The Canadian Association of Information Science has delivered its latest issue of its Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science (via Project Muse on behalf of UT Press, the publisher), vol. 35 issue 4.

A few articles seem particularly interesting, such as:

Enhancing Skills, Effecting Change: Evaluating an Intervention for Students with Below-Proficient Information Literacy Skills / Renforcer les compétences pour induire des changements : évaluation d’une intervention auprès d’étudiants possédant des compétences informationnelles inférieures à la maîtrise
Don Latham
Melissa Gross
pp. 157-173

and

Subject Guides in Academic Libraries: A User-Centred Study of Uses and Perceptions/Les guides par sujets dans les bibliothèques académiques : une étude des utilisations et des perceptions centrée sur l’utilisateur
Dana Ouellette
pp. 226-241

Of course, all articles seem interesting, but there is so little time to read everything!

The OECD launched a 12 minute video about the PISA study, explaining how its analysts rank school systems around the world :

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugz_1Clpsdk&w=560&h=315]

Worth a listen, Jesse Brown’s podcast from TVO’s Search Engine where he interviews Grade 7 teacher Royan Lee on how cellphones are transforming his classroom.

UNESCO launched a new Open Educational Resources Platform last week.

The Call for papers is open for one more month for the InSITE Conference to be held at Concordia University on June 22 & 23 2012.

There are 4 “tracks” for the conference, according to the conference website:

Connect:

Consists of workshops and panels that connect delegates with industry and business to promote the transfer of skills, information and knowledge.

TeachIT:
Focuses on research topics related to teaching IT, including curricular issues, capstone courses, pedagogy, and emerging topics in IT.

TeLE:
Focuses on research topics related to using IT to teach (technology-mediated). For example, these topics may include e-learning, m-learning, clickers and other technologies that aim at making the classroom teaching more effective.

InForm:
Solicits papers in any area that explores issues in effectivley and efficiently informing clients through Information Technology (IT).

Interesting read about cheating:

Nouvelle recherche sur la probité intellectuelle – Peut-on éradiquer la tricherie chez les étudiants ? by Catherine Bolton, Mebs Kanji and Soheyla Salari in Le Devoir Oct. 24th 2011

The authors remark, about a recent study presented at the International Conference on Academic Integrity :

Jusqu’à présent, les données que nous avons recueillies sont plutôt encourageantes. La vaste majorité des étudiants obtiennent leur diplôme sans jamais être accusés de tricher — la plupart ne trichent pas, car ils souhaitent apprendre, travailler fort et réussir. Nous avons aussi constaté que l’Université Concordia applique les normes les plus rigoureuses en matière de probité intellectuelle.

Aussi préliminaires soient-elles, nos données révèlent cependant des tendances dont la constance justifie une attention particulière. Nous avons en effet constaté que la majorité des cas de fraude rapportés concernent des étudiants inscrits à des programmes de sciences sociales. Qui plus est, nos données laissent penser que ces fraudes surviennent habituellement dans le cadre de cours de première année.

Les fraudes ne sont par ailleurs rapportées que par un contingent relativement restreint de professeurs rattachés à quelques départements seulement. Se pourrait-il que les professeurs ne déclarent pas toutes les affaires de fraude? Le cas échéant, les universités vont devoir trouver un autre plan d’attaque. Nous devons mettre en place des mécanismes pour vérifier si des tricheurs parviennent bel et bien à passer entre les mailles du filet.

So, cases of academic misconduct stem mostly from the social sciences, from first year students, as reported by a small set of professors. Interesting !

Interesting – also because these are my colleagues at Concordia University !

I stumbled on this article in Le Devoir, a daily Montréal newspaper, via the ACFAS newsletter (the biggest learned society in Quebec).

This post presents the PRIMO (Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online) and the MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Teaching and Learning) projects.

PRIMO
Under the ALA/ACRL umbrella, one can find the PRIMO Committee of the Instruction section. Of the many things they do, they offer a database of Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online – aka the PRIMO database.

I remember in the past that a team at Concordia University Libraries (of which I was a member) was awarded the “site of the month” award for June 2006 from the PRIMO Committee for our InfoResearch 101 project.

MERLOT
I remember stumbling on the MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Teaching and Learning) repository about a year ago. It contained a few interesting sites relating to business, such as Stanford’s Educators Corner or the Beginner’s Guide to Business Research.

According to their site, MERLOT is a

MERLOT is a free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy. MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, collection of peer reviewed higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services.

I am very lucky to be a business librarian at Concordia University – this is true on so many levels! Of all the reasons, the fact that the John Molson School of Business is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) may be a boon to work towards integrating information literacy in the curriculum.

As their website shows, the AACSB has Accreditation Standards to which JMSB must adhere to. These include the concept of total quality management – or making the most of the resources you have. It also assists in comparing business school together. Every so often, accredited schools must undergo a review process (audit), which serves as a nice entry point should you want to propose changes to how things are done – an external review fosters the feeling of continuous improvement.

For example, the “Assurance of Learning Standards” offers a few points where a library could have a positive impact… these are straightforward issues that school educators must report back on – so they are easily actionnable!

The most recent volume of the Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CJSoTL) offers many interesting articles about new ways to teach and think about teaching. This one caught my eye:

Sana, Faria; Fenesi, Barbara; and Kim, Joseph A. (2011). A Case Study of the Introductory Psychology Blended Learning Model at McMaster University. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2 (1).
Retrieved from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cjsotl_rcacea/vol2/iss1/6

It caught my eye not only because of the title and abstract, but because one of the authors has presented the paper in a TEDx conference and the video is posted on YouTube:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8vxpI5P4lM&w=560&h=315]

In reading the weekly newsletter from CARL, I stumbled on this blog post from Léo Charbonneau at University Affairs, discussing the following report:

Kaznowska, E., Rogers, J., and Usher, A. (2011). The State of E-Learning in Canadian
Universities, 2011: If Students Are Digital Natives, Why Don’t They Like E-Learning?
Toronto: Higher Education Strategy Associates.