Instruction Swap Ideas and Ongoing Repository Project

It was suggested that we collect the Instruction Swap ideas and share them with each other. I've uploaded all that were sent into an Evernote notebook, and added a few tags to help folks navigate and find what they're interested in.  View it here: https://www.evernote.com/pub/iloveinstruction/firstnotebook

Also, others mentioned in their IPAL session evaluations that creating some sort of drop box or  repository where people could easily share instruction ideas at any time (not just during IPAL) would be helpful. It wouldn't have to be polished, or fancy, or overly detailed--Just enough detail for someone else looking at it to get the gist and figure out if the lesson plan or document is something that they could adapt/use. If that's something you're interested in, add the following email to your address book and start sending away: iloveinstruction.3a8241a [at] m.evernote.com

When using email to contribute to an Evernote notebook, your subject line becomes the title of the new note. You can add tags (identifying categories/labels used to group like notes together) after your note title in the subject line by using the hashtag symbol (#). For Evernote, your tags can include spaces (see image below). When you click send, Evernote will then upload your email as the note, apply the labels you've indicated, and include any attachments you added.

If you have any questions or issues, feel free to contact Cara Stone (cstone [at] grandview.edu).

IPAL IL Discussion Group Photos

As you can see from the photos, there were so many wonderful conversations happening during the IPAL Information Literacy Interest Group morning session held May 1, at Grand View University in Des Moines!

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

As mentioned in earlier posts, we plan on compiling the Instruction Swap materials and will get those distributed to those who attended.

Interested in what was discussed during the Circuit Training sessions? Check our our previous post: http://ilove-instruction.blogspot.com/2014/05/ipal-recap-2014-circuit-training-notes.html 

IPAL Recap 2014: Circuit Training Notes

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who attended the IPAL Information Literacy Interest Group session held May 1, 2014 at Grand View University! I did my best to get around to as many different groups as I could during both the Instruction Swap and the Circuit Training sessions, and loved the conversations that were happening! As was discussed during the session, attendees will be contacted and asked to email me (Cara) your Instruction Swap ideas, which I will then compile and share again with the whole group. We will also be going through the surveys (thank you for sharing your feedback), and will be using those to help plan future events and blog posts.

It will take some time to compile the Instruction Swap resources, so, in the meantime, here are the notes from the different "Conversation Stations."

Those who went to this station had the following prompt, but were free to take anything within the topic & run with it:

Logistics

Interested in talking about library spaces, configurations, labs and opportunities for using other areas across campus? What about scheduling, staffing (full-time and student workers), or faculty relationships? Then this Conversation Station is right for you!
Please appoint someone to help keep track of the ideas you discussed by taking notes in this Google Doc.
All of the Google Docs will then be made available to the rest of the IPAL IL Discussion Group so others can benefit from multiple discussions. You don’t have to miss out on the conversation from one group because you decided to join another!

Find this group's notes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gLGCp3j3SG1qDh3l-8PQMyYQaBK-hCgPkNP2X8W0Vm0/edit?usp=sharing

Those who went to this station had the following prompt, but were free to take anything within the topic & run with it:

Creativity

Interested in brainstorming instruction ideas? Looking for inspiration (or interested in sharing what inspires you)? What about moving beyond instruction “writer’s block?” Wondering how others practice self-reflection or what new teaching strategies they’ve used? Then this Conversation Station is right for you!

Please appoint someone to help keep track of the ideas you discussed by taking notes in this Google Doc. 

All of the Google Docs will then be made available to the rest of the IPAL IL Discussion Group so others can benefit from multiple discussions. You don’t have to miss out on the conversation from one group because you decided to join another!

Find this group's notes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kNKCj5V2w8sBYakPrGL7mr7WIybK6jyiqInMCg2JYDQ/edit?usp=sharing

Those who went to this station had the following prompt, but were free to take anything within the topic & run with it:

Computers vs. Non-Computers

Wondering what others do when a computer lab isn’t available for their library instruction? Wondering when it’s best to walk away from the computers? Interested in new computer-based or non-computer based activities? Then this Conversation Station is right for you!
Please appoint someone to help keep track of the ideas you discussed by taking notes in this Google Doc.
All of the Google Docs will then be made available to the rest of the IPAL IL Discussion Group so others can benefit from multiple discussions. You don’t have to miss out on the conversation from one group because you decided to join another!

Find this group's notes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Faosd7NOXDWGSIippy-SikKcpEDpkYR1VshUREAJskE/edit?usp=sharing

Those who went to this station had the following prompt, but were free to take anything within the topic & run with it:

Assessment Ideas

Interested in sharing different assessment approaches and considerations? Wondering about formal and informal assessment, and tech tools to help you assess? What about closing the gap or revisiting classes to share or discuss their assessment results? Then this Conversation Station is right for you!
Please appoint someone to help keep track of the ideas you discussed by taking notes in this Google Doc.
All of the Google Docs will then be made available to the rest of the IPAL IL Discussion Group so others can benefit from multiple discussions. You don’t have to miss out on the conversation from one group because you decided to join another!

Find this group's notes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sbdmGjdZ9AUUQmfeRkRQyxQJ-9a7Tscjs776_-OMgqU/edit?usp=sharing

Those who went to this station had the following prompt, but were free to take anything within the topic & run with it:

Beyond Instruction 

Interested in discussing professional development for librarians? Wondering about librarians providing faculty development opportunities? What about webinars, sharing scholarship, programming, or other things that don’t fit within the other categories? Then this Conversation Station is right for you!
Please appoint someone to help keep track of the ideas you discussed by taking notes in this Google Doc.
All of the Google Docs will then be made available to the rest of the IPAL IL Discussion Group so others can benefit from multiple discussions. You don’t have to miss out on the conversation from one group because you decided to join another!

Find this group's notes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10XXbBgOhI6SW7puCUjamENmkaWRI8f1INsJ7fyeKaJU/edit?usp=sharing

IPAL 2014 Preview

Yes, we are still alive and are beyond excited to have the opportunity to meet again, face to face, with the Information Literacy Discussion Group at this year's IPAL conference! The theme is "Say Something: A Great Big World of Academic Libraries." (It looks like someone on the conference committee is a great big Christina Aguilera fan...P.S. If you cry easily, don't watch that music video.)

This year's conference will be held May 1, 2014 at Grand View University in Des Moines. If you're looking for registration information, follow this link: http://www.ipalgroup.org/IPAL_conferences.html

We have some great activities planned, with plenty of time for discussion and sharing. Only have 30 seconds? Check out this brief "commercial" (inspired by the swap meet commercials on late night TV from the 80s):

We'll start out with an "Instruction Swap." Have you ever heard of a clothing swap or a book swap? It’s where you bring something you've used to a get-together and trade it for something someone else has brought. We’d like to get the discussion started with something similar.

In preparation for the IPAL IL Discussion Group gathering, we’d like for attendees to bring a physical copy something you've used in your IL instruction to share (it can be an activity description, a whole lesson or a chunk of a lesson plan, a reflective piece, a concept map, manipulatives or learning objects you use, etc.). Whatever it is, be prepared to share it with someone you meet at the session and they’ll swap their idea with yours! (It doesn't have to be anything fancy, jewel encrusted, laminated, earth-shattering, or super-formal. Just something you that has worked well for you that you would enjoy sharing & you think might also be helpful to another librarian who does instruction.)

After the "Swap" we'll break out into smaller, themed discussion groups for “Circuit Training” to share ideas, then rotate to another station that interests you. We'll conclude the morning with a few rounds of "Solution or Sympathy" where attendees write down instruction/library-related questions or concerns they have which will then be shared anonymously to see if the group has experienced something similar, can offer up possible solutions, or sympathize, and let the person who submitted the question know that at least they're not alone. We hope this range of activities will allow attendees the flexibility to focus the discussions on their instruction needs, making it as relevant as possible.

We hope to see you there!

When New Books Arrive in the Mail

 

Find more fun gifs from When in Academia at http://wheninacademia.tumblr.com

Merry librarian-snark-mas to all and to all a good snark! Enjoy your break, and we'll see you in the new year! 

Brief Hiatus

Greetings iLOVE readers! The bloggers are taking a brief hiatus as we reorganize and re-energize for a new calendar year.  In the coming year we plan to share teaching ideas from new voices! Are you interested in being a guest contributor? Contact us at iloveinstruction@gmail.com, or feel free to use the Ask the Masses form. We'd love to hear from you and help share your ideas with those who are looking for inspiration!

When You Search a Works Cited List for Articles and Three of the Citations You Need Put the Incorrect Journal

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Teaching Translitearcy with EBSCO and ProQuest

Today’s post will be about something I love to use. That is, technology. I am an avid user and teacher of the stuff. Sharing some new tick, be it with a database, mobile app or desktop app is one of the key aspects of my job. As librarians, we need to be fluent with technology. After all, we teach students the concepts behind databases, web interfaces and working with file structures. 

There are some great tools out there, which interact with other apps. (Zotero being one such option. ) Being an iPad campus, my institution has purchased a notability license for our students.  This is a nifty little app that works with cloud storage to allow PDF annotation. As a librarian, I view this as an opportunity to teach students how to interact with file structures, save PDF’s, import them into the app and annotate them. 

These types of apps and tools require a student to really understand file structures and user interfaces. They need to understand that a PDF is more common for scholarly articles, whereas a word document is better suited for a working document. An understanding of common UI elements is also required. The larger concept here is transliteracy. 

Translitearcy, for those who do not know is “… concerned with mapping meaning across different media and not with developing particular literacies about various media. It is not about learning text literacy and visual literacy and digital literacy in isolation from one another but about the interaction among all these literacies” (Ipri, 2010).

This is not an easy thing to teach. Students need to draw concepts between interfaces and develop and intuition for graphical user interfaces (GUI). I believe most librarians are transliterate. The nature of our jobs require use to interact with different interfaces, to get desired outcomes. Students are often lost in new interfaces and require a guiding hand. 

Transliteracy is far too large of a literacy to teach in a single library session. It is something that is developed over time. They need experience interacting with lots of GUIs. In my sessions, I have developed a simple technique to get across a basic translitearcy concept.

The interfaces of EBSCOhost and ProQuest are not all that different. Sure, they use different color styles and somewhat different wording, but they both send you to a PDF. They both offer you the ability to refine your search with boolean operators. There is even a way to refine your search based on peer-reviewed status.

In class, I have the students find one article in EBSCO and ProQuest. Usually I leave 5-10 minutes each. If the articles they can find are related to a paper they are required to write, that is all the better. Once the time is complete, I ask which was their favorite. Most of the time, the class is split down the middle. 

After that, I bring up EBSCO and ProQuest on the same screen. I point out how both interfaces have that three search box interface. I mention the boolean operator drop downs. They are shown how to refine the searches with the peer-reviewed/scholarly article check boxes and how to refine the searches by timeframe. 

By showing them the common elements in each database, they are learning (hopefully) to look for familiar interfaces. In much the same way you or I would look for a left facing arrow to go back, I am hoping they are learning to use the drop down menu in either database to refine their search with boolean operators.

When Someone Teaches Me a Formatting Shortcut

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Ask the Masses: Grading for Embedded Classes and One-Shots

This week's AtM question relates to something I've been spending a lot of time doing lately: grading/assessment.

My question is:

At what level are you involved with grading and formally assessing student assignments/projects in the classes you work with? Do you provide feedback, but leave grading up to the course instructor? Do you grade library assignments? Do the course instructors count library assignments or activities for course credit? Let's have a conversation about assessment and grading!