Hello Everyone,

Below are the three responses I received in relation to active learning.

I hope you find this useful.

Best wishes,

Sandra

Sandra Rothenberg, M.A., M.L.S.

Reference/Instruction Librarian

Henry Whittemore Library

Framingham State College

 

 

I teach a credit-bearing information skills class called Beyond Google at Pratt (last year’s course wiki is available here: http://beyondgoogle.pbwiki.com), and I’ve had some positive results with a few techniques that might translate well to one-off library sessions. One thing that’s worked really well is having the students brainstorm their research steps in small groups and then draw visual representations of those processes. Most of our art and design students respond really well to visual and kinesthetic learning opportunities, so moving around the classroom helps, too—I like to mix it up by getting them all to stand up and gather around one table to look at books, break off into small groups to complete worksheets, and do short individual exercises. I hope that helps. I’d be happy to talk with you some more, and I would love to hear about any other suggestions you receive. This is a topic that really fascinates me. Good luck!

I give a library presentation to our ART 100W classes, which is a junior-level (theoretically) writing class in the major. Students run the gamut from very text-oriented art history majors to majors in design (graphic, industrial, interior) and studio types. I can only focus on one thing in a single class, so I show them how to search for articles in a database (Art Full Text at present). Using that I try to squeeze in as many ACRL infolit categories as possible!

To help them understand the difference between keywords and controlled-vocabulary subject descriptors (with an offhand reference to tagging, although few actually do that) I've begun using the following exercise. I print out the first 2 pages of an article from Art Full Text. I chose the one I use partly for the funky topic but primarily for the fact that it begins with a long abstract that describes the article content in more detail than most. (No way would we have the time for all of them to read a whole article.) Based on that I ask them to fill in a worksheet, assigning thae article up to 6 subjects. I give them about 5 minutes.

I ask for a student volunteer to write responses on the board, and I ask students what subjects they chose. Responses are rewarded with Dove chocolate (milk or dark). Board writer gets 2 pieces. (BTW, chocolate reward is the single most effective pedagogical tool I've found in about 30 years of teaching art students, who can be notoriously unresponsive!)

After they've done this thay can better understand what you tell them about how keywords and subject headings are different, the pros & cons of each, and the necessity to try different combinations of same for the best results. Then you can start the session on database searching by finding the same article in the database by author/title and they can compare the actual subject headings with the ones they came up with.

Article I use:

Arthur, Linda B. "The Aloha Shirt and Ethnicity in Hawaii." Textile vol. 4 no. 1 (Spring 2006) 8-34.

I also have a PowerPoint with an image of a pot, and you can reinforce the concept using image rather than text--ask them what it is and get all kinds of responses (pottery, ceramics, pot, vessel, container, etc.). Reward responses with chocolate, of course.

 

I have in the past collaborated with instructors (usually of Art History

classes) so that there is a class assignment. The most common is each student has to search for information on recent exhibitions plus biographical material on a contemporary artist from a list compiled by the instructor (and checked by me to ensure we have material).  The students are required to find magazine articles, info from a reference source and one or more books on the chosen artist.  Then the information session I give shows them how to locate each of these types of information and they can work on their topic area during my explanations and I am there to help with their early searches.  It works really well and the instructor often makes it the first part of a term long project leading to a term paper.