Author: Cynthia Ng

Notes on Building the Information Literate University

Bill Johnston & Sheila Webber

Information Literacy

It’s big and complex. A lot has been done and researched, but not put together.

The information literate person is an information culture needs a broader, more creative and critical information and media education, not only to enjoy the economic benefits of digitally based infrastructures, but to fully engage either the social, political, and creative dimension of the developing information culture of the 21st century.

Hoping to lead to wise and ethical use of information.

Information Literacy as Discipline

  • professional associations and journals
  • international community
  • academic departments
  • graduate students
  • id with the discipline
  • distinctive language
  • knowledge and research base

Continuing to use the term, because it’s used at the international level. In essence, doesn’t really matter what term we use if we can connect the different areas. Partly, because there is no real alternative term. What you need to keep in mind is that the meaning may change depending on the context (work, subject, country), and users will express different needs.

Information Literate University

This includes graduates, academic peers elsewhere and wider society, but more specifically include:

  • Info Literate Curriculum (in curriculum, as discipline)
  • Info Literate students
  • Info Literate Research
  • Info Literate staff & managers
  • Staff development for IL
  • Management for IL (strategy, policy, resourcing, infrastructure, knowledge & research)

To move towards such a university, need to think about what forces can bring about this change, including:

  • whole course redesign
  • strategy for education (in institutional plan)
  • specific student learning environments
  • theoretically informed case studies

Institutional Strategies

A chance for opportunity spotting. For example, cross disciplinary research, and cross organization research. Another example is engaging students through thinking about how to integrate learning instead of just one off workshops, and using tools to enrich learning. Information literacy might be the discipline of the librarians (as faculty). Zones of action might include workshop model of educational development for librarians with subject/university focus with themes of assessment and online learning objects.

Mainstreaming IL

Many ways to to engaging academic staff.

  • pre-empt negativity
  • identify downside of not shifting
  • identify lecturers who have refixed the rate (combining staff time, etc.; transmissive vs. constructivist)
  • develop scenarios for refixing the rate

Teaching-Learning Environment

Student spending more time engaged in:

  • acitivites designed for deep processing of info
  • developing knowledge of reliable sources
  • etc.

Need to think about:

  • specific pedagogic approach

    • a

  • infrastructure such as classroom setups
  • e-learning: process of; focus on approach, not learning objects

Conclusions

  • Think BIG
  • Associate IL eith global themes, educational achievement, and institutional success
  • teach, learn, research, and communicate through IL
  • Challenge doubters and convince supporters

Workshop Notes

In the afternoon, we worked in groups to come up with different strategies to mainstream information literacy.

Aims and Strategies

  • Research a core group at every level and convince faculty of the value
  • Have students understand that the information they are looking for is available at the library
  • Education of the faculty
  • Building relationships with faculty
    • sharing successful stories and strategies
    • become more embedded: courses, research
    • building enough of a relationship to do a course redesign
  • maintain face to face contact
  • ensure programmatically implemented
  • testing critical student thinking
  • e-textbooks
  • audit course outlines and develop IL arguments or zones of intervention, then include statement
  • IL becoming component of the institutional teaching methodologies, sneaking it in
  • subject related divisions within OCUL which don’t exist
  • student survey on student info seeking and help behaviour
  • co-teaching

Key Levers

  • new strategic plan and new administration
  • related committees in teaching, curriculum, and info literacy
  • dealing with funding changes due to university specialization declarations
  • collaborations cross-university
  • integration of tutorials, tools, and services into environment e.g. Course Management Systems
  • making use of existing communications and marketing avenues e.g. Taking advantage of assessment to get support from upper administration
  • AACSB (accreditation)
  • program/course proposals
  • program review
  • online courses/e-learning
  • copyright
  • faculty meetings
  • conferences

Partners

  • faculty liaisons and subject experts
  • library “champions”
  • other university departments e.g. Writing centre
  • librarians at other universities
  • Student services
  • Academic support
  • Teaching co
  • quality assurance framework
  • OCUL

Connecting It All

The key points to be taken forward.
Sustaining

  • Teaching chairs (R)
  • Teaching & Learning commons (Y)

Growing

  • growing learning commons to include topics of academic integrity
  • building on tri-mentoring to find out what info literacy skills employers are looking for (R)
  • meta-level points for engaging faculty in importance of IL e.g. Info society, ethical issues
  • getting upper admin buy-in and budget
  • opportunities for embedding and assessment

Initiating

  • R-Y partnership to talk about success & challenges specific to subject areas building on informal network
  • writing IL modules for courses that can be collaborative and shared
  • syllabus audit looking for IL opportunities
  • IL committee

Partnering

  • college (workshops, drop-in)
  • career centre
  • learning skills
  • tri-mentoring
  • other librarians in same subject
  • accreditation bodies: building on industry expectations
  • within the university: faculty liaisons

Developing library staff

  • more intensive opportunity to discuss these issues with outcomes of program documents or policies, etc. beyond just a one day workshop
  • retreat
  • instruction peer assessment
  • communication: key messages & how to convey them
  • time and training for IL
  • reexamine what IL should or can look like

Steve Krug: You’re NOT Doing Usability Testing? Are You Nuts?

The University of Toronto iSchool was lucky enough to get Steve Krug of Don’t Make Me Think fame. If you haven’t read it and you’re at all interested in usability, I would definitely recommend it. Anyway, here are my notes from today’s talk.

Goal

Convince you that usability testing is the most valuable thing you can do to ensure that what you’re building works.

12 Years Ago – The Debate

Realized seeing the same story over and over again. He first started by turning it into a comic. Basically the same debates happened over and over, frequently without decisions being made. It’s difficult to find a middle ground, because each person comes with their own perspective. Partly, there’s no hard and fast answer, because it depends on the context.

Usability testing eliminated most debates. Seeing users use what they designed changed their perspective and start talking from the user perspective rather than personal biases.

Keeping It Simple

Traditionally, usability is done in a lab with the minimum 8 users in a day by an outsider, ending in an expensive report which may not be convincing to the team.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy written more for people intending to actually do usability testing.

Just do it with:

  • 3 users per round
  • set up a monitor in another room to watch
  • record screencast
  • no stats, no faux validity, but produces meaningful insight
  • no big report, just debrief over lunch, report in 1-2 page email

Live Demo

Use script, which can be downloaded from Krug’s website. Instead of a website, he did a live demo on the Clear mobile app. Interestingly, the participant could not complete the task, which was interesting since the app is highly praised.

RSME: The 22-minute version

6 Maxims

  • A morning a month is all we ask.
  • Start earlier than you think makes sense. – Can start before you start by testing a competitor’s or old version, or even a sketch on a napkin.
  • Recruit loosely and grade on a curve. – Take just about anyone, and judge whether everyone would have that problem or if it’s just because not from target audience.
  • Make it a spectator sport.
  • Focus ruthlessly on the few, most serious problems. – Right away write down the top 3 problems to take into debrief.
  • When fixing problems, always do the least you can do. – The smallest change might do to solve or help mitigate the problem. Tweak, don’t redesign.

Q&A

  • James Chudley CX Partners wrote on the approach to doing mobile app testing that needs context.
  • Tools for Remote Testing – Goto Meeting, WebEx and need high quality audio
  • Analytics good to help know what to test
  • Do usability more frequently rather than testing a lot of people, because you quickly hit diminishing returns
  • Task specification – allow user to have the choices of content

MozFest 2012: Reflection & Thimble Project Making

Where to even begin? My mind is still reeling from the awesomeness that was MozFest almost a week later. I suppose the best place is for those who aren’t familiar…

What is MozFest?

The Mozilla Festival is an annual weekend event where (mainly) Mozilla Foundation, its affiliates, and others (because anyone can submit proposals) hold sessions (presentation, workshops, or hackfest type sessions) on some of the cool, open things that have been happening. That’s how I see it anyway.

There is a big range of people who attend of different age, background, tech-savvyness, geographic location, everything. I will say that there were different streams, which made some groups more prominent (other than developers), such as journalists and educators.

Science Fair

The digital, technology version of a regular science fair. People got to show off stuff that has been made, especially within the past year since the last MozFest. Highlight for me was definitely the banana piano. Simple, but ingenious use of MakeyMakey with an Arduino unit where you hold the ground and when you touch one of the bananas, it completes the circuit and knows which banana you touched, ultimately playing a sound and animating a digital keyboard.

Opening and Closing Circle – Day 1

I actually don’t have any notes for the plenaries of the day 1. For the first time ever, I felt the need to closed my laptop and just listen. However, the streaming videos are online on the MozFest website.

Sessions

Gunner at Work Open Session

I didn’t attend very many sessions, because I was busy doing other things much of the time, but two in particular stood out for me.

The first on how to work in the open turned into a particularly interesting session, because Gunner (Allen Gunn) came in to check up on us and asked if we needed anything. The response was “our facilitator”. So while Matt Thompson was “coming”, Gunner stepped in and totally winged a Q&A + discussion session. It was great. You can find my notes in a recent post.

The second was the fireside chat with Mark Surman on the future of Webmaker. It was interesting to hear about the big lessons they learned and the direction in moving forward, especially with Thimble since I’m fairly familiar with it. One of the questions that Mark wanted us to answer in the discussion was what projects (i.e. templates) we could make (either in Thimble or Popcorn) that would be popular. One of the answers inspired me to hack together a new Thimble project (if you’re not familiar with Thimble projects, take a look at the list of Thimble projects). More on that later.

While not exactly a session, I have to mention Codery’s Badge Bingo. They added another fun game factor to collection badges at MozFest, plus they gave away a t-shirt to every person who got bingo. It was great.

Helping Out

So when I wasn’t attending sessions, I was helping out with various things. I did a lot of random, being a gopher type things, and helped with setup and clean up of some sessions. The afternoon of the first day, I hung out to help with the HTML5 Hackable Games session.

I was also a Human API. Basically, people could ask questions, in my case about HTML and CSS stuff. I didn’t get many questions though, so next year, they might need to coordinate to have people with certain skills help out at certain sessions to make better use of the Human APIs.

Demo Party

I didn’t really have anything ready when I submitted my name to be part of the demo party, but what the heck, I figured I’d have something put together even if it wasn’t polished. Since there was a Thimble table, I ended up providing my project as a Thimble example.

Interestingly, I ended up staffing the table by myself, so I got to talk about Thimble in general as well as my project. Apparently, I was good enough and know enough about Thimble that I could pass for a MoFo staff member. ^^

So here’s a summary what I talked about during the demo party in regards to my project:

Hacking Together a New Thimble Project

Inspiration

One of the answers to what might make a popular Thimble project was “school projects”. I immediatly thought of the poster projects we had to make in school and how I really disliked having to print everything, and cut and paste each bit straight (and if you screwed up, having to do it again). Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could just do a digital version and display it? (or if necessary, print the whole thing off).

Making the Project

I spent a couple of hours putting together a poster thimble project. I wish I had more graphic design/artistic talent, because as it stands, it kind of looks like somthing from the geocities age (ugh), but for me, rather than the look, it was more important to make it so that it’s:

  • easy to use – no CSS and very little HTML required
  • flexible – hackable if you know HTML & CSS

In particular:

  • separate title & footer areas
  • column classes are reused – don’t need to specify first, last, inner, or outer.
  • image classes – text wrap on right or left, or centre with no wrapping
  • works cited area – automatically floats this in bottom right above footer

Since we were at MozFest, I couldn’t help but use red pandas!

To Do

I want to clean it up, insert instructions, and separate the CSS into external and internal blocks. I’d also like to add ways to possibly rotate blocks of text or images.

I’ve also requested from the projects coordinator a small bit of time from a graphics designer to make it look nicer and more professional looking.

Extended Use Case

I created it with school kids (primary and secondary) in mind, but someone mentioned that they would find this useful for university presentation and conference posters as well. I was very happy to hear that they thought it would be useful beyond my original intention.

Other Demos

I took a bit of time to walk around the room and see what else people were up to. The Hackable games section was definitely interesting to see, especially with the one button arcade boxes. The MakeyMakey step visualizer was a crowd draw as well.

For a list of all the demos with links and pictures, check out the MozFest demo party page.

Thanks MozFest

I went to MozFest with the intention of simply hanging out and helping out. I never thought that I’d be inspired to hack anything together, because I’m just not a coder. I was inspired not only by the talks and ideas, but by the attitude and enthusiasm through MozFest. I never thought that I’d even have my project featured first on the demo page.

So, thanks MozFest, and hope to be there next year.

MozFest 2012: Mark Surman on Where Next to Webmaker

Story of Webmaker

4 years ago, where Mozilla has always been clear about its mission. Guard the open nature of the internet. Firefox, for example, was not a browser but a standards play (vs. IE).  The approach was to make a product that people would love to embed a set of value to bring the web platform back.

Can’t just win one thing. What is beyond Firefox? Started a product oriented lab. It came to the idea of FirefoxOS. It’s doing what Firefox did for browsers with mobile. Drumbeat was also set for the more social side in terms of engagement, which came to webmaker.

A platform is not enough to make that writeable web. Need to teach people how to write. Based webmaker on three theories:

  • Best way to get writing is to teach people.
  • Learning is social. Connecting people.
  • Tap into the internet culture.

First part was to build the tools: Thimble, Popcorn Maker. Second part was Summer Code Party which asked people to get together to make and learn (the social side). 650 events in 80+ countries with almost no planning.

What we learned:

  • projects based on popular themes are popular e.g. Thimble lolcat editor (vs. edgecase animals)
  • people have a lot of content online e.g. Popcorn Presidential Attack Ad – by signing in Facebook; Concert video using music and their own pictures
  • Self-identify as educators: Those who want to teach are the first ones to get it. Need to build an army to make a permanent Summer Code Party everywhere.

Existing Popular Ideas to Turn into Starter Projects

  • collaborative scrapbooking
  • viral dubbing
  • wish list from social network putting back out
  • school year book
  • school projects – templates
  • infographics
  • e-cards

Building a Permanent Summer Code Party

  • network on how to build summer code party
  • have more regular ones
  • mentors, ambassadors
  • badges as connectors
  • how to do it without access to web
  • localization

I’ve heard there’s an etherpad with further notes, but no idea what the link is…

MozFest 2012: Opening Circle Day 2

Mark Surman

The theme is creating a writeable society. Need a web that allows us to write, not just read.

MozFest is about inventing that future.

This is a place where we can do it.

Popcorn

Brett Gaylor

Announce the release of Popcorn Maker 1.0 with a screencast.

Wanted to work with people to who co-create the media of the future. At MozFest 2011, PopcornJS 1.0. One release a month to make Popcorn Maker.

Let’s Get Making.

Back to Mark

It’s making an open source cinema.

A whole world of social media that can hack. The next one is to make games that can be hacked. Check out Hackable Games, such as HTML5 2D Hackable Games.

Ukie

Games are awesome

It’s a huge multi million dollar business. It’s a massively growing business. Most people think about console games, which is a strong part, but the games industry is shifting. It’s becoming more accessible, because technology is changing to make it easier to make games.

Games are powerful in learning, provoking people into action, fun. Can teach about failure, collaboration, hard work, anything and everything.

The whole industry is very young, but built on people who could tinker with code. However, we’ve moved away (for the most part) from encouraging people to create with the building blocks, to solve problems. Some good examples are Scratch and Ouya (hackable console).

We must learn not just how to use programs but how to make them… Program or be programmed.

Get excited and make things.

Back to Mark Surman

At the core of Mozilla’s is to focus on learning. Understandability needs to be integrated so that programming becomes something that everyone can do. Popcorn is a start, and games is the next step.

It’s not sure about shipping a cool product, but also an attitude. Need to bring playfulness, which is what games do.

Joi Ito

Interest-driven learner who found a community through the Internet, but did not have teachers. The tools are now available so that anything can make things.

What we’re doing is very disruptive, because everything we do is political and what we do is scary. We empower others, and it’s great to be fun, but there are people trying to shut us down. We win by creating a movement.

We have to fight to keep the internet open.

Back to Mark

The one punk rock kid in Northern Ontario. What punk rock gave Mark was to make media. Made media with magazines, scissors, and glue.

It’s an attitude that injects fun and builds that movement we need and are. We should build that attitude into everything we make and offer.

That attitude is what is going to bring people in.

F*ck it. Ship It.