Category Archives: What’s Cool

News from the 8th New England Region Science Boot Camp 2016

The New England Science Boot Camp for Librarians is an annual educational event. This year the camp was held at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus in Dartmouth. The theme of this year’s science boot camp is: “Explore key concepts and research in select subject areas, and engage faculty in their disciplines.” Topics covered included civil environmental engineering, nursing, physics and science literacy. This year also marked the first time that the planning committee was able to offer four Fellow Scholarships for students with an interest in science or engineering librarianship to attend the 2016 New England Science Boot Camp for Librarians.

The capstone session “Science Literacy” Literacy presented by Professor Marja Bakermans & Rebecca Ziino from Worcester Polytechnic Institute was very informative. This presentation demonstrated how librarians and faculty worked together to develop an online literacy curriculum for Biology. The module focused on the components of finding, reading, and understanding primary literature.

The nursing research session: “The effect of mobile symptom monitoring on self-care behaviors in patients with heart failure”, present by Dr. Sethares, Professor, director of the College of Nursing from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is very practical and helpful. It was very interesting to see the collaboration between nursing researchers and engineers in developing the mobile device, and the way they engaged with patients through education and self-care.

Please feel free to check out the presentation on the YouTube page from the playlist: Science Boot Camp 2016

Also, here is the Library school student scholarship winners’ blog post at: http://esciencecommunity.umassmed.edu/tag/student-scholarship-winner/

BrowZine

BrowZine is a web and mobile interface for scholarly journals available through the Healey Library. It consolidates thousands of journals from hundreds of publishers and delivers them to your mobile device or desktop. Rather than search databases for specific journal issues, BrowZine creates an experience similar to browsing a newsstand and reading a print journal.

BrowZine All Devices

The landing page provides the option to browse journals by subject or search by title. Each subject is organized into many subtopics. Users can browse large subject areas, like Education or drill down to specific subjects such as Emergency Nursing. Journals are listed alphabetically by default but they can also be sorted by journal rank, allowing you to explore the top journals your field. Ranking is determined by Scimago Journal Rank, which uses data from Scopus®. All the subjects and sorting options produce a permanent link in the address bar that can be bookmarked and shared.

The journal pages default to the most current issue and contain the table of contents. Journals can be added to your Bookshelf, which allows you to save and organize your favorite journals. On mobile devices, the articles are displayed seamlessly without the usual clutter. They can also be saved in your account. The web version links out to full text articles in databases and publisher websites. The ability to create reading lists for the web version is coming soon.

 

Assessment in Action: Overview

In Spring 2016, Healey Library and the English department collaborated to design an assessment study focusing on students enrolled in ENGL 102.  Librarians and faculty worked together to develop learning outcomes, instructional materials, and data collection instruments (pre-test, post-test, rubric).  Our learning outcomes were that after research instruction, students would be able to:

  • explain the difference between Googling and academic research
  • apply subject-appropriate vocabulary to brainstorm keywords and find books and articles
  • revise their research questions and search strategies according to what they discover and synthesize across multiple sources of information

In January, English department chair Cheryl Nixon described our study in a meeting with Composition faculty.  Ultimately, we had 10 participating faculty and 24 ENGL 102 sections:

  • 320 students attended research instruction delivered by their professor and/or librarians
  • 281 pre-tests were collected
  • 222 booklets were collected from students that attended research instruction sessions
  • 250 post-tests were collected

There are no results to report yet, as we are just beginning to analyze the data we gathered.  However, I can share some lessons learned:

  • Put together a large team with diverse strengths, and delegate accordingly.
  • Collaborating is time- and labor-intensive, but an extremely fruitful endeavor. Getting buy-in from participating ENGL 102 professors was probably made easier because we worked so closely together.  In fact, we heard from more than one professor that they were impressed with how much reflection was built into the lesson!
  • While your study may change drastically over time, it still helps to have a research design document that is updated as needed.
  • Don’t try to assess too many learning outcomes at once! We only had 3, which still resulted in a lesson plan that packed too many things into too little time and a booklet that the majority of students had difficulty completing in class.
  • If you show students how to email articles to themselves, they will not necessarily want to write down the articles’ bibliographic information.
  • Don’t be afraid to deviate from the original plan to address more immediate needs, if that’s what’s needed.
  • Recruit more participants than you think you’ll need; also, try to recruit participants even if they didn’t initially indicate interest in the study – at worst, you’ll hear “no.”
  • Just remind yourself if you feel like you’re lost, that you’re not making a mess of things and to keep going, and that your hard work and frustration will pay off! Remember, you put together a good team with diverse strengths.  Lean on your team and trust that you’ll learn something useful that you can use to make improvements to your program and/or your teaching.

AiA wordcloud

Word cloud of student responses collected in the post-test when asked “In the database(s) you searched, what features did you find the most helpful/useful?”

Curious about using Apps for teaching and research?

UMass Boston Librarians and Educational Technologists are offering hands-on workshops!  iPad Workshop Promotional Handout Spring 2016

Add mobile apps to your research tool kit. Attend 1…or all 5 iPad workshops and get hands-on experience with educational apps through engaging exercises aimed at exploring the potential of research apps.

Join Librarian Teresa Maceira and Adaptive Technology Specialist Matt McCubbin in this series of sessions covering a variety of apps for searching our databases, access e-journals and e-books, discover and organize online content, create quick and easy presentations, and learn about accessibility features on Apple devices.

Feel free to share this announcement with colleagues and students –the workshops are open to everyone!

DATES AND APPS:

  • Tuesday, February 16,  1:00-2:00pm
    Featured Apps: Browzine, Financial Times, RefME, Bluefire Reader
  • Tuesday, March 1, 10:00-11:00am
    Featured Apps:  PubMed, Gale Databases, EBSCOhost Databases, Census.gov
  • Wednesday, March 23, 3:00-4:00pm
    Featured Apps: Evernote, Dropbox, Pocket, and Flipboard
  • Thursday, April 7, 11:00am-12:00pm
    Featured Speaker: Matt McCubbin, Adaptive Technology Specialist
    Featured Apps: Voice Dream Reader and Apple iOS Assistive Technology Features
  • Monday, April 25, 12:00-1:00pm
    Featured Apps: Prezi, Educreations, Haiku Deck, Google Slides

LOCATION:

All workshops will be held in the Center for Library Instruction, Healey-04-015

TO REGISTER:

To register: IT Training Portal

SPONSORED BY:

University Libraries

Information Technology Learning Commons

November is Native American Heritage Month

Here are a few ways to celebrate Native American Heritage Month.

View a documentary about the contemporary experiences or history of Native Americans available via Healey Library streaming video databases.

Up Heartbreak Hill

“Up Heartbreak Hill chronicles the lives of three Native American teenagers in Navajo, New Mexico-Thomas, an elite runner; Tamara, an academic superstar; and Gabby, an aspiring photographer-as they navigate their senior year at a reservation high school.”

The Way West: Ghost Dance

“The story begins with the opening decades of expansion, key technological advances, and the uprooting of the native people through the Civil War period. It then examines the four-year period immediately following the Civil War to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The conclusion traces the sequence of events leading to the battle of the Little Big Horn, the oppression of Native American tribes, the rise of the Ghost Dance religion and the massacre at Wounded Knee.”

In Whose Honor?

“In Whose Honor? takes a critical look at the long-running practice of “honoring” American Indians as mascots and nicknames in sport. It follows Native American mother Charlene Teters, and her transformation into the leader some are calling the “Rosa Parks of American Indians” as she struggles to protect her cultural symbols and identity.”

 

Read a book about Native American history or literature.

Green, Thomas A., ed. Stories from the American Mosaic: Native American Folktales. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 13 November 2015.

Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Knopf, 2005. Print.

Treuer, David. Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual. Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 2006. Print.