Friday, 27 April 2012

LILAC 2012 part 2

For the full list of sessions at LILAC 2012 complete with most of the Powerpoints click here

I would like to draw your attention to a few of the sessions I attended which I found particularly interesting so here goes :


Mary Antonesa and Claire McAvinia (National University of Ireland Maynooth)

Information Literacy and the case of the “natives”

The concept of the Digital Native started with Marc Prensky et al and encouraged librarians to do new things in order to connect with them. There has been a lot of cold water poured on this over recent years and the general consensus is that it is much more complex than this!

This presentation based on research being done for a PhD at University of Sheffield is looking at IL and its evolving relationship with literacy, the learning environment and the creation of knowledge by students. This is very much the same ground that I was looking at it
our new book so I was eager to see if her findings based on focus groups of all concerned, student observation and interviews were going to chime with what I have written.
Emerging findings emphasised :
-the importance of the transition from school to HE and the intimidating nature of online material after the transition;
-the challenge of referencing and the lack of understanding of its value ;
-in terms of teaching  : dont tell us show us;  
-they may think they should know and therefore do not  ask.
-Library instruction is more about  knowledge construction.
-Literacy development is progressive not sequential.
-It is socially negotiated.
-It depends on context.
-Need to focus on the person’s interest.
-Cannot be learned once for all time.

Amen to all these!

The second study is on the use of vles by students.
This has begun with a survey of use of undergraduate  language students. The kind of use was disappointing to me (but not surprising!) L they saw it as a place to get lecture notes, the place to keep up to date with room changes etc. Lecturers were enthusiastic  and later beginning to use e-lng tools, aaaand also giving tasters of secondary sources that opened up reading lists.

This was one of the most interesting sessions and  more time was needed to follow up these interim conclusions.

 
Maria Savova (Claremont Colleges Library) Robin Canuel (McGill University)and Chad Crichton (University of Toronto)

Mobile Technology and Information Literacy instruction ; the McGill Library experience.

This was one of the most useful sessions I attended and is the kind of thing that all HE institutions should be tackling if not now, then soon!!

The workshop “McGill Library from the palm of your hand” was given to library staff first.It covered E- content issues ; whether to download or use online ; Issues of direct online ; direct download and can be used offline ; download to pc and transfer. Current catalogue records do not clarify which type it is and therefore users need to be aware of these format issues. Html versus pdf has issues for 6 inch screen. Digital rights management and the problems this raises. Full versus mobile library web sites.
How to manage e content on mobiles and on ipads
What application  will students use to download their stuff onto? This is a big area for development and becoming part of what it will mean to be information literate.


Andrew Walsh (University of Huddersfield)

Playing games and growing trees...not sucking lemons

How Lemon Tree, a social online game based on use of library resources has been developed at Huddersfield. Works rather like Foursquare.
Here is a link to Lemon Tree
Students register with Lemon Tree and are awarded points for use of library and comments. 
Started in Nov 2011 and already 500-600 signed up exceeding expectations!
For further details strongly recommend you look at  this article in the University repository. 



Gwnneth Price (Institute of Education)

Digital literacies as a postgraduate attribute

This very interesting project is part of the JISC "Developing digital literacies" band. see here.
Staring in July 2011 it runs for 2 years. It will describe what pg students  think about use of digital tool.Different groups will have different experiences.
The next stage is to give all students an ipod touch to use for making journal of how they study.
This sounds fascinating as I believe librarians should be assisting students to gather, manipulate, synthesise digitally across platforms and devices. This project will help us to understand what is already happening and how we can tackle this in the future.

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