Study reveals shocking truth: Most Facebook apps are silly, pointless | The Social – CNET News.com

Study reveals shocking truth: Most Facebook apps are silly, pointless – CNET News.com

For 30 years now, you’ve been getting spam

READ: For 30 years now, you’ve been getting spam

…the message sent on May 3, 1978 by a marketer for the now defunct DEC computer company to around 400 people on the west coast of the United States wasn’t called spam, and the sender dispatched it without ill intent.

How things have changed.

LOEX2008: Creating an Architecture of Assessment: Using benchmarks to measure library instruction progress and success

Presented by Candice Benjes-Small and Eric Ackermann of Radford University

Curricular changes, librarian burnout, and student-reported BI overload (measured in LibQual). Instruction was course-integrated but built on one-shot classes.

Challenge of linking the 4-point Likert scale questions to specific comments and suggestions.

Evaluation Form (very short and straightforward)

1. I learned something useful from this workshop (Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree). Comment lines with each choice

2. I think this librarian was a good teacher.

3. I would recommend this workshop to someone interested in library research.

Thank you!

For benchmarking, they chose to use University of Virginia’s library system use of metrics to determine success. See http://www.lib.virginia.edu/bsc/

Used these benchmarks — Number of negative comments for question 2 under 10% would constitute partial success, and under 5% would constitute total success. In Spring ‘07 they found that number of negative comments was 11.6%, so they revamped their course content. In Fall 07 and Spring 08, these figures were 5.6% and 6.3% respectively. Better, but a prompt for continuous improvement!

These kinds of quantitative data are very helpful for annual reports (and accreditation reports)! Changing the form is not something one should do lightly, since you’ll lose some ability to compare data with previous years.

loex2008

LOEX2008: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Revamping a Freshman Seminar Information Literacy Program

Presented by Amanda Izenstark and Mary MacDonald, University of Rhode Island.

For the entire presentation, go to: http://www.uri.edu/library/staff_pages/amanda/ReduceReuseRecycleLOEX08.pdf and http://www.slideshare.net/aizenstark

Reduce student anxiety, boredom, librarian apathy

Reuse previous successes in instruction

Recycle the things about your sessions that meet your goals and outcomes.

URI 101: Freshman Seminar, started in 1995, introduces students to the Library and Catalog. This used a tour/lecture/worksheet apparoach. By 2006, this was feeling dated, instructors were losing enthusiasm about the course, and the future of URI 101 was unclear.

Two Models of Instructional Design: 1) Backward Design and 2) Deb Gilchrist’s Five Questions for Assessment Design.

Backward design from Making the Most of Understanding by Design (p. 17): Begin with desired results, determine acceptable evidence, design learning activities to achieve this.

Five Questions…:

1. Outcome
2. IL Curriculum – What does the student need to know to do this well
3. Pedagogy – What activity will facilitate learning
4. Assessment
5. Criteria for Evaluation

URI used these five questions to determine what the student mentors wanted the students to know, and what the librarians wanted students to know. Student mentors are juniors or seniors who are helping new students acclimate to college life. There are 20-30 students per class.

The Result – A Three-Part Program

Pre-activity: Brief Web searching exercise that asked students to find sources suitable for college-level research

Classroom Session: Re-used library tours and exercises from other successful instruction sessions.

Post-Activity: Adapted scavenger hunt to incorporate a subject focus when possible. Required a thorough search of Library’s resources online (not in-person).

The goals of this program was to introduce students to library as a place (for group work, study) and to the array of services that support student research and learning (catalog and databases).

Assessment asked students (in a written survey):

• Name three things you learned
• Two things you’re unclear about
• One thing you’ll do differently when researching

Assess and tweak the course! Use Active Learning techniques, create opportunities for in-class discussion, tailor activities to subject interests whenever possible.

loex2008