Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 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 …

The Center For Teaching & Learning: July 1, 2014 - December 2015, Liz Mikita

Annual Reports & Administrative Documents

Contents:

• From the Director
• New Center Supports Teaching and Learning
• CTL Supports Scholarly Publishing
• iCE Platform Fosters Interactive Learning Experience
• A Physical and Virtual Makeover for Scott Library
• Reaching Out to Our Users
• Exhibits & Special Events
• Staff Highlights

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 …

“I Am More Productive In The Library Because It’S Quiet”: Commuter Students In The College Library, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

This article discusses commuter students’ experiences with the academic library, drawn from a qualitative study at the City University of New York. Undergraduates at six community and baccalaureate colleges were interviewed to explore how they fit schoolwork into their days, and the challenges and opportunities they encountered. Students identified physical and environmental features that informed their ability to successfully engage in academic work in the library. They valued the library as a distraction-free place for academic work, in contrast to the constraints they experienced in other places—including in their homes and on the commute.

A Mixed-Methods (Quantitative-Qualitative) Study To Identify The Perceived Level Of, Zeky Zardo

Dissertations

Different approaches to developing leaders have been established through various forms of self-assessment, action learning, and education and training activities (Smither et al., 2005). The existing body of research on the impact and success of college and university leadership development programs focuses heavily on undergraduate leadership programs and not graduate-level programs such as the Master of Business Administration (MBA) or the doctorate. The purpose of this mixed-methods (quantitative–qualitative) study was to identify the perceived level of transformational leadership skill development by students enrolled in a doctoral program in organizational leadership. In addition, it was the purpose of this study to …

Frequently Asked Questions About Open Access@Sacred Heart University, Zachariah Claybaugh, Chelsea Stone

Librarian Publications

In academia, Open Access (OA) offers the possibility of saving time and lowering costs for faculty and students. Lesson plans, textbooks, journal access, etc. are just a few examples of how OA is aiming to change the dynamic in universities around the world.

Crowdsourcing As An Approach To Customer Relationship Building In Academic Libraries, Lisa A. Ellis, Aisha Pena

Publications and Research

Library initiatives to first-year students not only present an opportunity to offer information literacy instruction for student advancement but they also serve a key marketing function by communicating the library’s ongoing value and building customer relationships. Library orientation tours are an example of how to effectively market to first-year students. Combining peer-to-peer learning and user-generated content via social media known as crowdsourcing, Newman Library sponsored a contest challenging first-year students to create a video sharing a useful library tip. The contributions and benefits of this co-creation approach to fostering relationships are examined and the implications to strengthening other library-user bonds …

Medulla: A 2d Sidescrolling Platformer Game That Teaches Basic Brain Structure And Function, Joey R. Fanfarelli, Stephanie Vie

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article explores the design and instructional effectiveness of Medulla, an educational game meant to teach brain structure and function to undergraduate psychology students. Developed in the retro-style platformer genre, Medulla uses two-dimensional gameplay with pixel-based graphics to engage students in learning content related to the brain, information which is often pre-requisite to more rigorous psychological study. A pretest posttest design was used in an experiment assessing Medulla’s ability to teach psychology content. Results indicated content knowledge was significantly higher on the posttest than the pretest, with a large effect size. Medulla appears to be an effective learning tool. These …

Best Practices For Student Learning Assessment In Smaller-Sized Undergraduate Mass Communication Programs, Douglas J. Swanson Ed.D Apr

Douglas J. Swanson, Ed.D APR

Assessment of student learning in higher education is no longer optional, because the public increasingly expects universities to spend less and produce more. Generating detailed, meaningful assessment is challenging, particularly for smaller-sized mass communication programs with limited resources. Mass communication-focused assessment literature is scarce. This best practices essay reviews other research to illustrate proven examples of ways to assess simply and effectively in undergraduate mass communication programs to achieve maximum faculty support and curriculum improvement.

Foregrounding The Research Log In Information Literacy Instruction, Louise R. Fluk

Publications and Research

Updating an earlier study, this article reviews the literature of information literacy (IL) instruction since 2008 for empirical evidence of the value of research logs or research journals for effective pedagogy, assessment, and prevention of plagiarism in IL instruction at the college level. The review reveals a mismatch between the acknowledged theoretical and practical value of research log assignments and the mixed advocacy for them in the literature. The article further analyzes the literature for the drawbacks of research log assignments and points toward ways of mitigating these drawbacks.

Helping Junior Faculty Achieve Success In Promotion And Tenure, Jon A. Hess

Jonathan A. Hess

Part and parcel of the chair’s job is to prepare junior faculty to achieve success. In academic departments that typically means achieving tenure and promotion to associate professor. In my experience, the success of a junior faculty member has as much to do with what the department and chair do as with the faculty member’s native ability. Junior faculty need to learn what activities are rewarded and what are not, what strategies they may use during their probationary period to develop the evidence needed for a successful tenure case, and how to present their materials in their file—what evidence is …

Exploration Of The Relationships Between And Among Role Strain, Faculty Stress, And Organizational Support For Clinical Nurse Faculty Faced With A Decision To Assign A Failing Grade, Jeannie Couper

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Despite a stressful process, Clinical Nurse Faculty (CNF) are ultimately responsible for assigning a grade indicating that a student successfully met clinical course outcomes and standards of safe practice required to progress (Amicucci, 2012). The purpose of this descriptive correlational study was to explore the relationships between perceived role strain (PRS), perceived faculty stress (PFS), and perceived organizational support (POS) for CNF who faced the decision to assign a failing grade to a student in a clinical practicum. A national sample of 390 predominantly full-time, female, experienced CNF teaching in undergraduate and graduate nursing programs completed the online survey consisting …

Breathing Life Into Information Literacy Skills: Results Of A Faculty-Librarian Collaboration, Divonna M. Stebick, Janelle L. Wertzberger, Margaret E. Flora, Joseph W. Miller

Janelle Wertzberger

When an education professor and a reference librarian sought to improve the quality of undergraduate student research, their partnership led to a new focus on assessing the research process in addition to the product. In this study, we reflect on our collaborative experience introducing information literacy as the foundation for undergraduate teacher education research. We examine the outcomes of this collaboration, focusing on the assessment of the process. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that direct instruction supporting effective research strategies positively impacted student projects. Our data also suggest that undergraduate students benefit from not only sound research strategies, …

Enhancing Psychology Majors’ Meta-Cognitive Understanding Of Desirable Workplace Skills Using A Short Discussion-Based In-Class Activity, Alena S. Gordienko

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The skills psychology students possess that employers look for in job applicants include: reliability, integrity, work ethic, communication, technology, critical thinking, teamwork, and professionalism (Rodgers, 2012). I conducted a study to determine whether participating in a brief classroom activity would improve students’ ability to effectively describe their skills. Students were asked to write a cover letter before and after the activity. The activity included a discussion of four skills and student reflection on their experiences that demonstrated these skills. I hypothesized that overall letter-writing would improve, that students’ self-reported levels of preparedness to find a job would improve, that students …

Measuring Success: The Value Of Our Work Can’T Always Be Captured In A Spreadsheet, Tom Radko, Mary Rose Muccie, Fredric Nachbaur, Mark H. Saunders, Darrin Pratt

Cinema & Media Studies

This year we were fortunate in encouraging directors of four university presses—Temple, Fordham, Virginia, and Colorado— to carve a chunk of time out of busy winter schedules in order to share their perspectives on the university press enterprise.

A Promise Kept In El Dorado? An Evaluation Of The Impact Of A Universal, Place-Based College Scholarship On K-12 Achievement And High School Graduation, Jennifer W. Ash

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The El Dorado Promise is a scholarship program that provides approximately $7,818 per year toward college tuition - for up to five years - to public high school graduates in El Dorado, Arkansas who have attended El Dorado schools since at least the ninth grade. The program was announced in January 2007, and students were able to use the college scholarships in the fall of 2007. School leaders in El Dorado hoped that the enhanced access to college would increase student interest, engagement, and achievement throughout the school district. In this study, I use one-to-one student-level matching to estimate the …

Developing An Understanding Of How College Students Experience Interactive Instructional Technology: A Ux Perspective, Adam Wagler

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Technology is increasingly mobile and social, resulting in dynamic digital and interactive environments. The ubiquitous nature of interactive instructional technology presents new paradigms for higher education, creating challenges for instructors to compete for time and attention as students are bombarded by information in a digital, media rich world. The problem being studied, with all of these technological advancements, is how instructors can approach these challenges from a user experience (UX) perspective. A macro level view sees college students taking multiple courses at a time, over many semesters, and using different interactive instructional technology that mix with other forms of online …

Is Service-Learning The Answer? Preparing Teacher Candidates To Work With Ells Through Service-Learning Experiences, Sandra Rodriguez-Arroyo

Scholarship of Metropolitan Mission

In an effort to address the gaps in preparing teacher candidates (TCs) to work with English Language Learners (ELLs), service-learning experiences (SLE) were integrated into two courses within a teacher education program. This exploratory case study sought to explore the outcomes of teacher candidates (TCs) engaged in SLE with diverse students and families, particularly ELLs. Content analysis of students’ reflections provided insights of the impact of the SLE. Findings indicate that participating in service-learning with ELLs provides opportunities for TCs to engage in positive interactions that help to address misconceptions about students, families, and communities. TCs also began to confront …

What Stick Figures Tell Us About Irish Politics: Creating A Critical And Collaborative Learning Space, Sharon Feeney, John Hogan, Paul Donnelly

Articles

This paper focuses upon the interpretation of freehand drawings produced by a small sample of 220 first-year students taking an Irish politics introductory module in response to the question, ‘What is Irish Politics?’ By sidestepping cognitive verbal processing routes, through employing freehand drawing, we aim to create a critical and collaborative learning environment, where students develop their capacity for interpretation and critical self-reflection. This is because the freehand drawing technique, as part of a critical pedagogy, can generate a more critical and inclusive perspective, as visual representations permit us to comprehend the world differently, and understand how others also see …

Breathing Life Into Information Literacy Skills: Results Of A Faculty-Librarian Collaboration, Divonna M. Stebick, Janelle L. Wertzberger, Margaret E. Flora, Joseph W. Miller

Education Faculty Publications

When an education professor and a reference librarian sought to improve the quality of undergraduate student research, their partnership led to a new focus on assessing the research process in addition to the product. In this study, we reflect on our collaborative experience introducing information literacy as the foundation for undergraduate teacher education research. We examine the outcomes of this collaboration, focusing on the assessment of the process. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that direct instruction supporting effective research strategies positively impacted student projects. Our data also suggest that undergraduate students benefit from not only sound research strategies, …

The Future Of Institutional Repositories At Small Academic Institutions: Analysis And Insights, Mary J. Wu

Library Faculty Publications

Institutional repositories (IRs) established at universities and academic libraries over a decade ago, large and small, have encountered challenges along the way in keeping faith with their original objective: to collect, preserve, and disseminate the intellectual output of an institution in digital form. While all institutional repositories have experienced the same obstacles relating to a lack of faculty participation, those at small universities face unique challenges. This article examines causes of low faculty contribution to IR content growth, particularly at small academic institutions. It also offers a first-hand account of building and developing an institutional repository at a small university. …

Evidence-Based Teaching And Learning: Putting The Results Of Psychological Research To Work In Our Classrooms, Sarah Grison

Psychology Faculty

If our pedagogical solutions are based on research they will have a high impact on student learning! Using evidence-based teaching methods will help student read and comprehend text, engage students in the classroom and with course materials, and improve student performance on tests. Methods addressed include assigning reading activities, repeated testing, and student response systems.

Co-Authors: Faculty-Student Collaborative Writers, Tara Perry, Jackie Heller

Writing Research Fellows

Research Question(s):

RQ1: What communication processes are involved in collaborative co-authorship between faculty and students?

RQ2: What happens when faculty and students engage in collaborative writing through co-authorship?

Actionable Learning For A Living Earth: Backwards By Design 2015-16 Project Report, James Loucky

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

During the summer 2015 “Backwards by Design” working retreat, I explored the intricate pairing of knowledge and action as central to efforts to bridge anthropology and environment. The retreat initiated a focus on “actionable learning” as a threshold concept that would come to underlie my seminar on “Ecocultural Ethics” in Winter 2016.

Ethical Research In Indigenous Contexts And The Practical Implementation Of It, Graeme Gower

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Research in Indigenous Australia has historically been controlled and dominated by non-Indigenous researchers. However, recent national research guidelines which have been developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and together with a number of other research guidelines that have been developed by other institutions, including the Australian Institute for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), have signalled a shift towards Indigenous ownership and control over research. However, despite these revised guidelines, researching in Indigenous contexts can still result in cultural insensitivities, neglect or disregard by researchers and mistrust by Indigenous participants. Similar issues have also been …

Thinking Differently About Reflective Practice In Australian Social Work Education: A Rhapsody, Lynelle Watts

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

There are many different ways of thinking about reflective practice in social work education in Australia. This research utilises a musical metaphor to illustrate this diversity. Written as a piece of music with album notes, the study utilises a reflexive methodology with a qualitative mixed method approach. Three studies were conducted to explore how reflective practice is understood in social work education and practice in Australia. The first study examined my own learning and teaching of reflective practice through an autoethnographic process. The findings indicated a range of models of reflective practice potentially available to the educator. Also explored in …

Situating Information Literacy In The Disciplines: A Practical And Systematic Approach For Academic Librarians, Robert Farrell, William Badke

Publications and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to consider the current barriers to situating in the disciplines and to offer a possible strategy for so doing.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews current challenges facing librarians who seek to situate information literacy in the disciplines and offers and practical model for those wishing to do so. Phenomenographic evidence from disciplinary faculty focus groups is presented in the context of the model put forward.

Findings – Disciplinary faculty do not have generic conceptions of information literacy but rather understand information-related behaviors as part of embodied disciplinary practice.

Practical implications – Librarians …

Lib 3010 Fall 2015: Students Choose An Image To Represent Patent Searching, Jan Comfort

Jan Comfort

Students enrolled in LIB 3010 (a one hour credit-bearing class on patent searching) were asked to submit an image and write a few sentences describing how it represented their experience.

Young, Gifted, And Brown: Ricanstructing Through Autoethnopoetic Stories For Critical Diasporic Puerto Rican Pedagogy, Ángel Luis Martínez

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Young, Gifted and Brown is a journey of two directions converging. It is a study of Puerto Rican Diaspora in higher education, specifically, students making sense and meaning of their everyday. It is also a study of how I have related to them as a professor. Together, this is a story: research done creatively, toward the development of Critical Pedagogy for Puerto Rican Diaspora. The research question is: what has made the Puerto Rican Diaspora in the United States flourish and their lived experience meaningful? How can a diasporic people connect with and affirm their roots in an educational system …

Adapting To A Virtual Learning Environment, Winston H. Maddox

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This participatory action research (PAR) dissertation examines the experiences of five experienced faculty transitioning from teaching in a traditional classroom to a virtual learning environment. The research participants used technology to deliver course material and reflected on the changes in their pedagogical practice. Data were collected using four phased sessions, including the completion of interview questions, individual interview video sessions, and group video sessions and the review of participant video validation postings. Research participants used journaling to reflect on their values, beliefs, assumptions, and experiences associated with teaching and learning. Research participants teaching in virtual learning environments were provided an …