EDUCAUSE | Information Literacy

Students, Technology, and Learning: Strategies for Success—Proceedings

ckeller — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:20:47 -0500

Cosponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), EDUCAUSE, and the University of Central Florida (UCF), the Students, Technology and Learning: Strategies for Success Conference (formerly the Key to Competitiveness) provides AASCU institutions with an opportunity to learn more about the next generation of students—a group with much greater expectations for the use of technology in higher education than previous generations. The event allows teams of presidents and senior institutional leaders to explore new ways of using technology to meet student expectations and more effectively serve the next generation learner.

Can We Raise the Bar? Collaboration with Others Using Instructional Technology

drupal — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:37:32 -0500

Do you have a program or class at your institution that needs to be refreshed and revitalized? Could you sharpen your students' critical thinking skills by incorporating active learning techniques, information literacy competencies, and fresh, new technologies? If you can answer "yes" to either of these questions, then our program can help both you and your colleagues. Come learn how we breathed new life into our old standard of instruction by collaborating through three distinctively different groups: First Year Programs, the academic library, and teaching faculty. The result was a more contemporary yet engaging learning experience for all involved.

Building a More Net-Savvy Campus Culture

drupal — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:37:31 -0500

What does it mean for students, faculty, and staff to be “net savvy”? Many are facile with music downloads, word processing, text messaging, or Web 2.0 tools, but are they really technology literate? What does it take to build a more net-savvy campus culture for students, faculty, and staff? Share your ideas, experiences, and questions in this dialogue on a topic of critical importance to the development of a community of responsible, self-directed, lifelong learners.

Digital Visual Literacy: Interdisciplinary Skills for the 21st-Century Learner

djacobs — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:16:45 -0500

As international culture and commerce become increasingly reliant on visual communications, visual literacy has developed into an essential skill for 21st-century college graduates. With advancements in technology and the digitizing of information, digital literacy has also grown in importance. Digital visual literacy (DVL) is the ability to critically analyze digital visual materials, create effective visual communications, and make judgments and decisions using visual representations of thoughts and ideas. These skills, which actively engage our cognitive processing of visual images, have evolved from concepts at the intersection of a range of established disciplines. This session will discuss this exciting new literacy, showcase the free materials developed under a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education grant, and share recent feedback from instructors who have integrated these pioneering instructional modules into their courses. The discussion will benefit faculty, staff, and administrators infusing their curriculum with fresh IT skills.

A Seismic Shift in Epistemology

elilly — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:25:25 -0500

Web 2.0 is redefining what and how and with whom we learn. For example, in Wikipedia, “knowledge” is constructed by negotiating compromises among various points of view. This raises numerous questions: How do we in higher education help students understand the differences between facts, opinions, and values—and how do we help them appreciate the interrelationships that create “meaning”?

In Search of Certitude

elilly — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:34:39 -0500

As the second decade of the public Internet reveals a desire for immediate access to greater certitude, CIOs and other campus leaders have an opportunity to rethink how questions find answers that are good enough or quick enough for the context of need.

Interactivity in Library Presentations Using a Personal Response System

elilly — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:09:40 -0500

In order to evaluate student opinion as well as the impact on students of an active learning methodology of two face-to-face presentation styles, during a 50-minute session of library research skills, participants attended either a traditional presentation or a modified one, incorporating the use of the PRS. The Personal Response System is a wireless technology in which students, equipped with clickers, respond to a variety of questions posed by the librarian in the course of the presentation. Both types of sessions, offered by the same librarian, included the same research skills content. Created for the purpose of evaluating various aspects of the library presentation, a questionnaire completed by all students was analyzed. In the evaluation, the PRS group not only indicated a greater enjoyment of the session but found the presenter to be well organized. The authors also discuss aspects of using clickers versus employing a traditional classroom setting.

Notes: Challenging IT Leaders to Mashup, Twitter, Tag, and Poke - Susan Metros keynote address

llarsen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:58:14 -0500

Challenging IT Leaders to Mashup, Twitter, Tag, and Poke: New IT Strategies for a Digital Society. Susan Metros, Deputy CIO, University of Southern California

2008 Midwest Regional Conference Opening General Session

Notes:

This session has been recorded and is available for podcast at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/podcastchallengingitleade/46499.

Metros slides are available in pdf at http://www.educause.edu/upload/presentations/MWRC08/GS01/Metros%20EDUCAUSE%20Midwest.pdf

An outstanding and energetic speaker, Susan Metros offered a thought-provoking discussion of what it means to transform the things we do in support of new learners and general education as well as our faculty’s teaching and research.

Her initial premise was that General Education is not on people’s radar screens and she asked the following questions:

Who are out students?
What does it take to be literate?
What we can do about it?

She put these is the context of:

Historical perspectives
Preservation of knowledge
Promoting inquiry

Modern higher education institutions have strategic visions that we can explore. At her new home at USC, the vision includes meeting societal needs, expanding global presence and its impact, and promoting learner-centered education. At her previous institution, Ohio State, it was to create a more diverse university community and build Ohio’s future. At Maricopa Community College the vision is access to programs and services.

What does it mean to be a literate human society?

The dictionary definition says the ability to read and write but it is so much more, especially today: economic, cultural, visual, information, media, scientific, politics and even more…. Students are stewards of knowledge with their own set of core values. Today’s youth are digitally titillated, visually stimulated, and socially connected. They are information seekers, communicators, collaborators – and are multi-taskers who want random access. They are networked and have instant gratification needs.

A recent survey indicates that the majority of students own laptops and have music/video players

24% primary wireless
80% use collaboration tools
76% download music or video
83% use a CMS
56% say convenience is important

…and they do not like heavily IT driven courses.

Metros suggested 6 principles and asked “what can IT leaders do to deploy a campus-wide IT strategy supporting these values?”

1) Possess core communication and quantitative (sometimes also qualitative) skills:

Reading and writing - visual expression
Speak and listen (communication)
Perform quantitative analysis
Social networking and collaboration tool use– Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Gmail, RSS feeds, email - as IT professionals, will we embrace these tools or not? [USC went to Google apps - in doing so there was a lot of work to be done. Students now must accept privacy information, create Google passwords, choose where to deliver their USC mail -- lots to put it into place but they know students are using the social networking tools.
Communication and quantitative skills in undergraduate research, doing “research on research”
Undergraduate students with faculty in e-partnerships, do a portfolio that shares the process and products with colleagues, industry, etc.

2) Critical Thinking: the ability to analyze information and use it appropriately

LMS or CMS, everybody has them and they provide a participatory culture. We are working to add sophistication, assessment, and more. At a recent EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative event there was a conversation on “Is CMS so 2005?” With Web 2.0 options there are other options, ie, courses on Facebook. The Faculty doesn’t design it but the student does. These tools allow faculty to reach students where they are.

Another example she offered was Google classes. Microsoft thought Sharepoint would be the killer application and when Apple just announced an iPhone software roadmap, programs began to be submitted immediately. She asked: can we do courses on the phone?

There is a participatory culture in critical thinking: Ohio State’s Digital Union is a gathering place, and a place for new media production, showcases, workshops learning communities, emerging technology test beds, multi-disciplinary research and more. At USC they have an institute for multimedia literacy where they do research on the changing nature of literacy, teaching production, programs in scholarship.

3) Integrates and applies knowledge: Knowledge sharing – astronomy 112 class recorded by a student and made them available. They garnered attention from around the world. USC has an iTunes channel with 12 sub-channels (8 more coming) with 900 subscribers. The schools are doing this rather than the central IT unit.

4) Intellectual breadth, depth, and adaptive-ness: Discipline specific collections, the long tail of collections, many of them are in the library but there are many more within a faculty member’s personal private space. How can we help faculty to produce these and provide a web media collective for discipline specific collections? There are new ways to teach and learn, not much has changed in the millennia, so many things need to change now. Exchange of information is wanted rather than “telling me” your information. Experiential learning, multimedia and more are important.

Benchmarks for this should be:

level of academic challenge
active and collaborative learning
student / faculty interaction
enriching educational experiences
supportive campus environment

Illustrations included the New Media Consortium’s Pachyderm (http://www.nmc.org/pachyderm/)

Learning spaces – we have a shift from carts to AV wall boxes and camera equipped classrooms. However, we are doing these in old spaces and we need new spaces including virtual space: Croquet, Second Life, etc. USC is hiring a director of learning spaces and those spaces will be formal, informal, virtual and more.

5) Understand diverse societies and cultures: In this age of global connections, how do we support international education? She mentioned the Internet2 megaconference with Bob Dixon via video-conferencing and the Ohio Supercomputer Center’s transportable satellite system.

At the local level she talked about the outreach of Eva Bradshaw of Ohio State in starting “Gidget,” a technology pipeline for girls – see http://www.gogidget.org/. Metros also talked about partnerships with learners, staff, both centralized and decentralized, faculty, other campus institutions, as well as community and industry partners.

Uphold values and ethics: Metros said we are always fighting an uphill battle, in reactive mode, in this area and suggested that we need to help our students, staff, and others with credibility, validity, and ethical implications. She said that faculty don’t always have the context so we must not start with tools, but rather with goals. Goal->Process->Product (tool)

She suggests new IT strategies for a digital society

Goal = convenience, collaboration, communication, engagement, interaction, mobility, accessibility, literacy, accountability, security, effectiveness, and efficiency.

1) Adopt new teaching and learning configurations and formats

2) Manage knowledge

3) Extend education’s reach

4) Build communication and collaboration pathways

5) Develop and adopt new and emerging IT processes and tools

6) Be a conscientious local and global citizen.

Using Learning Objects and Instructional Technologies to Improve the Information Competency

drupal — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:00:18 -0500

The Information Literacy Program at Otis College is a collaboration between faculty and librarians that includes multimedia tutorials, learning objects, podcasts, and YouTube videos. This presentation will describe how the program was developed and embedded in courses, demonstrate some of the instructional technologies used, and discuss the assessment processes and results.

Information Literacy: Reinforcing Student Skills Through Two Digital Archives

drupal — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:14:59 -0500

As information literacy and active learning principles are being incorporated into accreditation standards, the teaching of these skills is becoming a broader campus concern. This session will feature two collaborative digitization projects that exemplify best practices in visual and information literacy and technology fluency.

EFF keeps viral video free from infection

mpasiewicz — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:10:26 -0600

EFF recently blogged about the way they're using embedded video and steps that they've taken to protect the privacy of users visiting their pages. They've created a script that prevents embeded sources from automatically downloading when you visit a page. In effect, they've created a system that offers the ability to opt-in to view the embedded media, rather that force feeding content from third parties (and associated usage tracking) into the attention stream of their audience. This seems like an important step towards elevating thought and providing protective measures aimed at third party sources (whether that mean viral video, widgets, maps, images or mashups of various web services).

They've implemented these protection measures using a Drupal module and they'll be contributing this back to the community!

Thank you EFF!

The Library + WebCT = A Perfect Partnership

drupal — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:59:12 -0600

Online learning provides opportunities and challenges for students and institutions. The Lee College instructional designer and distance education librarian collaborated with others to provide a means of increasing student awareness and use of selected scholarly resources. Our WebCT Library Resources "course" is the result. We will discuss the building process and the results.

Handbook for Information Literacy Teaching

ckeller — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:51:03 -0600

This Handbook was written by a group of subject librarians at Cardiff University to support their colleagues in Information Services as they developed their information literacy teaching.

Designing the Next-Generation Student Technology Fluency Program: TAC 2.0

drupal — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:45:06 -0600

In this session, we will discuss our experience at George Mason University in redesigning our student technology fluency program. We will describe the external and internal factors that prompting us to rethink our approach as well as the challenges we faced and how we responded to them.

The Digitally Fluent University: A Recipe for Success?

drupal — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:07:26 -0600

How do you make a digitally fluent university? What are the ingredients, who decides the recipe, and how do you ensure the many cooks are spicing not spoiling the broth? Six months into an ambitious transformation program we will share the sweet and sour of our expectations and experiences.

Additional contributor: Paul A. Helm, Sheffield Hallam University.

What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies

drupal — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:07:26 -0600

The Fourth Annual Robert C. Heterick, Jr., Lecture

Emblematic of the new participatory cultures and the emerging practices of collective intelligence, Wikipedia has drawn fire from academic institutions and traditional gatekeepers. Using segments from a forthcoming documentary about the Wikipedia movement produced by MIT's Project NML, this session will discuss how educators might use Wikipedia to introduce students to the ways that new forms of cultural production and knowledge sharing are reshaping the research process.

Designing Spaces for New Media Literacy Learning

drupal — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:07:25 -0600

This session will investigate possibilities for the design of learning spaces in both the virtual and the built world. When centered on the widespread social uses of new-media literacies, the architecture of innovative learning environments includes participatory pedagogies, open access to digital resources, opportunities for dialogue, and global distribution networks.

ELI Podcast: What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies

gbayne — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:19:11 -0600

This 73 minute podcast features the 4th Annual Robert C. Heterick Jr. Lecture, given by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. The lecture is entitled, "What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies".

Linking E-Portfolios to Information and Technological Literacy

drupal — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:56:19 -0600

Electronic portfolios have become a means for students to demonstrate and reflect on learning in a way that helps them build and apply information- and technology-literacy skills. This session will discuss e-portfolios and their potential for building such literacy, as well as present a model for the design of a student-centered electronic portfolio project purposed for this charge.

What Can You Do? The Rest of the Copyright Story

drupal — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:39:00 -0600

The ARL's Know Your Copy Rights is a multifaceted campus copyright education initiative that accentuates the positive and emphasizes what you can do with copyrighted materials. This effort offers resources, including a unique brochure, specifically created for all campus constituencies with the assistance of nationally recognized copyright educators.

Developing a Campus Copyright Education Program

drupal — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:16:29 -0600

Brigham Young University's Copyright Licensing Office is dedicated to promoting copyright education, securing permissions, and increasing legal compliance. This session will cover several tools developed to accomplish these goals, including a university copyright policy, an online tutorial, a resource manual for faculty, a helpful Web site, and databases to process permissions requests.

ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session, Being Net Savvy: Developing Skills for a Rapidly Changing World Video

ckeller — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:34:47 -0600

The ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session, Being Net Savvy: Developing Skills for a Rapidly Changing World, explored what it means for students, faculty, and staff to be net savvy, and why it is a critical skill in a Web 2.0 world. ELI developed a video summary of the event for use as a persistent learning resource. It provides an overview of the major concepts presented and discussed at the session, such as what it means for students, faculty, and staff to be net savvy and the potential pitfalls of not being net savvy in an online world. It also highlights the need to address issues of information literacy / fluency, media literacy, and good digital citizenship across the curriculum, as well as across professional development and student life programs.

Intersecting Learner Characteristics and Technology Capabilities: Survey Development and Validation

drupal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:04:19 -0600

This session will discuss the methods and preliminary results of the first and second steps of a three-step process for assessing a survey's validity. The survey of interest was designed to expand on McVay (2000, 2001) and Bernard et al. (2004), as well as examine learner characteristics and technology capabilities of online students.

From Information Literacy to Scholarly Identity: Effective Pedagogical Strategies for Social Bookmarking

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:39 -0500

Collaborative research teaches students critical knowledge management skills, whether they are undergraduates learning the basics of Web research or advanced scholars defining their own knowledge domains. Faculty need practical examples and strategies to initiate social bookmarking activities. Case studies demonstrate how this has been accomplished in undergraduate and graduate courses.

Student Expectations Study

ckeller — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:47:43 -0500

These are key findings from online research and discussion evenings held in June 2007 for the Joint Information Systems Committee. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) commissioned Ipsos MORI to undertake research among prospective university students to understand a number of issues:

current levels of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) provision at school/college
expectations of ICT provision at university
any difference between expectation of ICT provision and that which is provided by HE institutions

These objectives helped to explore the hypothesis that there is a mismatch between student expectations of what they will be able to do and what Higher Education (HE) institutions can and do offer in terms of ICT. This study will form part of an overarching piece of research being undertaken by JISC to examine this hypothesis and inform HE institutions of student expectations of ICT provision.

Faculty Integration of Technology into Instruction and Students' Perceptions of Computer Technology to Improve Student Learning

ckeller — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:32:06 -0500

There has been a remarkable improvement in access and rate of adoption of technology in higher
education. Even so, reports indicate that faculty members are not integrating technology into instruction
in ways that make a difference in student learning (Cuban, 2001; McCannon & Crews,
2000). To help faculty make informed decisions on student learning, there is need for current
knowledge of faculty integration practices. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine
the nature of the relationship between faculty integration of technology into classroom instruction
and students' perceptions of the effect of computer technology to improve their learning.
A sample of at least 800 undergraduate students at a participating medium-sized midwest public
university was selected using a stratified random sampling technique. The researcher delivered
and administered the surveys to the participating students and collected them after completion.
98% of the questionnaires were complete and retained for analysis. Two major statistical techniques
were used to analyze data obtained in the study: a multiple regression and a Two-Way
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).
A statistically significant relationship was found between the three predictor variables and the
criterion. The Two-Way ANOVA results indicated no interaction effect between gender and
course levels, and students' perceptions of the effect of computer technology use to improve their
learning. The main effects of gender and course levels were not statistically significant.
The results indicated that students lack computer skills in various computer applications that are
necessary to support and enhance their learning experiences. Therefore, it can be suggested that
students need to have direct instruction to efficiently use computer technology applications such
as authoring and sophisticated hypermedia. These programs provide computer skills in advanced
computer technology applications that will enable faculty members to expect more disciplinespecific
computer-based projects such as developing a webquest in a web editor.

Student Content Creators: Convergence of Literacies

ckeller — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:17:23 -0500

Due to the fact that many campuses are not requiring information literacy and IT fluency skills as part of the curricula, the author advocates channeling the teaching of these skills through the notion that students are future content creators, in digitial enviroments.

Student Perspective - Meg and Joan Lippincott Net Savvy Video

drupal — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:56:01 -0500

Joan Lippincott, associate executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), contributed a video interview with her daughter, Meg Lippincott, to the program for the ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session, Being Net Savvy: Developing Skills for A Rapidly Changing World. A sophomore at Vassar College, Meg provides a student perspective on how students seek information for their academic work. Her views are drawn from her experiences helping peers at her college library reference desk as well as her own efforts. Meg discusses aspects of information literacy and her definition of a "net savvy student." Her friend Jan Zhan, a student at University of Maryland, shot the interview.

Using Blogs for Formative Assessment and Interactive Teaching

ckeller — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:05:10 -0500

This case study shows how students were taught the skills they need to find information relevant to their subject area. As groups of students are generally seen once only, measures to assess the effectiveness of teaching are needed, i.e. to determine the skills the students have acquired. Blogs were used as a tool for formative assessment and were used to measure student expectations before teaching, and their level of satisfaction with the session afterwards. The blog [1] helps the tutor to understand if learning outcomes have been achieved and whether the session has met student expectations. It also requires students to reflect on the skills that they have acquired.

Information Literacy in the Digital Age

drupal — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:47:46 -0500

This session will begin with an overview of information literacy based on research conducted for the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, discuss an examination of information literacy preparation for higher education via the K–12 setting, and close with a presentation on the iSkills Assessment (the former ICT Literacy Assessment) tool.

Beyond Google: How do students conduct academic research?

ckeller — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:59:47 -0500

This paper reports findings from an exploratory study about how students majoring in humanities and social sciences use the Internet and library resources for research. Using student discussion groups, content analysis, and a student survey, our results suggest students may not be as reliant on public Internet sites as previous research has reported. Instead, students in our study used a hybrid approach for conducting course–related research. A majority of students leveraged both online and offline sources to overcome challenges with finding, selecting, and evaluating resources and gauging professors’ expectations for quality research.

Podcast: Information Literacy, IT Fluency, and Media Literacy - An Interview with Craig Gibson

gbayne — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:18:12 -0500

In this podcast, we feature 15 minute interview with Craig Gibson, Associate University Librarian at George Mason University. This interview was recorded at the ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session in Boulder, Colorado, where Mr. Gibson presented a speech entitled, "Prisms Around Student Learning: Information Literacy, IT Fluency, and Media Literacy". A podcast of that speech can be found here.

The family of literacies now promoted in higher education (information literacy, IT fluency, and media and visual literacies) continues to multiply. These educational agendas call for more pervasive collaboration among all stakeholders (faculty, administrators, librarians, technologists, student life staff, assessment specialists, and others) because of conceptual and programmatic linkages and convergences among them. The blending of these literacies can become a catalyst that taps into student learning and engagement at a deep level and effects cultural change within and across institutions.

This podcast was edited with assistance from Kelly Walker.

Student Perspective Video - University of Central Florida

drupal — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:16:42 -0500

In this video from the University of Central Florida, students interview other students to uncover what they know and don't know about information fluency, starting with the question: "What is IF (information fluency)?"

Podcast: Information Literacy in the Digital Age

gbayne — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:40:46 -0500

In this hour-long podcast, we feature a panel discussion from the 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing entitled, "Information Literacy in the Digitial Age". Panelists in this discussion include:

Irvin R. Katz, Senior Research Scientist for the Educational Testing Service
George Lorenzo, President and CEO of Lorenzo Associates, Inc.
Moses Wolfenstein, Graduate Student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Session convener: Charles D. Dziuban, Director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Central Florida

This session will be an examination of information literacy preparation for higher education via the K–12 setting, and close with a presentation on the iSkills Assessment (the former ICT Literacy Assessment) tool.

This podcast was edited with assistance from Kelly Walker.

Mellon Fellowship for Undergraduate Research: Ideas, Innovations, and Impacts - Project Parlor

drupal — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:19:07 -0500

UC Berkeley's Mellon Fellowship for Undergraduate Research offers one model for strengthening the connections between undergraduate research, information literacy, and educational technologies. The initiative engages many issues: supporting instructors' pedagogical approaches; sustaining cross-departmental collaborations; leveraging resources to transform curriculum; assessing student learning; and evaluating faculty, departmental, and institutional change.

Mellon Fellowship for Undergraduate Research: Ideas, Innovations, and Impacts - Concurrent Session

drupal — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:19:07 -0500

One Click at a Time: How Net Savvy Learners Are Transforming Educational Institutions

drupal — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:19:05 -0500

The introduction of new media tools and texts inevitably creates social tension as the roles of information receivers, producers, and gatekeepers shift with the changing literacy landscape. In particular, the traditional relationship between alphabetic literacy and schooling gives way to a complex and expansive view of multiple, critical literacies and their uses. How can educational institutions rethink the literacy and learning connection within the context of pervasive communication devices and shared knowledge networks? Instead of focusing on the challenges of integrating net savvy students into existing institutional practices, an assets model for new media education leverages everyday literacy skills and enlists students as partners in the design of relevant, customized, and dynamic learning environments in a digital world.

Prisms Around Student Learning: Information Literacy, IT Fluency, and Media Literacy

drupal — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:19:04 -0500

Podcast: Prisms Around Student Learning: Information Literacy, IT Fluency, and Media Literacy

gbayne — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:52:58 -0500

In this 37 minute podcast, we feature the opening plenary session from the ELI Fall 2007 Focus Session. The speaker is Craig Gibson, Associate University Librarian at George Mason University. His speech is entitled, "Prisms Around Student Learning: Information Literacy, IT Fluency, and Media Literacy"

Human Futures for Technology and Education

ckeller — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:41:14 -0500

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. In January 2007, Michael Wesch released a video on the history of the Web called "The Machine is Us/ing Us." The video quickly tracks the transformations of the Web from its beginnings as a place to retrieve information into a vibrant user-generated and user-organized platform of RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social networks, and folksonomies that encourage, enhance, and capitalize on collaboration. At the video's end, Wesch suggests that these transformations require us to begin rethinking virtually everything, from authorship and copyright to our sense of identity and selfhood. These new technologies also have profound implications for education. What possibilities and challenges do they bring to our teaching? What should we be teaching to students who are habituated to a new media environment where Google and Wikipedia are always at their fingertips? How are these technologies changing the way students learn and assess information? In short, we need to rethink how we teach, what we teach, and whom we think we are teaching. For this presentation, Wesch creates another video in the same genre as "The Machine is Us/ing Us." Like the earlier video, this video quickly tracks the important moments in the history of education and attempts to capture the possibilities and challenges of the current moment in such a way as to pose and clarify some of the most important questions facing us as educators today.

ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session Tag

jcummings — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:03:30 -0500

I'm making this entry to establish the common tag for event content from the ELI 2007 Fall Focus Session, "Being Net Savvy: Developing Skills for a Rapidly Changing World." All participants developing blog entries, posting photos, creating podcasts, etc., from the focus session are encouraged to tag their entries in Connect with:

ELI07NetSavvySession

This will ensure those entries are aggregated on the event page created by the tag.

If you would like to submit content but don't already have a Connect account, please see the Connect FAQ, which provides directions to do so.

Becoming Net Savvy

ckeller — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:19:18 -0500

All of us bear responsibility for learning to be net savvy and supporting the members of our campus communities in the same lifelong process.

The New Economy, Technology, and Learning Outcomes Assessment

ckeller — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:13:32 -0500

Answering calls for change entails meaningful assessments of technology-enabled learning.

Information Literacy Redux: Whose Job Is It?

ckeller — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:45:48 -0500

Information literacy has been a key focus for many academic library programs for over 30 years. Today, information literacy is being revisited as an institutional imperative. This Web seminar will explore the forces leading to this renewed interest as well as the basic concepts of information literacy and key elements of successful programs. It will also answer the question of whose role it is to design and deliver an information literacy program.

7 Things You Should Know About Wikipedia

ckeller — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:39:24 -0500

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia anyone can add to or edit. A highly popular resource, Wikipedia has become a primary research tool of college students, and it may help them develop comparative research skills. However, since Wikipedia’s entries don’t undergo verified expert review, many academics are concerned about its use for academic purposes.

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

In addition to the "7 Things You Should Know About…" briefs, you may find other ELI resources useful in addressing teaching, learning, and technology issues at your institution. To learn more, please visit the ELI Resources page.

7 Things You Should Know About Facebook II

drupal — Fri, 11 May 2007 17:18:51 -0500

Since ELI's first brief on Facebook (http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7017), the social networking site originally developed for college and university students has become available to anyone. It now offers new ways of organizing social networks as well as extensive new features and access to other Web applications. Users can now manage online identities and engage other users much more easily. They also enjoy privacy policies that give them unprecedented control over how their personal information is handled on the site.

Reflecting, Writing, and Responding: Reasons Students Blog

drupal — Wed, 09 May 2007 10:10:43 -0500

Faculty and students are recognizing blogging's learning potential, including the chance to practice writing, reflect on others' thinking, and respond to critical analyses of one's own work. In this paper, a graduate student explores the campus "blogosphere" to discover who is blogging and what they are posting, as well as how faculty are using blogs in their courses and the results they are seeing.

Why Johnny Can't Search (Intelligently)

drupal — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:06:22 -0600

Diana G. Oblinger, Vice President of EDUCAUSE, discusses the importance of critical thinking skills and the current ways information literacy is being taught in higher education.

Testing for Technology Literacy

drupal — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 11:39:42 -0600

"Professors, librarians, and other college officials are increasingly coming to grips with the somewhat confounding reality that despite students' affinity for IPods and their complete comfort with Google, many of them lack the technological literacy they need to navigate today's information landscape. But recognizing the problem is not the same as knowing how to measure or fix it — tasks that many colleges are puzzling over."

How Choice, Co-Creation, and Culture Are Changing What It Means to Be Net Savvy

drupal — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 10:10:43 -0600

Technology and the way information is created, used, and disseminated have changed, as has the definition of "net savvy"