Post project update

We've both been busy with BRUM related activities in the past couple of months. After LILAC we were asked to write an article about the project for the next issue of ALISS journal. This will be published in August. The article focuses on our issues surrounding the project including independent learning and new forms of communication technologies. Please send us any feedback from the article.

We are giving a paper at the HEA annual conference in Harrogate tomorrow on engaging the iPod generation. I'm really looking forward to this presentation as it gives us a chance to engage with academics as well as learning support staff to discuss the pedagogical issues around information literacy and how we engage with students. We're both looking forward to meeting new people and our first visit to Harrogate.

I'm off to another HEA event next week in Loughborough called Delivering Information Skills. It's being held at the EngCetl and I was asked to produce a poster for the event. It will be a great chance to catch up with some familiar IL faces and to discuss our project with other information professionals who deliver training.

Throughout preparation for our talk at the HEA annual conference Ann-Marie and I have been mulling over lots of different issues including student feedback. We both feel as if there is a dichotomy between being obsessed with gathering feedback and statistics and the response to the results of that feedback. Should we just respond without delving further into the answers students give or do we need to engage students in more qualitative feedback?

Last academic year two colleagues and I ran an information skills module on the University's Personal Skills Award. Our assessment for the students was a learning journal describing how their information skills had progressed throughout the course. The journals made for interesting reading as we realised we asked them for 2000 words of qualitative feedback on IL training! The overall feedback was very positive with students explaining how the IL training that we had given them had improved their academic performance.

I think that we need to do more to engage students in our planning of training and services or at least do more to understand their point of view and expectations.