Students’ Research Skills and the Future

Below is a noteworthy piece about the repercussions of students’ heavy reliance on Wikipedia and of not taking time to do broader research; to illustrate, the author discusses his own startup, EasyBib (a bibliography tool for students).

Quote: “If the next generation lacks these inquiry skills, our pace of innovation and creativity will consequently dwindle.”

Students most often cite Wikipedia. How this is killing future startups.

As always, feel free to comment in the CCCOnline Community.

This blog post, authored by Neal Taparia, is from Startl.com, 11/27/12.

CCCS Participating in Landmark Analytics Project

This week, we’re excited to share that the Colorado Community College System is one of six academic institutions participating in the groundbreaking PAR (Predictive Analytics Reporting) project. Led by WCET (WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies) and funded by the Gates Foundation, the project aims to help institutions improve students' progression and completion through a better understanding of student success factors.

Jonathan Sherrill, CCCOnline Data Analyst Professional, is a project participant. He says the group is bringing the idea of “big data” to the study of student success; and indeed, the scale of the project is big: “We’ve already brought together 640,000 anonymized student records and three million course records from these six institutions – we can go very fine looking at this because there’s so much data,” reports Jonathan. This multi-institution collaboration is also exciting, he explains, because analyzing such a great number of records from multiple sources invites broadly meaningful conclusions.

The other PAR project participants are Rio Salado College, the University of Illinois at Springfield, the University of Hawaii system, the American Public University system, and the University of Phoenix. As the project continues, additional institutions will join, allowing for even broader analysis. Preliminary results from the proof of concept already are being released, and the next phase likely will conclude in late 2014.

"I believe the hope of the Gates Foundation is for it to ultimately become self-sustaining,” Jonathan concludes, “a valuable service provided to educational institutions long after their direct involvement ends."

Valuable Library Information Coming Your Way!

This week, we’d like to remind everyone we have a wonderful resource to help us cultivate e-classroom excellence: our CCCOnline Librarian!

Check out Mary Cash’s The Librarian’s Labyrinth blog this week for news you can use:

*how your students may access article databases,
*where students may find helpful resources,
*an invitation to communicate with the librarian, and
*the latest on upcoming library webinars!

New Library Blog Launched

CCCOnline is pleased to announce an exciting new blog from our Instructional Online Librarian: The Librarian’s Labyrinth. It will feature news you can use on research and library topics; we encourage you to follow along!

National Information Literacy Month

Today, we have a message from Mary Cash, CCCOnline’s Instructional Online Librarian:

President Obama has declared October to be National Information Literacy Month. In our busy, technological world, we are inundated by information – thanks to the Internet, we can learn new information, share ideas and photos and communicate instantly. It’s very easy to become overwhelmed. According to President Obama, “Rather than merely possessing data, we must also learn the skills necessary to acquire, collate, and evaluate information for any situation. This new type of literacy also requires competency with communication technologies, including computers and mobile devices that can help in our day-to-day decision making. National Information Literacy Awareness Month highlights the need for all Americans to be adept in the skills necessary to effectively navigate the Information Age” (Presidential Proclamation).

What can we do to help our students gain the skills they need to navigate the busy world of information? We can offer them information and guidance so that they know when they need to seek out information, how to locate the specific information they need, and then what to do with it once they find it. We can create lessons and assignments so our students can practice those skills and become better consumers of information. Need some assistance or ideas on how to do this? As the instructional online librarian, information literacy is a huge interest of mine, and I’ll be glad to sit down and talk to you about little or even big things you can do in your course to help your students learn to manage the information in their worlds.

· Read the President’s Proclamation: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/presidential-proclamation-national-information-literacy-awareness-month/

· Visit the National Forum on Information Literacy’s website:
http://infolit.org/

-Mary Cash
Instructional Online Librarian
CCCOnline

eLcc Report I: Power Up with the Research & Writing Toolkit

During our eLcc presentation “Power Up with the Research & Writing Toolkit," we shared ideas on information literacy instruction and on how others might tackle a project similar to the RWT at their own colleges.  Thanks to our gracious attendees for the ideas!  And now, in the spirit of sharing with you all, here’s a list of items and questions that emerged:

Within the RWT or a similar resource:
-would like to see video or another learning object covering the spirit of research: the curiosity that drives the research process.

-perhaps include resources linked to specific disciplines: e.g., a special list of Research & Writing resources for Business, Science, etc.

-Students might find helpful a guide on how to gather resources; what does one need to know to start the research process?

-Students do not necessarily start off on the right track in their research; perhaps some resources could help them to get on and stay on the right track.

-Library-generated student help guides, or “LibGuides,” are helpful in that they break out library resources by academic area.  We might consult with faculty to gather a discussion-specific type of “LibGuide.”

Another open question regarding students and the research process:
-Facebook or other social media can be helpful tools to gather information for a research project; in other words, social media has potential to help students help each other.  Do we believe discussion boards within a class can serve the same function?  

Feel free to share ideas and further conversation in the Cultivating Excellence topic in the Community.

Research & Writing Toolkit, Illustrated!

The library and information literacy talk continues with special guest Mary Cash.

Impressed by what you see here in our Wordle? You can find information on these topics and more when you visit the Research and Writing Toolkit on our Student Wiki: http://at.ccconline.org/students/wiki/Academic_Resources_-_Research_and_Writing_Toolkit

And, for those of you who already know about the Toolkit, how do you use the Research and Writing Toolkit in your courses?

Besides having links to the Toolkit on my Resources page and on several of my Unit Homework page, I send my students to specific assets we've listed on the Toolkit, including the Research 101 tutorial from the University of Washington's library. Also, when I grade papers and run into students who have grammar or sentence issues, I often send them to a specific section in the Help with Writing part of the Toolkit - I often send students to the Comma Splices and Fused Sentences section.

LisaMarie has a discussion early in the semester in her anthropology courses that has students go to the Research Writing Toolkit to do some exploring and then they need to find something they liked and report back to the other students on that website or tutorial.

So, how do you use the Research and Writing Toolkit in your courses? Liz and I are going to be giving presentations on the Toolkit at the eLCC conference in April and at the D2L Fusion conference in July, and we'd like to share with others how our faculty use the Research and Writing Toolkit. And, if you're not using it now, perhaps we've inspired you to try to come up with some ideas on how to incorporate the toolkit into your course:) Please share those ideas with us in the Community's Cultivating Excellence discussion.

-Mary Cash

Quality Time: Teaching Students to Fish

“Do we give students the fish, or do we teach them to fish?” often asks Donna Hall, Design Team Coordinator, regarding assignment design. In our classes, the answer may vary based on the course and the type of assignment, but as part of our overall goal to develop students with skills in information literacy, research, and writing, we want to teach our students to fish.

One type of assignment I like to employ in my classes is student-generated content. History is a very broad subject and rather than dictating every detail they are expected to learn in long lectures, I guide students to select topics that fall within certain parameters but interest them. They share their final product with classmates in a discussion or other tool. The students not only learn content from each other’s projects but get to compare their assignments to the work of others in a conscious or unconscious self-evaluation.

One example is a research and writing project that requires students to locate primary and secondary sources on a historical term. In a discussion, they post a brief description of the term, their cited sources, and what we will find useful at each source. Additionally, while working on the discussion, students may ask the instructor or each other questions about sources, citation, or content, building a sense of community. What I have noticed is that by doing the project openly and seeing each others’ examples of how they put research and writing together, the quality of the individual student’s work greatly improves and they become self motivated to be experts on their piece of content.

Want to learn more on student-generated content? Here are two web resources to get you started: http://senerlearning.com/projects/student-generated-content
http://senerlearning.com/category/blog-topics/student-generated-content
Please share with us student-generated content assignments you employ in your courses in the CCCOnline Community Cultivating Excellence discussion.

Quality Time is a series of posts concerning course quality issues, best practices, and/or CCCOnline policy.

Research and Writing Toolkit Webinar

Have you ever wished for a set of quick links to assign to your students for brush-up help on research skills, avoiding plagiarism, or writing in general?

We’re happy to say we’ve been working on such a project, and we seek your feedback! Come to our webinar at 1:00 p.m. this Friday, Oct. 22, to learn about the Research and Writing Toolkit and share your thoughts.

Quality Time: Fostering Information Literacy

Do your students tend to rely on Wikipedia or Google for scholarly research? If so, and if this concerns you, you’re certainly not alone. As we face vast amounts of information so instantly, easily accessible, our encouraging students to examine how they locate and use that information becomes increasingly important – if increasingly difficult at times.

Our CCCOnline Librarian, Mary Cash, defines information literacy as “the set of abilities that allow a person to recognize a need for information, to search for and find the necessary information, and to best know how to use that information.” The Association of College and Research Libraries stresses information literacy’s worth as forming “the basis for lifelong learning” and empowering learners with “greater control over their own learning” (read more at the source here). In addition, information literacy has garnered a fair amount of recent attention from educators at all levels.

Our question to you: how do you address information literacy in your courses? If you have found particular activities or assignments to be effective, please share with colleagues. Post your comments in the appropriate discussion in the CCCOnline Community.

Quality Time is a series of posts concerning course quality issues, best practices, and/or CCCOnline policy.

Research and Writing Toolkit: Your Input Wanted!

Have you ever wished for a set of quick links to assign to your students for brush-up help on research skills, avoiding plagiarism, or writing in general?

We’re happy to say we’ve been working on such a project, and we seek your feedback!

Here is a link to our archived presentation at the faculty conference; also please note this direct link to the Research and Writing Toolkit.

Finally, in the corresponding CCCOnline Community discussion, we would love to hear your answers to any of these questions:
1) What subject do you teach and how would you use the RWT in your course(s)?
2) Which particular RWT resources would you find most helpful?
3) After you’ve reviewed the current RWT: do you have suggestions for content or layout?

Thank you!