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April 27, 2006

All Together, How? Collaboration in Research & Publication

Dr. mary McAleer Balkun, faculty member at Seton Hall Univ. was well into her presentation and was discussing results of what worked for her students, as I walked into this session a little late. Dr. Balkun is an English instructor and uses Blackboard (BB), a course management system to enhance her teaching. One point which sounded effective was her requiring her students to keep a research log and post it in BB. The students write about their research and is effective in making them better researchers. It involves the students in a 'metatative' process or the notion of 'metacognition' that is, thinking about thinking...or thinking about the research process as you conduct your research.

Dr. Balkun further elaborated on having the librarian sign onto the BB discussion room and introduce herself to the class. She praised the librarian as having a 'hands-on' and project-oriented approach with her students. Students who may be afraid to ask Dr. Balkun a dumb question would feel free to ask the librarian for help. She saw the role of the librarian as a 'coach' for her students.

Susan Bissett, librarian at Union County College spoke next. Her work with faculty at Union sounded much more challenging in working to establish a collaborative relationship with faculty. In her talk she spoke of some tough battles getting in on even ground with working with faculty. It isn't always a smooth road! Ms. Bissett mentioned some research articles and I wish I could have gotten the references as they were worth pursuing. I will try to contact her for those.

Lastly, Triveni Kuchi & Roberta Tipton, librarians from Rutgers spoke on their work on a "Learning Framework Study Group" which worked to recommend an appropriate open source online information literacy tutorial. See http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/staff/groups/instructional_services/reports/learning_frameworks.shtml

They also reviewed the 'Why' of developing a systemwide Online Tutorial. The reasons were: maintaining several smaller tutorials was troublesome and developing and keeping momentum on various projects was difficult.

Each speaker gave a different perspective of work done at various academic institutions. The differing perspectives were valuable.
Chris Herz, Gloucester County College

Posted by at April 27, 2006 2:00 PM

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