12/14/2011 From the Chronicles Wired Campus  

comes this article on a new course management open access software. 

New Course-Management Software Promises Facebook-Like Experience

November 29, 2011, 1:40 pm

By Alexandra Rice

Three University of Pennsylvania students who recently dropped out to start an upstart course-management system today unveiled their software, called Coursekit, after having raised more than $1-million in venture capital.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-course-management-software-promises-facebook-like-experience/34488?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

11/30/2011 A new Information Literacy Journal.

Perhaps your library would like to prescribe? This was brought to my attention from the ILI-L listserv by Christopher Hollister cvh2@buffalo.edu.

The editors of Communications in Information Literacy (CIL) are pleased to
announce the publication of the journal’s latest issue: volume 5, number
1. The table of contents and a link to the issue are pasted below. As
ever, we look forward to hearing from you, and we offer our sincere
gratitude for the ongoing support.

Vol 5, No 1 (2011)

Table of Contents

Editorial:

Teaching Matters: Developing as a Teacher/Librarian. Budding Researchers and the
Process of Framing Research Questions
Patrick P. Ragains     1-3

Perspectives:

Privileging Peer Review: Implications for Undergraduates
Amy E. Mark     4-8

Articles:

An Assessment of Peer Coaching to Drive Professional Development and Reflective
Teaching
Caroline Sinkinson     9-20

Format as a False Judge of Credibility: Messages from Librarians and Faculty and
Student Responses
Amy E. Mark     21-37

Information Literacy for Multiple Disciplines: Toward a Campus-Wide Integration
Model at Indiana University, Bloomington
Brian Winterman, Carrie Donovan, Rachel Slough, 38-54

Supplementing a Librarian’s Information Literacy Toolkit with Textbooks:A Scan of
Basic Communication Course Texts
Melissa A. Gains, Richard A. Stoddart     55-67

http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php?journal=cil&page=issue&op=current

 

 

11/20/2011  A webcomic of romance,

sarcasm, math, and language presents:

Citogenesis

 http://xkcd.com/978/

11/13/2011 From comes this article on the interactive, student centered, Information Literacy 2.0

                                                                                                                 

 10/07/2011 Just came across this terrific resource from York County Community College for activities to teach information literacy from a colleague.

10/06/2011 A new site which I have just come across  tells about an International Information Literacy Conference in Finland this summer which I would love to attend. More information follows below and I am adding this site to my Blogroll. 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2011

Helen Jane Hearn6 Comments

June 14, 2011

When it comes to our senses, vision trumps them all. When I’m communicating to persuade, I need to get the point across as clearly as possible. If my presentation slides are cluttered or confusing, I lose my chance.

Over 400 million computers have PowerPoint installed. That’s a lot of opportunity for beautifully engaging communication. Apply these six rules for beauty to help your next presentation get your audience to act.

1. Design for the purpose

Is your presentation meant to persuade or entertain? Are you trying to impress or inform? Once you figure out the purpose of your presentation, you can find out if a formal, executive design or a lighter touch is the right one. Knowing the purpose of your presentation will help keep your imagery, templates, colors and fonts consistent with your objective.

How do you know what colors are the right ones to use? Usability studies have shown that strong use of red can cause viewers to become more excited and agitated. Blue is more calming. Yellow is for optimism. If your purpose is to get your audience excited, go with red. Delivering tough news? A blue-heavy presentation can help send a different message.

Determine how much information you’re trying to get across. If you’re giving a technical presentation, it may be appropriate to add more data and charts to your slides. Make your handout do the heavy lifting, but some additional data may be necessary. If you’re giving a presentation on marketing or leadership, the simpler the slides, the clearer the communication.

2. Pictures over words

We see presentations, we don’t read them. Using effective imagery makes your PowerPoint design more engaging. To find compelling imagery, Seth Godin suggests an advanced Flickr search “Go to advanced search, choose Creative Commons Commercial license and search away. The breadth is extraordinary, but what will amaze you is the quality.”

Using images with minimal words can help craft an emotional response to your presentation. It can also keep the focus on you and your story. Consider stock photography websites, Flickr and photographs from your company’s own creative department to help you communicate your story more effectively.

3. Clutter free is the way to be

Pull out any information that does not directly communicate your message. You’re there to present, not talk them through lots of information on each slide. Put spreadsheets in the handout, not on the screen.

“When you overload your audience, you shut down the dialogue that’s an important part of decision-making,”says PowerPoint expert Cliff Atkinson. “When you remove interesting but irrelevant words and pictures from a screen, you can increase the audience’s ability to remember the information by 189 percent and the ability to apply the information by 109 percent.”

Help your audience remember and apply your information by remembering the following tips:

• Excluding any corporate logos or design element, use no more than one graphic image or chart per slide.

• Use white space generously. White space sets the tone of your design and affects the usability dramatically. White space around the biggest items on the slide can convey elegance. The more white space, the more impactful your message.

• Distracting transitions can detract from your message by making you look amateur. Stick to the basics when it comes to transitions between slides.

A good way to keep yourself in line is by remembering the 666 rule. Presentation University recommends slides shave no more than 6 words per bullet, 6 bullets per image, and 6 word slides in a row.

4. Be consistent

Use the same colors, imagery style and fonts throughout your presentation. To help keep the focus on you and your story, use no more than two font families.

Templates can help you maintain a consistent look. You can either create your own template or find one online to suit your purpose. Be warned, some templates are so busy, they can detract from your message.

5. PowerPoint is a tool

Powerpoint isn’t you, it’s just  a tool you use  to get your point across. Remembering this is key in successful Powerpoint design. Use the slides in your presentation to highlight and emphasize key points but remember that you’re the one telling the story.

6. Surprise

Memorable PowerPoint presentations use the power of surprise to go beyond the unexpected. This element of surprise can be used to entertain your audience. If you want your business to stand out, don’t copy all the other presentations. You need to go beyond the expected.

Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Die and Others Survive say, “If we want to motivate people to pay attention we should seize the power of big surprises.” They recommend building beautiful and memorable presentations by breaking patterns, creating mystery, building unique stories, and finding knowledge gaps. Exploiting the unexpected can create attention.

Want more information about Powerpoint? Resources abound.

• Presentation Zen is the leading resource for reasonable Powerpoint design.

• The Powerpoint blog has examples and insight to help your presentations shine.

• Idea Transplant is filled with inspiration for your next presentation.

College students eager to learn but need help negotiating information overload

Guest columnists Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg push back on the prevailing idea that today’s college students are slackers. Rather, these researchers argue that colleges must retool to help young people learn the skills to negotiate the vast amount of information at their disposal.

By Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg

Special to The Times

Seems like everywhere you turn — in a stream of new books, blogs, newspaper stories and broadcasts — the same story is being reported: Today’s students don’t study much. Many are unrepentant slackers, tethered to Facebook and their smartphones on their way to another party. Even worse: Today’s college students lack critical-thinking skills, leaving them unprepared for the workplace.

Reports from campus front lines, especially from professor-authors, present the most comprehensive — and damning — arguments.

For example, the newly released “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” by sociology professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, found almost half — 45 percent — of the 2,300 students they studied “demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and written communications during the first two years of college.”

In “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future,” Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University, concludes, “the intellectual future of the United States looks dim.”

While our own research findings from the University of Washington’s Project Information Literacy Study have confirmed today’s college students struggle, our ongoing study adds another dimension to what is going on in the academy.

All is not lost! Most of the students we studied across all types of higher-education institutions in the U.S. still attend college to learn, but many are afraid of getting lost in a thicket of information overload they cannot dodge.

Our research tells us information literacy is a critical component of the larger concerns facing higher-education institutions today, along with challenges of multiculturalism, massive budget cuts, helicopter parents, grade inflation, limitations of K-12 education and preparation for college, and adapting to an ever-changing information-technology landscape.

Since 2008, we have been studying the information-literacy skills of students — the ability to recognize when information is needed, then locate, evaluate and put that information to effective use. As information scientists, we believe these skills are essential to critical thinking, lifelong learning and succeeding in life, the work force and in a democratic society.

We surveyed and interviewed more than 10,000 U.S. students at 31 U.S. colleges and universities, including undergraduates enrolled at UW, Harvard, Ohio State University, University of Michigan and community colleges, such as Shoreline Community College. We found no matter where students are enrolled, no matter what information resources they have at their disposal, and no matter how much time they have, the abundance of information technology and the proliferation of digital information resources have made research uniquely paradoxical.

Information is now as infinite as the universe, but finding the answers needed is harder than ever.

Our ongoing research confirms proficiency in information problem solving is urgent, given the dauntingly vast and complex wilderness of information available digitally. As one student in humanities said during one of our focus groups, “What’s so frustrating to me about conducting research is the more you know, the more you realize how little you know — it’s depressing, frustrating and suffocating.”

When we surveyed undergraduates last spring in a large-scale survey, eight in 10 of our 8,353 respondents reported having overwhelming difficulty even starting research assignments and determining the nature and scope of what was expected of them.

Nearly half of the students in our survey sample experienced nagging uncertainty about how to conclude and assess the quality of their research efforts. They struggled with the same frustrating open-endedness whether they were researching something for a college course or in their personal lives.

Almost every student surveyed used a risk-averse and consistent strategy that closes the aperture of information available in order to cope. Many respondents reported relying on the same few tried and true resources — course readings, Google, library databases, instructors and Wikipedia — to control the staggering amount information available.

This strategy, of course, underscores the gap between the plethora of Web sources and rich information campus libraries make available to students and the sources students actually use: a limited toolbox of familiar sources, which infrequently includes consulting a librarian or, in many cases, even going to the campus library at all.

While these findings are truly concerning — we would argue they are not entirely damning.

In fact, we found a gaping chasm between some of the widespread assumptions about today’s students and what students themselves hold important about learning.

In our last survey, more than three-fourths of our total sample of students — 78 percent — reported it was important to learn something new and conduct comprehensive research about a topic — along with the tangible rewards of passing a course, finishing an assignment and earning a good grade.

This finding squarely counters the conventional wisdom that characterizes students as worthless slackers.

Problems do not begin or end with students. Many — not all — educators are failing to teach students how to navigate a vast wilderness of information — to discern what they can trust, edit out what is unnecessary, redundant or unreliable, and focus on what they really need.

As one engineering student explained, “None of the old-timers — the old professors — can really give us much advice on sorting through and evaluating resources … we’re kind of one of the first generations to have too much information, as opposed to too little.”

We argue evaluation, interpretation and synthesis are the key competencies of the 21st century. These information-literacy skills allow us to find what we need, filter out what we do not and chart a course in an ever-expanding frontier of information. Information literacy is the essential skill set that cuts across all disciplines and professions.

It is time for many educators to stop lamenting about “these kids today” and retool and prioritize the learning of skills for solving information problems if students are to learn and master critical thinking at all. Or, as one student in social sciences we interviewed told us, “College is about knowing how to look at a problem in multiple ways and how to think about it analytically — now, that’s something I’ll use in my life.”

Alison J. Head, left, and Michael B. Eisenberg are the co-principal investigators and co-directors of Project Information Literacy, which is based in the University of Washington Information School.

1. Mary K. O’Kelly and
2. Colleen Lyon June 2011 College & Research Libraries News vol. 72 no. 6 330-332

+Author Affiliations

1. 
   
   Mary K. O’Kelly is research and instruction librarian at Grand Valley State University, e-mail: okellym@gvsu.edu, and
2. 
   
   Colleen Lyon is digital repository librarian at the University of Texas-Austin, e-mail: c.lyon@austin.utexas.edu

Why we did it

When we ask students where they start research, most say Google. But we began to suspect that the really interesting and useful Google tools went largely unknown, and, since we started paying more attention to how people use Google, we have seen that others have noticed (and written about) the same thing.1,2

One day after a busy week of instruction, we started talking about some of the misunderstandings people have about Google searching. Both of us noticed in our classes an under-appreciation for Google’s many functions, especially those that go beyond the simple search box. We also realized that librarians know a Google trick or two that other faculty and staff might find useful.

Google seemed at first like a rather frivolous topic for a faculty workshop. Yet, upon further thought, it made a lot of sense. We had been assuming that, sure, everyone knows how to use Google. But do they really know how to Google like a librarian?

In May 2010 we advertised the “Using Google Like a Librarian” workshop for two of Grand Valley’s campuses. We expected a half-dozen or so participants, figuring that it was new and, really, everyone already knows how to use Google, right? Both sessions were nearly filled. We repeated the sessions in September 2010, and this time they filled up, had waiting lists to get in, and generated several requests for more sessions. Based on the “sold-out” enrollment, these were among the most popular workshops the library has ever offered.

The notice for the workshop promised that participants:

• will know how to use many of the fun and interesting advanced search options in Google,

• will learn what Google Scholar and Google Books are, and how they and their students can use those tools for research, and

• will set up a Google account and know how to create, edit, share, and upload files.

The lesson plan included how to use the Google menu bar, some fun search tips (e.g., conversions, earthquakes, airline flight tracking, and public data, plus many more),3 Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Translate, Google Finance, and Google Docs.

The sessions were an hour-and-a-half long, so we split the presentation between two librarians to make it easier on the presenters and to make it more interesting for the audience. The lesson was grouped into four sections: advanced search, Books and Scholar, Translate and Finance, and finally Google Docs.

An hour-and-a-half is a long time to pay attention to a projection screen, even for the most focused student, so we felt it was important to hand out a fill-in-the-blank worksheet and to hold the sessions in a computer lab. Participants were free to follow along on the computers, to fill in the worksheet, to make notes, or simply to sit and listen, based on their own learning styles. We also hoped that the worksheet could be used as a reference tool after the workshop.

All workshop documents were loaded into the Blackboard course management system for ease of future use by participants and presenters.

Almost everyone we’ve spoken to uses Google on a daily or almost daily basis. Yet we suspected that many who use Google, even those who use it often, had either been frustrated by Google results in the past, were convinced there was more that Google could do but didn’t know how, or didn’t have time to figure it out. We suspect three reasons for high interest in our workshops:

• Google can be used for nearly any topic, the workshop appealed to a much wider audience than other workshops. It’s relevant and realistic: people can strike up an easy conversation with colleagues about Google, it doesn’t require special software, it’s not limited to one discipline, and it’s quick to get started.

• The sessions were in computer labs, so participants could follow along with the presenters. We gave them hands-on, in-the-moment practice. One particularly satisfying aspect of the session for the librarians was the many “oohs and ahhs” from participants when we introduced short cuts or advanced features.

• When advertising it to faculty, we emphasized that “Your students are using it. You’re using it. Why not get the most out of Google tools?” We pointed at the elephant in the room and said, “Let’s take a ride!”

It seems like the timing was right, too. Our own discourse had moved from, “Do students use Google?” to “How do students use Google?” Inside Higher Ed recently reported on a presentation by Andrew Asher at the 2010 Ithaka Sustainable Scholarship Conference that looked at “what happens when students do not learn how to use Google properly.”4

Then the New York Times Upfront magazine re-asked the question “Is Google making us stupid?” and aimed the debate squarely at teens.5 We hope it’s not too bold to claim that classroom faculty are at the front lines with students, that librarians support faculty, and that librarians know Google.

An observational study in Sweden found that most faculty use Google for all their research needs and weren’t aware of the services the library and librarians offered.6 This is one reason why it’s so important for librarians to market all of their skills so that faculty associate us with the entire research process and not just the part that involves library resources. We noticed in conversations that students and faculty were using some Google resources incorrectly.

For instance, most faculty and students don’t know how critical Scholar Preferences are to using Google Scholar from an off-campus location. This is also an opportunity to talk about Google Scholar as a back door into library resources and not completely separate from a library search.

It was this strong emphasis on using Google as a supplement to library resources that was most important. Workshops like this are an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between librarians and the university community. Even the title of the workshop reinforced the librarians’ expertise: “Using Google Like a Librarian.” People turn to librarians as search experts; this was offered as an opportunity to learn how the experts do it.

With expertise can come remarkable efficiency. Yes, we asked our faculty and staff to share well over an hour of their busy work weeks learning how to use Google better. But we also wanted better use of Google to be accompanied by faster and smarter use. Knowing some of the search tips, knowing another way to get to scholarly articles, and knowing how to navigate Google Books all could save time and energy.

Project Information Literacy researchers found that students “consulted their instructors first when looking for research information from a person—before they consulted librarians, if they did, at all.”7

The researchers also found that Google was the most popular source for students looking for “everyday life research” and second-most popular when completing course assignments.8

We agree with the researchers’ recommendation that “librarians need to actively identify opportunities for training faculty,”9 and, as an extension of that, we feel that it’s important not to focus only on database and library skills training. If Google is as ubiquitous as we think, using it as a training topic is worth our focus, too.

We are thinking of creating videos in either Wimba Classroom or Camtasia that could be used as a refresher for those who attended the workshop or as an introduction to those who were unable to attend.

Most likely the workshop will be offered again. Based on feedback from past workshops, we may adjust the lesson plan to reflect new Google features and to incorporate more of the Google search capabilities. 10 There also seems to be considerable interest in using Google Docs, so a session just for that tool is possible.

The success of such a workshop raises several interesting questions: Are the skills retained? Are the elements of the lesson plan reflective of the greatest learning need? Is there a gap between what learners expect and what the instructors present? Is there a lasting efficiency effect? Future assessment could focus on any one of these questions.

1. See www.google.com/help/features.html.

In The Know panelists discuss a new congressional report linking all of America’s problems to the fact that our entire nation was built on top of Native American graves.

Wikipedia is the most popular site for copying and pasting content into student papers, a new study reports, and social media and content-sharing sites are not far behind. Image below via Wikipedia

The report is called “Plagiarism and the Web: Myths and Realities.” It’s written by Chris Harrick, vice president of marketing for Turnitin, a popular service designed to detect content matches from other student papers, Web sites, as well as an entire library of academic journal and book material.

Analyzing nearly 40 million submitted high school and college papers between June 2010 and March 2011, the company detected 140 million content matches and classified them based on their source:

1. Social Networking and Content Sharing (33.0%)
2. Homework and Academic sites (25.0%)
3. Paper Mills and Cheat sites (14.8%)
4. News and Portals (13.6%)
5. Encyclopedias (9.5%)
6. Other (4.1%)

Overall, the user-generated encyclopedia, Wikipedia, ranked first as the most popular cite to copy content. It was followed by content farms such Yahoo! Answers.

Harrick believes that digital media has created a cultural shift among our youth, who need to be educated to value originality in academic thought and writing. He writes:

A digital culture that promotes sharing, openness and re-use is colliding with one of the fundamental tenets of education – the ability to develop, organize and express original thoughts. For many students who have grown up sharing music, retweeting thoughts and downloading free software, the principle of originality in research and writing can seem antiquated.

For a study of 40 million papers and 140 content matches, I found this report excessively lean. We are not told how much content is typically matched in student papers, the typical number of content sources per paper, or the percentage of papers that don’t suffer from any content match, nor do we have a breakdown based on education type, subject, or grade level.

More importantly, while the company is clear about distinguishing plagiarism (a deliberate attempt to claim  ownership of another’s intellectual contribution) fromcontent matching (the simple overlap of text), Harrick often equates the two in the report, and most explicitly in its title (“Plagiarism and the Web”).

The service does not detect nor determine plagiarism – it detects patterns of matching text to help instructors determine if plagiarism has occurred

Unfortunately, stories using the “P-word” have already started showing up in the media: The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Plagiarism Goes Social“), Inside Higher Ed(“The Sources of Plagiarism“), and PR newswire (“Turnitin Debunks Myths Surrounding Plagiarism on the Web“).

While I have no doubt that plagiarism is present in many of the 140 million content matches in the dataset, the study did not attempt to investigate plagiarism, which is why I take issue with the use of the “P-word” in this context.  Many of the content matches may simply be attributed pieces of text (such as a quotation that is found on Wikipedia), or a block of text that is proceeded with a citation or footnote. Even academics charged with plagiarism find ways of attributing the match to a missing quotation mark or the loss of a few footnotes, as in the case of the late American historian, Stephen Ambrose. In academia, the P-word is more offensive than the F-word, which is why it should be used carefully.

At present, the Turnitin study provides some novel and informative data about where students are getting content for their papers. For this reason alone, the report is valuable to high-school and college educators, librarians, and academic publishers who may all attempt to steer their students to more authoritative sources of content (or alternatively, start populating these sites with the content they want students to read). But without knowledge of whether the content they use has been properly attributed with a reference, it’s a stretch to make strong claims about student plagiarism.

Students, you can quote me on this: Just make sure to include a full citation.

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/04/29/the-p-word/