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High School and College Instructors and Librarians collaborate in a Workshop series
The purpose of this workshop series is to bring together high school and college instructors and librarians to share and discuss common teaching challenges, barriers and aids in helping high school students make a successful transition to college. In the series, participants revised high school curricular units in English and social studies using shared objectives for high school seniors and college freshmen and shared understanding of the challenges and realities teachers and students face. It is hoped that high school faculty will be able to implement the revised units during spring 2013. The workshop took place in the Architecture Library at City College, CUNY.
Copyright and information literacy
The Center for Intellectual Property will host a Community Conversation on July 19 from 1-2pm EST. If you are interested in attending this free, virtual event which is for CIP members, please contact Kathleen Collins by June 27. While it appears to be geared toward the U of Maryland audience, there will undoubtedly by some excellent ideas for you to incorporate into your teaching at CUNY. Here’s the description from the Center’s site:
Join the Community Conversation with Mark de Jong, Document Management Librarian and Institutional Liaison, UMUC Academic Center at Largo. The discussion topics include Best Practices in Copyright Literacy, including Staff Training and Development issues.
The UMUC Library supports the educational mission of UMUC by educating students, faculty, and staff in the use of library and information resources and services, emphasizing the critical importance of information literacy knowledge and skills for success in today’s information-rich world, Partnering with The Undergraduate School, The Graduate School, and UMUC faculty worldwide to promote and embed information literacy within the curriculum, and Developing and managing extensive online library resources and user-centered services for UMUC students, faculty, and staff worldwide.
“Workplace Readiness?” session sponsored by the Library Information Literacy Committee
Workplace Readiness? Gaps in critical thinking skills of early career professionals
Speakers
Marisol Hernandez, Memorial Sloan Cancer Center
Dawn Hoffman, Global Strategy Group
Jeffrey Holmes, Woods Bagot
Brendan Molloy, KPMG
Kate Wittenberg, Portico
The “Workplace Readiness?” session, sponsored by the City University of New York’s Library Information Literacy Advisory Committee (LILAC) and Gale, a Cengage Learning Company, will be a chance for librarians and other faculty as well as career development professionals to hear from employers how well we are doing in preparing early career professionals with the critical thinking skills they need to succeed in the workforce. Representatives from various fields will be invited to speak with an audience of librarians, subject faculty, and CUNY career development specialists.
Speakers will address gaps they see in employee preparation and the skills needed to thrive in the workplace. The program will provide ample opportunity for discussion about how to close the gaps. Participants will take away a broader understanding of the requirements for success in the 21st Century workforce, as well as suggested strategies and tactics for how better to prepare students for their lives beyond academia.
Friday, April 27, 2012, 9am, Room L2.84
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Registration information is available here: http://metro.org/events/174/
Article on Libraries and Gen Ed
Carl R. Andrews from Medgar Evers College has just published an article Libraries and General Education: New Strategies to Enhance Freshman Orientation, Faculty Collaboration,and Curriculum Development
http://ijl.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.30/prod.3214
Abstract: My research will attempt to re-evaluate the academic library’s role in supporting a general education program. The emphasis will focus on student centeredness, faculty collaboration, outreach and curriculum support. In the short time that I have worked in academic libraries I have learned that quality customer service and reference desk work is far from the list of priorities in some settings. Coming from the public library I found this to be unacceptable. We are service providers and the way in which we communicate with students and faculty is important. As professionals we should do more in the way of making the transition to college as seamless as possible for freshmen and continuing education students. It is imperative of us to adapt to the changing ways in which students interpret, process, and evaluate information. This involves embracing Web 2.0 and the social networking tools that students are using. Libraries will increasingly need to work at staying ahead of the information curve if we are to be an essential resource for today’s college freshmen.
Panel discussion on “Information Literacy and Workplace Readiness” on April 27
Session on “Information Literacy and Workplace Readiness” April 27
Today more than ever, success in the classroom and in the workforce depends on the ability to evaluate a rapidly expanding pool of specialized information. Information competence involves a complex set of critical thinking skills to find, evaluate, contextualize and communicate information using technology. Employees who are information competent can think critically in the context of an increasingly extensive amount of information. They can solve real-world problems using a wide range of technologies to find, evaluate, contextualize and communicate information.
The “Workplace Readiness” session, sponsored by CUNY’s Library Information Literacy Advisory Committee, will be a chance for librarians and other faculty as well as career placement professionals to hear how well we are doing in preparing early career professionals with the critical thinking skills they need to succeed in the workforce. Representatives from various fields, e.g. telecommunications, allied health, non-profits, and law will be invited to speak with an audience of librarians, subject faculty, and the staff from CUNY placement offices.
Speakers will address particular gaps they see in employee preparation and the skills needed to thrive in the workplace. The program will provide ample opportunity for discussion and idea generation about how to close the gaps. Participants will take away a broader understanding of the requirements for success in the 21st Century workforce, as well as suggested strategies and tactics for how better to prepare students for their lives beyond academia.
UPDATE: registration is now open! Register at http://metro.org/events/174/
Hostos Using Blackboard for Information Literacy Workshops
This semester, for the first time, the library began offering online versions of our information literacy workshops through Blackboard. “Keys to Database Searching” was offered four times and “Finding Articles” class was given twice during the Fall semester. On weekdays, the workshops were open 7 a.m. to 8:45pm while a Saturday work-shop was offered from 8 am to 3 pm. Instead of having to sign up for an information literacy workshop and struggle to fit the workshop into their busy schedules, the online format now freed Hostos students from the inconvenience of traveling to a class. They could now log into the workshop at any time throughout the day, completing tasks at their convenience. On their end, librarian instructors logged in throughout the day to respond to discussion board posts and student questions. Busy Hostos students who attended the online workshops were able to learn information literacy and research skills from anywhere.
All workshops were fully registered although not all registered students completed the workshops. Student comments were uniformly enthusiastic: “I thought the online workshop was GREAT! I got to do it at home by myself and really concentrate and focus on what I was learning. And I really liked how the Librarian answered all of my questions pretty fast. I wish there were more FULLY online workshops!” One student commented that this work-shop was her first introduction to Blackboard.
Librarian instructors benefited from the experience of teaching online. We are able to assess student learning in ways that are not possible in a short, single session workshop. We also connected with individual students, responding to their specific concerns through email in the context of an organized lesson. We hope that these individual connections will encourage students to come back and use the library for future research. Although we are still experimenting with format and process, look for more online workshops during spring semester.
—Prof. Kate Lyons
