What initially looked like several change agents colliding to create a year of turbulence, came to be a year of transformation for our teaching practice. Both external forces, such as ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, and internal forces, such as new strategic directions in eLearning, provided momentum as we redesigned our research guides. The presentation includes a case study of a year-long process of re-envisioning our guides to enhance content based on the Framework’s threshold concepts, incorporate responsive and accessible design, and reflect our pedagogical practices. Throughout the process we collaborated with key campus stakeholders: eLearning strategists, English Composition faculty, and the student population. In addition, our process coincided with the renovation of one of our classrooms into a collaborative teaching and learning environment. The presentation demonstrates how the new space converged with our instruction strategies.
A presentation for UC Libraries showcasing 2 projects: English Composition 1001 students' perception of research and findings of an undergraduate research survey identifying library needs, a collaboration with UC’s Office of Undergraduate Research, Scholarly Endeavors and Creative Practice.
Using the university-wide common reading book, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, we jump start the research process with first year students from the moment they step onto campus with an 8 minute orientation activity. In a small group, highly interactive process, students explore current controversial scenarios and are challenged to make informed and reasonable judgments based on evidence and observation. The goal: capture their natural curiosity and get them excited about research, information, discovery, and evaluation.
Virtual Poster for Association of College and Research Libraries 2015 Conference. This poster illustrates how to reuse and recycle existing course materials by flipping the classroom into library instruction sessions. This activity merges problem-based classroom active learning techniques with student self-paced pre-work that will increase student engagement, content retention, and collaboration with the teaching faculty.
Presentation for 3 T Conference at the University of Cincinnati. Learning outcomes: make effective use of library resources in teaching; use technology to “embed” librarians in courses; understand how faculty can collaborate with librarians in teaching; use an easy, practical technique to visualize students’ perceptions about a class topic.
1st Fridays @ 4, a series of informal themed events hosted by librarians, was designed to engage with students in meaningful conversation and explore the terrain of information resources beyond coursework and research needs. The series marketed with the tag line, fun, food and library finds, included themes of Survivor, Library Edition, Celebrate the Chinese New Year, and The Secret World of Rare Books. The series was highly successful, providing direction for the current year.
In its recent strategic planning effort, the University of Cincinnati Libraries (UCL) identified assessment as one of five strategic directions. The overall goal is to “ensure library user input into decision making about collections, services, and facilities.” While UCL has participated in LibQUAL+ regularly since 2002, and conducted other studies, UCL’s Transforming the UC Library User Experience, Strategic Plan 2011-2014, places increased focus and importance on gathering information and data from and about our users to inform decisions. The presenters will share their experience developing an assessment plan for UCL and initial efforts in building a culture of assessment. The design, methodology and approach of two focused surveys, that are a part of our coordinated plan of assessment, will be shared.