During Week 4, we covered searching the catalog for books. We sent the students to the stacks. Many hadn't realized there would actually be books written about the topic we're researching. We also focused on how to cite in APA style so they could complete their homework for class 5 - to find and cite three books (or at least chapters).
The planning for EDT 110: Civic-centered research has begun! My co-teacher and I are updating the syllabus, and going over our notes from the debrief after last winter's course to make the appropriate changes.
My co-teacher and I will teach our Information Literacy course, EDT 110, again beginning in January. One of the questions I get most frequently about my class is about timing. How long/far in advance should I start planning a service-learning partnership or course?
Our EDT 110 class community partner, Project READ, has a huge fundraiser next week. The 7th annual Concert for Literacy will take place Thursday, June 30 at 8 p.m. at the Fraze Pavillion in Kettering, Ohio, featuring Parrots of the Caribbean (A Jimmy Buffett Tribute Band). Tickets are $10 for adults and $3 for children 10 and under. All proceeds benefit Project READ.
"Research for the greater good: Incorporating service-learning in an information literacy course at Wright State University" was published in this month's (June 2011) College & Research Libraries News. I hope this encourages other librarians to try a similar service-learning model for their information literacy course.
Since our class ended in early March, I've been reflecting on how we can improve the research portfolios. As it stands now, the students include annotated bibliographies in the portfolio, along with recommendations for the agency. The recommendations were a new requirement this past quarter. Our aim was to get students to synthesize the information they were finding, rather than just summarizing it. In most classes, they would write a paper. However, our class is only 2 credits, and the focus is supposed to be on the research process, not writing the research paper.
Days like yesterday don't happen often - but they make all the struggles of teaching worthwhile. Our students completely blew us away yesterday! A tradition of this course is that we invite our community partner staff members and the Director of the Office of Service Learning to the last day of class for a group reflection, and for the students to hand over their research portfolios to our partner.
Next week, March 8, our students will turn in their completed research portfolios to Project READ. So this week (week 9), the groups were working fast and furious to continue compiling their portfolios and write appropriate recommendations based on their research. This is the part where the students apply critical thinking skills by synthesizing the research they found. Students also took a very brief 5-question review "quiz." The quiz covered the big concepts we covered, like evaluating information and the invisible web.
Last week in class, our students spent time working in groups to revise their citations and annotations for the annotated bibliography and also begin to compile some recommendations based on their research. We met with each team separately to check on their progress and make some suggestions about how to improve their citations and annotations and how to start writing recommendations. Since our goal is for the students to experience all stages of information literacy, the recommendations they will write will be a way for them to synthesize the information they have found.