nothing to see here

maura @ 9:23 pm

Decided to write something about open access for my other blog today. Really it was finishing something I started a few weeks ago when Gus was at karate on a Saturday morning. I usually bring the netbook and can often get a bunch written, which seems impossible sitting near 30 kids yelling “yes sensei!” every few minutes. But it’s a surprisingly productive time for me. For a bunch of different reasons Gus hasn’t gone to karate on Saturday morning in a while, and I kind of miss it. I think he misses it, too. Despite being sick he’s still pretty high energy. Begone, evil fever!

i am tired

maura @ 9:13 pm

Short entry tonight because it was a long week. Lots of teaching and the faculty poster session and hanging up posters all over the place for our new course (which has two [2!] people registered for it already, hooray!). And then helping to run a bake sale at the talent show at Gus’s school tonight. And also I’m still sick. Because it’s good to have a sick person selling baked goods to children at dinnertime. Achoo! Have some brownies.

Now Gus is sick too, which kind of scuttles our plans to get him a flu shot this weekend. But it does support the new plan of me lying on the sofa all weekend getting better. So it’s a draw.

ha! bet you thought i’d forgotten

maura @ 10:46 pm

But no, I was just working on my poster for tomorrow’s faculty poster session. Which is almost done, just needs the final constructing before work tomorrow.

It is, late, though, and I’m still nursing this head cold (which has stayed at the low-level annoyance phase, thankfully). So here are a few pictures that struck me as funny. Because part of this research project is asking students to take photos of various objects/locations. And one of the photos is “the night before a big assignment is due.” And that’s where I’m at, tonight. So here’re my photos:

I should probably take a picture of the whole poster tomorrow, too, huh?

grab your skeleton key

maura @ 9:34 pm

Today I had RT* and worked on a poster for my research project that I’m giving at the faculty poster session later this week. I’ve done posters before, but not since I’ve gotten all ethnographic with this qualitative study I’m working on right now, and it’s been a bit weird to make this poster. I mean, my old archaeology self was really comfortable with posters. Charts + graphs? Check. Photos of the site or the faunal remains? Check. Brief bullets w/salient data points and conclusions? Check.

* Reassigned Time, boon to the jr faculty member, in which I do all much** of the research + publication that will (I hope) eventually earn me tenure + promotion someday.

** Because I have my Morning Writing Time, too.

But this poster is different. First off, these are only preliminary results — no final conclusions yet (though they’re interesting enough to make the poster feasible). Stranger to me is that I don’t have any charts and graphs. No charts and graphs! I feel a bit naked.

It’s been harder than I thought it would be to recreate a narrative on the poster (this is the project, here’s why we’re doing it, here’s what we’ve done so far, and this is what the interviewees said). I’ve pulled out a few interesting quotes and highlighted them in blue. I’m using Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flicker to illustrate the salient points, e.g. a big twisty clock for the “students have many demands on their time” point. And, I sheepishly admit to using a bit of clipart, too (hey Flickr, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you had more photos of people of color).

Is there going to be enough info there without my friends the Charts and their neighbors the Graphs? Tomorrow I have to pick up the posterboard, so we’ll see how it turns out.

because it’s the weekend…

maura @ 12:45 pm

I finally had time to finish an ACRLog post that I’ve been chewing on for more than a week and drafting for a few days. It’s 724 words, so that counts for today, right?

(Warning: not interesting unless you’re a librarian, and probably only if you’re an instruction librarian.)

c is for cookie

maura @ 9:28 pm

Last week, in honor of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, Google had a different Sesame-themed logo each day. I happened to be teaching many of those days and it kept cracking me up every time we used Google for searching in class. Cookie Monster was the funniest — his eyeballs were the “oo” in Google

This week I had many meetings with pastries, which kind of takes the edge off having many meetings. After today’s meeting (2 cookies: oatmeal raisin and chocolate w/white chocolate chips) I was thinking about different kinds of desserts. And I kept on thinking after dinner, too (raspberry meringue sandwich cookie).

So here’s Maura’s Hierarchy of Desserts (in order of preference):

1. Cookies: More often than not if there’s a dessert choice I will pick something in the baked goods category. Cookies are usually the winner, beating out cake ever so slightly (see below). I mostly don’t want a huge pile of dessert, so cookies are a good choice. And I often like to have a couple of different flavor options, which is also possible with cookies. These days we’ve got our xmas cookie baking down to a science and most of my favorites are in there: a delicious iced molasses-spice cookie, good old reliable peanut butter cookies, butter cookie sandwiches with raspberry and apricot jam, and your basic chocolate chip cookie (though oatmeal chocolate chip is another tasty option).

2. Cakes: To be fair, I do like cakes, too. I include brownies in the cakes category, though if they’re too chocolatey I will often pass. For the longest time when I was growing up my birthday cakes were always chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Jonathan makes a mean chocolate cupcake, so these days we usually have that for my birthday, too. But I also like the traditional old yellow cake with chocolate frosting. And red velvet cake and applesauce cake and gingerbread and pound cake and …

One thing I am very particular about is the ratio of cake to frosting. I can’t really deal with tons of frosting, esp. if it’s that fakey sugary supermarket frosting. I’d much rather have a smaller amt of buttercream or even a nice glaze. I don’t like puddings/custard/flan/etc. at all so I’m sure the frosting thing is of the same ilk.

3. Chocolate: Of course I like chocolate, who doesn’t? It’s clearly the most superior of all candies. I used to love dark chocolate best, but now I can groove on milk chocolate, too. I wish we had better chocolate in this country (= less sugary); whenever we travel we always come back loaded down with better chocolate bars from other places. A well-timed piece of chocolate can really brighten your day.

4. Other candy: Other, non-chocolate kinds of candy can be nice, too, mainly of the sour fruit or cinnamon variety. Like Lemonheads and Red Hots, yum. Also Dum-Dums — my dad’s parents used to keep a bag of these in a drawer in their kitchen when I was little.

5. Ice cream: I do like ice cream, despite what some people keep saying, really I do. But I will admit that it’s not my favorite kind of dessert. Mostly I like vanilla with chunks of stuff in it (chocolate, caramel, etc.). And the grownup flavors like maple walnut, cinnamon, sweet cream, and coffee. I’m happy to occasionally head to the schmantzy ice cream place around the corner from us and have a cup or cone, but it doesn’t haunt my dreams.

put the music on

maura @ 6:36 pm

You may remember my musing/grumping about classes I taught earlier in the week. I had a class this morning (my lone weekend class this semester), and I’m happy to report that it was an entirely different — and pleasant! — experience.

I’ve been trying to deconstruct it all day. The course instructor was there, though she had to miss the first half of the session; since the library doesn’t open that early she had to wait by the door for latecomers. The students were averagely engaged, some more than others, and there was a bit of chatting. I worked to ask more questions of them which I think helped, especially asking questions of the chatty ones. It was the first class of the day so the room wasn’t too hot yet.* I tried to pace + talk with my hands less (because I think that tires me out), though I’m not exceptionally well-rested today. And a big plus is that the students are working on a research assignment right now. I always ask students to suggest topics to search during library sessions, but today we actually found a couple of relevant books, articles, and websites for a few lucky ones.

* This is a serious bummer. Because the classroom was carved out of a windowless space not originally intended for 30 computers, it gets incredibly hot. We have a couple of fans and run them between classes, but we can’t run them too high during class or we’d have to yell over them. I sympathize with the students, really, I do. Even the most fascinating discussion is difficult to concentrate on when you’re in a hot room, and for most students even debating the pros + cons of Wikipedia (usually the high point of student interest in the session) doesn’t really qualify as fascinating.

So, what can I take away from this?

1. I need to try harder to schedule these sessions at students’ point of need: when they are beginning research for an assignment.

Scheduling is a huge bear for us. This semester we have 126 sections of English Comp I. We always have 4 instruction librarians and 1 classroom. Recently we’ve been trying to squeeze most classes in right after midterms, figuring that students won’t really be thinking about their final papers until then. But some sections don’t do a research paper and some faculty would prefer sessions earlier or later (we do accommodate those faculty who ask). Maybe next semester we will try asking for a few date suggestions from each prof and schedule them first come, first served. A colleague also suggested sticking with the same librarian/instructor pair from semester to semester, which could help us keep all of these diverse assignments in mind.

I also need to gently remind faculty that the sessions work best if students have an assignment. Since this is the only required library session in our students’ academic careers at the college, there’s a tendency to make it more orientation than instruction. I’d really like to move my classes more firmly into the instruction zone. Probably it’s time to revisit our learning objectives to make sure they don’t focus too much on orientation-type info. It’s also really hard to resist the temptation in these sessions to try and cover everything, because we’re only guaranteed to get them in the library this one time. But I know I should probably resist.

2. More thinking about a session that’s entirely made up of questions I ask of the students.

I already structure the first part of the class like this, in which I discuss searching the internet and how library and internet resources are different. We have classroom control software, so I could ask students to search and then display their results on the screen for all to see, which might be more efficient (and less scary) than asking students to come to the podium to demonstrate. I’m still not sure this will work with all classes — in my experience the students’ prior library knowledge is all over the place. But it will definitely be more interactive and (I hope) engaging for the students. I’ll need to really tightly tie the questions to our learning objectives to be sure that we have time to cover everything we need to in the session, and practice keeping a closer eye on the clock.

Closer, closer still! This is getting closer to a plan.

P.S. Sorry for so much library stuff here lately. I guess I can’t figure out where to put these less-formal blatherings. But I clearly want to write about these issues (I sat down to try to write an ACRL blog post but this is what I got instead), so I guess it’ll be here for now.

just like falling off a log

maura @ 9:51 pm

This afternoon I went to a meeting of the CUNY Games Network. Let’s get this right out of the way: yes, it’s true, we do play games at these meetings. And sometimes I feel a little bit guilty about it, because it doesn’t seem as worky as some of the other parts of my job do. I also waver a bit before these meetings because I have so much else going on in my research life right now, including my main project (probably a multi-year commitment) and an article I’m coauthoring with a colleague.

But I always end up being glad that I’ve made time for the meeting (and not just because we play a game). It’s such an interesting group: faculty from all over the university who are interested in using games for teaching and learning. All kinds of games, too, from board to digital to roleplaying to simulations. It’s really right at the intersection of many of my personal and professional interests, which is why I haven’t successfully convinced myself that I’m too busy for it.

Today (among other things) we played Settlers of Catan. It’s a great game, though it was a little weird to play again after so many years. We had a pretty regular Settlers game night with friends maybe 10 (!) yrs ago, but haven’t played much since. After a couple of rounds of play the group stopped to discuss the aspects of the game that might be used in teaching (a regular feature of these meetings).

Catan is pretty complex, which I’d kind of forgotten, so it was great to have the chance to break it down and see whether the underlying mechanics can be adapted to a classroom setting. Often we discuss games on the micro level, seeing which parts of the game can be pulled out for teaching. But today I was struck by the macro level. Resource management games like Catan are (in part) about using your resources to accomplish small tasks in the pursuit of a bigger goal (winning the game). Which is kind of like scaffolding student work on a research paper/project/assignment. To use the term paper analogy, first students need to pick an appropriate (in subject + scope) topic, then find resources on the topic, then maybe create an annotated bibliography, then write the paper, and finally add their references.

It’s not a perfect fit: part of the gameplay in resource management games is that you don’t always have the resources you need to win, and you need to strategize to get as many resources as you can. In a way what I’ve described is really any game that it’s possible to win. And certainly in a class there shouldn’t be one student who will “win” above all others — everyone can be a winner (in theory, at least). But it was good to be able to map something gamey (har) onto a traditional library/research task. I mean, I always think of research as a kind of game — hunting + gathering for the best info hits many of the same notes for me that playing a good puzzley adventure game does. Transferring that enjoyment of the research process to students, that’s the challenge.

superblast

maura @ 9:14 pm

It’s Open Access Week, so we had a little program for faculty (with cookies!) at MPOW today and got some spiffy orange buttons to boot.

I’m tired.

So, without further ado, this week’s twitterstream:

headache, are you from too much coffee or too little coffee?
about 2 hours ago from web

@mikhailg my inlaws are in w. lafayette–ping me if you end up going & I’ll share good places to eat.
about 23 hours ago from Echofon in reply to mikhailg

RT CityTechLibrary Happy Open Access Week! How will you celebrate? http://www.openaccessweek.org/
5:17 PM Oct 19th from web

Wait, it’s Sunday night already? How did that happen?
9:52 PM Oct 18th from Echofon

@notjonathan i made a valiant effort! damn you, casunziei and your delicious buttery beety-ness.
11:40 PM Oct 17th from web

I’m totally sick of vampires and zombies.
9:18 AM Oct 17th from Echofon

RT @zephoria: Doing work on Digital Media and Learning? There’s now a conference for you! Submit session proposals: http://bit.ly/WQ90t
9:15 AM Oct 17th from Echofon

seasonally creepy http://twitpic.com/lsapx
5:46 PM Oct 16th from Echofon

RT jpeg2000 Please join me in welcoming @RadReference to the twitterdome!
2:07 PM Oct 16th from web

also: wearing 2 sweaters, no heat in tech services. it’s like a meat locker in here. send a search party if no tweets by dinnertime.
9:53 AM Oct 16th from web

bummed to be missing @mkgold’s guerrilla pedagogy talk at laguardia cc this morning. i need a clone!
9:51 AM Oct 16th from web

@aegisnyc down with research guilt! research is always good.
10:55 PM Oct 15th from web in reply to aegisnyc

our library course for next semester is in sims! never thought i would be happy to learn another bureaucratic proprietary computer system.
12:49 PM Oct 15th from web

@alevtina we have friends in Portland who love it. It’s easy to want to get out of NYC when job hunting! So many other places…
12:44 PM Oct 15th from Echofon in reply to alevtina

ate my lunch while it was still hot, FTW!
1:34 PM Oct 14th from web

engulfed

maura @ 9:30 pm

Earlier Gus asked Jonathan what “engulfed” means, and since I was thinking I’d write a little something about my research project today that seems as good a title as any.

This year a colleague (at another library) and I got a small grant to do an ethnographic study of the ways that students at each of our colleges research and complete their school assignments and projects. It’s modeled after a similar study done at the University of Rochester a few years ago (here’s a PDF of the book they wrote about it). We’re interviewing faculty about their expectations for student work, and also doing a couple of different kinds of interviews with students.

Working on this project has been a blast so far. We started with faculty interviews at the end of the spring and over the summer. But it’s gotten a bit intense over the past few weeks since the student interviews started. Right now I’m in the throes of 2 kinds of interviews with students. One is called a mapping diary — I give each student a map of our campus and of the transit system and ask them to trace and log (with times) the course of a typical school day. The other is called a photo survey — I give each student a disposable camera and ask them to take pictures of different objects and locations, e.g., where they study, what they carry in their school bag, etc. With both of these I’m asking students to meet with me after they’ve finished for between 10-30 minutes so that I can interview them to expand on what they recorded on their maps/photos.

We’ve got enough funding for 10 students to participate in each kind of study. It’s been a bit more challenging than I’d anticipated keeping track of everything: which students have come to pick up their maps/cameras, dropped them off, and scheduled interviews. I’m running cameras to the drugstore to get developed and buying Metrocards in different denominations (as payment to the students for participating in the interviews). When I posted the flyers to recruit students for the study I had such an overwhelming response that I actually had to go around campus and take them down 4 days later! Which is all great, just a bit of a challenge on top of all of the usual life + work stuff.

Thank goodness for RT! Reassigned time, the saving grace of the junior faculty member. Tomorrow I’ve got an RT day scheduled and have 4 students meeting me for interviews. Then somebody has a birthday (and will finally be as old as me), and we all get cake. Huzzah!