Week 2 Post 2: Integration & Course Design Worksheet

Integrating Steps 1-4

1. Situational Factors

          I think that the situational factors are reflected well in the other steps I have written about. Continuing off the job outlook scenario, the only problem I can think of is that freshmen students may have no idea that these resources even exist. As a result, they may not even know to go to them. For example, I worked 1-on-1 with a student a week after his class came for library instruction. We had spoken about professional organizations in class, but did not have the chance to delve deeper. He was interested in the medical field, but was not aware that there were professional organizations he could join such as the American Medical Association (or any listed here: http://www.meditec.com/resourcestools/professional-associations-list/), but he was unaware of what they do. I explained that they have conferences, committees, networking and job search resources, and more. Therefore, I could see some trouble with expecting students to find professional organizations if they don't know they exist or what their function is (I could do a whole class on those alone!). 

        I don't foresee any disconnects in the way I propose to run my course, other than that in the grand scheme of things I'm doing assignment-driven one-shot classes. Each class will be a bit different, and because I may focus on specific types of resources for a class, those students are not going to have a true overview of what kind of resources the library has for all kinds of classes and topics. 

2. Learning Goals and Feedback & Assessment

        The job outlook scenario addresses the full range of learning goals well. As I said in an earlier post, a goal is for students to understand how to search for credible information through college and beyond. Having mastered this, students can begin joining professional organizations and applying to jobs while still in college, and then use what they've learned later in life when moving up the job ladder. They will also be able to apply this to looking for houses, cars, and healthcare. Feedback does give information about all of the goals, because asking questions and having a discussion allows the opportunity to give praise for correct answers and to further explore areas that are lacking. If I do the peer discussions about the information found, it would help students learn how to evaluate each other which will give way to them thinking more critically about evaluating their own work. If the peer discussions don't happen, the class discussions could also do this, it just may take a bit longer to get to that point.

3. Learning Goals and Teaching/Learning Activities

        Yes, I believe the class discussion or peer discussions would effectively support the learning goals. The video I like to show about why searching databases is better than the internet will still apply in the job outlook scenario, but there could be a couple gaps in that job outlook searching will also require a bit of Google use in addition to library resources.

4. Teaching/Learning Activities and Feedback & Assessment

         I feel like this is the most difficult part. If I were giving an actual grade during the one-shot I feel like this would apply more, but since I'm not it's a little harder to evaluate the efficiency of the feedback loop. I think the practice learning activities and feedback opportunities do prepare students for assessment activities, though. The only real evaluation that can truly be done would be by their instructor that would read their completed papers on the job outlook and assign a grade based on similar criteria that I mentioned in my previous post.

Here is a link to the worksheet.