Resnis, Eric
resnisew
Recent Submissions
Item Reframing Liaisonship: Moving Towards Quality User Engagement
Resnis, Eric; Natale, JenniferAs librarianship continues to evolve, the roles of the liaison librarian have also changed considerably. So, what are the priorities for an effective liaison? This program will detail our institution's reframing of liaison work, focusing on user engagement and how we better foster quality liaisonship as a result.Item Capitalizing on University Resources for Easy and Economical Information Literacy Assessment
Resnis, EricePortfolios continue to gain strength in higher education as a viable and relatively quick method for assessment of student work. Miami University (Oxford, OH) recently implemented Chalk & Wire as its ePortfolio system for the entire campus. The libraries have partnered with several departments to utilize ePortfolios for the assessment of information literacy skills. Student work from departments are automatically forwarded to a team of librarians that assess the work using a revised version of the information literacy rubric developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). What is unique about this process is that the artifacts are not tailored to the library or to the information literacy rubric. Now in its third year, this project has provided extremely valuable and robust data regarding the information literacy skills at Miami. It assists in developing a baseline for students, and helps us to see progression in information literacy as students move through the curriculum. The assessments have provided data on which classes need further assistance with research assignments, classes that need syllabi revised to better assist students in the research process, and has helped us to easily identify classes and assignments that can serve as a model to others.Item Engagement, Effectiveness & Efficiency: Energize Your Personal Librarian Program
Natale, Jennifer; Resnis, EricMiami University Libraries created a Personal Librarian program to supplement our liaison system in support of student success and information literacy advancement. Our program was designed to integrate into university curriculum and build toward connections with subject librarians. The program was designed to be efficient by use of a project management tool and to be assessed by mostly existing data. Participants can expect to learn how a Personal Librarian program can be integrated into a first-year university course, how to utilize a project management tool to administer a program, and methods for assessment. Our target audience includes those who want to start a program or improve their program with new ideas and methods of assessment.Item Dedicated Technology Facilities: Impacts, Success, and Implications
Resnis, EricMiami University’s Assessment in Action project examined the effectiveness of two high-end digital media facilities. The first study of the project compared the technological self-efficacy of students who used the facilities to those who used other computing facilities without a comparable suite of equipment. The second project evaluated the visual literacy of students who created research project posters using the facilities compared to those who did not.Item Spicing up the Orientation: Promoting Brill Science Library
Resnis, EricThis poster describes “Follow The Silk Road….to the Science Library”, a new orientation for the Brill Science Library at Miami University. The orientation combined many important ingredients including outreach, information literacy, collaboration, and university-wide program involvement; all in a non-threatening and fun atmosphere. Discover what is needed to make this type of event possible and how you might implement such an orientation at your institutionItem Smart Searching: An Online Information Literacy Tutorial Tailored Specifically To Introductory Engineering Students
Resnis, EricA common problem facing librarians today is convincing students about the world of information beyond Google. Traditional library instruction is a reasonable answer, but tends not to be effective. First, introductory science courses at Miami University (Oxford, OH) are usually far too large for instruction, with enrollments of between 300 and 800 students. Secondly, many students at this stage fail to see the relevancy of the library instruction because they have not made the connection between good information seeking skills and improved assignments. Finally, students may not see the importance of the instruction because it is not geared towards their current situation. One example of this is E-learn, an online tutorial developed several years ago by the Miami University Libraries. However, the examples used in E-learn were too general to be of great help to science students. In this era of customization and personalization, several librarians at Miami University decided to create a set of online tutorials that are designed specifically for students in specific introductory engineering courses. The result is: Smart Searching: Finding, Citing, & Evaluating Information (http://e-learn.lib.muohio.edu/science/eas and http://e-learn.lib.muohio.edu/science/eas102 ). Librarians worked closely with faculty in the Engineering departments to create this set of tutorials for the introductory engineering courses (300 students). The Smart Searching tutorials have several features that make them unique and applicable to students in these courses. The tutorials are designed to address information seeking skills needed for assignments in each course. Examples used in the tutorials are topics that will be encountered during the course. Secondly, a blog is built in to the tutorials to ease communication between the librarians and students. The tutorials were also created with a customizable back-end interface, so that changes can be completed with ease. While each tutorial is customized to one course, each tutorial can be used as a refresher for students once they leave the course. This session will document the process of creating Smart Searching from initial idea to implementation and its evolution from an optional activity to a fully integrated and required assignment within the introductory engineering courses.Item Gettin' Hot in Here: Using Global Warming to Connect the Library with the Community
Resnis, Eric; Nichols-Buckley, AmberWho knew that a topic as controversial as global warming could bring people together? GAIA (Global Awareness and Information Access), a year-long series of events, with global warming as the central theme, provided students and community members with the information needed to create informed opinions about this heated topic. Come by to get all of the details of the GAIA initiative, including the planning, advertising, sponsorship, and collaboration needed to make this series a success.Item What Information Literacy Means to Me: Collaborating with Faculty to Understand Student Perceptions of Information Literacy
Resnis, Eric; Gibson, Katie; Misco, Masha; Hartsell-Gundy, ArianneThis presentation recounts the experiences of The Faculty Learning Community for Improving Student Research Literacy, a community of professors and librarians at Miami University (Oxford, OH). Community members created a survey for students in their courses to self-assess information literacy skills that faculty perceived important. Approximately 400 students completed the survey, the results of which were matched to professor definitions of information literacy and a common list of information literacy skills desired by professors. Professors then utilized that data to enhance their syllabi by infusing information literacy skills throughout their courses.Item Do They Really Know? Collaborating with Faculty on Information Literacy Assessment
Resnis, Eric; Gibson, Katie; Misco, Masha; Hartsell-Gundy, ArianneThis poster will recount the experience of Miami University's Faculty Learning Community for Improving Student Research Literacy, a group of professors and librarians who work together on incorporating information literacy skills into the curriculum. Faculty members wondered early on how students in their classes conceive of their own information literacy skills. These conversations led to the creation of a survey for students to self-assess the information literacy skills that faculty perceived important, including: 1) How and where students are searching for information; 2) Student perceptions to perform information research, and its applicability outside the library; 3)Location(s) where students perform information research; 4)Differences in information literacy skill perceptions between class level and experience with paper writing. Approximately 400 students were reached with the survey instrument. Results of the survey were matched to professor definitions of information literacy and a common list of desired information literacy skills created by professors at the beginning of the academic year. Study results allowed community members to see where perceptions among professors, librarians, and students were similar, and where they differed greatly. The results led to rich and stimulating conversations about how students perceive information literacy.Item Campus-wide partnerships to improve students’ academic integrity iQ
Resnis, Eric; Miller, Lindsay; Withers, RobertMiami University’s iQ (short for integrity Quickstart) is a newly created online tutorial that guides students through different scenarios about academic integrity and research issues. Each scenario introduces the student to a new topic with animated Flash video, additional resources and short quizzes to assess their understanding. iQ was created through a partnership between the Libraries, University IT and Student Affairs. Instructional designers from IT helped us to transform the content into short video-based snippets. The presentation tools from Prezi.com give iQ its visually appealing, non-linear structure. Additionally, staff from Student Affairs help us to tailor the content on academic integrity and consequences for violation. Numerous challenges were encountered to ensure that the end product was something exemplary of Miami’s commitment to these topics. This poster will cover the creation and implementation of iQ at Miami University. We will discuss how iQ works as both a standalone learning tool and as part of a bibliographic information session and how campus partnerships can help foster institutional buy-in for academic integrity and information literacy.Item Joining forces with Faculty to Foster Information Literacy Best Practices in the Classroom
Resnis, Eric; Sullivan, Elizabeth; Miller, Lindsay; Pickens, KathleenFaculty often are frustrated by the quality of student research, including low scholarly resource use and lack of evaluation skills. Miami University (Oxford, OH) has created a faculty learning community (comprised of both faculty and librarians) to explore the above concerns during the course of an academic year. During the first semester, faculty discovered the information literacy skills of their students via survey tools, focus groups, and class observation. Disturbed by the results, faculty began work on a “best practices” list for bringing information literacy skills into the classroom. This poster will detail the process, successes, and future prospects for this project.Item Integrated Information Literacy Assessment using ePortfolios
Resnis, EricePortfolios continue to gain strength in higher education as a viable and relatively quick method for assessment of student work. Miami University recently implemented Chalk & Wire as its ePortfolio system for the entire campus system of 21,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduate students. Numerous programs and departments have embraced assessment using ePortfolios. One of the earlier adopters was the Honors Program, with a philosophy that focuses on student development in seven outcome areas (URL). Students create ePortfolios that demonstrate their growth in each outcome during the school year, and these ePortfolios are assessed by program staff and affiliated faculty. The libraries have partnered with the Honors Program to utilize ePortfolios for the assessment of information literacy skills. Artifacts from three of the seven Honors Program outcomes (communication, inquiry, and critical/integrative thinking) are automatically forwarded to a team of librarians that assess the work using the Information Literacy rubric developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). These artifacts are the same that are submitted to the honors program, and are tailored for our purposes. This poster will further explain the project, detail the results from initial assessments, and expand on how the data was used to enhance information literacy concepts in the Honors Program curriculum. Furthermore, the poster will describe future implications for the project, including the feasibility of expanding the program to additional departments.Item Engaging with Wikipedia via Article Creation
Resnis, EricThe dichotomy of Wikipedia: many love it, and many others love to hate it. While students may not entirely understand the process behind Wikipedia, they do know that they can get information fast (and generally of high quality). Rather than just discussing Wikipedia quality, students in a three credit-hour digital literacy course were challenged to create Wikipedia articles on topics pertinent to their university. Students engaged in the entire process from Wiki syntax to proper Wikipedia formatting and editorship. After making their articles live, students let them lay for a few weeks (allowing others to edit), and then reflected on the power of peer review, the difficulty of creating an article, and how both of these contribute to the overall quality of the tool. This poster will detail the entire assignment, focusing on process and the learning that resulted.Item Capitalizing on University Resources for Easy and Economical Information Literacy Assessment
Resnis, EricePortfolios continue to gain strength in higher education as a viable and relatively quick method for assessment of student work. Miami University (Oxford, OH) recently implemented Chalk & Wire as its ePortfolio system for the entire campus. The libraries have partnered with several departments to utilize ePortfolios for the assessment of information literacy skills. Student work from departments are automatically forwarded to a team of librarians that assess the work using a revised version of the information literacy rubric developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). What is unique about this process is that the artifacts are not tailored to the library or to the information literacy rubric. Now in its third year, this project has provided extremely valuable and robust data regarding the information literacy skills at Miami. It assists in developing a baseline for students, and helps us to see progression in information literacy as students move through the curriculum. The assessments have provided data on which classes need further assistance with research assignments, classes that need syllabi revised to better assist students in the research process, and has helped us to easily identify classes and assignments that can serve as a model to othersItem Using Visual Literacy to Demonstrate the Impact of Technological Space
Natale, Jennifer; Resnis, Eric; Miami University; natalejj@miamioh.edu; resnisew@miamioh.eduLearn how we assessed the visual literacy skills of students in relation to the use of our technological spaces in the Libraries. We will share the rubric we created to assess student poster presentations at the annual Undergraduate Research Forum. Results from 2014 will be presented as well as the implementation plan for 2015.Item Student Perceptions as a Method to Improve Information Literacy
Resnis, EricPurpose When considering the information literacy skills of students, faculty (and librarians) often make assumptions as to what students know, understand, or why they act as they do. To help alleviate these misunderstandings, librarians and faculty co-created a tool to gauge student perceptions on finding information and using information in research projects. The tool is utilized in classrooms, and then faculty members (in conjunction with librarians) use that data to improve information literacy via assignments and instruction. Design/Methodology/Approach A 10-minute questionnaire was designed in late 2008 that gauges student perceptions in the following areas: • Research Habits • Resource Use • Library Use • Library Services The tool is utilized by faculty in approximately 20 courses each semester. Results (which are compiled and anonymous) are returned to the faculty member, including overall results since the project began. Faculty members discuss these results with librarians, and make changes to their assignments/syllabi based upon what they have learned. Findings Some results of the questionnaire tool were not surprising at all. For instance, student effort in seeking information is tied to grades, students overwhelming prefer online materials to print, and Google is the first place that students look for information. On the other hand, student perceptions on assignment construction and resource requirements often differed from faculty, and even librarian expectations. Just as important as the data in this project is how faculty members interpreted that data and made changes in their classrooms. The information faculty receive is personalized to their own classes, and provides additional context that they do not receive from the literature or national projects that collect similar information. Currently we have 3.5 years of data from approximately 3500 students, and continue to add to the data set each semester. Practical Implications/Value While national data collection efforts such as Project Information Literacy are very useful in helping to better understand the information literacy skills of students, sometimes that data is too general for faculty members to find value in it. Having a tool that is easily implemented in the classroom helps faculty members to better understand the problems they see in student research projects, and to change their teaching and assignments based upon what they have learned from their students. Considering that this tool costs extremely little to implement and analyze, it is an extremely high value for the change that results.Item Quality and Engaging Student Research Projects: A Student Development Theory Approach
Resnis, Eric; Tully, Kim; Shores, Mark; Long, JessieResearch projects can cause struggles for students, faculty, and librarians alike. While assumptions are made as to why these struggles occur, we propose that looking at student development theory can further assist in understanding why the struggles occur. This session will further demonstrate the connections between student development theory and the research process, and include suggestions and methods for utilizing this information in the classroom, with the intent of truly collaborative and engaging research projects.Item Reimagining Info Lit Assessment: An Inexpensive and Easy Method for Measuring IL Skill Progression
Resnis, Eric; Miller, Lindsay; Lucey, KateHow information literate are our students? How can we tell if their skills are improving during their college years? Standardized IL tests are available (iCriticalThinking and SAILS), but each requires a considerable investment to participate. Is it possible to achieve results using a separate in-house, and open source software? Yes! This presentation will describe our university’s implementation of this software, the results, and how we are using results to prove effectiveness and improve information literacy instruction.