Status Skills

Are status skills related at all to academic skills? Does this have any impact on how we think about the Learning Commons, libraries, information, technology, teaching, etc.?

http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/index.shtml

Library Fall Festival

Tomorrow is the Library's Fall Festival. It isn't a Learning Commons event per se and isn't even focused in the Undergraduate Library. It actually takes place in the Marshall Gallery (aka main lobby) of the main Library building and out front if it isn't raining. It was generated from conversations with librarians who wanted to do something to introduce new students to the Library.

Having spent the day prepping materials, moving furniture, etc., I find myself wondering if these sorts of events generate more than general publicity and good will. Do students get enticed in to the Library who wouldn't have entered before? Or, does the day function more to broaden the understanding of the Library's collections and services for those who are already users but maybe don't know the wide-range of what is offered? Either would be fine with me - maybe it is some of both.

Small invite - stop by, get a frisbee, and have your picture taken with Bob-the-Book!

Save Your Space

I ran across this petition today, Save Your Space. The House of Representative signed legislation in July requiring schools to block access to social networking, blogging and chat room sites. Does that mean if we want blogs (even perhaps this one) to be accessible to students, we should sign the petition to block this legislation from becoming a law? We should if we'd like to see lawmakers clarify the ramifications of such a law. Of course, the politicians who support the "Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA)" are concerned with social networking becoming a "happy hunting ground for child predators". However, the legislation will ban access in schools to such sites as this awesome one, Wildcast, by an acclaimed wildlife filmmaker who is filming and blogging about wild dogs in Africa.

Did I mention that I have candy if you come to my office?

Still a Sponge with Some Asorbency

I refuse to use the sinister term lurker to excuse my limited posting (1 comment), and would rather invoke the metaphor of the sponge, with a bit more absorbency. I’m close to squeezing, but am still reading and synthesizing Lanny’s posts and some of the many links and references posted here. Besides, those that know me know that if I begin, it’s hard to stop me.

I have jotted some ideas on my new white board in my office along the lines of trying to come up with an all-inclusive term to describe what we mean by “visual literacy” and “information literacy” and “digital storytelling” and “writing with video.” All of these, as contrasted with traditional lectures and “papers” are, for me (drum roll): Multimedia Composition and Visual Rhetoric.

Part of my enthusiasm for the Learning Commons is based in the hope that it might be a space to promote and support Multimedia Composition projects and efforts to educate on Visual Rhetoric.

More drops from the sponge later. . . .

Papers on Blogging in Higher Ed

Stolen straight from "WCET Article Digests 7/21-8/11" in forum "Article Digest Lists from WCET":
The topic can be found here:
http://www.wcet.info/community/index.php?act=ST&f=8&t=1174.


Papers on Blogging in Higher Ed
The mission of the HigherEd BlogCon 2006 online conference was to "engage the Higher Education community in a conversation on the use of blogs, wikis, RSS, audio and video podcasts, social networks, and other digital tools in a range of areas in academe." During April 2006, BlogCon participants posted "articles, screencasts, videos, and mp3's on new media in academia." Presentations from this conference include:

"How the Integrated Use of Blogs and Blackboard Can Improve a University Public Relations Class: A Case Study"
by Ric Jensen, Northwestern State University, and an Infobits subscriber http://www.higheredblogcon.com/teaching/jensen/Jensen-March-06.html

"Nomadic Desktops: What? How? Why?"
by Owen James
International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan
http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/nomadic-desktops-what-how-why/

"Teaching Information Literacy: Who's Teaching the Teachers?" by Ewan McIntosh University of Stirling, Scotland
http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/teaching-information-literacy-whos-teaching-the-teachers/

"Giving the Students What They Want: Short, To-the-Point E-Lectures" by Mark E. Ott Jackson Community College
http://www.higheredblogcon.com/index.php/giving-the-students-what-they-want-short-to-the-point-e-lectures/
Source: HigherEd BlogCon
Date: 6-01-06
Link: http://www.higheredblogcon.com/
Digested by: TL Infobits on 8-10-06

Lost It

I hadn't realized that this blog had been getting any traffic until this morning when Robert mentioned he felt a little guilty that he hadn't posted anything yet. I looked at him a bit dumbfounded and asked, "There have been posts on the blog??" Duh. Boy, I felt really out of it. I have been so wrapped up in my own day-to-day issues, that I completely forgot to check the blog. I also found that I didn't have a bookmark to the blog and had to open an old email message to find the URL. Then I had to send in a request for a password reminder to blogger.com because I had forgotten the password I set for this blog. It seemed like a lot of barriers to overcome (my own memory being the biggest) in order to start participating. I realize I have come to rely on information coming directly to me through email or instant messaging, and have fallen out of the habit of taking myself to the information in order to participate. I need to find out if I can get the blog to send me email notifications, or copies of the posts via email, when something is posted. That is what will get me to be a regular. I can't depend on my memory, and it will take me some time to develop a routine that keeps me here.

I remember as an undergraduate and a graduate student on this campus, that I would often go to the library to browse, read, research. I worked in the Modern Languages and Linguistics Library for a few years and helped patrons find books, journals, articles, etc. all the time. This was before the Library had the abundance of webified resources. Back then, people had to navigate the online catalog with strange search booleans and several different databases.

Nowadays, I pretty much use the Internet exclusively for searching for any books. If I need help, I use the library chat. I've not been to the library to work or search for many years. I pretty much only go there when I have meetings scheduled there. I do miss the library. I love the feeling I get in the library. My curiosity is way up, I lose a sense of time, and I have a great urge to sit down to write my own book. I do think the library is a community-building space. For a lot of undergraduates, you go to the library for the social networking. It's interesting that as we "grow up" and mature in our studies, we go to the library to be isolated. As a graduate student, people knew you were a serious student if you had a study carrel reserved for your use in the Stacks. You could surround yourself with knowledge that you hoped to absorb and resynthesize into new knowledge.

The Learning Commons is the glue that can attract students to the libary and to services designed for them when access to online resources gives them reasons to stay at home. I like it that we are admitting the social importance of space like the Undergraduate library and designing it to excel for that purpose. What intriques me even more is that through the design, we can make the other resources and services designed for students become an organic part of the space. Just like having information come to me in my email, where I happen to be every day to do my work, having a tighter presentation of the resources for students delivered to them in their social/study space will keep them aware of the information and, thus, more likely to use it. We may finally have a wormhole, if you will, that can transport students to new parts of the knowledge universe.

Okay, when I start thinking about Star Trek metaphors, it is probably time to turn my attention to another topic for awhile.

Books I've been waiting to read (but people had to write them first!)

Tucked into an email advertising a conference that I received today was an announcement of this new book: Learning Spaces (http://www.educause.edu/LearningSpaces/10569). Haven't read it yet but by chapter titles we should be able to garner quite a bit from it! E.g., chapter 5. Student Practices and Their Impact on Learning Spaces or chapter 7. Linking the Information Commons to Learning.

Here's the other book I haven't read yet: In Sync: Environmental Behavior Research and the Design of Learning Spaces (http://www.scup.org/pubs/books/is_ebrdls.html).

These are probably the two books I was hoping most to find when I did my own research for my own book on electronic classroom design in libraries in the mid/late 1990s. Glad to see people wrote them - now I need to find time to read them! ;-)

The Library Facility and Student Perceptions

Back in June, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article - "Facilities Play a Key Role in Students' Enrollment Decisions, Study Finds" (requires password, sorry) - which has been on my mind ever since then. The Chronicle article reported on "The Impact of Facilities on Recruitment and Retention of Students" by David Cain, Ph.D. & Gary L. Reynolds, P.E., which was published in Facilities Manager (for another day but ironically, the article itself is available online without password even though the Chronicle piece about the article requires a password).

I, like many other librarians, was pleased that 53.6% of students reported that the library was an Extremely or Very Important facility in the selection decision process and 48.4% believe it is important to see the library facility on a campus visit. But then, when one gets to the findings on the characteristics of institutions students rejected in their selection process, the data give me pause. 2.9% rejected an institution where the library facility was missing; 21.1% where the library facility was inadequate; and 19.3% were the library facility was poorly maintained. Finally, once on campus students were fairly well satisfied with the library facility (as they were with other facilities that they ranked as important). Just to finish the story, in Part II of the study's report, data reveal that women view the library as more important than men but very few other differences in how the library is perceived in the selection decision process.

So, why is this on my mind? I keep wondering why so many students rank the Library as important but then also seem relatively satisfied with what they see at the institutions they visit? Is it that it is perceived as "a good thing" to say the library is important or does it go deeper than that? If yes, what are the reasons? What does a library facility signal to students? Also, how do students judge adequacy and maintenance? Are those judgments effected by the state of other facilities on campus? Then - why do students seem relatively satisfied with what they see on the campuses they visit? Are libraries in such better shape than residential facilities and classrooms? What characteristics are students looking for in a library facility? And, do the students use criteria similar to or completely different than those ACRL outlined in "A Student's Guide to Evaluating Libraries in Colleges and Universities"?

And, why does this matter? Because if we are trying to create a learning environment in the Undergraduate Library, it would be very helpful to know what students think make a good library. What is the best way to open up the channels of communication so that students can tell us what they would find important, useful, relevant, desirable, attractive, etc.? A survey seems such a sterile approach. Focus groups? Interviews? University of Rochester Library has students draw pictures, take photos, and draw maps of their travel paths on campus (and they have an anthropologist on staff to help them with this sort of study!). National studies like the one in Facilities Manager are interesting and raise many questions. How do we answer them for UIUC?