SSC Library hosted the first NOBLE Information Literacy Roundtable on June 10. I orgnized it, and despite my nerves leading up to it, I think it went well.  About 15 people attended and we talked for 2 hours about information literacy and how we do it at our institutions. Since this was our first meeting, and there was no real agenda, I adapted a techinique we practiced at Immesion last summer. I divided the group into two smaller cohorts and had each of them brainstorm for 15 minutes the challenges they have with teaching information literacy.

 

 Group 1 Challenges:

• No Assignment
• Faculty lack of engagement
• space
• equipment
• surly students
• interesting
• outreach
• marketing
• computing w/ internet
• teaching to different levels
• time
• assessment
• relevant
• monotony
• Systematic approach(lack of)
• troublesome assignment
• faculty curveballs
• Repeat students

 

Group 2 challenges

• Not interactive enough
• lack fo student input
• Repeat studetnts
• lack of good assessment
• information overload for the students (after 20 minutes)
• lack of communication with/from faculty
• library interfaces are clunky
• lack of classroom resources
• teacher burnout
• faculty not incorporating skills into class
• I.L. not built in to missionof the college
• Changing interfaces
• time to learn and implement new tech
• departments territorial
• faculty teaching their own version of I.L.

Then I had them switch sides and spend another 15 minutes brainstorming solutions to the other group’s challenges.

Soultions for Group 1

• For “No Assignment” the solutions were Form, Reminders, Ask about skills, 1 on 1 appointments if assignment doesn’t require research.
• For “Time” the solutions were Shorter Sessions, More targeted
• For “Assessment” the solutions were Assessment form, Clickers, Are we answering “Learning”?
• For “Surly Students” the solutions were Food rewards,  Challenges
• For “Monotony” the solutiosn were Video clips, Multimedia, Clickers, Interactions, involve students

 Solutions for Group 2

• For “Repeat Students” the solutions were Quiz, Demonstration  of competency, and something I can’t make out
• For “I.L. not built in to mission of college” the solutions were C0llatboration with faculty, dean, director.

 

The discussion that followed focused a lot on assessment, and the difference between satisfaction surveys and learning outcomes. It’s easy to find out how satisfied your patrons are, but it’s difficult to see if learning has taken place. Especially if you only have 50 minutes with your students.

Clickers garnered a lot of interest. We just love new toys. Clickers have been a topic of conversation recently, but it was really good to sit down and talk with someone who’s using them, what she likes and doesn’t like, how they can be integrated into a 50 minute session without sacrificing any lesson time.

We ended with some of us sharing something that we do well, soemthing that works in our classrooms. I got one new trick to try out, which is have the students vote  on the topic that the class will search. It will work out best in my Freshmen Comp. classes, where everyone is all over the place. If I list three topics and have students vote on them, that might give them more ownership of the material. We’ll see. I’ll try it out in the fall.

All in all, the day went well.  Hopefully we’ll have another one in the fall.