I had a brief, but enjoyable, visit to the Western Conference on Science Education at UWO (July 6-8, 2011). I attended on the Thursday to share with educators in attendance some of the things we’re experimenting with in the Science Literacy component of iSci. The format was interesting – speakers were paired up by topic similarity, and after those there was a discussion period lasting about a half hour. I was paired up with Francis Jones out of UBC, who was doing some very cool things in a second-year Earth and Ocean Science course to develop ‘scientific skills’. Some of the things that Francis and we are trying overlap, and some diverge, but that’s where great idea sharing can happen. I’ll be getting in touch with Francis to get more detail on a few areas, particularly his approach to students developing a good scientific question.

My presentation is below. I was particularly chuffed when one of the attendees told me that I had the best designed slides at the conference.

Explaining Science: Embedding Science Literacy into a Research-Based Undergraduate Program

On Thursday March 31st, Krista Godfrey, Karen Nicholson and I participated in a panel presentation on three models of embedded librarianship at ACRL 2011. In an unusual twist, we had no convener to introduce us, so we ran the show ourselves. We were playing to packed house, probably due to a combination of talking about a hot topic, and being in an ideal timeslot (10:30am on the first day). Our ‘hook’ was that we were presenting our models as if they were the best, and we were debating each other to prove to the audience, and let them be our jury (plus, a beer was on the line).

One feature that ACRL offered was to print a twitter hashtag in the conference schedule (further reinforced by including it on our title slide). This led to a lively ‘backchannel’ conversation in the audience, which included thoughts, links and notes. A big plus of a twitter discussion is that it allows the presenters to read what the audience is thinking in a way that doesn’t often come across in questions. Furthermore, that ‘discussion’ can be saved and shared (which I’ve done below).
Thanks to all who participated! (And special thanks to those that personally approached us after the talk to say they enjoyed it)

Embedded Librarians: Three Models – ACRL 2011

Twitter archive after the jump.

Twitter Archive

This is an article that I co-wrote with the director of McMaster’s Integrated Science program about the some of the new ideas and collaborations we’re trying. It’s great to be able to share our ideas with a wide audience. The article was originally published in EDUCAUSE Review.

Colgoni, A. & Eyles, C., January/February 2010. A New Approach to Science Education for the 21st Century. EDUCAUSE Review. 45(1):10-11.

Technically, my first information literacy class. The first hour and a bit was taken up with this ‘lecture’, which included some opportunity to discuss evaluation criteria for websites, and a source jeopardy game.

Part II, the second hour and a half, required the students to find, collect, checkout, photocopy, print, and cite. They did this as a group, and some had to leave our location to visit another library. In effect, this was an opportunity to ‘troubleshoot’ common problems with me in the room.

Library 101 for iSci 2009

Information Sources Location Activity.