Loughborough University Library: Open Journals
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Book review of Markey, K., Leeder, C. and Rieh, S.Y. 2014. Designing online information literacy games students want to play. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Get PDFPicking up the cool tools: working with strategic students to get bite-sized information literacy tutorials created, promoted, embedded, remembered and used
Get PDFThis small-scale practical action research project set out to investigate how undergraduate Primary Teacher Education students in a UK university find and evaluate information, and whether short online tutorials hosted in the university’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) could support their information literacy development. Surveys and focus groups were used to explore students' information-seeking behaviours. Students then collaborated with the researcher in selecting, designing and creating a series of short video tutorials demonstrating key information literacy-related Library tools.The project found that many students navigate both physical and online information environments with their focus on immediate short-term goals, without exploring; that key IL messages only communicated once are quickly forgotten; and that without frequent reminders of Library tools students devise their own workarounds to their IL problems, with varying degrees of success.The article therefore argues, from the project findings and the existing higher education literature on strategic student behaviour online, that while students value short visual IL tutorials, librarians’ time and effort in producing these risks being wasted if it is simply assumed that students will find and use them unprompted. These findings have implications for professional practice in terms of how such resources are positioned and promoted.This is believed to be one of the first studies within the librarianship literature exploring the effect of students’ strategic navigation of online environments on their awareness of information literacy tools and resources, and suggesting tactics to address the resulting issues. It is also unusual in having collaborated with students in designing and producing information literacy resources.
Drop-in sessions as an effective format for teaching information literacy: a case study in the Medical and Dental Libraries at Queen Mary University of London
Get PDFInformation literacy (IL) skills are increasingly becoming acknowledged as vital lifelong skills, necessary to thrive in education, research and the workplace. IL is taught in a variety of formats in higher education. The purpose of this study is to examine the use of drop-in sessions as an effective format to meet the need for ongoing IL teaching. Although research has previously been carried out on various formats of IL teaching, there is little research specifically investigating the effectiveness of drop-in sessions. This study aims to add to the current body of knowledge by examining the experience of providing drop-in IL sessions at the Medical and Dental Libraries at Queen Mary University of London. These sessions have now been running for five years and data has been gathered from attendance statistics, evaluation forms and follow-up questionnaires in order to evaluate their effectiveness for teaching IL skills. The study shows that drop-in sessions can provide the desired one-to-one, personalised, hands-on teaching, delivered in an informal environment. Good attendance figures, high levels of satisfaction and the perceived positive impact on IL skills demonstrate that drop-in sessions can be used as an effective format for IL teaching. The study provides evidence of good practice for those looking at how best to provide ongoing IL teaching
Book Review of Duckworth, V. and Ade-Ojo, G. (eds). 2015. Landscapes of specific literacies in contemporary society: exploring a social model of literacy. Abingdon: Routledge
Get PDFDesign Pedagogy
Get PDFFor this book Mike Tovey has assembled a stellar cast of
design researchers and educators to provide a guide to
the latest thinking on teaching and learning design to bring
undergraduate students to a professional level.
The book has chapters by experienced teachers and
researchers from many of the UK’s leading universities
and art and design schools, including Loughborough;
Glasgow; Open; Aston, and de Montfort. In particular there
are chapters on the work by members of Coventry
University’s Centre of Excellence for Product and
Automotive Design (CEPAD), which Mike Tovey directed.
The research at Coventry has been developed by the
international group of academics who form the Design
Research Society’s Special Interest Group on Design
Pedagogy, also headed by Tovey, and the results of this
further work are also represented in the book
Complexity in Design-Driven Innovation: A case study of knowledge transfer flow in subsea seismic sensor technology and design education
Get PDFTo the extent previously claimed, concept exploration is
not the key to product innovation. However, companies
that are design-focused are twice as innovative as those
that are not. To study design-driven innovation and its
occurrence in design education, two case studies are
conducted. The first is an example of design practice
which includes observation and cooperation process maps
in an offshore project. The second is an example of
product design education which includes observations of
teamwork, team member interviews and archival studies.
While the first case study demonstrates how a company
innovates through a design-driven process with complex
knowledge transference and systematic planning and
improvisation, the second case study shows students
managing their design processes through concept
generation in a less complex trial and error process.
Knowledge exploration as a part of design activity was
analyzed through the criteria of network paradoxes. A
pedagogic concept has been synthesized and validated
internally based on the case study, and externally based
on other design practices and design research. The
pedagogic concept synthesized was Knowledge Transfer
Flow [KTF]. The KTF concept can help to orient design
students within the information-saturated design
processes integrated within complex innovation systems
The Amazing Library Race: tracking student engagement and learning comprehension in library orientations
Get PDFSeeking to introduce first-year students to library resources and services in an engaging way, an orientation titled The Amazing Library Race (ALR) was developed and implemented at a university library. Informed by the pedagogy of problem-based learning, the ALR asks students to complete challenges regarding different departments and services. This study assesses this initiative’s success using observational and artifact-based data, addressing the challenging prospect of evaluating the impact of library orientation sessions. Two rubrics were developed to measure student involvement and student learning comprehension. More than 14 hours of in-class observations were used to track engagement, and 64 artifacts of student learning were collected and coded to evaluate learning comprehension. After coding, interrater reliability was established using the intraclass correlation coefficient to establish the validity of the ratings. This paper will outline these methodologies, present the results of the data analysis, and discuss the possibilities and difficulties of measuring student engagement in information literacy instruction centred upon active learning
Framing Behaviours in Novice Interaction Designers
Get PDFFraming design problems and solutions has been
recognised in design studies as a central designerly
activity. Some recent findings with expert designers relate
framing practices to problem–solution co-evolution and
analogy use, two further widely recognised design
strategies. We wanted to understand if interaction design
novices also use co-evolution and analogies to frame their
thinking. Furthermore we wanted to see if there are any
differences across cultures. The paper reports an analysis
of data gained from protocol studies with novice
interaction designers in the UK and Botswana. Novice
interaction designers in the UK and Botswana show some
similarities in framing behaviours using co-evolution and
opening analogies to develop metaphorical themes in
framing. But within these observations we also found
differences across the cohorts, such as different numbers
of co-evolution episodes or opening analogies. The
implications are discussed in the light of adopting
appropriate design pedagogy for novices in different
cultures. To increase reframing and generation of more
ideas in UK design novices, educators would need to
increase the number of leaps between problem and
solution spaces. To encourage Botswana groups to frame
ideas and work them through in depth, educators would
need to discourage students from building too many
bridges. Educators are also encouraged to experiment with
prohibiting opening analogies to see what other framing
behaviours occur
Designerly Ways to Theoretical Insight: Visualisation as a means to explore, discuss and understand design theory
Get PDFThis paper set out to investigate how design students
learn from visualising theory in design education. The
exploration rests on the assumption that the application of
tools and techniques from design practice supports design
students with an entrance to the theoretical part of the
field.
The paper is based on teaching experiences from an MA
course in design methodology at Design School Kolding
where we use visualisation as a tool to discuss, explore
and understand design theory. To throw light on the
question, student evaluations and feedback has been
included together with a classification of the material from
one visualisation exercise. In addition, theories for how to
understand designerly ways of knowing and constructing
knowledge have been applied as tools to think with in the
discussion.
The educational approach where design students read,
analyse, and visualise theory, appears to be beneficial to
the students’ learning process for a number of reasons,
which will be discussed in the paper. The main findings
indicate that visualising theory is beneficial because it
applies a type of practice that the students are familiar
with, and supports the construction of new knowledge, by
allowing the students to express information and concepts
in ways that are personally meaningful to them