Final Project

Redesign/Re-plan my one-shot Information Literacy Instruction

1. Teaching environment:

I am teaching one-shot face-to-face library instruction and most of my students are from upper division and graduate level.  The course's purpose is enrich students' research skills.

2. Learning Outcomes:

About a week before each session, I would request syllabus and assignment from the professors, plus any specific requirements that the professor wants their students to be familiar with.  For instance, one professor requests their students be familiar with different of engineering databases, while the other one wants her students to be able to write APA style rather than use any bibliographic tools.  Therefore, each session would be differently, but the basic learning outcomes are same, which contain identifying scholarly journal articles, choosing appropriate databases, using Boolean logic for research, and reference management tools to organize their results.  At each session, everyone has found one scholarly full-text article and saved in their RefWorks' folder or email.

3.  Assessment:

At each session, students practice to find one full-text scholarly article from one of engineering databases, which is their self-assessment.  With my other two colleague librarians, we create an online survey to collect students feedback in order to see if there anything we could improve our sessions.  From the survey, we learned most students request more activities, and less than 5% students think they have took the similar course while attending lower division courses, from whom we realized the misunderstanding of the purpose of the session.

4. Learning Theories:

We realized the misunderstanding of the purpose of the session.    From week 3's materials, I am thinking to lead students to THINK and ASK questions rather than telling them what and how to do it.  In addition, I have met with professors a couple of weeks ago to collaborate with them for a better on-site activity.

First, creating a NEED environment that professors need to provide actual topic and request students to submit either a topic or a full-text article after the course.

Second, design the activity with controllable results that I am sure what students will gain.  An example from my week 3's post will encourage students to think where they could get information, not always from GOOGLE (hopefully, I need to test it next semester since I have done all of my instructions) and help students to understand the library has well designed databases/directories for their research needs.

5. Ed-Tech tools:

While teaching face-to-face one-shot instruction, I am using limited high-tech tools.  But after reading the 4th week articles, I am think I could use Google Drive.  Great appreciation to Eliot Boden's post of activity to motive students in week 3: mapping out and sharing information resource give me idea of using Google Drive for teaching.  And other reasons to use the tool.  I don't have time to check if every student accomplish the activity, but I could use Google Drive to see everyone's response; in addition, students could share their thoughts, tips, and results with everyone; third, the weakness of one-shot instruction is that students cannot review what I taught, hard to find me because of my busy schedule.  If I could use Google Drive and save it for students to review whenever they need, it could help them to refresh memory, with shared notes from classmates.

6. Reflection and changes:

This course really guide me to rethink about my course design.  I knew there is something missing that students are lack of motivation with active-learning teaching model.  Cooperstein and Small's articles are really helpful.  However, some changes will make professors are uncomfortable so that I cannot make too much changes of my instructions.  During the meeting a couple of weeks ago, they stated that they LOVE active-learning style, which is nothing wrong just with taking this course, I am thinking there are changes we need to make sooner or later.  But I could start testing some small changes to motivate students.

7. Other's posts:

Ediot Boden:  http://eliotdesign.wordpress.com/
Hong Guo: http://spiltfrommyhead.blogspot.com/
Kimberly Lowe: http://kimbrary.blogspot.com/

Emily Woolery: http://emthegemreads.blogspot.com/
Kelly Dagan: http://kellydagan.com/
Kristy Padron: http://kmplibraries.blogspot.com/

How to Choose the best Ed-Tech Tools

What technologies (and these can be old, new, or emerging) might be most appropriate for your final project? Does your final project align with any of the trends represented in the Horizon Report you reviewed?

Personally, online courses are difficulty since we are using WebEx that I won't able to see students' reaction and I normally try to avoid teaching online courses.  From reading How to choose the best Ed-Tech tools for Online Instruction, and his Post II: 5 [very good] Ed-Tech tools for Online Instruction, I am thinking Google Hougouts and Google Drive could be most appropriate tools for my final project.

In NMC Horizon Report: Higher Ed, digital libraries have been "deemed critically important to both students and instructors in higher education...", such as Digital Library Center at Notre Dame; at Fresno State University, librarians assist professors to redesign syllabus and generate learning objects, etc.  

The two Ed-Tech applications that I choose align with working/assisting professors with generating learning objects, more specifically using online tools that students could review the course and refresh research knowledge outside of the class.  I am thinking not only using it for online instruction, but I could use Google Drive on my face-to-face courses.  Thanks to Eliot Boden's week 3's two posts gives me some ideas to use this week's tool to motivate students to share their information sources.  I have to dig and design the instruction more.

Week 3 Learning Theories

1. discuss which theory/ies might be most applicable to your instruction and outline a specific activity/assignment/exercise that would facilitate learning according to that theory. 

I am mostly teaching the library instruction based on students' actual writing assignment and using active-learning teaching module; however, from our study, the results are not as well as we thought.  While reading Cooperstein's Beyond active learning: a constructivist approach to learning, it will lead students to think and ask questions. 

One activity I normally do is demonstrating how to identify scholarly/peer-review journals.  I am thinking to redesign the activity:
Step 1. Explain what a scholarly/peer-review journal is.
Step 2. Ask students to identify an assigned journal's type, whether it is a peer-reviewed journal, and the audience from any website they choose in 2 minutes.
Step 3. Let students to share searching results.
Step 4. Introduce Ulrich's Periodicals Directory
Step 5. Ask students to the same search on Ulrich in 2 minutes.
Step 6. Let students to share searching results. 

As mentioned in the article, do not design the activity with an open-end problem that students could easily find answers from websites, and they will see how easily to use the library database, and this is the reason I set up the time limitation so that students could see how quick and easy once they use the library database.  In addition, I only have 90 minutes to 2 hours for each session that I have to make sure there are enough time for each activity.

However, I couldn't find a way to redesign research activities from active-learning module because it may confuse students since I don't have enough time to explain everything and let students to compare.


2. Write a brief post addressing how you are going to motivate your learners/students, and align your response with the information drawn from Small's article on motivation.

I work closely with professors to make sure I understand what information students need to receive for their assignment.  Meanwhile, students must understand that they NEED to enrich research skills for their writing/research assignments.  However, it doesn't work well to some students when they come to the library instruction unless there are something that they need to accomplish.  For instance, I worked with my colleagues to meet writing professors to discuss requesting students to submit a full-text article by end of the session, and/or able to answer a problem from the professor to identify/write APA style after the course.  Therefore, there are ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION.