Reference, Instruction, and Outreach (RIO)

Mark Lasek led our discussion on information literacy and distance learning. Mark informed the group about the fact that most of the new nursing students for each class are lacking in information skills that the faculty expects them to have. He has created lessons/learning plans for each level of student to increase their skills as they advance through the program. He has found that lessons need to be timed so that the students learned the skills just before they needed to do their assignments (otherwise, they would not see the need to learn the skills). Mark also stated that he created a rubric specific to each assignment with learning objectives. Lucas Petruzzini of Mildred Elley stated that they teach presentation skills at the same time they teach information skills. The group discussed that students need to learn to back up their work on several different sites/storage devices. They trust too much that their chosen site will be secure and/or available when they need it. As for distance learners –crystal clear, detailed instructions are necessary, also a complete list of contacts and their hours of availability. The distances involved can make time zones a problem for these contacts. Jen Anderson from Sage stated that they were doing a series of mandatory webinars for their distance learners and that one consideration was that international students needed to use voice over IP to connect rather than 1-800-numbers. Many users, both local and distant, do not understand the differences in types of libraries (i.e. – public vs. academic), and will often go to a library of a different type than they need, and expect the same resources. This happens quite a bit for students who want to visit a library closer to them than their school library, and/or it is closed when they need to use it. It was emphasized that for all of the efforts on the part of the library HAVE to have faculty buy-in for them to be successful, which can be difficult to obtain.