Inside Lynn Parker's head - learning from the Library

TASH continues to boldly go where angels fear to tread; mixing our metaphors, or should that be adages, at every opportunity. A week last Friday (apologies for the lateness of this post therefore), Tim and I met with Lynn Parker from the Library, chief curator of the voluminous and enormously helpful suite of Information Skills tutorials which are available, by default, to all students and staff via MOLE.

Lynn was able to share a wide range of insights into the challenges involved in trying to embed "reusable learning objects" such as the discrete MOLE tutorials she curates within individual courses and/or student consciousness more generally - but was also keen to stress that the strategy the library has adopted and refined over a number of years now of seeking to tailor and embed generic resources within specific disciplinary contexts was an increasingly successful one.

Key points to emerge from our discussions included:

• students generally want to see immediate benefits in terms of tangible progress in their assessed work if they are to engage with more generic study skills materials;
• the promotion of such resources by academic staff was crucial to ensure student buy-in, but it was still necessary to tailor examples to specific disciplinary areas wherever possible;
• attention to the tone/feel of resources and exercises is important as hostility can quickly grow to a resource or approach if it is perceived as "too easy" or "too much like what I did at school" (this may be a particular challenge for TASH when trying to encourage a critical, self-aware and reflexive approach to the hub, and an attitude to learning which values revision and reassessment of the same skills in different contexts at different stages in the learning journey, from pre-entry to post-graduate and beyond);
• there is enormous diversity across individual departments in terms of the nature of assessment tasks and the degree to which independent research, for example, is foregrounded in different disciplinary areas; this can make structuring a generic resource for all extremely challenging;
• Lynn has commented to us before on the absence of Information Literacy as a specific named category for TASH, but is prepared to accept the justification that we have previously offered that IL cross-cuts most, perhaps all of our themes, and it is therefore appropriate for it sit outside the formal framework in the same way that we have argued this may also be necessary for attributes such as creativity and resourcefulness;
• keeping links and resources up to date in large online products like the Info Skills tutorials - or TASH - is a real challenge and needs careful monitoring.

Lynn sees TASH as one important avenue through which to further publicise the existence and value of the MOLE tutorials to academics and students alike, to "give it a new push" and take its place more squarely alongside other resources available across the institution. She also emphasises the added-value of academic colleagues acting as advocates for such resources alongside professional service curators. These are things we are more than happy to help with, and Lynn has already agreed to contribute to the project by writing a number of tutor-facing guides, organised by reference to the 7 sk/hills framework (academic literacy and written communication being two of the more obvious places to start).

She has also agreed to produce a kind of mind or site map to the tutorials as a whole. We hope this will be of particular value as it became clear to us as the conversation progressed that the inside of Lynn Parker's head contains all sorts of treasures and a very detailed knowledge of the resource she curates. This allowed her to direct us very quickly to a whole host of relevant materials in all manner of different skills areas as the conversation turned from one topic to the next. The problem at present is that it is much harder for those of us on the outside of her head to make these connection as quickly, unless she's there in the room with us. We hope therefore that a map or index of some sort will mean that much of the good work currently being overlooked may be more easily accessed.

Finally, we are mindful of the need for case studies illustrating how close collaboration and embedding of library tutorials within specific disciplinary contexts is achieved in practice. To this end, we will shortly be hunting down Aidan While in Town and Regional Planning, who worked closely with Lynn on a strategy for embedding Information Literacy throughout the undergraduate programme for which he has responsibility. Indeed a brief case study already exists here, on the case studies wiki. Many thanks for your input, Lynn. We will be back.

LTEA2008: induction, treasure hunts and interactivity

Before I forget, just wanted to post one or two random points arising from last week's LTEA conference.

In a session jointly hosted by colleagues from ACSE, Mech Eng. and HCS, a number of similar themes emerged around the importance of engaging students in pre-entry, induction week and follow-up activities which can help to foreground the importance of generic academic skills enhancement, the development of information literacy, and the acquisition of academic literacy in specific disciplinary contexts; and crucially to do this through active learning processes (rather than screeds of lectures and information sessions in large rooms). You can see the accompanying powerpoint here.

Something which all three departments seem to have introduced with positive results is the development of "learning trails" or "treasure hunts" to encouraged students to go out and find information and resources for themselves. This is also an activity I've used successfully with prospective students coming in to the University for taster sessions, and I wonder whether some kind of online quest might also be developed on TASH's site.

Further, Jen Rowson described an induction activity (a "design and build" task similar to a level one Mech Eng module) in which groups of students compete directly with one another to design something which will go the furthest, carry the most etc. etc. using limited materials. In the assessed module, grades are entirely dependent upon how well individual designs fare relative to other groups. To a lily-livered social scientist, this sounded a bit harsh, but as Jen notes it does closely mirror the reality of becoming a design engineer ("we might provide them with the tool box, but engineering is essentially about creative problem solving, and it's the most creative solution in the context of the brief which gets the contract", was something like how Jen put it) .

The element of competition (particularly when working as a group) seems often to engage students in very positive ways (and having assessed part of a module by group work this year for the first time, I have also seen the related benefits of peer-motivation in action). Again, Jen put it something like this: "show 'em the sky and invite them to reach for it" ... which I rather liked (even if it might also sound a bit cheesy if you're having a bad day).

So I wonder whether we might consider certain strategically targetted time-limited competitions for the hub - for example an online treasure hunt released via the hub in induction week with the best responses by week two earning a prize of some sort or another. Likewise, we could do similar things in and around other key transition areas - something to do with revision strategies released in the week before Xmas, time limited for entries in the first week of the new year; something in the first week of July targeted at students going from first to second or second to third year which gets them thinking about useful stuff to be thinking about and/or doing over the summer etc.?

The group I was in the induction session also turned to the issue of how to get students up and running most effectively at the beginning of their second year when suddenly grades really count (no longer enough simply to coast and scrape a pass), some of that study skills stuff from induction in year one might seem a bit rusty, and when additional pressures or challenges may be added by the move from halls of residence to private rented accommodation etc.

Getting students mentoring one another across levels was one obvious solution which is of course being supported and developed very effectively in a number of central support departments already, and is one which we've already batted about a bit in relation to TASH.

Finally, I had a conversation with Tash Semmens after the conference dinner (I think), the details of which are a little hazy - but revolved around our reminiscences of the central importance of law libraries in our own (increasingly distant) undergraduate studies ... and their relative lack of importance in many students minds today. One effect, Tash mused, of the increased accessibility of online sources in law today (but also many other disciplines, I have no doubt), is that students find it increasingly difficult to appreciate the distinction between primary, secondary and other sources, and their relative importance in the research and/or legal process. I very well remember myself that in the 1980s it wasn't difficult to spot whether you were dealing with statute law, common law, or text book opinion, because you found the books in different parts of the library and they all looked different, felt different and smelt different depending upon the type of source you were dealing with (and I'm sure this isn't simply the post-hoc rationalisation of a lawyer-turned-archaeologist more interested in law libraries as material culture than anything else these days). So the importance of getting students out and about, engaging with the very materiality of their individual disciplines, remains an important task which the treasure hunt can again achieve in part, I would suggest.

Key academic skills - seven skills for seven hills

Tim and I met this morning to review the outcomes of last Tuesday's launch meeting and to look forward to the next event on Thursday 17 July. One important task was to consider and feedback on the different group responses to our invitation to outline the three most important academic skills which students need to develop at University. The raw outputs will, all being well, be uploaded to the Generic Skills website later this week and we will be circulating an email shortly thereafter. In the meantime, we wanted to share our particular - and undoubtedly preliminary - take on what has already emerged from this exercise. We will also be using this as one starting point for discussions and resource sharing on 17th.

The picture is of my rough summation of our tentative discussions, uploaded via the wonders of CILASS copycam technology. The grid in the top right hand corner will be explicated, we hope, on 17th.

We are presently suggesting seven key skills areas (in line with the seven hills theme which Claire Shanks has mentioned and which fits with the idea of using understanding/analysing Sheffield as one possible theme for the hub - but also some fit here with the SCONUL pillars and certain other possibilities too):

• academic literacy (understanding academic cultures, as raised by Nick Fox in discussions on 24th, including referencing, time management, induction and awareness of changes at different levels);
• personal and inter-personal skills (including self-organisation, self-motivation, working in groups and confidence building);
  
• problem solving and data handling (including qualitative and quantitative research methods, statistics etc.);
• analytical skills (which we hope need no explication here - though clearly they will on the hub);
• written communication (in its many different forms - including consideration of writing for different purposes and different audiences);
• oral and other communication (including multi-media presentations, poster presentations, and online literacies);
• reflective learning (including developing self-awareness of where you are, where you need to be, and what strategies may work best for you to get from one to the other).

Two terms which appeared in one or more of the group offerings, and on the image above, but which we have for now chosen not to reproduce in the list above, are "information literacy" and "resourcefulness". In the case of the former, we are currently arguing that this is a term which cross-cuts many of the sk/hills delineated above, but is not perhaps broad enough to encompass all the social aspects of learning which must also form a key element of the hub more generally. In this respect also, there may be something about the latter term which implies an inner resilience, and willingness to explore and work with resources - however plentiful or limited - which can be argued to be one particular hallmark of a genuinely autonomous learner, but which is as much perhaps about personal development as about academic skills per se. And whilst we want to continue to foreground the idea of academic skills for the moment, we are also entirely mindful of the indivisibility of academic skills development and enhancement from social and personal development within and beyond each individual student's time at University.

It can be taken as read, therefore, that these are both terms which offer important background contexts to the specific skills set we outline above - and that the "meta-skills approach" favoured by one group, and perhaps showing the clearest connection to many of the discussions we understand to have taken place in the Generic Skills Working Group in the past, is by no means excluded from TASH's developing vision. Nevertheless, we remain mindful of the fact that the hub must, first and foremost, be seen to assist individual students and their departments to achieve the best degree results they can - whilst recognising the crucial importance of extra- and co-curricular activities and support mechanisms in aiding this process.

We anticipate that we will return to debates around these and similar issues again and again over the coming months - we also hope we'll find some time to do some extra-curricular reading of our own relatively shortly to check our developing understanding against the broader skills literature.

Feedback on TASH meeting with CILASS

This lunchtime, Willy and I did a little presentation to CILASS staff about TASH. The genesis of this was the interest shown by CILASS in the project, but the clash of the June 24th launch meeting with an important internal CILASS event; so to maximise efficiency, we thought we'd talk to the half-dozen or so key members of CILASS staff together. You can find the slideshow we used here, although it's pretty much the same one that we used on the 24th, which is available from the LeTS pages.

The meeting was very helpful, with the interest shown by staff growing stronger the more they learned about TASH. In particular, they were excited by the possibility of student contributions to the resource, and pointed to their developing series of student guides (for instance, this one on groupwork). As TASH develops, CILASS are happy to help align these guides with the project and the topics it covers, leading to a really strong student voice, and some peer-support which, as I think we all recognise, can be a very powerful mechanism. CILASS were also keen to foreground the notion of Information Literacy as a way of tying together and supporting some of the topics that TASH will cover, and I agree this is a very helpful framework; it provides a structure in which learners can locate their skills development and progress, and an explanatory framework for what they're doing. It is also an obvious link with the Library's Information Skills tutorials, which have always been one of the main drivers behind TASH. And finally, in the kind of creative and free-flowing discussion that CILASS staff are so good at facilitating, we reached the idea of possibly TASH fitting into a "learning commons", providing students with a series of tools to further and perspectives to deepen their learning. If it could achieve this, that would be great; and the main message I took away from the meeting was how CILASS has already done much of the groundwork for such an ambitious project.