Got Polling?

You are standing in front of a classroom full of students, trying to explain how to narrow a search from 100,000 results to a more manageable amount. Suddenly, the students all point strange remote-control-shaped devices at you and begin pressing the buttons. Lights flash on the screen behind you... No, it’s not a horrible nightmare—you’ve started using clicker technology in your instruction sessions!

Clickers, small devices that work with the companion software on the instructors’ machine and a remote receiver, allow students to answer pre-written questions during the course of a class by simply pressing a button. Students’ answers are instantly and anonymously displayed on the instructor’s computer or projected onto a screen. Answers display in a variety of forms, including multi-colored graphs, with default graphs being determined by the instructor.

The Biomedical Library recently used the Interwrite PRS system from the Office of Instructional Development in multiple sessions for an upper-division Ecology and Evolutionary Biology course (EEB100). Previously designed to be taught without clickers, the instructional sessions already included many opportunities for interaction. Integrating clicker questions into the course was not a significant challenge. We used the clickers to ask questions about students’ year in school, their previous experiences with library resources, and experience with writing papers. We also used the clicker questions to assess students’ understanding of concepts covered in the class, such as the purpose of truncation symbols and locating call numbers within the Biomedical Library. Students’ reactions to the clickers were overall quite positive. Some surprised gasps were heard when the first graph appeared on the projector screen, and students were enthusiastic about answering the questions.

Our instructors also enjoyed using the clickers in the class. Students’ response allowed us to determine if students understood the topics covered, and gave us an opportunity for class remediation without singling out individuals. The system encourages participation through anonymity, allowing all “voices” to be heard, not just those who felt confident enough to speak up in front of class. Clicker questions helped to keep students’ attention during each 2 hour class session, giving instructors an engaged and energized audience.

For more information contact Amy Chatfield achatfie@library.ucla.edu and Rikke Ogawa rikke.ogawa@library.ucla.edu at the Biomedical Library.

Informal Brown Bag Session: Educause Learning Institute - Creating a Successful Learning Culture

UCLA Attendees Lisa Kemp Jones and Aura Lippincott will share what they learned at the conference (January, 2007) and lead a discussion.

Wednesday, February 28 12:30-1:30pm in Powell 320B (CLICC Classroom B).

The conference sessions explored the following themes:

• What should we understand about learners, learning principles, and learning technologies that would allow us to enhance learner success? How do we build that into our institutional culture?
• How has technology changed the way people communicate and network? How can higher education leverage these changes to improve learning?
• How can technology help connect learners, communities, and information in meaningful ways?
• How do we address the need for evidence about learning, teaching, and technology? What questions should be asked? What evidence should guide future improvements?
• Review of two different approaches to learning spaces - Emory University and Georgia Tech

You can read more about the conference at www.educause.edu/eli071 and listen to podcasts of some of the featured sessions at connect.educause.edu/term_view/ELI2007 (under Community > Blog)

This program is sponsored by the UCLA Library Information Literacy Program Instructional Development and Instructional Technology Interest Groups.

Call for Participation: ACRL IS/AS Conference Program Virtual Poster Sessions

Together with the Arts Section, the Instruction Section of ACRL invites proposal submissions for Virtual Poster Sessions being offered in connection with the Conference Program at ALA 2007 in Washington, D.C. The conference program, titled Eye to I: Visual Literacy Meets Information Literacy, will explore the relationship between these two sets of abilities.

More information, including the official call for proposals, is available at: www.indiana.edu/~libinstr/eye2i/index.html.

Happy TRAILS - Assessing Information Literacy Skills

If you are both interested in assessing information literacy skills in general, and curious about what our school and media specialist colleagues are doing in this arena, the TRAILS project should be of interest to you. We can learn more about what is going on in the K-12 environment and might even get some inspiration from the TRAILS instrument for our own instructional endeavors.

TRAILS (Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) is a federally funded project to create a tool for library media specialists and teachers to assess the information literacy skills of their high school students. TRAILS first went live in spring 2006 and was refined this summer. It is now available in its expanded form.

TRAILS is standards-based and freely available on the Web. Student privacy is assured, as the system does not collect any identifying information. The multiple-choice assessment items are based on the 9th grade Ohio Academic Content Standards (www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?Page=2&TopicRelationID=305) and Information Power (www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/informationpower/informationpower.htm) (American Association of School Librarians).

You are invited to see if TRAILS might be of use to you. It is at: www.trails9.org.

If you used TRAILS previously, you may find the new features useful:

• five refined information literacy categories, each with two new, 10-item assessments
• improved items on each of the 30-item general assessments
• capability to copy student codes to use in a new session
• capability for students to review their responses after a session is closed
• improved session management
• discussion list for account holders to get news and share ideas

TRAILS is a project of the Institute for Library and Information Literacy Education (ILILE) (www.ilile.org/) at Kent State University and is directed by the University Libraries. ILILE is funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (www.imls.gov/)) and the U.S. Department of Education (www.ed.gov/index.jhtml).

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• Library News for the Faculty (www2.library.ucla.edu/facultynews/3300.cfm)
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The UCLA Library Staff Newsweb is published every other Monday by Library Human Resources. News items should be sent to Sheila Knapp, Library Newsweb, LHR. Please submit via email to Sheila at sknapp@library.ucla.edu. The deadline for the next issue (March 5) is Friday, February 23 at 3 p.m.

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