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• Narrating the “Back Story” Through E-learning Resources in Libraries

  by Hyun-Duck Chung and Kim Duckett

  January 28, 2009
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  We at In the Library with the Lead Pipe are happy to wel­come two guest authors to our blog! Hyun-Duck Chung and Kim Duck­ett are two of our cre­ative and inspir­ing col­leagues at the North Car­olina State Uni­ver­sity Libraries. Read on to learn more…

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  Lately we’ve been think­ing a lot about the cre­ation and re-use of online instruc­tional con­tent in libraries. To be more pre­cise, we’ve been think­ing about cat­e­gories that might char­ac­ter­ize the instruc­tional intent behind some of this con­tent cre­ation. A casual sur­vey of mate­ri­als online sug­gests that much of the con­tent focuses on how to use a tool, or how to fol­low a process. There seems to be less con­tent that helps explain why the infor­ma­tion land­scape is orga­nized the way it is. This back­ground expla­na­tion, or “back story” can be use­ful in con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing how infor­ma­tion is cre­ated, debated, vet­ted, and why we find infor­ma­tion the way we do. In this way it also has the poten­tial to help stu­dent researchers become more crit­i­cal of their search for, and use of, infor­ma­tion.  In this post we dis­cuss our expe­ri­ence of pro­vid­ing the back story of peer review using an e-learning resource. But first, let’s take a brief look at the grow­ing inter­est in e-learning resources in libraries today.

  E-learning Resources in Libraries

  “E-learning resources” is our short­hand for describ­ing asyn­chro­nous, web-based instruc­tional con­tent. In other words, media that is hosted and dis­sem­i­nated online for the pur­pose of teach­ing and learn­ing in the form of html tuto­ri­als, inter­ac­tive video, flash ani­ma­tions, screen cap­tured pre­sen­ta­tions, and the like. Instruc­tional design­ers may use the term “learn­ing objects,” but we do not use it here as it has been crit­i­cized for being overly broad and there­fore less than use­ful.¹  Bell and Shank pre­fer the phrase “dig­i­tal learn­ing mate­ri­als,” but their def­i­n­i­tion empha­sizes “inter­ac­tiv­ity” as a key defin­ing char­ac­ter.²  While inter­ac­tiv­ity is cer­tainly a worth­while goal, many use­ful e-learning resources in libraries sim­ply don’t meet this cri­te­ria so we’ve opted to use our own more inclu­sive term. Regard­less of ter­mi­nol­ogy, we’re basi­cally refer­ring to the notion of mod­u­lar web-based instruc­tional con­tent that may be re-used across mul­ti­ple courses, course sec­tions, dis­ci­plines and even among var­i­ous libraries.

  Librar­i­ans have been cre­at­ing e-learning resources for years, but the impor­tance of this type of library or user instruc­tion appears to be grow­ing. This trend can be seen in

  • fre­quent dis­cus­sion about tech­nolo­gies for cre­at­ing e-learning resources on library list­servs and blogs;³
  • pop­u­lar­ity in the use of  screen­cast­ing tools such as Cam­ta­sia Stu­dio, Adobe Cap­ti­vate, Jing, and Qar­bon Viewlet Builder;
  • orga­nized ways to share e-learning resources through repos­i­to­ries  like A.N.T.S.⁴  and MERLOT;⁵
  • pro­grams that review, high­light and pro­mote high-quality e-learning resources, such as the ACRL PRIMO data­base;⁶
  • and the pub­li­ca­tion of books that focus on best prac­tices for design­ing e-learning resources. Susan Sharp­less Smith’s Web-based Instruc­tion: A Guide for Libraries (2^nd edi­tion) and Bell and Shank’s Aca­d­e­mic Librar­i­an­ship by Design are two well-known examples.

  The trend seems to be unde­ni­able, but is this a use­ful trend?

  Extend­ing Our Reach through E-Learning Resources

  The pro­lif­er­a­tion of e-learning resources can per­haps be attrib­uted, at least in part, to the use­ful poten­tial they offer for greatly expand­ing the reach of a sin­gle instruc­tor or instruc­tion ses­sion. The one-on-one instruc­tion or con­sul­ta­tion at the ref­er­ence desk relies on reach­ing only one per­son at a time and only those that approach the ref­er­ence desk or library staff.

  

  One to One

  Work­shops or class­room instruc­tion expands that reach to “one-to-many”, con­nect­ing with stu­dents who may not (under­stand­ably) con­sult or even know about the exper­tise of librar­i­ans by their own ini­tia­tive. E-learning resources have the poten­tial (with good qual­ity, rel­e­vance, and proper mar­ket­ing) to expand the reach even far­ther to “one-to-many-more,” help­ing librar­i­ans find an audi­ence oth­er­wise inaccessible.

  

  One to Many More

  Cat­e­gories of E-Learning Resources

  Since inter­est in e-learning resources con­tin­ues to grow, we thought we’d bet­ter start think­ing about them in more detail. Recently, we sat down with col­leagues at the NCSU Libraries to cat­e­go­rize the kinds of e-learning resources we have been devel­op­ing locally and those we’ve seen else­where. Though the dis­cus­sion is ongo­ing, to date we’ve come up with three cat­e­gories that enable us to think more strate­gi­cally about both the pur­pose and uses of these resources. Here’s a list of our cat­e­gories with exam­ples from var­i­ous libraries:

  CATEGORY 1. Teach stu­dents HOW TO USE A TOOL. This cat­e­gory includes screen­casts and tuto­ri­als that show users how to search a par­tic­u­lar data­base, the library cat­a­log, or a library website:

  • Mer­gent Quick Start Video Guide linked with other guides from Hyun-Duck’s Busi­ness Plan Research Guide (NCSU Libraries)
  • Z. Smith Reynolds Library Toolkit is a suite of short screen­casts teach­ing users how to use fea­tures of arti­cle data­bases, the library cat­a­log, and library web­site — what a great con­cept! (Wake For­est Uni­ver­sity Library)

  CATEGORY 2. Help stu­dents WITH A PROCESS. Resources in this cat­e­gory help learn­ers with processes such as eval­u­at­ing web­sites, cre­at­ing cita­tions, iden­ti­fy­ing a schol­arly arti­cle online:

  • Anatomy of a Schol­arly Arti­cle is an inter­ac­tive guide iden­ti­fy­ing var­i­ous parts of a schol­arly arti­cle (NCSU Libraries)
  • Cit­ing Infor­ma­tion Tuto­r­ial (UNC Libraries)

  CATEGORY 3. Pro­vide stu­dents with MORE CONTEXT to under­stand a process or con­cept — the BACK STORY for how infor­ma­tion is cre­ated, vet­ted, stored, accessed, and used. Resources in this cat­e­gory address social issues sur­round­ing infor­ma­tion and other schol­arly com­mu­ni­ca­tion topics:

  • Jour­nal Costs is a “sticker shock” web­site that exposes the costs of jour­nals that are so often hid­den from users (Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­sity Library)
  • Pri­mary or Sec­ondary is an inter­ac­tive site that teaches users about pri­mary and sec­ondary sources (Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton Libraries)

  There cer­tainly may be more cat­e­gories than these and none of the above may be mutu­ally exclu­sive. For instance, large-scale infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy tuto­ri­als are typ­i­cally a blend of more than one cat­e­gory. We hope that by teas­ing out the themes and inten­tions of var­i­ous resources, we can bet­ter design them for use in more than one instruc­tional con­text. Librar­i­ans should strive to have the great­est impact from all the work and energy cur­rently being invested into cre­at­ing them.

  More Back Story Please!

  From a very rough sur­vey of e-learning resources online, the land­scape seems to be dom­i­nated by the first two types of cat­e­gories. Per­haps this is because librar­i­ans have tra­di­tion­ally played a role in teach­ing stu­dents how to use spe­cific kinds of tools to find infor­ma­tion or to offer strate­gies for eval­u­at­ing sources. It might also be that since libraries make these infor­ma­tion resources avail­able, we see it as our respon­si­bil­ity to help our users make use of them. But con­sider how librar­i­ans are uniquely posi­tioned to design and develop e-learning resources that pro­vide stu­dents with the back story about sources of infor­ma­tion. Such con­cepts are rarely cov­ered by fac­ulty instruc­tors within a given aca­d­e­mic dis­ci­pline, yet they fall squarely in the realm of librar­ian exper­tise. Most impor­tantly, they help to explain real­i­ties that might oth­er­wise seem odd to stu­dents. For exam­ple, why is so much impor­tance given to find­ing “peer-reviewed” arti­cles for an assign­ment? Or why does Google Scholar some­times ask for money and what should you do to get around it? With­out some back­ground on how infor­ma­tion and pub­lish­ing “work” on the Web, stu­dents may be just going through the motions of “how-to” find infor­ma­tion with­out crit­i­cally reflect­ing on the process of solv­ing their infor­ma­tion problem.

  Pro­vid­ing learn­ers with the back story enhances under­stand­ing and use of infor­ma­tion. Con­sider the pairs of ques­tions below:

  How do I iden­tify a schol­arly, peer-reviewed article?

  VS.

  What is peer review and why is it important?

  How can I use Wikipedia in my research?

  VS.

  How did the infor­ma­tion get cre­ated in Wikipedia?

  How do I get started with my lit­er­a­ture review?

  VS.

  What is the role of a lit­er­a­ture review in research?

  The pair­ings go hand-in-hand, yet often library e-learning resources are lim­ited to answer­ing the first ques­tions in each set. Why don’t we cover the sec­ond ques­tions in as much depth? Could we be mak­ing e-learning resources that pro­vide more con­text? After all, under­stand­ing the back sto­ries that address the sec­ond ques­tions are fun­da­men­tal to infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy, par­tic­i­pa­tion in schol­arly com­mu­ni­ca­tion (espe­cially for those stu­dents who will become part of it in a few short years), and most impor­tantly, life­long learn­ing. They are also top­ics that span across many dif­fer­ent learn­ing sce­nar­ios and across insti­tu­tional boundaries.

  For Instance, Peer Review in Five Minutes

  Since this notion of pro­vid­ing a back story can be slip­pery, let’s look at a con­crete exam­ple where we tried to incor­po­rate some of the ideas we’ve raised above. Our inter­est in the back story led to our recent devel­op­ment of an e-learning mod­ule — an ani­ma­tion on the role of peer review in schol­arly research.

  

  Click to play Peer Review in 5 Minutes

  Stu­dents often come to the ser­vice desk seek­ing peer-reviewed arti­cles as part of a class assign­ment. At this point the stu­dent may need help with accom­plish­ing a num­ber of tasks. Per­haps they need help iden­ti­fy­ing or ver­i­fy­ing that the arti­cle has been peer-reviewed, search­ing in arti­cle data­bases, or under­stand­ing what a peer-reviewed arti­cle is in the first place and why it is so impor­tant in acad­e­mia. Since we found exist­ing e-learning resources address­ing the first two needs, we saw an oppor­tu­nity in meet­ing the third need through a new e-learning resource. We came up with the con­cept of Peer Review in 5 Min­utes – an ani­mated video that would ini­ti­ate stu­dents into one of the key facets of aca­d­e­mic culture.

  

  Fol­low­ing the ADDIE model⁷ often used in instruc­tional design, we based our design deci­sions on early input from poten­tial users. Since fac­ulty mem­bers are often the most influ­en­tial fac­tor in moti­vat­ing stu­dents to pur­sue learn­ing activ­i­ties, we con­ducted infor­mal inter­views with fac­ulty from var­i­ous aca­d­e­mic dis­ci­plines to test our assump­tions on the use­ful­ness of our idea. The response was very pos­i­tive and our open dis­cus­sions helped us tease out the var­i­ous aspects of peer review as a topic as well as iden­tify spe­cific and dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pli­nary needs.

  A sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge we faced early in the process of cre­at­ing the resource was scop­ing the con­tent. From the broad array of ideas that came out of our inter­views, zero­ing in on what to include and exclude in a five minute video required an iter­a­tive process of think­ing and re-thinking the goals of the video and defin­ing our tar­get users and their needs. In the end we decided to focus on pro­vid­ing a gen­eral overview of peer review for under­grad­u­ate stu­dents. Since this project was our first exper­i­ment in ani­ma­tion, we wanted it to serve as a proof-of-concept for reach­ing learn­ers in a new way and in turn acquire depart­men­tal sup­port for launch­ing sim­i­lar projects in the future. Tar­get­ing a broad and gen­eral audi­ence like the under­grad­u­ate pop­u­la­tion would 1) allow us to have the broad­est impact for the time and energy com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing the resource, and 2) there was a greater like­li­hood of receiv­ing feed­back from the users.

  

  An addi­tional chal­lenge we faced was find­ing the right way to explain the back story. Where do you begin to tell the story? Where do you end it? How do you make it rel­e­vant to the student’s tasks? How do you make the con­tent gen­eral enough to span across dis­ci­plines, yet rel­e­vant enough to each? Tack­ling such ques­tions required cre­ative nar­ra­tion, visu­als that went well beyond screen­shots, plus fairly cre­ative use of script­ing and story-boarding. In doing so we went through numer­ous revi­sions in the devel­op­ment process.

  

  Another chal­lenge we faced was in design­ing truly reusable con­tent that was also highly rel­e­vant to our insti­tu­tion. Since we intended to cre­ate a resource for broad dis­sem­i­na­tion we also thought it would be strate­gic to have the video specif­i­cally point to our library’s subscription-based resources and ref­er­ence ser­vices. This way the e-learning resource would not only serve instruc­tional needs, but also mar­ket spe­cific library ser­vices and resources to our stu­dents. Our solu­tion was to limit any insti­tu­tion spe­cific aspect to a very small scene at the very end of the video. We then, as a ser­vice to the broader edu­ca­tional com­mu­nity, cre­ated an alter­nate end­ing for a sec­ond down­load­able ver­sion that was not tied to our insti­tu­tion. We also made this ver­sion avail­able under a Cre­ative Com­mons license so that any­one could freely use it for non-commercial pur­poses. To get the video go to Peer Review in 5 Min­utes and click on down­load.

  Despite the chal­lenges we faced in devel­op­ing this resource, the highly col­lab­o­ra­tive process of devel­op­ment offered a unique oppor­tu­nity to con­nect with fac­ulty, staff and stu­dents in depart­ments within and out­side of the library. The suc­cess of the project relied on recruit­ing the exper­tise and skills of var­i­ous con­trib­u­tors. In addi­tion to the fac­ulty we inter­viewed, we worked closely with

  • a graphic design intern who cre­ated the ani­ma­tion;⁸
  • a stu­dent from the Libraries’ Dig­i­tal Media Lab who cre­ated an orig­i­nal sound track to the video;⁹
  • a cou­ple of library col­leagues who con­tributed their tech­ni­cal exper­tise in devel­op­ing an effec­tive web pres­ence for the video online.¹⁰

  We also con­sulted mul­ti­me­dia spe­cial­ists in our dis­tance edu­ca­tion office about meet­ing acces­si­bil­ity require­ments for cre­at­ing audio-visual mate­ri­als on the Web.¹¹ All of these inter­ac­tions not only helped spread the word about the Libraries’ embark­ing on an e-learning resources project but, per­haps more impor­tantly, com­mu­ni­cated the Libraries’ abil­ity, open­ness and will­ing­ness to col­lab­o­rate as part­ners in instruc­tional uses of technology.

  Our expe­ri­ence has taught us that cre­at­ing e-learning resources that tackle the back story of infor­ma­tion is not with­out its own set of chal­lenges. How­ever, if you can work through the chal­lenge of scop­ing the con­tent and telling the story well, the great­est reward is hav­ing an end prod­uct that can be used to reach many more learn­ers. Please let us know how well we did for this par­tic­u­lar resource.

  What’s Your Back Story?

  We invite you to share your reac­tions to our three cat­e­gories of e-learning resources. We’d also love to hear exam­ples of how you’re engag­ing stu­dents with the back story as well as your ideas for what other back sto­ries might be told through reusable, share­able, e-learning resources.

  Spe­cial Thanks

  Derik Bad­man from ITLWTLP, Steve McCann, Sandy Lit­tle­tree, and Scott War­ren for pro­vid­ing thought­ful feed­back on drafts of this post. Cindy Levine and Andreas Orphanides for help­ing us think through the e-learning resources cat­e­gories. Last but not least Hilary Davis for intro­duc­ing us to ITLWTLP and invit­ing us as contributors.

  You might also be inter­ested in:

  • What water?
  • In Praise of the Inter­net: Shift­ing Focus and Engag­ing Crit­i­cal Think­ing Skills
  • Learn­ing to teach through video
  • [RE]Boot Camp: Share Some. Learn More. Teach Better.
  • Step­ping on Toes: The Del­i­cate Art of Talk­ing to Fac­ulty about Ques­tion­able Assignments

  1. See for exam­ple,  Pol­sani, P.R. 2003. “Use and Abuse of Reusable Learn­ing Objects.” Jour­nal of Dig­i­tal Infor­ma­tion 3, no. 4 (Feb­ru­ary 19). [↩]
  2. Bell, S. & Shank, J. (2007). Aca­d­e­mic Librar­i­an­ship by Design. Chicago: Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion. [↩]
  3. OCLC’s white paper “Libraries and the enhance­ment of e-learning” (2003) pro­vides a more in-depth dis­cus­sion than we will offer here. [↩]
  4. The Ani­mated Tuto­r­ial Shar­ing Project based in Canada is an exam­ple of a col­lab­o­ra­tive project empha­siz­ing the re-usability aspect of these resources. The A.N.T.S. project tries to coor­di­nate devel­op­ment and re-use of mod­ules beyond a sin­gle insti­tu­tion by track­ing use­ful meta­data (such as what mod­ules are in the works) and host­ing com­pleted projects on a shared Screen­cast server for any­one to use. [↩]
  5. The Mul­ti­me­dia Edu­ca­tional Resource for Learn­ing and Teach­ing is an online repos­i­tory of peer reviewed dig­i­tal learn­ing mate­ri­als. The col­lec­tion spans across many dis­ci­plines and includes a “Library and Infor­ma­tion Ser­vices” cat­e­gory. [↩]
  6. PRIMO is the Peer Reviewed Infor­ma­tion Mate­ri­als Online” data­base. It focuses on pro­mot­ing and set­ting best prac­tices for imple­ment­ing e-learning resources so that librar­i­ans can share ideas for cre­at­ing them. At the time of writ­ing, the data­base holds 191 records for mate­ri­als that range from data­base spe­cific mod­ules to infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy tuto­ri­als. [↩]
  7. ADDIE — analy­sis, design, devel­op­ment, imple­ment, and eval­u­ate — is one of the most com­mon instruc­tional design mod­els. Bell and Shank’s Aca­d­e­mic Librar­i­an­ship by Design pro­vides a won­der­ful overview. [↩]
  8. Susan Baker, then a senior stu­dent in the Col­lege of Design, worked closely with us to cre­ate orig­i­nal graph­ics and ani­mate them using Affter­Ef­fects in Adobe Cre­ative Suite 3 [↩]
  9. We showed Chris Hill our video and some sam­ple music online to offer a sense of what we were look­ing for and he cre­ated an orig­i­nal track using Garage­Band [↩]
  10. Jason Walsh and Andreas Orphanides worked their magic to for­mat the video for opti­mal view­ing online through pro­gres­sive down­load­ing, and with the help of Susan cre­ated the cus­tom bor­der around the video. [↩]
  11. We’ve used Auto­matic Sync for cap­tion­ing. It’s fast and cheap! It cost us less than $10 per ani­ma­tion. [↩]
  Tags: digital learning materials, e-learning, instruction, instructional design, learning objects, peer review

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• « A Librarian's Guide to 332.024 My (Our) Abusive Relationship with Google and What We Can Do About It »

14 Comments

• Hilary Davis says:

  January 28, 2009 at 1:39 pm

  Kim and Hyun-Duck,

  Excel­lent post! I think you’ve made some really good points about the need to fill in the back story/context for stu­dents who may not be get­ting this in their courses while also engag­ing with fac­ulty to enhance stu­dent learn­ing. The peer review video (which is incred­i­bly well done), I think, would also be rel­e­vant to many first-year grad­u­ate stu­dents (not just under­grads). It’s very cool that the video is repurpose-able to other librar­i­ans and instruc­tors. I know that Kim has cre­ated some excel­lent pre­sen­ta­tions on the Eco­nom­ics of Infor­ma­tion and would love to see that topic added to your port­fo­lio of e-learning mod­ules. Another tricky topic would be copy­right and fair use in edu­ca­tion. For grad­u­ate stu­dents in the sci­ences, in par­tic­u­lar, what do you think about the role of e-learning mod­ules address­ing con­cerns about grad stu­dents’ rights to the data that they gen­er­ate as part of their theses/dissertations? Bot­tom line — excel­lent work — can’t wait to see what y’all come up with next.

  Reply
• Wednesday - A day in the life of a librarian « ellie <3 libraries says:

  January 28, 2009 at 5:23 pm

  […] adayinthe­life Morn­ing rou­tine remains the same. It’s a Wednes­day which means a new post on In the Library with the Lead Pipe, so off to read that. When I fin­ished the VCD new books list I sent an email off to my VCD liason […]

  Reply
• Brett Bonfield says:

  January 28, 2009 at 11:19 pm

  I think what I like best about this won­der­ful arti­cle is that it not only pro­motes a worth­while prac­tice, it’s also an exam­ple of that prac­tice: it pro­vides a back story for pro­vid­ing back sto­ries. Kudos to you for giv­ing the amaz­ing IsThisY​our​Pa​p​er​on​S​in​gle​Serv​ingSites​.com a run for its money.

  Like Hilary, I’d love to see some­one do “Copy­right in 5 Min­utes.” I’d also love to see “What Hap­pens When I Hit the Search But­ton?” By under­stand­ing what gets included in search results and how items are ranked (and maybe even how it all works algo­rith­mi­cally), searchers could begin con­struct­ing bet­ter searches in the places most likely to deliver suit­able results.

  Reply
• Kim Duckett says:

  January 29, 2009 at 5:05 pm

  Hilary and Brett — Thanks for the ideas and feed­back on the post! Good sug­ges­tions for more “back story” top­ics. I thought I’d also chime in that we’re cur­rently work­ing on sev­eral other “back sto­ries” including…

  a video about the eco­nom­ics sur­round­ing schol­arly jour­nals and open access

  Lit­er­a­ture Reviews: An Intro­duc­tion for Grad­u­ate Stu­dents which focuses on “what is a lit­er­a­ture review and its role in research.”

  Wikipedia: Beneath the Sur­face which focuses on the social con­struc­tion of infor­ma­tion in Wikipedia.

  Data­bases in Five Min­utes which cov­ers “what is a data­base?” “what is an arti­cle data­base?” and what are the key fea­tures of data­bases?” (sort of the “gestalt” of databases)

  We hope to start rolling out these other projects later this spring.

  Reply
• Emily Ford says:

  January 29, 2009 at 6:40 pm

  yes! I truly think that this model for instruct­ing users is not just a mat­ter of cre­at­ing more com­pe­tency and con­fi­dence in our users, but also a mat­ter of cater­ing to dif­fer­ent learn­ing styles. I, myself, am a visual learner who always asks why. Why-askers really need these back sto­ries to fully engage in dis­course and inter­act with infor­ma­tion. By pro­vid­ing this instruc­tional model (and shar­ing it with your library col­leagues) you are really doing a great ser­vice for tons of peo­ple out there. Thanks!

  Reply
• Hyun-Duck Chung says:

  February 1, 2009 at 7:00 pm

  Thanks Emily for your sup­port­ive com­ments! Your men­tion of the term ‘com­pe­tency’ also reminded me of some­thing we didn’t talk about in the post — that cre­at­ing these videos (maybe) can play a role in com­mu­ni­cat­ing to those out­side the LIS pro­fes­sion that librar­i­ans’ exper­tise span across a broad array of infor­ma­tion top­ics. I think this is some­thing that many peo­ple in our pro­fes­sion — and have to admit some­times I — have a hard time artic­u­lat­ing clearly :)

  Reply
• why recreate the wheel… « first conclusions says:

  February 3, 2009 at 3:50 pm

  […] on a blog post (Nar­rat­ing the “Back Story” through E-learning Resources in Libraries) at In the Library With the Lead Pipe where they this dis­cuss project in more […]

  Reply
• RIOT - EXERCISE (?): Information Literacy and Cognitive Authority says:

  February 9, 2009 at 5:53 pm

  […] think­ing a lot about tuto­ri­als lately, and found this great post Nar­rat­ing the “Back Story” Through E-learning Resources in Libraries from the blog In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Here librar­i­ans at NCSU Libraries talk about […]

  Reply
• Karrie Peterson says:

  February 13, 2009 at 10:37 am

  This is a great sub­ject — three cheers to the authors for their clear think­ing and writ­ing on this topic.

  I once heard some­one I admire say that what we think of as “being smart” can also be described as “con­sis­tently mak­ing good choices.” This fits with my view of mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences — smart peo­ple do the right things with their time, say the right things to oth­ers, go about solv­ing prob­lems effi­ciently, etc. To me, mak­ing good choices requires hav­ing the right kind of back story, that’s what intel­li­gent intu­ition comes from.

  Another way to think of the back story is that we are help­ing stu­dents develop “sys­tems thinking.”

  I never “get it” when peo­ple give me a lot of rules — first aid was taught to me that way when I was in high­school and it was a con­fus­ing maze. Far more help­ful would have been some under­stand­ing of phys­i­cal sys­tems, so that in cop­ing with unique emer­gen­cies I would have intel­li­gent intu­itions about what to do. A closer-to-home exam­ple is observ­ing the way peo­ple go about try­ing to solve IT-related prob­lems when they have no intu­ition about whether the sort of prob­lem they are look­ing at is com­ing from their machine, their local net­work, or an exter­nal web­site. Usu­ally highly inef­fec­tive and frustrating!

  Too often I have encoun­tered stu­dents who are stumped or blocked because they have been taught tool use instead of the back story. The “get full text” but­ton we use between our indexes and our full­text sub­scrip­tions is a good exam­ple. It often does things that stu­dents don’t expect, and then they become stumped or con­fused, because they see it only as tool, and not as part of a sys­tem. It sounds to me like the com­ment above about under­stand­ing algo­rith­mic search and “what hap­pens when you hit the search but­ton” is just the sort of thing I am talk­ing about as sys­tems thinking.

  Another exam­ple I would offer is the way stu­dents are often taught to nar­row or broaden their search when using arti­cle data­bases, and the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for doing so is because they got “too much stuff” or “not enough stuff.” When address­ing a research ques­tion or a prob­lem, the task is to think of the facets or con­tours of your research ques­tion. How does my ques­tion fit into the scope of issues in the field? How have peo­ple answered my prob­lem or oth­ers like it? Are their more than one set of the­o­ries involved, with dif­fer­ent schools of thought? We need to be teach­ing stu­dents to use our research resources as part of a research process, not just to get more or less stuff.

  I think stu­dents can become smarter –even with­out our inter­ven­tion– once they have the overview of the sys­tems they are using. Sys­tems think­ing, or the back story, allows them to use­fully reflect on their processes and use their crit­i­cal think­ing skills to for­mu­late strat­egy. We will never get there only pro­vid­ing stu­dents with rules or check­lists. Recently I saw a tuto­r­ial about eval­u­at­ing resources that asserted that resources found on an .edu or .gov web­site were gen­er­ally reli­able. As a for­mer gov docs librar­ian, I would not have said that. I explained to stu­dents about how dif­fer­ent branches of the govt were beholden to diff stake­hold­ers — and let them decide how to eval­u­ate and use the annual report from an exec­u­tive branch agency, in which the agency head works at the plea­sure of the President.

  Pro­vid­ing the back story feels to me like our best value-add, and I think the authors have hit upon a very prac­ti­cal way to re-tool our­selves in that direction.

  Reply
• Derik Badman says:

  February 20, 2009 at 1:11 pm

  Hyun and Kim, I’m late to reread­ing this, but I wanted to say you made great improve­ments over the draft I read. I appre­ci­ate the extra details about your tuto­r­ial cre­ation process. Your arti­cle is a great blend­ing of the­ory and practice.

  Extra kudos for putting a CC license on the tutorial.

  Reply
• Kim Duckett says:

  February 27, 2009 at 12:00 pm

  Thanks, Kar­rie, for your thought­ful com­ment! Thanks also, Derik, for the kind words regard­ing our blog post. Hyun-Duck and I def­i­nitely val­ued your feedback.

  Kar­rie and Oth­ers: If you haven’t seen Ali­son Head and Michael Eisenberg’s recent study <a href=“What Today’s Col­lege Stu­dents Say About Con­duct­ing Research in the Dig­i­tal Age, please take a look. It’s a fas­ci­nate study of how stu­dents grap­ple with get­ting more “con­text” to under­stand their assignments.

  – Kim Duckett

  Reply
• Kim Duckett says:

  February 27, 2009 at 12:00 pm

  Since that link didn’t work here’s the URL:
  http://​pro​ject​in​folit​.org/​p​d​f​s​/​P​I​L​_​P​r​o​g​r​e​s​s​R​e​p​o​r​t​_​2​_​2​0​0​9​.​pdf

  Reply
• Michele Hayslett says:

  November 2, 2009 at 1:08 pm

  Hi Kim and Hyun-Duck. Is there an update? Have you fin­ished other mod­ules? Another one that I think would be use­ful is Pla­gia­rism in 5. I’d also like to sec­ond the com­ment of oth­ers about how great it is that you’ve done this so oth­ers can use it, both in con­tent and with the CC license. Really ter­rific since many of us don’t have access to the kinds of stu­dent resources that you used!

  Reply
  • hdc says:

    November 12, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    Good topic idea Michele — we haven’t had a chance to work on any new mod­ules since we’re try­ing to work on improv­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, pro­mo­tion and assess­ment of the exist­ing ones. You can sub­scribe to our youtube chan­nel so when we do get around to new uploads you’ll be noti­fied: http://​www​.youtube​.com/​u​s​e​r​/​l​i​b​n​csu

    Thanks for posting!

    Reply