You have probably noticed that we often offer trials to different databases. Here’s a reminder to take advantage of these trials and to offer your feedback.
You know best whether or not these resources would be useful to you: please let us know. Perhaps your input will remind us to subscribe to that database you’ve always wanted us to have!
If you or your students need background information on a topic, here’s a friendly reminder that the libraries have a variety of specialized reference sources–many of them online. Many of these online sources come in convenient packages.
For example Oxford Reference Online brings together respected subject dictionaries and other tools in one database (You can search across the tools, by the way.). Gale Virtual Reference Library is another collection of subject encyclopedias. For yet another example you can browse the CredoReference collection by subject or type of resource (atlas, quotations, Religious text, etc.).
Explore these collections. Encourage your students to do the same. Your librarians are happy to answer additional questions about these packages and their contents.
In April 2009 I (Maureen Perry) had blogged about the idea of the Pecha Kucha Night (PKN), where each presenter has 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. Recently I attended Lewiston-Auburn’s first PKN. I saw firsthand the phenomenon’s classroom potential.
What do concise presentations have to do with information literacy? The Association of College & Research Libraries includes the following statement in its Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education: “The information literate student communicates the product or performance effectively to others (Standard 4, Performance Indicator 3).” A classroom version of the PKN can showcase student creativity and develop this important skill.
Portland has hosted several Pecha Kucha Nights so far. Whatever the city, I highly recommend experiencing one for yourself.
You know that we librarians will gladly visit your classes in person. You know that we’ll gladly work with your students online. With the new year comes this new reminder that the two services are not mutually exclusive.
In fact a combination of a visit and a course guide may be the best choice for many classes. The live visit puts a human face to the library and introduces certain key skills. The guide can reinforce key points from the visit. Since there is often too much information to convey in a single session, the guide can also keep students from getting overwhelmed during the live session.
Happy New Year! Here’s a new opportunity to have the best of both worlds, library-wise at least.
The USM Libraries’ journal shelves do not hint at the number of journals that are available electronically. How do you know if the Libraries subscribe to your favorite journal ?
From the libraries’ homepage choose the “Find Journals by Title” box as pictured above. Then you can type in the name of the journal.
From that same page you can also look for what journals in a particular field we carry. Thus you can find a favorite journal or discover a new journal.
We librarians always appreciate your help in building the collection. Now we are helping you help us in these efforts.
For starters many of the subject guides contain links to publisher catalogs. The library also has access to the popular selection tool Choice Reviews Online. Finally, an online form allows you to submit a request for a library purchase.
With the tools mentioned here, sending your liaison librarian a request is easier than ever. We may not always be able to act upon requests, but we do value them.
On November 12 USM’s own Betty Robinson and Bernice Conklin-Powers presented a webcast entitled “Do what we say (now) not what we did (then): Information for those new to the scene.” There they shared insights gained as they had transferred courses to online or blended format.
Some of the ideas were overall statements of good online practice. For instance, samples and models become very important in an online environment, since online courses allow less opportunity for real-time interaction than do face-to-face courses.
Other ideas were more concrete tips. Instead of responding to each discussion board post, for example, Conklin-Powers and Robinson recommend –when appropriate–unified responses to groups of posts. This tip makes the workload more efficient and allows the instructor to address patterns in student responses.
As useful as the ideas were, the act of sharing them was the most important part of the presentation. By telling their stories Robinson and Conklin-Powers were not only modeling lifelong learning, but also contributing to it.
You can access the recording of this presentation via the NCLC ning (social network). Go to the very bottom of the page for the link to the recording.
On October 30 USM co-hosted the New England Regional Sloan-C Conference. The gathering brought together educators concerned with the quality of online education. The attention to quality particularly struck me (Maureen Perry) in two of the presentations.
Michael Davis (Pathfinder Consulting) described a learning module approach to course design. Instead of having a confusing array of Blackboard buttons (Assignments, Course Documents, etc.) the instructor has the content organized into self-contained modules. Students can spend more time engaging with the material and less time searching for it.
In the other session David Lavoie, an instructional designer, and Andrew Rosman, an accounting professor, described their partnership at the University of Connecticut. By paying close attention to course objectives at the start they made sure that the chosen technologies and activities best met the desired goals. Thus the technology doesn’t drive the course: it serves the course.
Let us continue to share our ideas. Let us continue to put the learning in online learning.
If you or your students need ideas for a research project or creative work, inspiration may be closer than you realize. USM has special collections of rare primary source materials in a variety of formats: photgraphs, texts, recordings, ephemera, etc.
At the Glickman Library (Portland Campus) you’ll find a General Rare Books & Manuscripts Collection, the University Archives, and the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine. The Sampson Center collects materials on Maine’s African American, Jewish, and Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender communities.
At the Lewiston-Auburn College you’ll find the Franco-American Collection. The Collection also has material on Lewiston’s history and a few items on the College’s history.
These collections not only preserve culture, but also serve as resources for the creation of new culture. Please consider including them in your courses. Why ignore possible inspiration when it is nearby?
You may use bookmarks to keep favorite websites close at hand, but you can only access these bookmarks on a particular computer. Delicious allows you to organize and access bookmarks from any computer.
If your students need to find and share websites in a course, you can create an account for that course. Dordt College’s library uses a Delicious account to share bookmarks. Arkansas Technical University’s Ozark Campus Library also uses Delicious tags.
The best idea is to try Delicious for yourself. Then you can see if it would meet some of your needs.
