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

Use of information resources

Yesterday our level 1 BSc Information Management students presented posters from the projects they do in the Inquiry in Information Mangement module. All of them were interesting , but a prize was awarded for the best poster and it went to the poster on How do students use information resources to support their research during academic study: a comparison between levels of study. The photo shows Nina Jaswal, Natalie Chung and Lauren Cotton by their poster with Sheila Corrall (our Head of Department).

The sample was too small to generalise (20 students each from 1st, 2nd and 3rd years, mixture of Departments), nevertheless it may be indicative. For example, 20% of 1st years used library resources daily compared to 50% of 2nd years and 40% of3rd years. Similarly 60% of 1st years used search engines to search for academic material, whilst 30% of 3rd years did. I have put up the 6 posters on our Second Life island (Infolit iSchool), so if you have a SL avatar you can teleport up to the sky platform and see them.

Teens and writing

Another interesting report from the Pew Internet / American Life project has was published last week.
Lenhart, A. et al (2008) Writing, Technology and Teens. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/
r/247/report_display.asp There were 700 telephone interviews (using quite a robust sampling methodology, explained in the report) and eight focus groups, all with teens in the USA.
The summary is "Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them." That sounds a bit bland, but there is a lot more detail than that in the actual report! The nature and quality of learners' writing is generally a concern in the UK, too, in my experience.
Photo by Sheila Webber: fritillaries, Eltham Palace gardens, April 2008.

ESCALATE conference:1

I am at the ESCalate conference, which has the theme The Teaching-Research Interface: Implications for Practice in Higher Education and Further Education. ESCalate is the subject centre for education, and the conference is being held at Stirling University. There is a website at http://escalate.ac.uk/3936 but it does not have much info on it at the moment. I am giving a presentation tomorrow about inquiry based learning in our BSc Information Management Programme. When I have finished the ppt I will put it on slideshare (later today ;-) The first photo shows the conference bag, and the free ESCalate umbrella, but not the free ESCalate coffee carry-mug.

The delegates are academics from various Departments, incuding Education, and educational developers/researchers. The keynotes have been from Professor Gill Crozier, talking about her ESRC-funded project looking at working class students’ experiences of higher education, and from Professor Dai Hounsell, talking about some aspects of his team's ESRC-funded research into learning environments of undergraduate students.

There is a page about Prof Crozier's project here with some links to papers. Following wider questionnaires, they tracked 27 students over 2 years, who were based at four very different universities: one elite university, one pre-1992 university, one post-1992 university, and one college that did foundation degrees. The students were diverse in their home situations, as well as the nature of their university experience. For example, the elite university had a rule that students mustn't have outside jobs in their first tem, and they lived in halls, whereas at the college people\mostly lived at home and might be doing a lot of paid work, so that some of them scarcely identified themselves as "students".

Also, for example, while the students at the elite university had been identified as high flyers at school, nutured and therefore had quite positive views of themselves as learners, those from the college and post-1992 university might have low perceptions of their capabilities as learners. One interesting point was that the "traditional" system of the elite university was better at supporting students and helping them to feel at home in the university, whereas emphasis on "independent learning" and moves to e-learning (supposedly to make things more convenient for students) meant that it was even less likely that students would feel that they fitted in and were part of the university. This affects motivation and retention.

One thing that Dai Hounsell observed was that universities have tended to try and preserve the "elite" experience at least for their final year undergraduates, but there is an increasing gap between this final year experience and what students experience in first year. There has been a tendency for the first year experience to be more massified/generalised, with large lectures, use of teaching assistants and so forth. This made students potentially less prepared for a challenging final year: of course this is a familiar pattern from information literacy education, where librarians often seem to observe a sudden focus on information literacy in final year to support dissertation/project work, without a progression to this in previous years.
2nd photo is of woodland outside the conference centre

Generational markers

There is a table of "generational markers" as generated by Jennifer James for her keynote at the 2007 National Staff Development conference http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/
CandD/CurriculumAreas/CommArts/
documents/multi-generationalworkforce.pdf
I have no information as to how she generated this: some of the statements seem questionable (e.g. repeating the traditional ideas of technology-competence being linked primarily to age). However, these things can always be starting points for discussion.
Photo by Sheila Webber, April 2008

Information behaviour of future researchers

A research review has been published, which had the aims of establishing:
"whether or not, as a result of the digital transition and the vast range of information resources being digitally created, young people, the `Google"generation’, are searching for and researching content in new ways and whether this is likely to shape their future behaviour as mature researchers?
"whether or not new ways of researching content will prove to be any different from the ways that existing researchers and scholars carry out their work?
"to inform and stimulate discussion about the future of libraries in the internet era."
It was co-funded by JISC and the British Library. The JISC press release is here and it has been picked up by the press e.g. here. The latter story is probably also prompted by the fact that the Chief Executive of the British Library, Lynne Brindley, has just been made Dame Lynne Brindley (I worked for her for a while when I was at the BL....) This is the review:
University College London (UCL) CIBER group.(2008) Information behaviour of the researcher of the future. London: University College London. CIBER Briefing paper; 9. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/
programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: London, December 2007.

Studying students

I don't think I blogged the free downloadable publication, a book which describes a project to address the research question "What do students really do when they write their research papers?" The researchers at the University of Rochester, USA, used some ethnographic techniques to illuminate this question, including asking students to take photographs and keep diaries. Indeed, the first editor is described as "Lead Anthropolgist" at the libraries. It is interesting both in terms of the research approach usd and the findings.

Foster, N.F. and Gibbons, S. (eds) (2007) Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/
downloadables/Foster-Gibbons_cmpd.pdf

There is also a 16 minute podcast about the study at http://blogs.ala.org/acrlpodcast.php

Photo by Sheila Webber: Barge on the Thames, London, December 2007.

Blogs and social networks

Yesterday there was a meeting on Exploting the potential of blogs and social networks, held in Birmingham, UK. Part of it was (sort of) streamed into Second Life (where I attended part of the time) - however the venue had technical issues, so this aspect petered out a bit despite the valiant efforts of Andy Powell (pictured in the foreground right in the guise of Art Fossett). As it usually seems at these events, the most interesting bit was possibly when the stream was failing altogether and the assesmbled avatars were discussing the issues amongst themselves.

However, I will pick out a presentation from a student at Bath University (Tom Milburn) which highlights pros and cons of academics using social networking tools like Facebook (basically when they have a clear purpose, the tools seen as useful). All the Powerpoints from the day are together in one giant ppt on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/efsym/
ukoln-blogs-and-social-networks-workshop-all-presentations . His starts at slide 77.

Because of the technical problems, and also the fact that I had teaching, I was dipping in and out, but a snippet I caught from another presentation was that a survey at Oxford Uni had shown that the vast majority of students used Facebook. When asked why they spurned MySpace, they apparently replied that MySpace was full of chavs. This seems to fit in with danah boyd's analysis of social networking tools, where she found that preferences were linked to ethnicity/ social group.

Another general observation is that people in charge of the IT side are realising that they have to engage with these "unmanaged" tools rather than just trying to stop people use them (though on this subject, the good blog/bad blog presentation which starts at slide 23 looked rather irritating, but to be fair that was one presentation that I didn't hear).

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”.

Social networking

The latest issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (vol 13 issue 1) is published, available full text online. It includes a special theme of Social Network sites, with danah boyd and Nicole Ellison as guest editors. I particularly noticed
1) The introductory article by the guest editors, Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, which is obviously a useful overview "This introduction describes features of social network sites (SNSs), proposes a comprehensive definition, presents a history of their development, reviews existing SNS scholarship, and introduces the articles in this special theme section."
2) Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites, by Eszter Hargittai. This reveals that surveys that lump together use of all social networking sites are masking differences (e.g. by ethnicity) in who is using which service. "Are there systematic differences between people who use social network sites and those who stay away? Based on data from a survey administered to young adults, this article identifies demographic predictors of SNS usage, with particular focus on Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster."
The issue is at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Coots in the harbour (I've never seen so many in one place), Konstanz, Germany, November 2007.

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.

Sharing privacy and trust in our networked world

A new report from OCLC, which focuses on the currently fashionable topic of young people and social networking:
de Rosa, C. et al (2007) Sharing privacy and trust in our networked world. OCLC.
"This OCLC membership report explores this web of social participation and cooperation on the Internet and how it may impact the library’s role, including ..... The report is based on a survey (by Harris Interactive on behalf of OCLC) of the general public [6,000 people] from six countries—Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom." There were four key researh areas: 1) Practices and preferences of users in social networking; 2) User attitudes about sharing information; 3) Attitudes to information privacy; 4) Librarians' practice and views on social networking. http://www.oclc.org/reports/sharing/

Photo by Sheila Webber: War memorial, October 2007.

A vision of students today

Thanks to A source of inspiration blog (www.asourceofinspiration.com/
2007/10/ ) for highlighting a new video from Michael Wesch. It comes out of an exercise where 200 of his students were ask to contribute to a Google Document (i.e. shared via Google Docs) about a students' life (by implication, in the USA). The video mostly consists of students holding up placards, pieces of paper etc. with "facts" about their lives - that they will read 8 books a year, but read over a 1000 facebook profiles, for example. However it does end with a few comments about the value of using chalk and blackboard (it makes the lecturer move about!)

Interesting, I think, as a starting point for discussion with colleagues or students themselves - does this correspond with their worlds? And if so - so what? Is the implication that because a student doesn't read books but does use the web, the learning should be more web based? Or (also) that there needs to be more time devoted to helping students understand why books (whether e- or print) are valuable, and providing support in learning how to "read" and "access" academic texts (this is my view: I'm helping students explore Second Life, but also they need to learn how to follow through and critique an argument in an article, or understand summarised knowledge in a book).

The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o and is called A Vision of Students Today

Photo by Ishbel Hartmann: our first student on our Second Life island (outnumbered 3 to one at that point)

Students

A recent (August) Educause paper is a short item from Michael Wesch, who produced the popular youtube video, the machine is us/ing us. In the paper he mentions a survey of his students, who (averaging out their responses) said
"I'll read 8 books this semester
2,300 web pages
and 1,281 Facebook Profiles."
Wesch, M. (2007) Human futures for technology and education. Educause. http://connect.educause.edu/library/
abstract/HumanFuturesforTechn/44949
There is also the digital ethnography blog at http://www.mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/ which features videos by his students.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Sheep, Peak district, August 2007.

Potential students' use of ICT

Thanks to Andy Powell for highlighting this JISC study into UK students' expectations about information technology at university. There were 3 discussion groups totalling 27 students plus 500 respondents to an online questionnaire. Instant messaging and sites like Facebook/Myspace were most used. "In the qualitative discussions, the internet emerges as a research resource more than anything, whether for schoolwork or information in general (news, gossip)." The students expect certain IT facilities to be available as a matter of course.

"HEIs need to bear in mind the ubiquity of social networking – 88% of online respondents use these websites, although only in a social context. Respondents found it hard to imagine using social networking sites for coursework or study, and had reservations about this when presented with the scenario. Universities therefore need to explain how social networking tools relate to learning, if they choose to use these methods "

Ipsos MORI. (2007) Student Expectations Study: Key findings from online research and discussion evenings held in June 2007 for the Joint Information Systems Committee. JISC.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/
publications/studentexpectations.pdf

Photo by Sheila Webber: Little Mermaid, Copenhagen, August 2007.

IL test

There is a news story about an information literacy test run at Purdue University (USA) as a competition with prizes (in the university newspaper)
Mahasneh, N (2007) "Competition exercises critical thinking, Internet navigation skills." The exponent, 30 August. http://www.purdueexponent.com/
?module=article&story_id=6793 Note that whilst the organiser said "we need people to be thinking critically now, more than ever", the winner says how "I was prepared to hit Google as hard as possible."

Photo by Sheila Webber: Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, August 2007.

Discussion on librarians' image

On September 4th there was a discussion How should Librarians present themselves in Second Life, Facebook, My Space etc? in the office of the Centre for Information Literacy Research in Second Life (SL), the virtual world. Lyn Parker of Sheffield University Library (Maggie Kohime in SL) led the discussion and 10 people were present (plus a few lurkers looking over shoulders in Real Life apparently ;-) The transcript of the session is in two parts at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=124 and http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=125

Maggie is on the far left of the photo summing up discussion. There is a fuller description at http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/
2007/09/librarians-in-sl.html

Students use of web in Aboriginal studies

The latest issue of Webology has an emphasis on folksonomies and something on Web 2.0. There is also an article:
Aitken, W. (2007). "Use of Web in Tertiary Research and Education." Webology, 4 (2). http://www.webology.ir/2007/v4n2/a42.html
This is interesting in actually putting the case for use of the web by students. It describes the example of undergraduates in Aboriginal Studies (in Australia), who were originally discouraged from using the web, but this author explains the advantages. One of the things she raises is how discovering and reflecting on what search terms do, and don't, work can be valuable (e.g. that government agencies talk about air quality rather than air pollution). She also talks about how the usage of words such as "aboriginal" and "indigenous" in websites is interesting to study in itself, with social/political implications.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Passageway, Witham Road, Sheffield, Aug 2007.

Google article

In the latest First monday, an article reporting on a research study carried out at Saint Mary’s College of California into student use of information resources:
Head, A. (2007) "Beyond Google: How do students conduct academic research?First Monday, 12 (8). http://firstmonday.org/
issues/issue12_8/head/index.html
"Using student discussion groups, content analysis, and a student survey, our results suggest students may not be as reliant on public Internet sites as previous research has reported. Instead, students in our study used a hybrid approach for conducting course–related research. A majority of students leveraged both online and offline sources to overcome challenges with finding, selecting, and evaluating resources and gauging professors’ expectations for quality research."

Photo by Sheila Webber: Sloes, Hailsham, Sussex, August 2007.

New articles

In June2007, a number of new articles were published in Library philosophy and practice: http://www.webpages.uidaho.
edu/~mbolin/lpp2007.htm
John J. Doherty: No Shhing: Giving Voice to the Silenced: An Essay in Support of Critical Information Literacy.
Amrita Madray: Developing Students' Awareness of Plagiarism: Crisis and Opportunities
Shilpa Shanbhag: Door-in-the-face: Understandings of Scholarship for Academic Instruction Librarians
S. Ovadia: Digg.com and Socially-Driven Authority. "For librarians, the challenge is not so much helping patrons to find materials, because products like Digg and Google making finding materials relatively straightforward, but teaching patrons to evaluate what they are finding and how they were found"...
Mariana Regalado: Research Authority in the Age of Google: Equilibrium Sought
Genevieve Williams: Unclear on the Context: Refocusing on Information Literacy's Evaluative Component in the Age of Google
Photo by Sheila Webber: Rose, Sheffield, August 2007.