Summary: Library Instruction for e-Classes from ili-l

• There has been a recent discussion on how to get more student involvement in large classes. I would like to continue the discussion on ways to get students interacting in a 50 minute class in a room with computers, 20-30 students, and 4-5 databases to demo. What kinds of activities, exercises have you used successfully in this situation? How have you gotten away from spending the entire class time going over the various databases – a real snoozer! Thanks in advance, Caroline Barnes Black Hawk College 

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• I agree, cramming those databases into the 50 minute one-shot can be a pain! Currently I am using a method I’ve cobbled together based on something a writing instructor brought to me early this term.
• Depending on how much time I have and how much needs covering, I have to alter the approach, but it goes like this:
• after the introductions, shove them into a resource (or multiple resources, depending on the time allotted) to find information on a specific topic related to their assignment… most recently it was “racism”, although I find that “autism” and “stem cell research” work very well
  • I give no instruction on how to use a resource: “Just muddle through it”
  • They can work in pairs or small groups (depending on how large the class)
• I ask them to write down how many results were found
• I ask them to look at the top three items in their results list and determine whether they are “scholarly” or “authoritative” (or other useless, to them, jargon)
• I invite them to ask questions about what they see as it comes up and to hold questions about the process until after the exercise
• We come back together to talk about what happened, there are some pretty common reactions/responses
  • Why didn’t everyone get the same number of results in Google
    • some people use phrase searching, some people misspell, sometimes it’s the vagaries of Google
  • Why weren’t there any actual articles (re: using the full-text limiter in a database)
  • But it’s from ___, of course it’s scholarly (usually: Wikipedia, MSNBC, some professional organization e.g., ADA)
    • Great place to talk about scholarly vs. authority vs. useful, but totally inappropriate for a research paper (although some of the position papers have more wiggle room)

• If I am really pressed for time I will send them into Google for 5 unadulterated minutes and then pull them back into the database talk. Sometimes I have to combine databases and only talk about a select few. For example, I might talk about the EBSCO interface in contrast to Science Direct and highlight the similarities and differences. “You know from Google, that when you see a box and a button next to it that says ’search’, you’re going to be typing some kind of language and searching, but what’s totally different is…” In this way we cover the important issues like controlled vocabulary, phrase searching, finding and using the help functions– without actually demonstrating each database. I worry that demonstrating each database encourages students to avoid things they’ve not previously experienced.
• With ABE, ESOL, and College Success courses I will often incorporate an online Encyclopedia into the very first phase and occasionally leave out other resources, depending on the consult I have had with the classroom faculty. This allows us to talk about Wikipedia and how it is just as easy to use Worldbook Online, but that neither resource usually belongs in a Works Cited page.
• I like this approach because it forces them to confront the gap in their knowledge. Very often I find that students don’t believe they need any instruction on research tools and it isn’t until they have seen that blasted red message in EBSCO, telling them there are no results found, that they believe it is important to absorb the information. Of course we remember from library school that the problem with “the gap” is that folks have a difficult time asking questions about the information they don’t know they don’t know. Allie Flanary, Faculty Librarian Portland Community College Library Sylvania Campus