: Building Better Lesson Plans through Teamwork and Revision by Marija Freeland and Shevon Desai, University of Michigan and Eric Frierson, University of Texas at Arlington. "Lesson Study is a method of developing lesson plans that involves collaboration and creativity. It is an iterative process in which teacher-librarians brainstorm, discuss and implement lesson ideas, try them out, then come back together to revise and rethink the lesson." At the moment I am reading some articles about the lesson study approach, since I am planning to use variation theory (facilitating students' understanding of a subject through experiencing the subject from different perspectives) in our new Education for Information Literacy module, and the two educational literatures seem to be connected.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Arty reflection in a shop window in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, May 2008.

Pamplona: Information Commons; and Information Literacy in different disciplines

Continuing the report from Las VI Jornadas CRAI (held at teh University of Navarra in Pamplona), also yesterday I gave my own talk: What does Information Literacy mean? Some examples from different disciplines. It is embedded below from Slideshare. Before giving it, I inserted an advertisement for the Information Commons at the University of Sheffield, since people had talked about some other innovative British libraries the previous day. I said I’d put the links on my blog, so here they are: The Information commons web page at http://www.shef.ac.uk/infocommons/ ; the CILASS learning spaces webpages at http://www.shef.ac.uk/cilass/learning-spaces ; the video about CILASS learning spaces at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/avfiles/
programmes/elearning_innovation/cilass_qt.mov : the Youtube student video at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=D08XykTvOIo : and I also mentioned Facebook groups, such as 101 things to do in the I.C. before you graduate.

To go back to my talk: I was including elements from previous talks (how obvious this becomes when you upload them to Slideshare ;-) However, I think that some lines of argument might emerge more clearly and I will elaborate below.

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At the start I was talking about how the question of “what is information literacy” can be answered in different ways. One can use definitions (I included the definition Bill Johnston and I developed). Our definition does take account of the “socio-political” element, and Bill and I have argued that information literacy is a discpline. One can look at Information Literacy in a pragmatic sort of way, using models and frameworks developed, mainly by librarians, with the aim of outlining areas of skill and knowledge that students ought to develop. I used the SCONUL 7 Pillars model as an example. You can also position information literacy as one amongst many desired attributes for a graduate (I quoted the relevant section from my own university’s learning, teaching and assessment strategy).

Another perspective is that of the individual within their own area of expertise: how they experience and conceive of informatio n literacy. This led me into a summary of some of the discoveries from our research into UK academics’ conceptions of, and pedagogy for, information literacy. I talked about the different meanings of “information” in different disciplines, outlined the conceptions of information literacy discovered in the four disciplinary areas, and talked about the implications for motivating and working with academics.
Something which I realised I had not emphasised enough in the slides was the impact of an academic's approach to teaching. From the outcomes of the research that was investigating academics’ approach to teaching information literacy, and from my own experience/observation, I would say that if you want to change the way an academic teaches information literacy than what you most want to change is their approach to teaching (rather than – their skills in information literacy). That is, this would have the most impact, if you want to have impact on student learning.
An academic might learn to search a database better, but this might not translate to any improvement in his/her students’ information literacy if the way the lecturer is teaching is still through lectures and exams. However, if the lecturer, through persuasive discussion with a librarian, is enthused to introduce a more constructivist approach to teaching, the students’ information literacy has more chance of developing. Our hope is that our research helps to reveal some ways in which people may be thinking about information literacy in their discipline, opening up more lines of communication and stimulating ideas.

Information skills in a school

When I was in Glasgow on Tuesday I met up with John Crawford and Christine Irving (see my previous post about their open meeting). One interesting thing I came away with was an unpublished report produced in February by staff at Caldervale High School, Airdrie:
Brownlie, S., Curran, M., Falconer, L., McAllister, J. and Smith, C. (2008) Supporting our pupils in developing their information skills: How do we do it? Caldervale High School.
I will provide a summary of some key elements and some reflections on it. There were several stimuli for the work, including the teachers’ involvement in the research project (looking at schoolteachers’ conceptions of information literacy) led by Dorothy Williams, and the fact that two people were talking the Chartered Teacher programme. The project also developed from a Professional Development Group that the teachers had formed, and the action research they did provided a focus.
They started with the practice -based question “How do we help our pupils to improve their information skills?” They focused this further to the question of what intervention could they design to support their pupils in finding information relevant to a learning activity, collating that information in line with the activity, and presenting the information in the form required by the activity, whilst avoiding plagiarism.
Staff involved in the project (including the Learning Resources Centre manager) developing their own view of what skills were needed in their subjects, ending up with 6 clusters of skills:

- Reading with purpose and monitoring understanding relative to that purpose;
- Listening with purpose and monitoring understanding relative to that purpose;
- Writing with purpose and monitoring understanding relative to that purpose;
- Decoding visual representations;
- Using information honestly and responsibly;
- Synthesise different media with purpose and monitoring understanding relative to that purpose.

The group then targeted a geography class for observation in relation to these skills, as the pilot stage in an action research cycle (identifying more closely what needed to be changed). The outcomes from this observation are described in the report.
The intervention itself was focused on production of a leaflet about pet care, and this was undertaken by a class of 11-12 year olds and 12-13 year olds, over about 8 lessons. The authors describe their planning for different aspects, including how they supported pupils in understanding and developing social skills (respect etc.): the work was undertaken in groups of 4 with specific roles assigned. The strategy also included getting students to reflect on their performance, with time given in class for to complete diary entries.

The two teachers who implemented the intervention each give an account of what happened. The nature and impact of the group working is given quite a lot of attention. This includes how pupils were quick to identify suspected plagiarism in each others’ work (although with the planned nature of the intervention, there were few instances of copying). To see whether the intervention could be implemented more widely, it was used in two computing classes, with pupils using desktop publishing software to produce the leaflet (rather than powerpoint, as used by the first classes) and looking at computing topics rather than pet care.
Drawing a few more things from this report:
- the need to keep bringing pupils attention back to the main aims (formally at the start of sessions, and by intervening with individual groups as needed);
- the need to pay attention to social and teamworking skills;
- the inclusion of reflective acttivity;
- restricting choice of information to specific websites and print material (to try and avoid mindless surfing and scrolling);
- development of a concept of information skills for a specific population and specific subjects, rather than importing an existing skill list or framework. It is notable that the list is different from most “conventional” lists of information literacy skills;
- making the end of the intervention an "event" (pinning up the leaflets, and pupils commenting on each others’ leaflets).

Photos by Sheila Webber: Hillhead, Glasgow, May 2008 (when I lived in Glasgow my lodgings were in Athole Gardens).

Report from the LILAC conference: 4

On 27 March 2008 on Infolit iSchool, in the virtual world, Second Life, Vicki Cormie (Ishbel Hartmann in Second Life) and I (Sheila Yoshikawa in Second Life) led a discussion presenting some of our highlights from the 2008 LILAC conference. Some of the discussion participants had also attended the RL conference. The chatlog (transcript) of the session is at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=270 and the photo is of the session. The discussion touched on some important issues (subjects of future discussion!)

Vicki Cormie had prepared interesting notes on three sessions that she wanted to highlight, and I reproduce them here, below, with Vicki's permission.

1. The library? Why would I go there? Library use by undergraduate students in China, India and Greece. Speaker; Anja Timm
(Diversity and Social Justice Theme)

This address focused on the information literacy needs of students on taught postgraduate programmes in the UK. The aims of the project were:
"* to inject timely and topical research results into the debate about the way international students are recruited, prepared and taught and how plagiarism can be deterred
"* to develop resources that will be of use to various groups within the the higher education sector and support its engagement with the issues of student diversity and academic writing, e.g. teaching staff, senior managers, educational developers, etc."

The project went out to look at libraries and the ways students used them in China, India and Greece. It was found that there were huge differences in the ways students used libraries for many different factors. In India, students at some of the less affluent universities had libraries that did not meet their needs in any respect, being full of out of date materials and being run by people (rarely librarians) who saw themselves as custodians of the material, and therefore there to protect it from use by the students. The relationship with academic tutors in these colleges, was also found to be strikingly different from the experiences of students in other countries with their tutor being very much as a friend; someone the student could socialise with and be their key contact and problem solver of all issues that the student might come across. Academic tutors are usually not involved with research and tend to teach with fixed texts for the course.

(Sheila adds: a comment from my own experience. A small study by one of my students indicated that at undergraduate level international students might be *more* likely to have experienced good school libraries, perhaps as it is the better off students who have money to go abroad.)
Links:
http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/departments/
owt/Research/sdaw/
http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/2008/
keynote_abstracts.htm#timm

2. Podcasts: IL delivery on demand. Speaker: Rebecca Mogg (Net generation theme)

This short presentation looked at using Podcasts for IL delivery at Cardiff University.
One of the things that I really like about LILAC is the good balance of the academic papers and the practical sessions, and this session was an excellent example of the latter. It was short and to the point and came up with many good suggestions and of practical ideas of how academic liaison can be taught through the use of podcasting.

Cardiff University employed a former student who had worked with student radio to produce a series of short radio programmes which were released on a weekly basis under the title “The Essay Survival Guide”. The programmes were created around a very loose script of questions created by library staff and then answered by using soundbites from students, academics and library staff. The result was a professional and engaging series of programmes that never sounded boring.
Links:
http://www.xpressradio.co.uk/shows/
student-survival-guide-to-writing-a-good-essay#
http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/2008/register/index.php?action=details&eventid=33

3. Role delineation in an iterative, cognitive skills based model of Information Literacy. Speakers: Judith Keene and John Colvin (Practical approaches to information literacy).

This session was a good mix of theory and practice based on several years worth of research done on creating a model of information literacy with mathematics students at the University of Worcester. One of the most interesting things that came out of it, and certainly one of the things that caused the most discussion at the end, was at the different roles of lecturers and librarians in the different stages of the model and whether it was always appropriate for information skills to be taught only by librarians, especially in the sciences.
Link:
http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/2008/register/index.php?action=details&eventid=43

Using Wikipedia to Reenvision the Term Paper

Thanks to Gerry McKiernan for highlighting this presentation given by Andreas Brockhaus and Martha Groom on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative 2008 Online Spring Focus. Using Wikipedia to Reenvision the Term Paper "To enhance the learning experience of a term paper, students were required to publish their papers in Wikipedia. Publishing for a large audience provided authentic feedback and encouraged students to do their best work. Using Wikipedia also allowed students to connect with a vibrant community and share their knowledge by making their papers publicly accessible." You can see the ppt (and, I think, the ppt with audio but I was doing this blog entry at a computer that had sound disabled ;-) at http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=15031&PRODUCT_CODE=ELI082/SESS07&bhcp=1
You might want to look through the rest of the programme at http://www.educause.edu/Program/15029

Photo by Sheila Webber: Hawthorn, Hailsham, 2005.

Problem Based Learning for Information Literacy

I have posted the transcript of the discussion that took place on 13th March 2008, on Infolit iSchool, in Second Life, on Problem Based Learning for Information Literacy at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=253 The discussion was led by me and there was an accompanying notecard which is available at http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/13marchnotecard.pdf as a pdf.

IL in the curriculum

Here (finally) is the Pwerpoint I presented at the seminar held on 3 March 2008 at Stockholm University. The title of the PowerPoint is Information Literacy in the curriculum: reeal and realistic aims, and it was looking at outcomes for information literacy education. This session formed the second half of a day that was looking at the impact of information literact. Sharon Markless and David Streatfield presented the first half and it had been organised bu Christina Tovote.

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Evaluating...

On 14 Feb 2008 a discussion on Evaluating educational interventions in Second Life, particularly education for information literacy was held in the virtual world, Second Life. The chatlog is now at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=234 and the accompanying notecard is on the web at http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/evaluating-notecard.pdf It includes links to material from the Eduserv meeting that stimulated this event.

Photo by Sheila Webber: the meeting on 14 Feb: you may see the heart shaped cake & rose on the table.

HILT handbook

Cardiff University's Handbook for Information Literacy Teaching (HILT) is now available on the web. "It covers key topics such as Lesson Planning, Delivery, Evaluation and Assessment and also includes examples of our teaching materials. The Handbook was written by a group of subject librarians to support colleagues in the delivery of information literacy teaching within Information Services. However, we believe that there is much which will be of interest and of relevance to the wider IL community." Go to http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/educationandtraining/
infolit/hilt/index.html

Photo by Sheila Webber: Pearse Station, Dublin, Feb 2008 (filmgrain effect)

Social networking debate

Thanks to Gerry McKiernan for highlighting an "Oxford Style" debate on the Economist website that ends on the 25th January. The proposition is that "Social Networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational method, in and out of the classroom".
There is a proposer, an opposer and a moderator who have each made 2 statements, and others are encouraged to assume psudonyms and join in the debate. The website is at http://www.economist.com/debate/
Skimming, I notice a comment from Postcolonialtech "Yes, internet information may be untrustable. But in fact all information may be untrustable. I cannot say that I find more mis-information (as a percentage) on-line than I find on the shelves of any American Barnes & Noble. The New York Times gets things very wrong. So do textbooks. We either teach students to analyze information from whatever source or we leave then unarmed in the world." which latter statement is picked up enthusiatically by another commentator (of course, they could both be librarians) Postcolonialtech finishes one of his/her comments "My suggestion? If you are university professor, copy this entire debate. Let your students divide up the transcript - analysing claims, positions, strategies, rhetoric, etc. You may begin to show them the dynamics of SNS learning." [SNS = Social Networking .... something?]

Photo by Sheila Webber: a landscape I created in Second Life

Assessment of information literacy

A discussion on Assessment of information literacy took place in Second Life, the virtual world on 17th January 2008. It was led by Maggie Kohime (Lyn Parker in real life, a librarian here at Sheffield University). It was held, as usual with these discussions, on Infolit iSchool. Maggie/Lyn posed a number of questions for discussion, such as: What forms of assessment of information literacy are you using with your students? Would you recommend any in particular? How does the learning approach adopted impact on the assessment technique used? For example: Inquiry Based learning, problem based learning. Has anyone measured the impact of different assessment techniques on student learning? Know of any work done on this? How do you ensure that all aspects of information literacy are covered within a programme? There were 8 of us in the discussion forum, from the UK and North America.

The full transcript of the discussion is here: http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=217 The discussion was part of the Centre for Information Literacy Research discussion series.

Case studies wiki

A learning and teaching Case studies wiki has been started up at my University, the University of Sheffield. You may be particularly interested in the case study from the Town and Regional Planning Department, on their Information Literacy strategy but others may also be of interest e.g. the case study on First year podcasts: Drip feeding students information via RSS fe from a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering. I am a CILASS (Centre for Inquiry Based Learning in the Arts and Social Science) Fellow this year and another Fellow (Brendan Stone, in the School of English) is coordinating a section, the CILASS IBL ideas bank.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Konstanz, Germany, November 2007

Talk on IBL and SL

I have finally uploaded the presentation from last week to slideshare. This was the talk I gave at Strathclyde University on 29th November. The main focus was on Inquiry Based Learning: firstly I talked about what it was and how it was different from problem based learning (since the starting and/or finishing point are less fixed than with PBL).

I moved on to talk about the Centre for Inquiry Based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS), which is based at Sheffield University, with some examples of some modules that have carried out IBL activities with CILASS support. I mentioned the level 1 module Inquiry in Information Management (new last year), where I am part of the teaching team, and in particular I talked about the activity in Second Life with my first year Information Literacy class. The stage the students have reached now is interviewing Second Life residents about their information behaviour, by the way. The presentation is at http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/inquiry-based-learning-a-perspective/

My talk at Konstanz

At the Konstanz Workshop on Information Literacy on 9th November I gave a presentation on Information Literacy for Masters students. There were two parts to the presentation. In the first part I talked about an activity that I and my colleague Nigel Ford undertake with taught postgraduate (Masters) students taking our Information Management and Librarianship programmes (about 60 students). It is a formative activity, but involves peer evaluation. The task is to produce a brief written guide and a Squidoo lens or blog, relating to a specified database. The aims are to develop skills in the databases concerned (learning by teaching) and to develop skills in planning and writing material to support information literacy. It is part of a class "Information Resources and Information Literacy" that normally has a 2 hour lecture + a one hour lab each week.

In the first week of the cycle, the students are briefed, and they choose partners for the exercise (signing up using our VLE). They start working on the task by getting to know their database (e.g. Google Scholar or Web of Knowledge) better. In the second week, in the lab session, I and Nigel go over some material (some of which has been posted in advance) relating to production of documentation and to cognitive styles in learning. We answer questions and see how the pairs are working together. The next week there is no scheduled lab as the students should be working on the task, and the lecture session has presentations from practitioners working with information literacy. By the end of this week, students are to post their completed guides to discussion boards on our VLE. In the final lab session they swap guides with another group, and use a framework to evaluate each other's guides and provide feedback. We have a very short wrap up at the end. There is a slide in my presentation where I have a sort of flow diagram representing this process.

In the second part of my session I gave a very short overview of Second Life (SL) and what I'm doing there , including a demonstration. The questions from the audience were all about SL ;-)

The slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/
information-literacy-for-masters-students/

More notes from the Konstanz conference

This is another post about the Konstanz (Germany) Workshop on Information Literacy (KWIL), which ran 8-9 November. KWIL was focusing in particular on information literacy for higher degree students (Masters or Doctoral) and the website is at
http://www.ub.uni-konstanz.de/
bibliothek/projekte/
informationskompetenz/kwil.html

KWIL was attended mostly by German and Swiss librarians, with some participants from elsewhere (notably UK and USA, and a librarian from Ghana who was a former student of mine). It was held in English, though.

I will pick out a few of the sessions:
Konstanz University. The hosts for the conference gave a talk about their project to examine higher degree students’ information literacy needs. There is a lot of information about this, and their first project on undergraduate IL needs, at http://www.ub.uni-konstanz.de/bibliothek/projekte/
informationskompetenz/publikationen.html However, most of it is in German. Some interesting points are that:
- They used small multidisciplinary centre for research excellence (Konstanz University’s Zentrum für den wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs ) as an access point and test bed. They held a discussion to identify needs. They now see all new members of the Centre as part of the induction and also plan workshops on topics such as open access, searching and personal information management.
- They cooperated with the Politics academics to introduce a compulsory module in a politics masters course in 2006/7.
There is a lot of information given about this (including some course materials) on the above page (in German) and a good summary in the paper (also linked there):
Oliver Kohl-Frey (2007): Mittendrin statt nur dabei: Informationskompetenz und Fachreferat an der Universität Konstanz. [In the thick of it rather than standing on the sidelines: Information Literacy and subject support at the University of Konstanz] Beitrag zum Tagungsband des 3. Kongresses für Bibliothek und Information in Leipzig, 19.-22. März 2007

Imperial College. Debbi Boden gave a presentation about PILOT (POSTDOC INFORMATION LITERACY ONLINE TUTORIAL), a learning & teaching resource developed by Imperial College Library within the Virtual Learning Environment WebCT. It is aimed specifically at research students (and research staff).
- it has a section on the publishing process, including issues to do with copyright, open access etc. This seems to be the areas that is definitely given more prominence when people develop a strategy for people beyond the undergraduate level. It was mentioned by Konstanz, as noted, and also by the speaker from Manchester Metropolitan University.
- It includes some short tutorials with a “get your pilot’s licence” theme, using Flash and funky music. If someone fails the tutorial, the topic gets added automatically to their development plan in WebCT.
- They commissioned a film with student actors “Life on campus” which stresses the benefits of NOT plagiarising (rather than just the penalties for plagiarising) which is used as part of their plagiarism prevention work.
- They produced high quality free promotional items and got the university’s head person in learning & teaching to launch PILOT, making sure it had a high profile.

Mary Harrison. She is specifically appointed to support researcher’s needs at Manchester Metropolitan University Library. One thing she mentioned was a module in the MA Academic Practice (which new academics may take) which is just going to be introduced. It will cover searching, Web 2.0, Open access and managing research information.

Hannah Gascho Rempel described a 90 minute session supporting students’ literature review assignments. The interesting thing was that it was concentrating on understanding the what, why and how of literature reviews; and peers (students) who had already used tools like EndNote were given prominence in explaining the tools’ value

Nicole Krüger (German National Library of Economics) talked about an enquiry service they provide in the economics field. An interesting aspect was that, where possible, as well as giving an answer or just an explanation of how to find the answer, they would also refer people to the relevant section of LOTSE (a German language online information literacy tutorial developed by several German libraries). Thus they seemed to be seeking the “teaching moment”.

Konstanz meeting

I have missed a few days of blogging as I have been atttending the Konstanz Workshop on Information Literacy, (KWIL) 8-9 November, which was focusing in particular on information literacy of students above the undergraduate level. It was held at the University of Konstanz, in the attractive setting on the shore of the Bodensee and on the border with Switzerland. The delegates were mostly from Germany and Switzerland, but with some participants from other countries including the USA and UK.
Unfortunately because I had to attend a meeting on Wednesday afternoon in Sheffield I missed the Thursday morning sessions, which was a great shame as they were good by all accounts! They included a talk from Susie Andretta, and so I will take the opportunity to mention her website, http://www.ilit.org/ where she has already put her KWIL paper Everyone can be an 'advanced' learner with information literacy , both the PowerPoint and the text version. You can reach this from the IL Research page, which includes other information on her research. Her site also has lots of information relating to her Applied Information Research and Facilitating Information Literacy Education (FILE) modules and other information literacy resources.
Photo by Sheila Webber: War memorial Sheffield, October 2007.

New discussion list

Elearn is a new IFLA mailing list, set up by the IFLA (international Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) E-learning Discussion Group. "This is a discussion list for information professionals who are interested in issues to do with applications of e-learning in LIS education, continuing professional education and development and the operation of library services." To join go to: http://www.ifla.org/VII/dg/eldg/index.htm

Photo by Sheila Webber: Blackheath on an Autumn morning, 2007.

SEDA activities

SEDA is the Staff and Educational Development Association (for educational developers in the UK tertiary sector). They produce a number of (reasonably priced, printed) publications, the latest of which was published in July:
Bostock, S. (2007) e-Teaching: Engaging Learners Through Technology. (SEDA Paper 119) SEDA.
They also run events, for example a session tied into the above publication being held in London on 29 October. Information on the SEDA website at http://www.seda.ac.uk/index.htm

Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn anemones., Sept 2007