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This page updated: 10/18/07


ACRL Western New York / Ontario Chapter
Fall 2007 Conference

No Chalk Dust: Teaching and Learning in Online Environments

WNY/O ACRL Fall Conference
Friday, October 12, 2007
9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
RIT Inn and Conference Center, Rochester, NY
http://www.ritinn.com/

Featuring

Ken Fujiuchi, Buffalo State College
Krista Godfrey, McMaster University
Harry E. Pence, SUNY Oneonta
Roland Rachinger, Buffalo State College
Dennis Reed, Buffalo State College
Stephanie Rothenberg, SUNY at Buffalo

Plus

Poster Sessions


Conference Overview | Session One | Session Two | Session Three
Session Four | Poster Sessions | Conference in Brief | Presentation Materials


Conference Overview

The Western New York/Ontario chapter of the Association of College & Research Libraries (WNY/O ACRL) invites you to a day-long conference designed to address the new models of teaching and learning in the online environment, and how they can be applied to libraries. Please join us at the RIT Inn & Conference Center, in Rochester, NY, where we will explore new opportunities such as educational gaming, Second Life, immersive learning environments, online tutorials, the pedagogy of online instruction, virtual reference, and Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking, and more!


Session One, Keynote Address

First Steps in Second Life: Teaching and Learning in Virtual Space
Harry E. Pence
SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
SUNY Oneonta
pencehe@oneonta.edu

The virtual, online world called Second Life (SL) looks like a game, but does not present any clear goals for the participants to pursue. Indeed, it may be said that the goal of Second Life is to create your own goal. As a result, some residents of Second Life have chosen to develop their land; some try to earn money; some try to master the computer language that makes it possible to create objects; and, frankly, some have chosen to pursue a life of total hedonism. This paper will focus on the teachers and librarians who are exploring how to use Second Life for education. The author of this talk joined Second Life in November, 2006, and since then has been meeting educators from all over the world to talk about teaching and learning in virtual space as well as to become involved in some projects that attempted to implement these ideas. These projects have included an SL internship program for Music Industry majors from SUNY Oneonta and the design of an island for the science magazine, Nature. Another interesting aspect of this experience was working with the librarians from the Alliance Library Consortium, one of the largest educational groups in Second Life, as they have explored ways to create virtual library services. Second Life is far too complex to be encompassed in any single presentation, but this talk will at least explore one individual’s experiences in this virtual world.


Session Two

Panel Discussion on Virtual Worlds in the Academic Setting

This panel discussion is designed as a way to bring everyone up to speed on what virtual worlds and immersive learning environments are, and as an introduction to all the issues that may arise when an academic institution tries to implement it, either locally to certain departments, or campus wide. Each presenter will speak for about 10 minutes and then we will open it up for a group Q & A session.

Presenters include:

Ken Fujiuchi, Emerging Technologies Librarian, Buffalo State College
Roland Rachinger , ESRI Technical Coordinator, Buffalo State College
Dennis Reed, Web Services, Information Commons, Buffalo State College


Session Three

A Second Life for Virtual Reference
Krista Godfrey
Liaison Librarian, McMaster University
godfrey@mcmaster.ca

Libraries have been exploring the 3D virtual world of Second Life for just over a year. In December 2006, McMaster University Library claimed a space on the virtual island of Cybrary City and has been investigating potential services and service models for this virtual world, particularly in regards to reference service. We launched a three month pilot virtual reference service in May 2007. This presentation will focus largely on sharing the results of the pilot virtual reference service and place it within the larger context of virtual reference in Second Life. Learn why we should be exploring Second Life and services in this virtual world and tips for starting your own virtual reference service. Find out how McMaster University Library is utilizing their space to help patrons, both McMaster and Second Life residents, obtain the information they need. Discover if Second Life is right for your library.


Session Four

Designed Play
Stephanie Rothenberg
Assistant Professor, Department of Visual Studies
SUNY at Buffalo
info@pan-o-matic.com

Key ideas and correlating student projects being developed in a new course currently offered through the Department of Visual Studies at SUNY Buffalo. The course examines the changing role of play in cultural production through the lens of online learning and edutainment, corporate culture, advertgames, emerging virtual economies and social software. An analysis of the history of children’s play, hobbies and the history of leisure are an integral part of our study. This interdisciplinary course brings together a broad range of students at both the graduate and undergraduate level from various academic fields including art, media study, computer science and geology. Students work collaboratively on a variety of short exercises and extended projects to identify and evaluate how interactive systems and participatory culture can be used to create meaningful play.


Poster Sessions

Academic Research Information Access: A public/private information infrastructure to improve library collections, enhance research and foster economic development for New York State
Jason Kramer
NYSHEI Executive Director

This presentation discusses the policy proposal put forth by NYSHEI, the advocacy organization for New York’s public and private academic and research libraries, to create a statewide information infrastructure for the benefit of researchers, students, businesses and entrepreneurs. ARIA (academic research information access) seeks state funding to supplement the resources of academic libraries.

MIA No More: English 101 Distance Learning students at Genesee Community College”
Nicki Lerczak
Genesee Community College

The Alfred C. O’Connell Library gives approximately 240 instructional sessions per year. Approximately 40% of sessions are given to English classes, primarily English 101. Instructional sessions are held in the library’s computer lab, other labs on campus, point-to-point instruction rooms and at our 6 branch campuses. Our true Distance Learning students (currently 11% of Genesee’s student body) did not receive any kind of library instruction until the fall 2006 semester. Genesee offers a class on instructional design to faculty to help them create an online version of the classes they teach which I took in spring 2006. This poster will highlight the information gleaned from that class; the online instructional materials developed and demonstrate the approach being tried at Genesee with online English 101 classes. Learning module elements such as - discussions, PowerPoint files, and a research assignment incorporated into BlackBoard will be presented.

Information Literacy on the Q.T.
Elin O’Hara
SUNY Plattsburgh

This poster session would detail best practices in camouflaging information literacy content within assignment-specific research guides for online courses. Traditional classroom one-shot information literacy sessions are not available to the vast majority of students who opt to enroll in the growing number of online courses offered at institutions. More often than not, innovative teaching strategies for online courses, such as embedded librarians, are an impossibility given financial and workload considerations. These circumstances necessitate an alternate route for delivering information literacy content that is palatable to online students. Rather than neglecting online students in the course of their research, through the use of web-based research guides it is possible to subtly deliver key information literacy concepts while concurrently satisfying students’ need for assignment-specific research support. These online research guides directly target assignment-specific library materials and services in order to guide students towards best available sources while covertly integrating basic information literacy concepts. Not only do these online guides enable students to perform library research remotely, they also provide students with desirable on-demand research guidance. Moreover, the online research guide format can be adapted to benefit students researching course assignments for other classes or topics in librarians’ liaison departments as well. This poster session would use a laptop computer to present a sample of online research guides created by myself, an Instruction Librarian in charge of ‘one-shots’ at SUNY-Plattsburgh, in order to accompany or, in some cases, replace traditional classroom-based course-related instruction sessions. In addition, this poster session would present a variety of materials such as handouts and bookmarks outlining best practices in online research guide content that I have learned during the evolution of my research guides over the past three years.

Enhancing Traditional Library Instruction to Undergraduates:
Incorporating Online Tutorials into the Curriculum

Ligaya Ganster and Tiffany Walsh
SUNY Buffalo

Librarians can supplement, or replace, traditional in-class instruction with course-specific online tutorials. The literature demonstrates how tutorials customized for specific courses are more beneficial then generic tutorials on research skills. Many authors discuss using online tutorials, occasionally with subject-specific modules, but do not discuss designing online tutorials devoted to specific courses. With increasing demand for instruction services, online tutorials can ease staffing concerns rampant at many libraries, and otherwise enhance the quality of instruction and application to varied learning styles. Using the Blackboard course management system, the authors created an online tutorial tailored to the required World Civilizations course at the University at Buffalo. One innovative feature of the tutorial is the customization aspect— it was designed for librarians to easily tailor sections of the tutorial in order to modify it for a specific course or assignment. The tutorial incorporated elements of successful generic tutorials described in the literature: a quiz for self-assessment and active learning, a discussion board where questions are addressed, and individual e-mail feedback between students and librarians, and applied them to a specific course. The authors present student and librarian reactions to the tutorial, and make recommendations for how the tutorial can be improved and implemented in everyday instruction services. Screenshots of the online tutorial and future ideas for incorporating multimedia are also included.

Online Tutorials: Collaboration and Assessment
Andrew Yeager
Medaille College

In the Spring of 2006 the Medaille Library began developing an online tutorial in collaboration with the School of Education at Medaille College. The learning objectives and assessment instruments were developed together, and the resulting tutorial was implemented in online courses. The tutorial itself was not elaborate, but the close collaboration and free exchange of data allowed for focused revisions. At this time 2 revisions of the tutorial have taken place, and the library has collected data on hundreds of participants. This data-driven form of assessment is precisely what administration and outside accredidation agencies seek.


Conference in Brief

9:00-9:30 Registration, Continental Breakfast and an opportunity to view poster sessions
9:30-9:35 Opening Remarks
9:35-10:35 Session One: First Steps in Second Life: Teaching and Learning in Virtual Space (Harry E. Pence)
10:35-10:50 Coffee Break and an opportunity to view poster sessions
10:50-12:20 Session Two: Panel Discussion on Virtual Worlds in an Academic Setting (Ken Fujiuchi, Roland Rachinger, Dennis Reed)
12:20-1:20 Lunch and a final opportunity to view poster sessions
1:20-2:20 Session Three: A Second Life for Virtual Reference (Krista Godfrey)
2:20-2:35 Break
2:35-3:20 Session Four: Designed Play (Stephanie Rothenberg)
3:20-3:30 Closing Remarks


Presentation Materials