Library and Information Science Commons^™

Design Thinking And Methods In Library Practice And Graduate Library Education, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Ann Rosenblad, Satyen Amonkar

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Despite interest in the application of design thinking and methods in librarianship, there seems to be a disconnect between application and education to support it. This study used an online

questionnaire to elicit feedback from library workers in the United States about interest in and use of design thinking and methods in library practice, and the need for design skills and abilities in library education. We found that practicing librarians perceive the relevance of design thinking and methods to library work, although opinions vary based on library and work type. Design thinking and methods were used mostly for space planning …

Transitioning From The Mls To The Mld: Integrating Design Thinking And Philosophy Into Library And Information Science Education, Rachel I. Clarke, Steven Bell

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Purpose

As change creates more uncertainty for library practitioners, graduate library education needs to explore how to best prepare students to manage ambiguity through new approaches to identifying and solving challenging problems. We advocate for incorporating design into graduate library education.

Design/Methodology/Approach

First, we discuss the need for a design approach to librarianship. We then introduce the nature of design thinking and philosophy, and discuss the ways in which it is already present in librarianship. We review past developments and recent trends with a special focus on the ways in which design thinking, methods, and philosophies are (or are not) …

Learning In The Wild: Coding For Learning And Practice On Reddit, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite, Priya Kumar, Anatoliy Gruzd, Sarah Gilbert, Marc Esteve Del Valle, Drew Paulin

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Learning on and through social media is becoming a cornerstone of lifelong learning, creating places not only for accessing information, but also for finding other self-motivated learners. Such is the case for Reddit, the online news sharing site that is also a forum for asking and answering questions. We studied learning practices found in ‘Ask’ subreddits AskScience, Ask_Politics, AskAcademia, and AskHistorians to develop a coding schema for informal learning. This paper describes the process of evaluating and defining a workable coding schema, one that started with attention to learning processes associated with discourse, exploratory talk, and conversational dialogue, and ended …

What Can Social Networks Tell Us About Learning Ecologies?, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The ecology metaphor is drawn from the biological sciences and refers to the “scientific study of the distribution, abundance and dynamics of organisms, their interactions with other organisms and with their physical environment” (British Ecological Society, 2016). In recent decades, the metaphor has become useful for tackling the complexity of new information and learning environments, particularly as driven by the increasing quantity of information, the growing number of available media and means of communicating, the extended reach of information technologies, and the new practices arising from these configurations. This paper brings to the discussion of learning ecologies the research and …

New Metaphors For Networked Learning, Caroline A. Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

As networked learning leaves designed spaces and becomes diffused and re-infused through open, online information sharing and knowledge construction, what metaphors will frame our next steps, our next inquiries? In keeping with the conference theme of ‘Looking Back – Moving Forward’, this presentation will engage with where we are in the sea of change, and how our current understanding of networks, learning and knowledge will take us forward into new areas of inquiry. Elsewhere I have been advocating for a reclamation of the term ‘e-learning’ that takes us beyond the design and use of the closed LMS and VLE systems …

Crowdsourcing The Curriculum: Redefining E-Learning Practices Through Peer-Generated Approaches, Drew Paulin, Caroline Haythornthwaite

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Inclusion of open resources that employ a peer-generated approach is changing who learns what, from whom, and via what means. With these changes, there is a shift in responsibilities from the course designer to motivated and self-directed learner-participants. While much research on e-learning has addressed challenges of creating and sustaining participatory environments, the development of massive open online courses calls for new approaches that go beyond the existing research on participatory environments in institutionally defined classes. We decenter institutionally defined classes and broaden the discussion to the literature on the creation of open virtual communities and the operation of open …

Writing Information Literacy Assessment Plans: A Guide To Best Practice, Megan Oakleaf

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Academic librarians throughout higher education add value to the teaching and learning missions of their institutions though information literacy instruction. To demonstrate the full impact of librarians on students in higher education, librarians need comprehensive information literacy assessment plans, composed of instructional program-level and outcome-level components, that summarize the purpose of information literacy assessment, emphasize the theoretical basis of their assessment efforts, articulate specific information literacy goals and outcomes, describe the major assessment methods and tools used to capture evidence of student learning, report assessment results, and highlight improvements made as a consequence of learning assessment.

Planning, Building, And Assessing An Online Information Literacy Tutorial: The Lobo Experience, Megan Oakleaf

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Each fall, first-year students arrive at colleges across the country with widely varying abilities to complete library research assignments. Some students enter higher education as veterans of the information seeking process, armed with strong school library media preparation and ready to conquer any research assignment. Far more first-year students are over-reliant on Internet resources, confused about distinctions between scholarly and popular sources, daunted by scores of article databases, and mystified by the LC classification system. Academic librarians face the challenge of establishing baseline information literacy skills in all students, often with limited time and resources. One way to confront this …

Using Rubrics To Collect Evidence For Decision‐Making: What Do Librarians Need To Learn?, Megan Oakleaf

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Objective ‐ Every day librarians make decisions that impact on the provision of library products and services. To formulate good decisions librarians must be equipped with reliable and valid data. Unfortunately, many library processes generate vast quantities of unwieldy information that is ill suited for the evidence based decision‐making (EBDM) practices librarians strive to employ. Librarians require tools to facilitate the translation of unmanageable facts and figures into data that can be used to support decision‐making. One such tool is a rubric. Rubrics provide benefits to librarians seeking to use EBDM strategies. This study examined librarians’ abilities to use rubrics …