Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Lilly Conference (better late than never)

To echo Lynda, I saw many great presentations at the Lilly conference, but here are the notes I took on a session entitled "Meeting the Millenials: Using Wikipedia to Teach 21st Century Literacy Skills to First-Year Writing Students"

46% of students 18 and over have used Wikipedia
More popular than m-w.com
Students like it because:
• it’s the first result in a Google search
• Multimedia
• Links within articles
Assignment:
Have students change article, to show how easy it is
Look at the Discussion Tab to see how articles are rated and read what’s being said about the article. People discuss things such as possible plagiarism of articles, order, etc. See BF Skinner for an example.

Students can also look at the History tab to see what has been changed and who changed it.

*Controversial articles are locked (Barack Obama, Scientology) and only admins can change them. Notice that there's no "Edit this article" tab. As an interesting and completely unrelated side note, while Scientology is locked, Presbyterianism and Friends are not.

Point: Say why it’s not good, don’t just tell them no.

Monday, March 30, 2009

ACRL Conference in Seattle: programs on assessing usage of Libguides and 2.0

A couple of weeks ago I attended my first ACRL national conference. It was great being in Seattle again -- cool yet sunny the first two days, then rainy, and a little snow!

I took the most notes for a panel discussion about using improv in research instruction (UCLA librarians hired an acting coach). But Libguides and Web 2.0 was all over the program. Two short paper presentations actually got into an assessment of usage. The presentations were back to back, and were the only standing-room only (literally) events I attend.

1. Do the Outcomes Justify the Buzz?: An Assessment of LibGuides at Cornell University and Princeton University

"This study goes beyond the “”2.0″” dogma to empirically determine if LibGuides lives up to its publicity:
  • Critically examine LibGuides assessment results in order to comprehend patterns of user engagement with “”Web 2.0″” features for teaching, learning and research
  • Discuss Libguides survey data in order to make well informed decisions about the purchase, development, training for, and roll-out of new library systems
  • Observe guide creation and use patterns at Princeton and Cornell in order to understand what guide types (Course-Specific vs. Subject-Specific) are in highest demand in “”Library 2.0″”, and how to target publicity and discovery appropriate"
In general, the presenters provided data that web 2.0 tools in Libguides were lightly used except when required by the professor. Libraries at the two schools tended not to use the 2.0 tools in favor of using the Libguides to post links and locations of library resources.

2. If You Build It, Will They Care? Tracking Student Receptivity to Emerging Library Technologies

"The Library 2.0 movement has fostered extensive technological experimentation among academic librarians. Many question a prescriptive approach to such tech-based innovation, arguing that a user-centered focus results in more successful services. This paper presents findings of comprehensive research into student technology adoption and library usage patterns at Ohio University. "

Older patrons tended to prefer wikis, Second Life, blogs, and del.ici.ous.
Younger students tender to prefer Myspace, texting, IM, Youtube, and Facebook.
Twitter use was 0.2-0.3% for students between 18-22 years old. 23-26 years old reported 0.7% usage.

Birthplace to workplace-Breastfeeding & Feminism Symposium

Birthplace to Workplace (EUC Cone, Thurs 3/26-Fri 3/27) - It's been several years since I attended a conference in one of my liaison areas, I'm now wondering why I waited so long :)

It was nice to see faculty and students from SoN, NTR, and PHE and my poster got raves (woo-hoo!). Too many presentations to list, here are a few -

York University anthropologist Penny Van Esterik on how modernity disrupts birthplaces and workplaces. I admire her approach (participatory, applied) and especially her wake up call to health professionals. The Q&A turned to recent popular backlash against breastfeeding such as Hanna Rosin's Atlantic Monthly essay, The Case Against Breastfeeding. Van Esterik delivered several telling points:
  • There's no one right way to breastfeed
  • We need to start embracing bottle-feeding mothers
Didn't seem as if conference attendees were ready to hear this last message.

Dr. Ana Parrilla-Rodriguez, MPH, on Medicalization of Birth as Violence Against Women. Content was compelling even to a mainstream conference attendee. This was a qualitative study of birth experiences in Puerto Rico. The rate of induced labor in Puerto Rico was reported at over 50%, with induced labor being 4x more likely to result in C-section. Ouch!

Ami Goldstein, CNM, FMP on Women's Experiences with Birth: Promoting Positive Experiences and Outcomes. Hands-down best presentation. Great speaking style and fabu content. Common birth practices that lack evidence vs. evidence based practices. Interactive, brief, pithy, well-referenced.

Dr. Alison Stuebe on Empowering Women from the Birthplace to the Home. Great review of transition challenges (postpartum depression, low self-efficacy) to breastfeeding, suggestions for practice, plus a reference to a classic research study The let-down reflex in human lactation that was pubd in the J of Pediatrics in 1948. Apparently these researchers measured how much milk a research subject was able to give while having her feet dunked in ice water, then while having her toe pulled, then while being asked math questions and receiving electrical shocks. Not surprisingly, all of these interventions had serious effects on let-down.

Dr. Deborah Dee of the CDC on the Nationary Survey of Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care (mPINC). Responses to questions on best practices in labor and delivery (maternal-newborn skin to skin contact), breastfeeding support, etc. Detailed results only provided to the hospitals who responded to the survey, but more aggregated info will be made available in state reports.

Jake Marcus on Lactation, Law, and the Workplace. Don't cringe, fellow librarians, but I'm linking to this lawyer's non-refereed open Web article Pumping 9 to 5. It's well referenced and includes a link to a nifty map summarizing states with breast pumping laws. Twitter hashtag #bfing

Dr. Miriam Labbock's Evolutionary, Biological and Economic Perspectives on Maternity Leave had an interesting cost-benefit analysis on health system and household savings for paid maternity leave. Data were illustrative estimates, though.

I was wishing that Rachel, our esteemed HR librarian, could have listened to presentations and participated in discussions on benefits (Barbara Carroll, NCSU Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief HR officer) and on work-life balance research (Dr. Marian Ruderman of the Center for Creative Leadership).

One of Steve's faculty gave a nice talk - Dr. Yu-Chin Hsieh on Lodging Manager's Coping Strategies for Balancing Work and Family Life.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

TRI-IT Spring 2009 @ Elon -- PART 2

Campus updates:

  • Elon: Meeting w/ faculty to find out how they integrate with technology and how to better support them on their own ground. Created Gallery Builder using PHP as a collection of faculty's research that can be produced in poster form. Syllabus Collection online (voluntary) . Using blogs, wikis, podcasting for faculty. Wordpress software on their server. Wetpaint wikis. Video - such as clips of chemistry faculty showing howto use various tools and techniques. Flip cameras can be borrowed by faculty to use in their classes.
  • UNC: Voice Thread new Web 2.0 tool to create discussion and annotation around multi media objects. E-textbooks project. Lost Second Life and some IT training staff due to budget cuts. Distance learning is increasing tremendously.
  • Wake Forest: Using Sakai and Moodle. Studio for recording lectures in the library. Been supporting blogs, wikis and podcasts for a while including running their own server of these applications.
  • Duke: Duke Digital Initiative for next year; planning for instructional tech showcase April 24, 2009

Peda-Blogy Session
Rick Palmer/Matt Lewis (Elon)
Professor wanted to make her classes' group project/powerpt presentation more interactive, collaborative, and 21st century. Decided to try a blog: classroom presentation as knowledge sharing collaboration in creation of a resource on a topic. (using Wordpress) Responses --> Students like the idea of doing it on their own time, whenever they wanted, valued final project, thought there were only minor tech glitches. Faculty thought it was easy simple and clean (IT assisted to make this easy for them) and liked the less "present" time in class and more active learning and fun. Check out it out: http://idd.elon.edu/blogs/pedablogy/

Web 2.0 Applications and Usage
  • Lauren Pressley (WFU): Do training on how to use the tools and host some as well for librarians and faculty/staff on campus. Role of the library is to archive and preserve things happening on campus thus use Blogs wikis and podcasting. Will sit down with anyone to figure out the best tool for them. Use facebook, flickr, etc as a course management tool. Multimedia projects supported by library. Will teach a class to train the students for a prof on a tool. Google calendaring to embed. Google Voice starting to use. Twitter and 12seconds (like twitter but with video) TED talks invite others to join in. Nings!
  • Randy Piland(Lecturer in Communications @ Elon) & Scott Hilldebrand (Dir of Instruc Tech @Elon): Suggested some new tools - VuVOx collage (video) Issuu.com (magazine publishing portal) cooliris.com (photos & videos, search by theme, w/ captions, through all news archives) Thumbstrip - firefox plug in, add various sites and they appear as thumbnails in bottom of screen (preloaded and ready to gofor a class)Photosynth (MS, people submit photos and it pulls similar ones together). Kalabo (online music collaboration) Glypho (create a story collaboratively)
Cool Tools Sharing Session

TRI-IT Spring 2009 @ Elon

BFW and I attended a one-day (free!) informal information sharing opportunity for Triangle and Triad instructional technology people - instructors, programmers, web designers, librarians all under one roof. It was good opportunity to meet with a mix of people with varied backgrounds and skills; in fact I was surprised to learn that many of the non-librarians had MLIS/MSIS degrees!
I attended sessions on blogging, podcasting, interactive instructional multimedia and freeware and open source. A couple of highlights:
  • Learned how Elon Law School is incorporating podcasting for law professors (Christie Dickerman). They use a service that allows professors to record podcasts over the phone. Dickerman then edits the "voice recordings" as 18-20 minute long podcasts. (Longer podcasts are too big for BB to handle.) Students can listen to the podcasts - mini snippets of their class lecture on Blackboard or download them in itunes and listen to them on the go. Dickerman said that at first the students said it was "a little weird" but then it felt as though they were getting a one-on-one lessons with thier professor -- then, three years later they have to reapply the information on the bar exam, and can listen to it again for a refresher.
  • The interactive instructional multimedia presentation made me realize just how far instructional technology has come in such a short amount of time and also just how behind the library is. UNC teaching and learning center showed us some of the dynamic online courses they have prepared for some schools on campus. These were large-scale collaborative projects that demanded the skills of many different people on many different projects -- programmers, web design, graphic design, writers, producers, etc -- to have an end product. For example -- some online videos class modules for the nursing school took two days for video production but 5-6 weeks to edit with the team. (That was a short range project!) On the other hand it took two years to create 9 web-based class module courses. (A free demo is available to view here.) The shortest was 1 hour of narrated animation but that is without the quizzes; In total there was 800 hours of narration, (831 files) completed. All of the modules were interactive -- drag 'n drop, fill in blank, multiple choice.
Sidenote: Wake Forest ZSR has a reward scheme built into their Professional Development blog. People who attend conferences (etc.) and post on their PD blog get more funding; those that don't post on their blog get less funding. hmmm.

Friday, March 20, 2009

2009 UNC TLT Conference

This year the 10th Annual UNC Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference was held online only (and free to attend!) There were both synchronous and asynchronous sessions. Here is a summary of the sessions I found worthwhile:

Reusable Multimedia Resources to Enhance Information Literacy
(NCSU librarians)

Info Lit: how to use a tool or do a process VS. giving more context to understand the tool process or concept. (EX: how do I identify a peer reviewed journal? vs what is a peer reviewed and why is it impt? OR can I use wikipedia in my research? vs how does the info get created in wikipedia?) Teach the "back story" - instruction about how info is created, vetted, stored, accessed and used.

NCSU Libraries e-learning resources project: suite of online learning materials, stand alone for instructors or librarians, and share among other institutions. These are generic videos so can be used across disciplines and at other campuses --> anyone can download the zip file and host on their own site!

  • Peer Review in 5 minutes: 1) understanding the big picture of peer review process 2) why peer reviewed articles are different peer review 3) what happens on college campuses. 4)Knowing where to go for help.
  • Lit Review for Grad Students: 1)what is a literature review? 2)What purpose do literature reviews serve in research? 3) What should a student expect as part of the process of conducting a literature review?


Enhancing Student Learning Through the Use of NetOp School
(UMC-P Sharon Bell, Ollie Bishop)

View the Windows Media Video of the presentation.
  • To capture students' attention in a lab setting, fostering critical thinking, and enhancing collaboration in an active learning environment technology, try Net Op School
  • During class, students participate, collaborate in teams, and take responsibility for their own learning.
  • The professor facilitates discussion while solutions are critiqued.
  • The success of this teaching approach and use of this active learning classroom environment is not discipline specific.


Expanding Library Instruction Online: Using Elluminate to Reach Both On-Campus and Distance Education Students
(NCSU libraries)

Already working with de students for course specific or program specific workshops, but would students attend an online library workshops regardless of whether they are on campus students? YES!

How to get started/factors to consider:
  • cater to de and on campus students, esp grad students across several depts rather than a specific class.
  • timing is important! not late in the semester; try fall and early in the semester.
  • don't send long emails w/ too much info - they wont read it!
  • give meaning to the workshops.
  • faculty are interested and supportive of this - get leverage from them.
  • most workshops ended up being weekdays 7pm for 1 hour 15min max - best for working students and even on campus students.
Judge Success of Project:
  • reach different types of students.
  • same number of more students than f2f equivalent.
  • positive feedback - created a survey to take after they attend.
  • reuse the archival workshops - others can watch it later.

Second Step:
  • create web pages w/ workshop descriptions and info, tech info, registration (which is beneficial to know how many are planning to attend)

Promotion:
  • through classes, email, flyers, e-board, blog...

Who attended:
  • Majority were on campus students actually!
  • Majority were grad students, esp doctoral students.

Lessons Learned
  • critical to partner with faculty and other student support staff to market workshops.
  • hard to find good scheduling time for everyone.
  • web based content guides is very impt and helpful.
  • make it easy to join - if its complex for a group then just let them click a link and join.
  • re-use archival sessions instead for individual students or a class.
  • know that students dont come in masses.
  • why not create a library online of these links to recorded sessions in one place for others to grab and use?
  • use ellumniate to record shorter sessions, in place of a jing/camtesia tutorial.


Course Management with Social Networks
(JD Knode, Methodist U and Steve Knode, U of MD)

  • Using Nings instead of BB for class. More flexibility! More collaborative work!
  • Add photos or videos. Chat/threaded discussion. Each person has a page of their own to tweak and personalize. They have their own blog too.
  • Small groups can be created w/in the ning - with their OWN tools to discussion collaboratively and collect docs etc.
  • Invites tool to ask people to join network. Can keep it private.
  • Privacy/wavier/permission - asked students to try this and experiment w/ this tool and they were all ok it and w/ sharing this experiment with others.
  • You can set parameters on what students can and cant add to their pages in the ning. They can set who can see what they post as well.
  • Went through all the customization and aspects of using a ning.
  • Can set up notify to email you when changes occur in areas you specify so you dont have to log in all the time to check.
  • Don't have to be a techy person to use the ning. Its easy and simple to drag and drop to set things up.
  • This doesn't have to be a class ning, it could be a group, committee, organization or people with common focus.

Effective Screencasts for Maximum Learning at a Distance
(East Carolina U)

CAMTESIA INFO:
  • Provides editing features similar to ones available in movie editing programs such as Windows Movie Maker and Apple’s iMovie. May edit the screencast from either a timeline or storyboard.
  • At any point in the screencast, you can delete video and audio content or can insert new video, graphics, or audio clips. Also can even out volume levels and remove noise.
  • Can add a quiz with multiple-choice items; fill-in-the-blank items; and short answer items.
  • Camtasia will grade the multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank items.
  • Developers may publish a screencast in any combination of these formats: Web & blog (MP4); Flash (SWF); iPod/iPhone/iTunes (M4V); CD/DVD/lossless export (AVI); Silverlight-compatible (WMV); QuickTime (MOV); RealMedia (RM); Animated GIF; Audio only (MP3)

Monday, March 16, 2009

ASIST Training

On March 11th and 12th, I attended Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST), sponsored by the UNCG Student Health Center. ASIST provides intensive training and practice in recognizing individuals in danger of committing suicide or engaging in suicidal behavior, assessing the immediate risk of such behavior, as well as how to intervene and assist someone in an obvious suicidal situation.

ASIST training is referred to as “suicide first aid.” The training helps people in any role or profession reduce and eliminate the immediate threat of suicide, as opposed to training for the long term care of potential suicide victims. ASIST training supplements the UNCG Cares initiative through the Dean of Students office as well as Safe Zone training offered by the UNCG Wellness Center. Although many people attending this program were mental health professionals, my fellow trainees included people from Campus Ministries, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and Housing & Residence Life.

ASIST is the most intensive training program offered through LivingWorks Education, Inc. Additionally, there are 2-3 hour programs (suicideTALK & safeTALK) and day-long training sessions (WorkingTogether & suicideCare). Healthcare professionals as well as informal facilitators attend these programs.

Why is it important to have suicide awareness and intervention training when working at a university? According to 2005 statistics, suicide is the third cause of death among Americans 15-24 years of age. In fact, over 1,000 students commit suicide on college campuses each year, and 1 in 12 students has planned his or her suicide at some point. Based on this statistic, of the 28,429 undergraduates who can borrow from our library in 2007-08, 2,370 have considered suicide at some point. Of the 7,646 students seen in instructional sessions by our Reference Department in 2007, at least 638 have had thoughts of suicide. With statistics like these, campus-community awareness and training is a necessity.

For more information about the ASIST program and other prevention and awareness training, visit: http://www.livingworks.net/

For more general information concerning suicide, visit: http://www.suicidology.org/web/guest/home