Spring cleaning your LibGuides

I'm in the process of revamping my library's LibGuides, and I've come across a few small changes you can make to your guides that make a world a difference for design and usability. First of all, as far as headers/banners go, I am NOT a graphic designer, so I kept it simple, with just the school logo, and "Library Research Guides" in our official font. I don't recommend random images and color-fading if you're not really, really good at it. Otherwise it looks like a page for your local pre-K, coded with Microsoft Word.

old design

new design

Second, take advantage of SpringShare's excellent documentation. As a company that markets guide-creation software, they really put their money where their mouth is. Seriously, they've created a guide for pretty much everything. Here are some I found particularly useful:

• Changing your banner/adding an image map to your banner
• Customizing LibGuides CSS
• Creating a database A-Z guide with the Serials Solutions importer
• Creating search boxes for your catalog/individual databases

As the library's LibGuides admin, I'm currently building a template that all librarians can start from when creating new guides. They are free to not use it if they don't want to, but if the majority of them do use it, this will ensure some consistency across guides. It also acts as a repository for all the custom search-boxes I've built, so other librarians can pick and choose which ones they want to add to their guides.

I've also created a hidden tab (hidden from public view, that is. It's visible to anyone signed in through the admin interface.) I'm using this tab to post instructions, screenshots, and tips for guide creators. I'm also using it as a content repository for boxes I want to be available, but that don't necessarily have a logical home in the template itself (more on this in a minute...)

I've recommended that users link to boxes in the template, rather than copying them, so the template can also act as a content hub, where changes can be made in one place and pushed to all guides linking to the content. This is also why it's a good idea to import your database A-Z list into LibGuides, even if you have one on your library website. If librarians link to links in the database A-Z guide, it will automatically pull the description (which can be hidden or changed if they want) and it will allow you to make changes to database links and names in one place, that, again, will be pushed to all guides that use those links.

I've also noticed that most libraries that use LibGuides just use the default homepage options, which include a list of guides (featured, popular or recent,) a random user profile, email sign-up and/or a tag cloud. But you can choose instead to display a box from elsewhere in the site, by just entering the box id. So, on my hidden template page, I created a box of popular links (I called them "quick links") and put that on the homepage. I also replaced one of the boxes with our "help" box, that contains our various methods of contact. A good example of a nice customized LibGuides homepage is Worcester Poly's site: http://libguides.wpi.edu/

I also like how Rutgers made their homepage a complete list of guides, listed alphabetically on one tab, and by discipline on another: http://libguides.rutgers.edu/home

This is still a work-in-progress, so if anyone has any other helpful hints, please leave them in the comments!

The sociology of Sociology 101 (or "Psych 101" 101)

I just had a really great chat with a professor here, and it got me thinking. I've been pondering the idea of doing my PhD  at some point (I will be finishing my third masters this December, and I'm declaring a moratorium on masters degrees after that.) Having taken many of my classes for this past degree online, I'm fascinated by educational technology, but that doesn't quite cover what I want to research. What I'm *really* interested in is the sociology/psychology of learning behavior in college students.

In the last five years or so, I have gotten really passionate about learning. I want to learn. I need to learn. I take classes, and get degrees, not for a line on my CV, but to learn. This is a sharp about face from my undergraduate years, when skipping classes and bullshitting my way through classes was the norm. I'm not proud of it, and I'm sure my feminist card will be revoked for this, but I even cried my way into a passing grade once. OH THE SHAME!

::ahem:: Aaaaanyway. There came a time in my educational career, when the joy of learning hit me hard, and now, I finally *get* it. But that's not to say that I never have classes where it's just too easy to fall back into old habits. Multiple-choice quizzes, required forum posts with extremely restricted topics that are of no interest to me, slides that the professor has copy-pasted from another source, and formulaic group projects (especially when I can't pick the topic *or* my group members) send me reeling back into "just-get-it-the-fuck-over-with-with-a-passing-grade" mode.

So that's what lead to my discussion with the professor this afternoon. We talked about what factors could seemingly change a bright class into a dull one (time of day, class troublemakers, strict lesson plans created by a third party, unclear performance expectations, banning of technology, etc.)

Educational technology is powerful, but it's not a cure-all. You have to be very pragmatic about what tools you use to teach certain curricula, and you have to understand that it's all a work in progress, always. How your students use technology, and what kinds of technology they use are ever-changing things, and the most important aspect of any class is engaging them. Getting them interested, getting them involved in the learning process, getting past remembering and into *understanding*; that is the ultimate goal, and sometimes you have to sacrifice quantity for quality (that's just a fact of life, right?)

Does anyone know of anyone doing research in this area, or any pertinent books or articles on the topic of psychology in post-secondary education?

The Joy of Learning, part deux

Conveniently enough, right after the first of this series of blog posts, I came across another inspiring article, this one about the use of mobile media in the classroom (and on campus). This wasn't 100% the direction I was going in with this topic, but the way this professor has used technology to engage his students is inspiring. I love, love, LOVE his use of location-aware apps to have students explore their campus. Could you imagine a professor sending you outside on a lovely day like today during class? (And the possibilities for having the library be part[s] of this assignment?!)

Also, I've long been a proponent of the idea of actually ::gasp:: *encouraging* a Twitter backchannel during presentations. (See: https://twitter.com/#!/val_forrestal/statuses/127455465339752448, for how I feel about the matter.) I do agree that students with their heads buried in their laptop/tablet/phone can be distracting and off-putting for a presenter, so you may have to set some ground rules, or intervene if you feel that they are *never* looking up, but banning mobile devices from all classrooms is not the answer, imho.

The truth is, information without context is dull, and can be confusing. Allowing students to go outside the classroom to find that context will help them engage with the information. This doesn't always have to include technology. For example, I love when a professor asks me to read an article or book chapter, and then, instead of summarizing it, asks for my thoughts/impressions/insights on the topic. This allows me to interact with the information presented, beyond just reading enough of it to paraphrase the gist of the article. You can also do this in classroom discussions; (especially on a graduate level, quizzing students to see if they did the reading is a little insulting. Class/forum discussions on the reading helps you asses whether they've done the reading, and gives students the benefit of each other's understanding of the material.)

With online classes (which I've done most of my current degree program though) use of technology becomes increasingly important for fostering this kind of discussion. CMS forums, wikis, twitter hashtags, blogs, facebook pages, and even pinterest boards can all help professors and students link what they are learning, with what they already know, and this is a vital step for fostering knowledge.

Anyway, if you are doing anything cool with technology in the classroom (especially, but not limited to, library and info lit training), let me know in the comments. I'd love to steal... ::ahem:: borrow your ideas!

On curiosity and the joy of learning

I love learning. I find it to be a truly joyous experience. I wasn't always this way though. If you ask my friends from college, they will laugh, and tell you what a miracle it is that I managed to graduate (cum laude, no less) while attending so few classes, and doing so little work. So what changed? Obviously I'd like to think I just got older and wiser, but evidence suggests otherwise. Personally, I think what happened to me was the internet.

The internet has obviously drastically changed the way we interact with information, by making so very much accessible to us, almost anytime, almost anywhere. But that, in itself, is not enough to make us *want* to seek out that information. To read it, to synthesize it into knowledge, into our world-view.

Working in the realm of education (and being a pretty much life-long student who is almost done with her third masters degree), the answer to this little riddle is of vital importance to me. I feel we're on the cusp of an educational revolution, and I want to help shape it. I want to help us storm the right castles, and march on in the right direction.

I recently read an article about Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University, where he talks about fostering a sense of curiosity in students. Let's skip over the part where he coins the term "knowledge-able", which, while cute and fitting, brings back library school nightmares of reading article after article from researchers using quirky acronyms to build their personal brand. (Just "ask" Nick Belkin about "ASK". UGH.)

Aaaaanyway, this article really struck a chord with me.

"It's just not enough anymore to know a bunch of stuff... Instead, we should be concentrating on making them truly knowledge-able. Imagination and curiosity are the heart of that idea; if we have those qualities, learning becomes joyous."

Right? RIGHT?! Many teachers fought (and still fight) the use of calculators in math classes. But others saw this as an opportunity. If students spend less time doing simple calculations (after they truly understand *how* to do them, of course), there's more time to delve into more complex problems and ideas. Graphing calculators especially, can allow for more creative and imaginative assignments, assignments that might actually grab the students attention.

So back to the internet, and why it helped me learn to love learning. Social networks have added something into the information mix, something that is vital to a lot of people: context. Instead of information existing in a void, we can now see who's reading what, and what they think of it. The information now has a personal aspect for us. And also, there's the joy of finding something on our own that we know our networks will enjoy. We like seeing our content shared by others. And it's exciting when discussions happen around that content.

I have so much more to say about this, but I think I may save that for part two, where I can get into what I think the implications of all this are for education. I have thoughts, people. Copious amounts of thoughts. I'm excited for all of us in academia. Things are about to get SO COOL.

Getting our foot in the door to Moodle(Rooms)

My awesome co-worker and frequent co-conspirator Barbara Arnett has whipped up a little library resource search box that can be added to courses in our course management software (we just switched to Moodle.) We're currently working on convincing them to add it to the school's course shell template, so it will appear by default in every single course (where each prof will have the option to remove it, if they so desire.)

We're running into some trouble because we're using MoodleRooms to host the CMS, and apparently they charge extra for this sort of thing, but I have to imagine that this would really be useful for students. In the past, the course shells included a link to the library's homepage, with no explanation of how to use the site once they got there. We never really analyzed click-throughs from Blackboard (our old CMS), but the link was fairly buried (as opposed to having the search box prominently located on the side of every screen, as would be the case in Moodle.)

Is anyone else working on something like this? Did you have any trouble getting your school to add it to the template? Do you think it will increase online resource usage?

SCREENSHOTS (click to embiggen):

library link in Blackboard, located only under "Course Content"

library search box in Moodle, located in right-hand column of every page