Post conference

We gave a paper on 'Engaging the iPod generation' at the Higher Education Academy's annual conference yesterday. It was a great experience and it really highlighted to us that we, librarians, need to engage with academics at these type of events much more. They are our customers and we need to know what they're talking to each other about and, more importantly, we need to tell them what we're doing in our community of practice as this can often have a really positive impact on their work.

Photos include Nancy standing by the poster and Ann-Marie and Dr Maxine Lintern (Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at the University of Birmingham) standing outside the famous Betty's tea room in Harrogate.

BRUM on YouTube

I forgot to mention in the last post how we did manage to upload two of our BRUM RLOs on to YouTube. I think one of them did have or is still having problems with sound and visuals matching up but it was really just to see if it could be done at all. Last time I checked we had about 700 hits for one of them and 60 for the other. We have no idea who is looking at them or why or, more likely, people have stumbled on them by mistake.

I'm also in the process of contributing 5 of the RLOs to Jorum. I'll test them out first and then unleash them!

To see the BRUM RLOs on YouTube please follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brumproject&search=Search

Happy viewing - feedback welcome!

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.