SPRING 2011 LEARNING COMMUNITY PROJECTS

1. Name: Carrye Syma
Title: Assistant Librarian, Social Sciences
Institution: Texas Tech University
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Phone number: 806-742-2239 x281

Project:
A small group of librarians at my institution, including myself, are investigating possible grant opportunities to create a learning lab that incorporates several different types of new technologies.  For example, there might be one 3-D TV in the lab and perhaps one or two wireless media sticks.  We might try to have a HoverCam or any other new technology as recently seen at the Consumer Electronics Show which some of our librarians recently attended and reported on. 
Tackling this issue would be important to our community because it would bring technologies to our patrons that they might otherwise not be able to see or use.  Cost is often an important consideration when talking about technology as is space.  If the library were able to have a space available as well as the newest technologies available to patrons, the patrons would then be exposed to and be able to use many exciting and new innovations.

2. Joint project from Marshall University

Name: Christine Lewis
Title: Acquisitions Librarian – Asst. Professor
Institution: Marshall University
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Phone number:  304-696-4356 

Name: Sherri Smith
Title: Executive Director, Center for Teaching and Learning
Institution: Marshall University
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Phone number: 304-696-5268

Name: Kelli Johnson
Title: Librarian, Digital Learning Team
Institution: Marshall University
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Phone number: 304-696-6567

Project: A collaboration between the library and the teaching and learning center for our new First Year Seminar (FYS 100)--an integrative and critical thinking course.  We will work with faculty to get relevant e-resources materials into blackboard for these special classes.

Our project involves collaboration between MU Libraries and the Center for Teaching and Learning to develop an online tool to facilitate student learning and research in FYS 100: First Year Seminar. This foundational course in general education is part of a new Core Curriculum that began in Fall 2010. Faculty teaching this 3-credit, interdisciplinary course on critical thinking have a tall order: they must address five learning outcomes (reasoning, cultural judgment, representations, information literacy, and metacognitive reflection) and introduce students to seven domains of critical thinking (scientific thinking, mathematical/abstract thinking, aesthetic/artistic thinking, etc.). Introducing students to the seven domains is meant to prepare them for the rest of their college coursework—namely, to help them see and utilize connections across the disciplines in general education and become more integrative and strategic thinkers in their majors and later in their professional lives. Nevertheless, five outcomes and seven domains amount to a lot of categories to keep track of, both for FYS students and faculty alike.

Our idea is to create a “super” LibGuide for FYS, something that is both bigger and smaller than a traditional, discipline-based LibGuide.

1) BIGGER: Traditional LibGuides offer easy electronic organization of and access to research resources that support a particular discipline. Our project, on the other hand, will facilitate inquiry in all seven Core Domains.

2) SMALLER: Traditional LibGuides are most often prepared at the discipline level rather than at the course level. Even when collaborations between librarians and faculty yield a course-specific LibGuide, that guide retains a discipline-specific, generic flavor to it, rarely integrating concrete curricular structures into the guide itself. Our LibGuide will provide that narrower, course-specific focus in order to assist faculty (who collectively teach 2000 students in this course) with the complexities of the seven-domain/five-learning-outcome nexus.

We are thinking that the LibGuide would have tabs--one for each of the 7 domains--plus one integrative tab that gives students access to interactive features that help them to see connections between two or more domains.

• New idea from Sue Polanka: a flash video in the LibGuide that introduces relationships among the domains (using puzzle pieces?)

3. Name: Michael Stöpel
Title: Public Services Administrative Supervisor
Institution: American University of Paris, France. 
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Phone number: 0033 1 40620552

Project: The Library of the American University of Paris (AUP) is about to implement a student-to-student “research help” in cooperation with the Academic Research Center (ARC) at AUP as a pilot project for the Spring semester 2011. The “student research help” will be available within the library during the week from 4-8 pm (possibility of expanding the project to other university buildings such as ARC). 

The idea is to train experienced student assistants by a librarian (myself) – in person or via a blog like the one I created for the general student assistant training (sgrs.wordpress.com) – to help students do research and use technology (i.e. databases, Refworks). The objective is to be closer to the student body by having students help students and to make students feel more comfortable in talking to the library (student research help). We think that it can be done either in person or remotely. We will test an online chat (IM) to see if it would be successful for the research help.

4. Name: Ramona (Mona) Garcia
Title: Public Librarian
Area served: Connecticut
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Project: Using online book websites for historical research.

“Civil War in Cyberspace:’ A Proposal Using Online Book Websites for Civil War Studies” offers steps for retrieving contemporary material on the Civil War from Google Books. To get started you need three things: an internet connection, some simple search strategies, and the issues that you want to investigate. Ultimately, the work involved in constructing and carrying out your search strategies will yield more accessible material on the Civil War and will provide a bridge for those lacking access to a library housing a solid collection on the Civil War. Who knows, you may find that title that has eluded you or your interlibrary-loan librarian. And if its not there when you first look, check back again since new titles are always being added to the Google Books website.