Treasure Hunt in the Library: An Exercise in Academic Literacy

Abstract

This paper presents an Academic Literacy course designed for first year students in our department. The course is based on a set of relevant reading materials and covers knowledge levels and classification systems, logical and physical library organization principles, physical and virtual search for publications, bibliographic citations and referencing methods and purposes.The paper describes two, out-of-class, activities related to the academic and public libraries in the information age. The first activity, the "Book Hunt", organizes the students' conceptions of the variety of functions being served and the impact of information technology on retrieving academic publications. Students' response to a reflective assignment dealing with concepts and impressions is described. The second activity "Visiting a public library", involves interviewing the librarian and writing a report on the structure and functions of the library. The paper discusses features of students' reports and indicates the contribution of the activities to the students' academic world view.

From tourist to treasure hunter: a self‐guided orientation programme for first‐year students

“…Some had major Internet components 3 where the 'treasure' was 'hidden' in databases and some were offering nothing more than a guided tour. 1,4 Others were thoroughly uninspiring 5 containing the vague and unstructured questions librarians often field at the beginning of a 'reference interview' and used clues like 'Go to chapter 2 ...', which teaches nothing about the techniques of how and why a particular chapter can be found. A number of reports on Treasure Hunts were negative, usually in the context of Library-Based Information Literacy Evaluation programmes.…”

Open Online Assignment Submission: First Year Students’ Behavior and Views

“…Our previous research (Ronen & Langley, 2004) has led us to believe that, given appropriate homework assignments, the potential advantages far outweigh the drawbacks. T he current case-study is framed within the Academic Literacy course in the department of Instructional Systems T echnologies (Langley, 2007). Within this study we shall attempt to describe and evaluate how first year students act, and the attitudes they express after initial implementation of the OAS regime.…”

Open Online Assignment Submission: First Year Students' Behavior and Views

“…Our previous research (Ronen & Langley, 2004) has led us to believe that, given appropriate homework assignments, the potential advantages far outweigh the drawbacks. T he current case-study is framed within the Academic Literacy course in the department of Instructional Systems T echnologies (Langley, 2007). Within this study we shall attempt to describe and evaluate how first year students act, and the attitudes they express after initial implementation of the OAS regime.…”