Course Integrated Instruction : June 2010 Archives

Did you see this?

"Consider this tally from Science two decades ago: Only 45 percent of the articles published in the 4,500 top scientific journals were cited within the first five years after publication. In recent years, the figure seems to have dropped further. In a 2009 article in Online Information Review, Péter Jacsó found that 40.6 percent of the articles published in the top science and social-science journals (the figures do not include the humanities) were cited in the period 2002 to 2006.

As a result, instead of contributing to knowledge in various disciplines, the increasing number of low-cited publications only adds to the bulk of words and numbers to be reviewed. Even if read, many articles that are not cited by anyone would seem to contain little useful information. The avalanche of ignored research has a profoundly damaging effect on the enterprise as a whole."

from We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research, June 13, 2010
Chronicle of Higher Education, by Mark Bauerlein, Mohamed Gad-el-Hak, Wayne Grody, Bill McKelvey, and Stanley W. Trimble

This article doesn't address the effect of this on students and their choice of research to use in assignments and papers but talk about challenging! Imagine trying to tell students that half of the articles are considered low quality--often students are new to the discipline area and wouldn't have the expertise to judge low quality to high quality. Is this distinction appropriate at the major level or is this really a graduate level skill? Does anyone try to teach this spectrum? It seems like there could be a role for a databases--instead of mega databases like Academic Search Premier that go for quantity instead of quality. Thoughts...

Today at the noon Meghan Lafferty and I presented an overview of the findings of a survey we recently conducted to learn about the "on-the-job" information needs of Engineering Co-op Students.

We recorded that session...you can watch it here!




The Engineering Co-op Program allows students to work full-time in a professional setting while earning credit towards graduation. We hoped to find out what types of information seeking they had to perform and how comfortable they were using information resources.  We hope to see if and/or how beginning engineers use different types of information retrieval and evaluation skills in the workplace.

The video is about 30 minutes long.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please feel free to be in touch with either Meghan or myself.

The Science and Engineering Library and the Information Literacy Collaborative hosted a one and a half day seminar for instructors in the Institute of Technology on May 19 and 20, 2010.  The purpose was to create and support a community of faculty and instructors committed to developing student skills in finding, evaluating, and synthesizing information in their academic coursework and for lifelong learning.  The seminar introduced participants to a variety of Libraries services, tools, and skill sets to help support instructors and students in their teaching and learning.  The seminar included sessions on information literacy, library and Google research tools, copyright, scholarly communication, data management, and offered consultations with subject librarians for integrating these resources into current and future assignments.

Here are a few comments from faculty and instructors responding to questions on beneficial aspects and feedback overall:
    "Revelations about what the library can and does do to facilitate faculty and student productivity"
    "Learning about available resources, talking with fellow faculty about issues related to effective pedagogy"
    "Very informative.  I learned a lot.  It makes me think of new ideas and more effective teaching strategies."
    "Thank you all for a fun and informative workshop!"

Learn more at: http://sciweb.lib.umn.edu/facultyseminar2010/