Education Commons^™

A New Approach To Evaluating Information: A Reflection On Radar, Kevin Tanner, Kim Mcphee

Western Libraries Presentations

For instruction librarians, teaching information literacy (IL) skills is often an important aspect of any lesson plan. One area of IL includes the critical evaluation of sources, an essential skill that students need to succeed as aspiring scholars and researchers. This ability to differentiate “good” from “bad” information is beneficial to students beyond their academic careers, and will help them navigate the “sea of information” for the rest of their lives. Typically, such evaluation skills are taught through applying the CRAAP test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. While humorous and memorable, the name of this test devalues the usefulness …

Leveraging Resources Across Units And Universities To Address Academic Literacies And Research Skills In Ontario Graduate Students, Melanie Mills, Elan Paulson

Western Libraries Presentations

Student2Scholar (S2S) is a fully online and open course that aims to teach academic literacies and research skills to social science graduate students. Set to launch in December 2015, S2S was conceived of and created by a diverse and distributed team of academic librarians, university staff, and graduate students from three Ontario Universities: Western, the University of Toronto, and Queen’s. Members of the project team brought with them varying degrees of experience and expertise across a range of disciplinary and teaching and learning backgrounds, including: adult education, information literacy, and online learning (to name only a few).

S2S serves as …

Interrogating Course-Related Public Interest Internships In Communications, Sandra Smeltzer

FIMS Publications

This article examines the benefits and drawbacks of for-credit, unpaid internships geared towards the public good. Attention is focused specifically on communication internships with non- governmental, non-profit, and community-based organizations. Drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with students, staff, faculty, and host organizations, the author advances a critical model of service learning that more fully recognizes the labour of community partners and encourages students to consider what role they can and should play in advancing the public good. The article also highlights two key issues vis-à-vis public interest internships that are of particular relevance to the field of communications. …

Awareness And Perception Of Copyright Among Teaching Faculty At Canadian Universities, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

In this talk I discuss the results of a survey of Canadian university faculty members undertaken from October to December 2014. The survey sought to determine teaching faculty awareness of copyright law and institutional policy and training, and how they would respond in various scenarios.

Analysis of the results suggests that while faculty members are aware of the existence of their institution's copyright policy, much fewer know whether their institution offers training. Of those who do know about training, only one-third have attended. However, faculty who have attended copyright training find that their knowledge is enhanced by the experience.

It …

Transitioning & Preparing Library Students: Canadian Pd Programs, Amanda R. Kelly, Sajni Lacey

FIMS Publications

In an increasingly competitive job market, extra-curricular professional development (PD) opportunities prepare and equip Masters-level LIS students to secure employment and excel in their careers. In addition to reviewing and examining existing extra-curricular PD initiatives available through current ALA accredited Masters-level programs in Canada, a potential structure for developing, framing, and delivering PD programs is proposed. Findings from a review of university websites reveal a lack of consistency across schools in PD opportunities geared to transitioning and preparing students for future careers. Prospective directions for educational organizations to further develop their program offerings for students and recent graduates are explored.

Awareness And Perception Of Copyright Among Teaching Faculty At Canadian Universities, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Publications

This article describes the background, methodology, and results of a study undertaken in 2014 to determine university faculty awareness and perceptions of copyright as it affects their teaching. An online survey questionnaire was distributed to teaching faculty across Canada, seeking feedback about the copyright policies and training opportunities at their institutions, where they go for copyright assistance, and how they would respond to various copyright-related scenarios that may arise in the course of teaching.

Most of the respondents are aware of the copyright policies or guidelines at their universities, but much fewer know whether or not their institution offers copyright …

Studying Treatment Intensity: Lessons From Two Preliminary Studies, Nicole Neil, Emily A. Jones

Education Publications

Determining how best to meet the needs of learners with Down syndrome requires an approach to intervention delivered at some level of intensity. How treatment intensity affects learner acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of skills can help optimize the efficiency and cost effectiveness of interventions. There is a growing body of research on the effects of treatment intensity but almost no systematic study of it with children with Down syndrome, providing little guidance about how to approach the study of intensity. In two preliminary studies we manipulated different aspects of the dose of treatment intensity and measured effects on skill acquisition …

Attention During Visual Search: The Benefit Of Bilingualism, Deanna Friesen, Vered Latman, Alejandra Calvo, Ellen Bialystok

Education Publications

Recent research has produced mixed results about the existence of a bilingual executive control advantage in young adults. The current study manipulated both task demands and task difficulty to investigate the conditions under which a bilingual advantage may be observed during a visual attention task. Bilingual and monolingual young adults performed visual search tasks in which they determined whether a target shape was present amid distractor shapes. In the feature searches, the target (e.g., green triangle) differed on a single dimension (e.g., color) from the distractors (e.g., yellow triangles); in the conjunction searches, two different types of distractors (e.g., pink …