Dear Greg

I should be very glad if you could send a little more information about
how you are going to capture and analyse the information about their
searching - if it wouldn't be too much trouble

I agree it is great to have a community for advice.

Judy

Judy Reading,
User Education Co-Ordinator, 
Oxford University Library Services 
Osney One Building, Osney Mead, Oxford OX2 0EW
tel: 01865-283808 fax: 01865-242287 [log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From: Information literacy and information skills teaching discussion
list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Greg Sheaf
Sent: 23 January 2008 15:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Help needed!

Hi all,

Many many thanks for all of your kind advice and suggestions, both 
individually and to the List. Perhaps I should have given a bit more 
background - I'm (I hope) reasonably capable of administering training 
by lecture, workshop, seminar etc on CINAHL, PubMed, Cochrane, MIDIRS 
and so on having been taught by someone who really knew her stuff, and 
I've been doing such training off my own bat for several years. But it's

great to have a community like this to help!

This session differs slightly from the usual "how to use the databases" 
in that the tutor already knows the key articles and wants me to 
demonstrate searches which will help the students find them, together 
with the element of the students doing a "blind" search first, but I'm 
feeling a lot more confident about it all today.

I agree 40 students is a lot for a hands-on session - I'd normally only 
have 20-odd.

Can't believe I'd forgotten about Intute - d'oh!

To be honest the thing worrying me was the recording of their web 
searches - and I cracked how to do that today :) I'm going to get them 
to use Firefox, mail the history file (history.dat) and then you can use

free tools like Mozilla History View to analyze it. Happy days!

Greg

Mike Maguire wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Forgive me for commenting/jumping in when I have nothing to offer to 
> Greg directly, but I have followed this list with great interest since

> it's beginning and in the past have "dabbled" with this sort of 
> challenge within projects and with colleagues delivering "learning 
> sessions" to the public.
>
> I'm not entirely certain quite what support Greg is looking for and so

> whether he'll get the support he needs, but the temptation to 
> "philosophise" is overwhelming!
>
>
> Greg,
>
> First of all, how much time have you to prepare ... when is this due
to 
> take place?
>
> Have you plenty of experience in delivering "the standard "this is how

> to search the databases" tutorial" (and yes, how do you make this 
> effective for 40 students at a time!? ... got your information sheets 
> ready?) Or are you looking for some advice on that?
>
> Are you seeking to deliver info literacy, i.e. a capability that 
> includes information searching skills and the ability to assess 
> relevance and authoritativeness etc., etc.? (i.e. If the tutor is 
> interested in their search strategy beyond fairly well defined 
> "medical literature" is her agenda beyond "just internet searching 
> skills" and stretching into the wider skills involved in info lit? It 
> sounds as thought she may be heading in that direction)
>
> Are you also/instead just looking for ways to capture the students' 
> work for evaluation by the tutor?
>
> In terms of evaluating the effectiveness of the exercise, have you 
> though of some sort of common structured baseline assessment of their 
> initial stab at searching (again, 40 is a very large number to deal 
> with!) with a repeat and comparison at the end?
>
> Practitioners
>
> Depending on what Greg is looking for, can anyone toss him the odd few

> VLE & curriculum "bones" that he can chew on? For that matter are any 
> of you using tracking software that can give an "audit" of searching 
> that he could consider? (And yes, I am aware that there are debates 
> about the probity of this.)
>
> One thing is fairly sure ... success will breed success & Greg should
be 
> on his way to a new way of life in his role and needs the new tools 
> for the trade!
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mike
>
> Mike Maguire
>
> Service Development Manager
>
> Devon Library & Information Services
>
> tel 01392 384326
>
> fax 01392 384316
>
> _mailto:[log in to unmask]
>
> _http://www.devon.gov.uk/library/_
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> ********************
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Information literacy and information skills teaching discussion 
> list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Greg Sheaf
> Sent: 22 January 2008 15:30
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Help needed!
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Just looking for a little advice... I'm a nursing/midwifery librarian
>
> who's been asked to run an "intervention" with a group of first-year
>
> midwifery students. Basically the tutor is looking at imparting
>
> life-long searching skills. Very laudable, highly info lit, but a bit
>
> off what I normally do and I'm panicking somewhat! The 40 students
will
>
> be given a clinical question to research for half an hour, before I
give
>
> the standard "this is how to search the databases" tutorial. A week
>
> later I'll demonstrate more searching and then they'll rerun the
search
>
> with their (hopefully) newly-gained knowledge. Has anyone done
something
>
> similar to this? Also, she wants to record their search histories for
>
> later evaluation, not just eg PubMed histories but their whole
Internet
>
> search strategy. Again, has anyone tried something similar? She's an
>
> expect on the subject question they will be given, so she wants to see
>
> if they come across any of the articles that she believes are key, but
>
> I'm not sure how technically feasible this is.
>
> Any comments or suggestions will be very gratefully received :)
>
> Greg
>
> ********************
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Information literacy and information skills teaching discussion 
> list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Callan,
Mark
> Sent: 22 January 2008 15:47
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Help needed!
>
> My first thought is "why do they do a search BEFORE they've been shown
>
> how to do one?" Might it not be more useful to a) talk them through
what
>
> they're going to do and how to start, b) let them do a search, c)ask
>
> them what problems they've run into, d) show them how to refine their
>
> searching. They have a task so I'd expect them to be sufficiently
>
> motivated to pay attention and then try to do the task properly.
>
> Second thought is that 40 is a vast number so the IT equivalent of
chalk
>
> & talk is all you can do to get them started. Later (in session 2,
>
> perhaps) you can get them to talk as a group about any problems, offer
>
> some pointers and then get them to continue their research.
>
> Hope this is of some help.
>
> Mark Callan
>
> Tyne Metropolitan College
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Information literacy and information skills teaching discussion
>
> list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Greg Sheaf
>
> Sent: 22 January 2008 15:30
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Subject: Help needed!
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
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