Assignment design provides a potential niche for librarians to fill in improving research assignments and in providing opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration on teaching, but this can be difficult work to claim as librarians. In the 2016-2017 academic year, a team of three librarians at Utah State University, a mid-size research university, piloted an assignment design workshop for faculty. Based on a model developed by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), our workshop's core component was a structured, librarian-facilitated small group discussion among three to four faculty members from a range of academic departments. Interdisciplinary conversation about teaching research skills thrived in these discussions (called "charrettes"), with librarians uniquely positioned to encourage knowledge sharing in service of student learning and success. This article presents three iterations of our workshops as a case study in information literacy intervention outside traditional classroom instruction sessions, extending and redefining the role of the academic librarian as a partner in teaching and learning.
This qualitative study explores the impact of a workshop on collaborative research assignment design that brought together an interdisciplinary group of faculty in a librarianfacilitated community of practice. Faculty participants attended the workshop, revised and implemented their assignments, and completed a follow-up interview. Themes that emerged reflected shifts in faculty teaching practices, including increased scaffolding, clarity, modeling, student collaboration, and opportunities for authentic learning. Gaining insight into how faculty approach the work of teaching directly impacts library instruction and how librarians can contribute to communities of practice among teachers in the academy.
Recent, rapid changes in technology have resulted in a proliferation of choices for music storage and access. Portable, web‐enabled music devices are widespread, and listeners now enjoy a plethora of options regarding formats, devices, and access methods. Yet in this mobile music environment, listeners' access and management strategies for music collections are poorly understood, because behaviors surrounding the organization and retrieval of music collections have received little formal study. Our current research seeks to enrich our knowledge of people's music listening and collecting behavior through a series of systematic user studies. In this paper we present our findings from interviews involving 20 adult and 20 teen users of commercial cloud music services. Our results contribute to theoretical understandings of users' music information behavior in a time of upheaval in music usage patterns, and more generally, the purposes and meanings users ascribe to personal media collections in cloud‐based systems. The findings suggest improvements to the future design of cloud‐based music services, as well as to any information systems and services designed for personal media collections, benefiting both commercial entities and listeners.
As distance education programs grow at college and universities across the country, libraries must ensure virtual reference services are prepared to meet the needs of patrons in these programs. This article describes the process and results of a 2018 chat analysis conducted at a midsize research university with a large distance education program. The authors discuss the implications of their findings, as well as their process of closing the assessment loop. By using data to inform changes to virtual reference services, chat becomes more accessible and approachable to all users regardless of location.
Abstract:As distance education programs grow at colleges and universities across the country, libraries must ensure virtual reference services are prepared to meet the needs of patrons in these programs. This article describes the process and results of a 2018 chat analysis conducted at a midsize research university with a large distance education program. The authors discuss the implications of their findings, as well as their process of closing the assessment loop. By using data to inform changes to virtual reference services, chat becomes more accessible and approachable to all users regardless of location.
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