Guidelines – recommendations

Academic Integrity Business plans Guidelines - recommendations

How to ethically use articles and reports from databases licensed by a library?

This question is quite astute as it allows me to consider both academic integrity as well as complying with copyright and licensing requirements. I’m periodically asked whether one can send an article or a report from a licensed database by our University Library to someone outside of our University’s library. The gist:

Don’t share, just cite

Source: Olivier Charbonneau, Senior Librarian, Concordia University (Montréal)

To expand on this simple guideline I can provide the following insight: our licensing agreements with most of our vendors do not allow members of the University Community to send the verbatim or full reports to parties from the external community. So, please do not forward PDFs from our licensed databases outside of our University. Caveat: anything on the “free web” – such as websites/reports from governments – are free to share in full (as per the Canadian Copyright Act).

I know this is unfortunate but I offer you a silver lining: members of the university community are allowed to read, learn and cite from reports or articles from our licensed databases to draft summaries or briefs. In addition, you can cite from multiple sources to craft a really powerful synthesis of a complex business topic. This resulting paper is your own, as long as you cite short but salient passages from reports or articles our licensed databases and provide the source in a proper bibliography (footnotes and/orendnotes).

This advice stems from a simple ethical rule in research: if you share a single source in full, this is usually called stealing… but if you cite salient but short passages from multiple sources and provide proper references, this is called research. The resulting research paper is yours: the authors of the research paper own the copyright of the resulting paper with citations and can leverage or mobilize it as they wish, like selling it to a client or posting it on the free web.

This is the ethical rule in authorship, in line with various complex copyright or licensing requirements, that exemplifies best practices for the university community. In addition, it also provides for a “value-added” service for business analysis: selecting and arranging salient business insight in a research brief. Believe it or not, this is what you are groomed to do in our business school. Your question exemplifies best practices, that of validating with a colleague how best to proceed given a novel or uncertain context.

In addition to the above insight, please allow me to point out the following resources I’ve created to support Canadian entrepreneurs:

1. I have created a “quick list” of best resources on the free web for entrepreneurship research on this post on my work blog: Researching a business plan using free sources

2. My “expanded” list of resources, with licensed databases from our collection, is on the Library website: Entrepreneurship research guide

In closing, please note that this summer, I shall be overhauling my research guides and corresponding YouTube tutorials, so these sources will shift in the coming months, as fast as this humble librarian (and single dad from an undisclosed location deep in the Montréal Suburbs) can crank out web and video Open Educational Resources. Please consult my work blog, www.outfind.ca, for updates.

Guidelines - recommendations Information literacy Publishing

Articles for business & academic insight

This post contains the lecture notes I will be using in an honors level undergraduate class. Remember, the library offers a Business Research Portal.

1. Is there information on the Internet?

  • Lecture; 10 minutes
  • Synthesis: Information (or more precisely: facts, opinions and data) is contained in documents. Documents may be posted on the Internet or published in electronic or print venues accessible through subscriptions or other forms of payment. A successful search for information implies thinking about (1) the motivations of those creating documents (e.g.: the goal) and their (2) expectations about posting on the internet or publishing in paid-for venues (e.g.: the source).

2. Compare articles

  • Activity; 10 minutes; Compare articles from various sources: blog, magazine, trade journal, Wikipedia, subject encyclopedia and scholarly journal

Paper copies: magazines and scholarly journals

Wikipedia (Entry for International business) vs. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (entry for International Business)

Blog (The benefits of online gambling) vs. Research Article (Video Lottery is the Most Harmful Form of Gambling in Canada)

  • Focus: distinction between free or invisible (library) web
  • Synthesis: all articles are not created for the same audiences. Academic or peer-reviewed articles are the standard way to publish research results. University students are groomed to craft academic articles through writing papers as part of the requirements for their classes

3. Academic articles: structure and editorial process of scholarly communication

  • Lecture; 10 minutes
  • Synthesis: Structure & Editorial process of scholarly communication.
  • Structure of an academic article: research questions; conceptual framework; hypothesis/objectives and method; data & analysis; conclusion (very similar to an academic paper)
  • Process: peer review

4. Tools & strategies

  • Activity: 20 minutes
  • Transforming concepts to keywords for database searching
  • Compare Google Scholar and a library article database
  • Working from a known item – read the bibliography and explore related articles. Locate the article in a database and obtain keywords
  • Data sources on the Internet – be mindful of secrets

5. Outputs

Annotated bibliography: 5 minutes

Academic paper: 5 minutes

Using MS Word(tm) with style

Citing business databases in APA format

Automated citation system: RefWorks or Zotero

6. Questions and discussion

 

From the Library

This is a list of existing pages or resources on the library website about articles.

Business Research Portal: list of Articles databases

Library Research Skills Tutorial: Finding articles

Finding

Articles

Peer-reviewed articles

How to identify scholarly, academic or peer-reviewed articles (pptx, 2.6 mb)

Evaluating

How to evaluate research materials and resources

Articles

Websites

Writing

Annotated bibliography

Literature review

Research paper

Writing assistance

Citing

Automated citation system: RefWorks or Zotero

How to cite: APA style

Export/import instructions for databases

Help

Ask-A-Librarian (Email, Chat, In person, phone)

Contact a business librarian (including Olivier) via lib-business@concordia.ca

Blended Learning Guidelines - recommendations Information Technology Inspiration Open education

Report on 10 trends that can transform education

A new report from the UK highlights 10 trends or new techniques in education that may have a profound impact on how we teach and learn. Academics from the Institute of Educational Technology and the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology at The Open University offer us the Innovating Pedagogy report, the third such report released to date.

Here is the outline:

Massive open social learning : Free online courses based on social learning
Learning design informed by analytics: A productive cycle linking design and analysis of effective learning
Flipped classroom: Blending learning inside and outside the classroom
Bring your own devices: Learners use their personal tools to enhance learning in the classroom
Learning to learn: Learning how to become an effective learner
Dynamic assessment: Giving the learner personalized assessment to support learning
Event-based learning: Time-bounded learning events
Learning through storytelling: Creating narratives of memories and events
Threshold concepts: Troublesome concepts and tricky topics for learning
Bricolage: Creative tinkering with resources

IMG_0195.PNG

Guidelines - recommendations Information literacy Inspiration

InfoLit Best Practices looking for example cases

According to the Information Literacy Blog, the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Information Literacy Best Practices Committee “is looking for information literacy programs that are exemplary in any of the categories outlined in Characteristics of Programs of Information Literacy that Illustrate Best Practices: A Guideline.”
More information here: http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/sections/is/iswebsite/committees/bestpractices

Guidelines - recommendations Universities

The more things change…

I liked this interesting take on undergraduate tacit knowledge from this experienced librarian in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Some key take-back points:

Journals and magazines are published as ongoing series. For those of us who remember print, articles are bundled into issues, issues into volumes, and every year more articles are published in these bundles. If every article you ever read was found online, the relationship of articles to a particular journal published in a particular year is not at all obvious.
News is different than opinion. I’m so ancient I grew up with newspapers printed on newsprint, delivered to your doorstep every morning and afternoon. (Hard to believe, but even small cities typically had two major newspapers dividing the day.) One thing that is immediately obvious from the layout of a printed newspaper is that news and opinion are different categories. One could argue that news is strongly influenced by reporters’ opinions or the orientation of the publication, but when it comes to making choices about what information to use and how to use it, the distinction between reporting and opining matters. That distinctiveness is much harder to recognize online.
Read more: Inside Higher Ed

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marinal/8291381232/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marinal/8291381232/sizes/o/in/photostream/


It reminded me of and linked to the Beloit College Mindset List, sumarizing what new undergraduates have experienced in their lifetime… an important read for everyone deling with “kids” these days!

Guidelines - recommendations Librarianship Universities

ALA on digital literacy

The American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy launched last January a report called “Digital Literacy, Libraries, and Public Policy” – the 27 page PDF report can be downloaded here.

Here is what the document has to say about Academic Libraries (p. 14-16)

Academic Libraries
The role of the academic library in the higher education ecosystem reflects the important relationship between the classroom professors, the curriculum, and the librarians in contributing to students‟ digital literacy. That is, the degree to which students take advantage of library resources—and the digital literacy skills they can gain by working with librarians—is influenced by the extent to which their official coursework or classroom time provides a link.

Digital Literacy through Information LiteracyAlthough academic libraries are more focused on information literacy than digital literacy, these two twenty-first century literacies are closely linked: information literacy requires digital literacy to access appropriate online research sources, and information literacy gives further context to the evaluation skills developed by digital literacy. ACRL‟s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education are often cited as a key resource on the role of and criteria for information literacy.

44 Furthermore, students learn many skills and research methods beyond what they learn in or about the library; thus, the development of information literacy is gained partly inside but also outside of the library.

Collaborative Partnerships
Information literacy initiatives often are a campus-wide effort. Librarians partner with professors, student affairs professionals, and media services staff, among others, to advance both the library and campus missions. Yet despite the potential of academic libraries to contribute to information literacy, perhaps the greatest challenge for academic librarians is that college students make much less use of librarians‟ expertise than they could. A five-campus, 2-year ethnographic study investigating how students perceive and use their campus libraries revealed that “students rarely ask librarians for help, even when they need it.”
45 The study findings detail just how underdeveloped students’ skills are when it comes to applying the digital fluency they show in nonacademic settings (e.g., on Facebook, in texting, in sharing videos with friends) in traditionally academic settings and with academic resources.

Many campuses are recognizing the importance of redefining what digital literacy means in the realm of higher education. They are taking an unvarnished, pragmatic look at students’ struggles to engage fully with digital resources and communities in academic settings and at what information skills students need for the workplace. Librarians are applying these findings by striving to work closely with university administrators and professors to integrate information literacy skills into the student learning process. At the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, for example, librarians helped write the basic English curriculum, ensuring that the standard course, reaching 78 percent of freshmen, was aligned with ACRL information literacy standards.

Today, “students simply cannot pass either semester of freshman composition without meeting a certain minimal threshold of information literacy in accordance with ACRL standards 1 through 4.” (note 46)

Activity Level in the Field
Instructional efforts at academic libraries take many forms, from face-to-face and web-based instructional offerings to carefully crafted pathfinders and guides. The libraries have appointments devoted to instruction and information literacy, and each year ACRL‟s Institute for Information Literacy Immersion Program trains academic librarians in the development, delivery, assessment, and management of information literacy. (note 47)
Today‟s information literacy efforts reflect an extensive level of activity in the field. According to a recent ALA report on Trends in Academic Libraries, for example, “nearly half (46.6 percent) of all academic libraries reporting had a definition for information literacy or an information literate student, increasing
about 18.2 percent in 2008 from 2004.” (note 48 )
Additionally, there was “a 13 percent increase in 2008 from 2004 of all academic libraries reporting having incorporated information literacy into their institutional missions.” Note 49
Growth also has occurred in the overall number of instruction sessions and in the number of learners reached by the instruction.

In addition to course-integrated offerings and guides, some institutions offer for-credit information literacy courses. Iowa State University‟s Library 160 course is by far one of the oldest information literacy courses in the United States. In its nearly 100-year history, the course has undergone many curriculum transformations, from an introductory library session to now shaping its core outcomes according to ACRL‟s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. The required 1-credit hour course is structured with readings and quizzes that cover information needs, web resources and evaluation, library resources, scholarly and popular articles, how to work with the library‟s databases, and academic integrity and plagiarism. In today‟s digital environment, social responsibility in information use is more important than ever.

Librarians instruct students in proper citation techniques and ethical retrieval methods. They help college students hone the critical and problem-solving skills needed to survive and thrive in a digital world. Such activities will prepare students for future academic success and set the stage for lifelong learning habits.

The Academic Librarian’s Toolkit
Academic librarians are true innovators in the classroom, ever investigating interactive instructional methods and new modes of delivering instruction. Today‟s classroom environment calls on librarians to meet students where they are, which may be beyond library walls.

Librarians work to embed tools such as chat widgets into library databases and use multimedia guides such as LibGuides to enhance instruction sessions and assignments. They also create online tutorials and instructional videos; use learning management systems; and craft interactive, homegrown games for use by students to explore information literacy concepts. And by working with Web 2.0 technologies, they encourage students to gain confidence with exploring new technologies while modeling appropriate, responsible use of them. In all of these efforts, librarians strive to make the learning experience as dynamic and engaging as possible.

Information Literacy Assessment Initiatives
An extensive body of literature focused on information literacy explores, among many other aspects of the subject, how people experience and respond to the changing digital world. The University of Washington Information School‟s ongoing research project on Project Information Literacy is one example of a systematic and concentrated effort to document the state of competency in information literacy among undergraduate students across the United States and across all institution types, including public and private universities and colleges and community colleges. note 50

Many academic libraries today, in line with campus information literacy initiatives, have undertaken assessment of the impact of these initiatives on student learning and the effectiveness of instruction. Standardized testing options are available with which to assess instructional programs and measure the information literacy abilities of students. The Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS) and the iSkills Assessment from the Educational Testing Service are two tools used for this purpose. Additionally, libraries may use a self-reporting assessment tool such as LibQUAL+ to collect both quantitative and qualitative information on instructional programs and information literacy efforts. The National Survey of
Student Engagement (NSSE) is another assessment tool that measures the quality of colleges and universities in relationship to the effort students put into learning, how institutions make resources available, and how they organize curriculum. Currently, an information literacy module is being developed for NSSE. note 51

These assessments enable librarians to remain responsive to user needs. In turn, librarians can confidently communicate with campus administrators and legislators, showing them data that support the impact of the library on students‟ information literacy development.

Guidelines - recommendations Inspiration Open education

Let a million Apps Bloom

A random RSS item sent me to Allan Carrington’s interesting blog post on applying Bloom’s taxonomy to Apps, called the Padagogy Wheel (as in using iPads in pedagogy).

Source: http://www.unity.net.au/allansportfolio/edublog/?p=324

Source: http://www.unity.net.au/allansportfolio/edublog/?p=324


See a high-resolution version of this image on a poster padwheelposter[1]

Also, here is a short video that explains how the Padagogy Wheel works:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAYVQlUVpK4&w=560&h=315]

As Allen writes :

During my research I saw lots of great work done by others using Bloom’s Taxonomy including the Revised Taxonomy which has now become the Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. However when I discovered the excellent pioneer work done by Kathy Schrock with “Bloomin’ Apps” I got the idea for the Padagogy Wheel. Dare I say it but it is the next version for mobile learning of the ongoing importance of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom’s is still fundamental to good teaching and learning.

I’ve visited all the links mentioned in this paragraph and they provide great information about Bloom’s taxonomy, its revisions and applicaitons to the digital world. How interesting!