I am attending three straight Cyber Zed Shed presentations, beginning at 3 today.  The first is Learning Information Literacy Online (LILO), followed by BibApp and Podcasts.  I’ll be “live” blogging these three presentations.  These will be my first of this series, which, as Jennifer blogged earlier, will give me the practical know-how that is so useful in the CC world (not that it’s not useful in other settings).

Session 1 (LILO)

I hadn’t realized that one of my fellow bloggers was presenting at CZS, i.e., Margot Hanson (great job, Margot!).  She is demonstrating a project from the University of Hawaii to put IL online. The code came from North Carolina State.  LILO is a systemwide effort throughout the state.  Note to self: how could we set up a collaborative model at the Community Colleges of Spokane for all three parts of our system?

• Interactive: tutorial, research journal; IM chat, email librarians/instructors; videos and links to interactive elements.
• Assessment:  institutional standards, information literacy reports.

Students know what is expected of them - very important.  They also included a local topics section, which can help keep students interested.

Tutorial is comprised of 6 modules, ranging from general to specific.  The students automatically have an account in the system.  The students have a journal, which can be emailed to librarians and their instructor.  This provides an easy, safe way to provide meaningful feedback to students about their progress.  Showed a good, quick video about citing sources - good use of humor.  They posted it on YouTube.

Assessment - follow a cycle. 

1. ACRL standards, university standards
2. LILO content and questions
3. Student responses
4. Score with rubrics
5. Response Data to faculty - trying to get more faculty on board to make it required, whether than voluntary, as it is now.

There is a guest login available.  Interested parties are welcome to login.

I like the tools available, such as links to Bubbl Us, a “fridge magnet” boolean search tool, citation builders, etc.

Session 2 (BibApp)

The presenter is Sarah L. Shreeves of U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  BibApp is billed as “A campus research gateway and expert finder.”  Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? 

The project is still under development, so it’s still being refined. 

Issues

• talk to faculty about archiving and scholarly comm. issues
• market institutional repositories
• faculty want something that gives access to all publications not just what is available in repo
• often don’t know faculty’s publication history and patterns
• faculty need lists of pubs for easy import into grant apps and other reports
• often do not udnerstand collaborations across campus - hard to get that data.

BibApp is a mashup, pulling data from faculty directory info, publication lists, Sherpa/Romeo archival database (open API), OpenURL resolver, and SWORD (for repository connection).   She showed the 0.7 version.  It looks like an innovative way to pull together the scholarly communications of an institution.  I like the cross-referencing with faculty they’ve collaborated with - reveals patterns of collaboration at the university or college.

Author disambiguation has been built in to BibApp.  Example:  two D. Morgans (one in sciences, one in humanities).  The system can “learn” how to assign the articles to the correct author.  Different types of data can be pulled out of the records.

Currently working on BibApp 1.0.  BibApp 2.0 is also planned for the future (will include tag clouds, collaboration network visualization, etc.).  It will be completely open source (Google code).

Session 3 (Podcasts)

The presenter is Clarence Maybee from Colgate University.  Students in a conflict resolution class (Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies)had to create podcasts.  These podcasts were loaded into Youtube and can be found there. 

Video excerpts of student reflections are available here.  There are also excerpts from the instructor of the course at the site.

• They were looking to embed technology in classes to enhance pedagogy.  They used a model called Collaboration for Enhanced Learning (CEL), which “pairs librarians with information technologists to work with faculty to embed appropriate technology and information literacy instruction into course curriculum.”
• Students were assessed by the professor and by some of the other students.  They also had to review their own podcast according to 4 standard questions.  The rubric sounds like it was clear.
• Ray Nardelli from Colgate also spoke via Skype to go into the technology side.  He’s the Manager of Digital Media at Colgate. 
• Nardelli credits the collaboration with making the project successful.
• From the tech side - how will the recordings be made, edited, distributed?
• Took one class period to present a workshop to use editing software. They used Audacity, an open source solution.  “The fact that it was open source and could be used both on Macs on on PCs made it a good choice for them, even though there might be better ones out there.
• The workshop took a final edit of a podcast then had the students try to edit the same files into a final production.
• Students need to learn these editing skills to use new media - good hands on approach.  Students can start to appreciate the amount of work and editing needed to make it work.

Now, off to Sherman Alexie!