Hi

Due to holidays etc. it has been some time since I posed my original
question about the use of the Cephaloanian method of Library induction but
below as promised is the summary of responses.  

Myself and a colleague have decided to use the method for first year
inductions in the School we support this year.  This will be in large groups
as part of a 90 minute session introducing students to email, computing, our
VLE and our new portal which is led by academic staff. We also had funding
to develop an online course of 8 information skills modules in WebCT which
we will be launching in these sessions accompanied some promotional
materials and freebies such as branded pens (more info on this project can
be found at http://www.gre.ac.uk/lib/progression/ for those interested). 

We will not be running traditional library tours this year for our School as
we have felt that these were very time consuming to run but very poorly
attended and ineffective for the students.  We will be supplying a
self-guided tour with photos etc. which students can do in the first few
weeks at a time that suits them - probably when they have seminar or
courework reading to start. 

I will also be running a class on using the Internet and Plagiarism for all
first years as part of a core course for each programme.



Summary of Responses on the Cephalonian Method:

“We tried it last year and thought it worked well - definitely an
improvement on the 'traditional' format. Staff found it enjoyable to
deliver. Our group size was around 20-25.”

“We are about to trail it tomorrow!”

“It's certainly something I have considered in the past, but there are
overtones of "one size fits all"; not helpful if you have a wide range of
student cohorts with different expectations and learning styles. I have
found that students are just as capable of dozing off,, nattering amongst
themselves, etc., if you sit them in front of a screen with a fancy hi-tec
display. I think the knack is to get the students to do the work themselves.
And that needs a bit of lateral thinking and some market research involving
the faculty or faculties you work with.”

“We used this method for the first time last year.  In the past we had tried
the traditional 'walk around' method, and a purely online induction.  All
methods have their pros and cons, but the good thing about the Cephalonian
idea, is that students interact with you, and with the rest of the group. 
They also have to think for themselves a little bit, which helps them to
remember something about the induction. It is a good idea to have a wide
variety of questions, applicable to all levels of students, you can then mix
and match, which helps to keep the sessions fresh for the people conducting
them.”

“I work in a hospital library and I use the Cephalonian method to great
effect. I have a slot on the all staff (medical and non medical) induction.
The majority of people on this are like students i.e. not interested in the
library so I find it does inject some fun into the session. 
Whilst I agree with the post that one size does not fit all there are many
common things that all of the users will need to know about. For myself I
focus on some of the less well known services that we offer such as our
fiction section and the fact that we do literature searches
for all staff. I find that it works incredibly well, we all have a big laugh
and they do enjoy the session. I got 5 out of 4 on one of the evaluation forms!”

“We have used this method last year and it worked very well. We need
different sets of question for different levels. We also encouraged students
to interact with the induction by putting the name of every student who read
a question in to a draw for a £25 HVM voucher. We also made sure we had
library assistants at hand to help anyone with reading difficulties. We have
noticed over the year an overall improvement in the way the students behave
in the library and we think this is because the students understand the
reasons behind all the library's dos and don'ts.”

“We have used a modified cephalonian induction method for the last 2 yrs
with our new undergraduate medical students and also with a group of 1st
year medical students who are fast tracked as they have a previous health
related degree. We have used it in large lecture theatres holding approx 200
and also smaller venues. It has worked well and we have had rounds of
applause from the students at the end - something that had never happened
before! We printed the questions out on coloured paper, and gave them to
people as they arrived.    We introduced ourselves, then asked for a
question from a particular colour group.   Each colour group contained
questions on a particular theme.  We did not ask all the questions in any
one group before moving on, but jumped about between groups.    We didn't
use sound effects which I believe the Nigel Morgan did.  I think from our
experience we would recommend it for livening up what can be a very dull
topic.  We also felt that it put the library in the students mind as
something less "stuffy" than the usual image.”

In response to en enquiry about the use of the method with International
students:
“Language barriers have never been an issue for us here,  though this has
been raised at various meetings/events where we have discussed the C method.
When inducting groups of overseas students, some librarians have used the
same style of presentation without actually using the question cards - it
sort of takes the novelty away from the session but still provides a
colourful, interesting way of structuring the presentation. “


Further info and presentations on the method can be found at:
http://www.ebase.uce.ac.uk/events.htm
http://www.sconul.ac.uk/pubs_stats/newsletter/32/2.pdf