Teaching@Libraries

I'm Back!

2011-05-09T16:04:00.004-04:00

I'm retiring from my position with Ohio State University Libraries on June 1, 2011 and expect to have much more time to devote to blogging on teaching topics as well as traveling, cat wrangling, and home improvement projects. I've changed the name of this blog too. Stay tuned.

Hiatus

2009-01-02T13:57:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed that my posts have become infrequent. I have taken on additional job responsibilities and have not been able to devote the time needed to make this a really good and useful blog. Beginning in January 2009, this blog will go on hiatus. I hope to be able to pick it up again later in the year. Thanks to those who have been regular readers.

Pedagogy in Action

2008-11-17T10:55:00.004-05:00

The Science Education Research Center (SERC) at Carleton College has an NSF funded portal, Pedagogy in Action, that provides a variety of useful resources. The Library includes teaching methods, activities, and research on learning. You can browse or search for particular topics, such as first day of class activities, and find examples developed by instructors. Although examples are oriented

Social Media and Education

2008-11-12T17:25:00.002-05:00

This EDUCAUSE 2008 talk (available on video) was recommended by Dona Straley and is well worth your time. Sarah Robbins-Bell's entertaining presentation offers a sound rationale for using social media in your teaching. As the slide below indicates, one goal is teaching students the importance of contributing to a learning community. clipped from www.youtube.com

Make Comics with Toonlet

2008-02-16T16:36:00.002-05:00

Here's another free tool to spice up your presentations or instructional materials. The example below came from the Toonlet archive. Click the toonlet.com link below to view a full screen version of the comic. clipped from toonlet.com

Boring Database Demos

2008-02-13T16:38:00.002-05:00

I've been following an ongoing thread on ILI-L (ALA's information literacy discussion list) about how to avoid the dreaded database demonstration, which many students find boring, and still accomplish your instructional goals for the class. Camilla Baker posted some interesting thoughts recently. She wrote that "I don't demo databases in class before starting students on exercises that require

Assessment Cycle

2008-02-04T10:35:00.001-05:00

This site from North Carolina State University Libraries provides a concise graphic overview of the assessment cycle for classroom instruction. Each section of the pie chart links to more detailed information and suggestions. While it may be more applicable for those of us who are teaching entire courses, it is still a useful model, even for the one-shot lecture. clipped from uk.youtube.comWhat is the M.I. theory? Howard Gardner, author of Five Minds for the Future, discussed his multiple intelligence theory on the television show Books of Our Time with host Lawrence R. Velvel (visit Velvel's blog at

Multiple Literacies

2007-11-29T16:50:00.000-05:00

Joan Lippincott's recent article in EDUCAUSE Review entitled "Student Content Creators: Convergence of Literacies" gave me one of those increasingly rare AHA moments. She notes that, despite prolonged efforts by ACRL and others, many universities remain unconvinced of the need for information and technology literacy components in the curriculum. She suggests that a focus on the need to prepare

Encouraging Student Discussion

2007-11-28T15:22:00.000-05:00

Have you been in the situation of wanting to have an interactive discussion with students in class and instead facing the dreaded wall of silence? What can you do to encourage non-participants? McKeachie suggests that the most compelling reason for student silence is fear of embarassment. To reduce this fear, you can ask students to: Discuss a question in pairs or small groups before asking for

Using Existing Knowledge

2007-11-21T15:53:00.000-05:00

In his well-known book, McKeachie's Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers, Wilbert J. McKeachie tells us that teaching introductory courses is often more difficult because students may lack prior knowledge of the subject to use as a foundation for learning. He notes that when students do not have direct prior knowledge, they usually do have knowledge

Using Social Bookmarks in Teaching

2007-11-15T11:42:00.000-05:00

A recent presentation at the EDUCAUSE conference entitled From Information Literacy to Scholarly Identity: Effective Pedagogical Strategies for Social Bookmarking offers a number of good ideas.The authors also provide a very helpful handout (Word document) with many specific strategies. For example, teaching students to use social bookmarking tools can be a fruitful way to help them learn about

Better Presentations

2007-11-10T14:16:00.001-05:00

We can all use some help in this department. This iLibrarian blog post provides some good resources and examples. One key piece of advice: more visuals, fewer words on slides. ImageGenerator.org can be used to customize your JPG graphics and has a long list of links to other useful sites for creating custom images, like the one below.More information: What is good PowerPoint design?

Link-A-Licious Library Guides

2007-11-01T15:50:00.000-04:00

A recent article in Library Journal (9/15/2007) provided many good examples of libraries using social bookmarking tools, like del.icio.us, to quickly pull together collections of relevant resources for their patrons. Here's a tag collection from another university library.Don't want to show readers your entire collection of tagged resources? You can be selective, because del.icio.us lets you

My First Blog Post

2007-10-25T14:19:00.000-04:00

Why am I doing this? I've been thinking about the pros and cons of blogging for a while now. I like to write, and do contribute to the academic literature in my field, but blogging is a more personal form of expression. There are some blogs that I look forward to reading regularly, mainly because they always stimulate some type of growth. We're all so busy, and communication is difficult,