Picked up from the elearning mailing list – it looks like it might be an interesting day and a useful group to know about. It is being organised by the Learning and Teaching Institute at Chester:

The University of Chester in collaboration with the University of Hertfordshire is pleased to announce the second meeting of the Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes SIG group, on 17th April 2008 at the University of Hertfordshire.

The day is designed to be as practical as possible (you can see the draft programme on our wiki (http://podcastingforpp.pbwiki.com/April%20event
invite key podcast08).

Please email DianeTaska (d.taska@chester.ac.uk) to book your place. There will be a maximum of 50 places, allocated on a ‘first come first served’
basis. There will be a maximum of 2 people from any 1 institution.

As this is a SIG group, and we are trying to build up a database of ‘good practice’ we would like everyone who attends the day to contribute an
‘artefact’: This could be
A sample podcast
A pdf/word document on ‘how to’
A poster on podcasting (that may have been produced for other events – let’s not re-invent the wheel)
The novices could produce a word document on ‘how they would like to use a podcast’.

http://www.chester.ac.uk/…d_teaching.html

Just a final comment. If you are interested in knowing more about our model, it is being published next month : Bent, Moira. Gannon-Leary, Pat. Webb, Jo. Information Literacy in a researcher’s learning life: the 7 ages of research New Review of Information Networking 13(2) 2007 (in press)

Here are the slides from our presentation:

PPT

Here are the group answers to questions from our workshop:
What is research?
* Finding stuff out
* Things you do to answer questions
* A framework/ accepted practice to answer questions
* A process of discovery
* It’s forward and backward facing
* It’s creation of new knowledge
* Something which attracts funding
* Collecting, analysing, disseminating.

What are researchers?
* Anyone who does research
* people wanting info in depth
* People looking for novelty
* People paid to do research
* Truth seekers
* Writers/ Disseminators
* Scholars
* Systematic enquirers

Who are your researchers?
* Teaching faculty
* Colleagues
* RAs
* Doctoral students
* Masters students
* Undergrads (some dissention here)
* Practitioners
* The public – for spec coll/ family history
* Research scientists in a research institute

What are your researchers’ learning needs?
* research methodology – how to do it
* Awareness of needing to know
* Updating skills for older/ experienced researchers
* issues around level and experience
* Effective use of sources, inc people
* Supervisors & librarians – skills assessment

Jo Webb and I ran a symposium on the last morning of LILAC (and were delighted to have over 50 people there even though it was the morning after the wonderful conference dinner in Liverpool Town Hall – where I found portraits of Sir John and Lady Bent – possible ancestors?)
We have used some of the data from our book on support for research to develop a model called the 7 ages of research and we wanted to explore with participants whether our model was relevant to their own situation and whether it is a useful model to help us develop information literacy for researchers. I promised that I would summarise the flipcharts from the symposium on the blog, so that’s what I’ll do for the next couple of entries.

The LWW gang at the LILAC dinner: Bob, Nancy, me, Gwyneth, Jane (Thanks to Jane for the photo)

It seems we’re all enthusiastically blogging about LILAC and Sheila Webber has helpfully listed other blogs on her blog so between us all we should have covered a lot of the sessions.

Chester again

http://information-litera…nference-3.html

Marian Smith’s research on perceptions of information is similar to my own, in that she has been talking to students in schools about their understanding of information and their perceptions in different contexts and in relation to different resources. Marian reported that context has a significant effect on young people’s perceptions of information – they are more aware of information in school and almost don’t realise that they are dealing with information out of school. Some interesting comments on how much students trust websites, in spite of advice to the contrary too!
Marian is a research student at Loughborough University, working with Mark Hepworth

Chester again

Sir Learnalot is a project with which I have been involved, aiming to digitise the original EduLib material to provide an online teaching skills resource for library staff. Ruth Stubbings and Debbi Boden have been the key players in the project, with input from several other people, including me. With options for interaction, diaries etc, we’re hoping it will be a useful tool to develop teaching skills. Sir Learnalot is coming soon!

SMILE is a development from Imperial College’s successful OLIVIA info lit programme, using material from Loughborough to add students writing skills. It will also be freely available soon.

Two good initiatives to look out for….

City walls, Chester

Patricia Senn Breivik gave us a fascinating glimpse of her key role in promoting IL in the US, using parnerships, planning and PR as her theme. The US Educational Testing Service, which is the established way of setting educational standards in the US, now have a new standard in information literacy. Wow! A quote from Pat: “the next major challenge is for all librarians to see themselves as leaders beyond the walls of the library”. So she advocates us talking about IL at parties too – I’m not sure how well that would go down with my friends!

Old bridge over the Dee, Chester.