Library Instruction & Technology Sandbox

I was reading (okay, skimming) the 2010 Horizon Report which comes out annually and is "a collaborative effort between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons: a year or less, two to three years, and four to five years."

One such emerging trend is mobile computing. Which brings us to iPhone apps. The report provided an example of one such app created by the San Franciso Museum of Modern Art.

"The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is offering two new mobile applications: Making Sense of Modern Art Mobile and the Rooftop Garden iPhone Tour. MSoMA Mobile is available
on iPod Touches that may be borrowed by museum visitors and includes interviews with architects, artists, and curators; video footage; and music and poetry related to the collection.The Rooftop Garden tour is available at no cost as an application in the iTunes Store." (2010 Horizon Report).

What can libraries do to harness these new trends? For example, rather than re-doing our iPod tour of the library (as we are currently doing), should we be pursuing how to add an iPhone app to provide such a tour? And if so, does Apple have an iphone app area comparable to itunes u-for educational purposes?

Other musings on the same subject:
-iPhone Apps and the Library (if you can’t build one, join one): http://theubiquitouslibrarian.typepad.com/the_ubiquitous_librarian/2009/02/iphone-apps-and-the-library-if-you-cant-build-one-join-one.html
-Here's a list of the top ten iphone apps librarians should have on their phone: http://kenleyneufeld.com/2009/02/11/top-10-iphone-apps-for-librarians/

http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=106-1

Interesting predictions for 2010. Several include a renewed focus on pedagogy before technology-yeah!

Design Before 'Cool'-2010 must be the year for Learning Design. We must take the "cool" technologies (gaming, social media, video connections) and do the hard work of designing learning methodologies that can cost effectively scale. Leave the hype and fascination about 2.0 or 3.0 and let's design!" —Elliott Masie, chair of The Learning Consortium, and CEO of The Masie Center

Not Quite 2.0
"We know there is more e-learning, but it isn't what you expect. Is it lessons in a virtual classroom? PowerPoint slides with an audio track? Scenario-based e-programs? What of 2.0? After an opportunistic study of nearly 1,000 practitioners, Jim Marshall and I were surprised. Instructional design practices made a strong showing. Tutorials, scenario-based learning, and problem-solving strategies were popular. "-—Allison Rossett, San Diego State University

Learning With a Capital L
"In 2010 the learning focus will favor pedagogy over technology in innovative learning discussions. "-—Ignatia "Inge" de Waard, e-learning coordinator and researcher at Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp

And my favorite-
Users Trump Designers
"I've been a broken record on the subject of user-centricity for the past 10 years, but in 2010 the tectonic plates are finally beginning to move. The intelligence of the users—individually and collectively—trumps the intelligence of the designer. Online learning will become much more adaptive and collaborative, more dynamic and less static in design, leveraging and activating the collective intellectual capital of the organization. Semantic technologies, taxonomies and ontologies will become critically important as filters for user-directed learning that bends time and space, allowing the learner to assemble needed knowledge, data, tools and ideas in real time. "Expertise" will extend beyond the individual to the group, from something one has, to something one uses. This shift impacts the design of online solutions more than any time in the past. "
—Jonathon Levy, president and chief strategy officer at LeveragePoint Innovations

While out with friends in Vancouver over the holidays, we discussed what we might write in an open letter to the City of Vancouver regarding the upcoming Winter 2010 Olympics and how visitors might view our fair (um, okay, grey) city.

The open letter would include the dissing of many restaurants in Vancouver that include the same menu items (braised pork ribs, and other such comfort foods), as well as the inability to rent a car with snow tires in Vancouver, despite the fact that every visitor renting a car during the Olympics will be driving the sea-to-sky highway to Whistler, which-though widened-has not be de-winded (not a word), nor de-iced.

There were other points, but the point of these points in this post is that it got me to wondering what an open letter to an academic library might include....

Here are some things I might include in an open letter to the library (virtual and physical musings included):

-why are there so few self-check stations at libraries, and why have they been so sparsely implemented in libraries?

-why don't call numbers make more sense? I mean, why can't I find the book?

-why can't one drink and eat in a library? I know the reason, but it's not really holding up now is it?

-No one cares where the electronic journal article came from-as long as it's free and accessible. Why do we insist on explaining it, and why do these explanations have to be coined "information literacy?"

-why are the computers hidden?

-where is "my library" with my preferences?

When I read about online library instruction, instructional design models are often followed in the design and development of these tools. Instructional design models provide a systematic way designers can progress through the design, development, and assessment of an e-learning resource. They are largely rooted in behaviorist or cognitive theories of learning.

The web, in contrast, is becoming increasingly constructivist. Constructivists promote an open ended and flexible learning experience with the assumption that each learner is unique and will construct his or her own meaning from the learning opportunities provided.

Here's the conundrum-traditional instructional design models seem incompatible with this more user-centered, flexible approach to designing online instruction, and learning outcomes (a staple of ID models) cannot be measured as they are with the more traditional views of learning.

Beyond the library realm, online learning increasingly employs a more flexible approach to the design of instruction, with the goal of enabling learners to construct their own meaning of the material. I would like to see more evidence of this in the library realm.

It's getting pretty common to see a link below a database citation indicated how many authors have cited the article. It's a beneficial addition, as it can allow people to follow the article trail and discover other relevant articles, and it's also good for those who need to prove that their work is well respected and read by others.

Many of the large databases-Web of Science, JSTOR, Project Muse, ProQuest, MedLine, etc.- provide citation tracking information. However, in many cases, databases only track citation information from the journals they index. Even with databases that include a larger pool of refereed journals in which they're tracking citations-like Web of Science-the journals are specific to the database subject area. To feel that you've cast a wide enough net in your search for citations of a specific article (especially if they are not science or medicine related), you need to look through several databases for citation tracking information. This is a cumbersome and time consuming process, as is evidenced by the PDF "Finding Cited Authors in the Humanities & Social Sciences" linked from this excellent tutorial on citation tracking: http://www.library.uow.edu.au/resourcesbytopic/UOW026626.

Google Scholar casts a wider net in its citation tracking abilities, because it searches across disciplines and includes more than refereed journals. In a Google Scholar search one might find blog posts referencing the article, white papers, technical papers, and mentions on websites. While the information is not limited to refereed journal citations only, it can still be very useful to discover who is looking at a certain work.

While Google Scholar moves things in the right direction, wouldn't it be great to have a a tool that automatically updates citation tracking information, and crawls several meta websites that might provide more than Google Scholar? Enter Citation Tracker. This tool was developed by Panos Ipeirotis of NYU and he developed it to solve the chore of updating his own vita. Users can import their bibliographies, and the software monitors open-web sources to search for citations of those works; it also updates as new cites appear.

The list of citations can then be curated/edited by the user to eliminate redundancies and less-valuable references. It also locates uses of papers in syllabi that appear online (which can be valuable for demonstrating impact of scholarship). The tool can also be used as an alert service, to find papers of interest to the individual scholar. For more information, read his blog post

I put the above tools to the test using one of my articles--Multimedia Learning Theories and Online Instruction Nadaleen Tempelman-Kluit. College & Research Libraries. Chicago: Jul 2006. Vol. 67, Iss. 4; p. 364

Results:
1.ProQuest: Cited by four -one recent (2009, scholarly) the others white papers from Universities

2.Google Scholar: Cited by fourteen- a mix of scholarly journals and blog-type posts, including articles accessed via csa.com and institutional repositories.

3.Citation Tracker: Cited by one hundred and sixty five: http://citation-tracker.com/publications/5d995819-2f0e-4cff-9c40-1e27aaaccc60/citations/. Not all of them are peer reviewed publications, but there are many more publications listed than the above tools provided, and then a plethora of other mentions from across the web.

Seems like a valuable tool.

MERLOT has announced several new iniatives-see below. Seems all the tools they're providing need to be hosted on their server, and seem to include a fee. Would be interesting to look at them further and see if they would provide more than free or fee based tools we're already using for web instruction (camtasia, etc).

"MERLOT Content Builder –a set of free, web-based tools that can be used by any registered MERLOT member to quickly create compact and engaging, MERLOT-hosted, Web-based learning materials. The Content Builder has been adapted by MERLOT, from the Carnegie Foundation’s KEEP Toolkit, and integrated with www.merlot.org in a fashion that allows instructors to create learning materials, make them publicly available if desired, and directly and easily define and contribute their metadata to the MERLOT repository. More information about the MERLOT Content Builder is available at
http://taste.merlot.org/Programs_and_Projects/ContentBuilder.html "

"SoftChalk Lesson Builder – a commercially available PC-based authoring tool for easy content creation that can be used by any level of developer to create online learning materials. Developers can produce a learning material in SoftChalk via an integrated SoftChalk/MERLOT interface, submit its metadata directly to the MERLOT repository. SoftChalk provides special pricing programs for MERLOT Academic Partners, and unit discounts for registered MERLOT members. More information about these programs can be found at http://taste.merlot.org/Programs_and_Projects/softchalk.html.

Pachyderm - an open source, server-based development system that grew from a partnership led by The New Media Consortium(NMC) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). More information about Pachyderm can be found at http://pachyderm.nmc.org/. Pachyderm is the authoring tool used to create video stories for the MERLOT ELXIR project (http://elixr.merlot.org/creatingstories/) . Pachyderm-developed learning materials can be catalogued in the MERLOT repository by registered members who make use of MERLOT ‘s Contribute a Material function that registered and logged-in MERLOT members can access at www.merlot.org."

I came across this blog post while googling myself (which I do periodically to see what's up with me-not much apparently). An article I wrote a few years ago on Cognitive load theory and online instruction was mentioned (Multimedia Learning Theories and Online Instruction.” College & Research Libraries 67.4 (2006): 364-369.) , which is how I ended up coming across the "In the Library with the Lead Pipe" blog.

Most library related writings regarding the making of tutorials and online instruction focus on the process and software needed to create. Few focus on the pedagogy and instructional design models and processes behind their creation-which is why this post was so great to read.

The post mentioned Common Craft videos as good examples of simplicity in video instruction. The mention of Common Craft reminded me that a few years ago I experimented with creating library videos a la Common Craft. They looked pretty awful

Lessons learned, coming soon..........

Came across this article summarizing library tutorial creation. It's got a lot of practical tips and compares tools for creation, as well as other things. It also includes a: Recommended Resources on Online Tutorials section which provides several relevant article citations:

Slebdonik, and Riehle.Creating Online Tutorials at Your Libraries: Software Choices and Practical Implications. Reference & User Services Quarterly V. 49 No. 1 (Fall 2009) P. 33-7, 51

I had an experience this past weekend that highlighted to me why knowing the source is important when it comes to online information. Though I'm a librarian and I believe in quality information, I'm pretty relaxed about most of it unless I'm citing web sources in a paper or something. Otherwise, I don't spend a lot of time researching who wrote what on the web, and for the most part, have had no problems with this rather lackadaisical approach.

All this changed on Saturday, however. I went hiking with three friends in Harriman State Park. One of my friends downloaded hiking maps off the web, from what *looked* like an official state park site. We cheerfully took off for a quick 4-mile walk at 3:30 on Saturday afternoon, without food, extra clothes, water, etc.

Fast-forward 5 hours later. We are on a trail but lost, have been walking for hours, it's pitch dark, and our map is wrong.

The story ended up okay-thanks to one friend bringing a cell phone. We called 911, got in touch with a park ranger, figured out how to get to the closest parking lot with the help of some sirens and cop lights, and made it to our car about 6 hours after we'd started out on our *walk.*

It struck me at some point during this adventure that this would be a good example of why it pays to know the source of the site. I often think the examples we use, as librarians are not very effective, but I think this one might hit home a little more.

Do others have personal stories that might resonate with students about situations that were made difficult because of sites with inaccurate information?

I've embedded a Xerxes subject snippet to test how it can be used in blogs, etc. The idea of Xerxes as a federated database tool is that you can create your own subsets of databases to search, and make them portable (as in this example).
They are being embedded in LibGuides as well. Anyone embedding them successfully in Blackboard....