Evolving Directions: Mitra Sharafi

Mitra Sharafi’s current research is a book project: Parsing Law: Zoroastrians and Litigation in Colonial South Asia, examining how the Parsi community used the colonial courts (such as related to matrimonial law) and the history of Parsi lawyers as intellectual and cultural “middlemen.”    Some interesting sources used were the magazine “Hindi Punch,”  the “India Office” archive in the BL, and “The Bombay High Court” in Mumbai.  There are few private papers of lawyers and judges, and newspapers are in poor condition.

In her teaching, Mitra Sharafi likes to use visual representations of information (like mnemonics).  She uses the Times digital archive in an assignment for her classes for undergrads, asking them to pick a particular phenomenon or event related to colonial law and find three articles.  These are used in a primary source paper.  Originally they had the option to use more sources, but she found that their skills were inadequate so it was too difficult (perhaps hindering the learning).  She also brings some front pages from the times into the class.  The Legal Studies program sets out to do something very different than what law school does, incorporating cultural sources, social sciences, and humanities.  They are also working to incorporate a more global focus to the program.     She likes to use primary sources that are accessible (i.e. digitized).  Last year she gave them the option of going to rare books, and only a few did it.  Google books is beginning to do amazing things in digitizing primary sources.

I would like to get a copy of the primary sources assignment, either from Mitra Sharafi or from the library liaison, Mary Rader.  This seems like an important model for meaningful research assignments for undergraduates because it gets away from the print/good vs. online/bad dichotomy.

Widgets and Course Content

An news item in the Chronicle of Higher Education today “Professor Uses Web ‘Widgets’ to Share Course Content” features a project by Mark Marino, a Lecturer at USC to create  “Web widgets for online course materials [to further] the goals of open courseware, efforts by professors and colleges to give away their lecture notes and other teaching materials online.”   Marino’s page uses PageFlakes.   Other instructors can build their own web pages by repurposing the widgets and creating their own.  This is something we’re talking about a lot in the library and across campus, and the project helps to get some new ideas for what modular content can be.

What is included in the collection is a lot of content related to Web 2.0 authoring, multimedia literacy, and even “ICT”  is mentioned (that’s Information and Communication Technology).  But the content related to research is pretty thin, mostly a module about Zotero.   It seems like the lack of reference to licensed content relates to the impulse to keep the widgets entirely open and portable (rather than institution-specific), but that rationale is not explicitly stated.

The move toward this kind of development seems to be a big opportunity for libraries to create their own instructional widgets, and I’ve seen some.   But what about widgets, portable/open or institution-specific, that dig more deeply into the full scope of information literacy competencies.  I would love to see some cool examples.

By the way, I feel out of my league in this area because I’m not a programmer, but Marino’s widgets are not particularly sophisticated from a visual design or programming standpoint.  Maybe we need to be bolder.

and finally, I used to work at USC and we had a great collaboration with the Writing Program.  I hope the  instruction librarians there are being invited to this project and given some resources to join in.

New Faculty & TA Orientations – Shared Values?

During Welcome Week, I spoke at a number of new faculty and TA orientations.  We all know that this is an important opportunity to introduce instructors to librarians’ role in teaching/learning on campus.  It’s also a  challenge to decide what to get across in the allotted 10-40 minutes, or maybe an opportunity to decide what you really have to say in the time allotted.  Speaking to instructor groups many times in the same week, you find yourself really modifying what you’re saying based on feedback (blank looks, enthusiasm, questions, evaluations, etc.)

So what seemed really important by the last talks?  I found myself referring back to a key sequence of topics:

• Research tells us that Information-seeking has changed, and the library is no longer the primary portal to for many information seekers.  (OCLC, 2006; Ithaka, 2008).  All users link more and reflect less (BL/JISC, 2007).
• This is problematic for our students when they come to college because they do not have the background knowledge needed to know what they’re looking for or evaluate their results to select resources that are appropriate for academic research (i.e. a Google)
• We have a shared responsibility to create learning experiences that require students to master more sophisticated information-seeking and use, and librarians can collaborate with faculty to make this happen.

Not rocket science, and many of you have said the same things all week, but that seemed to be the message that resonated.  Each group had its own needs and interests, but did seem to care about this message.  Will it be enough to move them to seek out the library’s instructional services this year?  They have a lot of other stuff on their minds, but probably it will motivate them to seek out help that’s low-threshold such as web pages or maybe library instruction sessions.  Hopefully, it will plant the seeds for a few deeper collaborations in the future.

Custom Textbooks

A department we work closely with in the Communication A requirement has plans to use a custom textbook this fall for the first time.  The rationale is that they have many sections and the shared readings allow instructors to customize within certain boundaries.  We’ve also had the opportunity to include certain handouts, which is a great way to further our integration into the course.  The other reason for having the custom textbook is that it raises revenue for the program, although I’m not sure how much.

There is an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education today about the ethics of this practice.  These textbooks are hard to resell, and it’s customary to include required workbook pages that make it necessary to use a new textbook each year.

Some interesting issues for library reserves as well…

First Year Interest Group (FIGS) – lots to learn!

I was invited to the First Year Interest Groups (FIGS) faculty orientation to this to give our usual short presentation about how the library can support FIGS courses, and I did speak for a few minutes about how the library can work with faculty to design support the kind of inquiry-based learning experiences these faculty were hoping for. I showed examples of a Library Course Page, an Undergraduate Research Guide for a FIGS class, and talked about library instruction. Janice Rice joined me to talk about how College Library supports new students, and how she sees students using College as a place to get together to work, which faculty were interested in because community-building is such an important part of these courses. A few faculty members talked about how much working closely with the library’s instructional staff (College in one case, Steenbock in another) had helped their class and improved student success, and they were so eloquent that I may contact them to get them to share these stories in other venues.

By sitting in on the full event, I learned quite a bit that others may already know:

• FIGS students have higher GPAs over time, even though they begin with a lower “academic profile.”
• Effects seem particularly remarkable for students of color. Each year, FIGS partners with other units to promote enrollment by students of color, who are 25% of the students in these classes.
• A survey of “FIGsters as Seniors” is underway and we got a handout with some of the early responses. An analysis will be published at the end.

Instructional Staff at UW

Just wanted to point out an article in the Wisconsin State Journal, “Teaching without Tenure at UW.”  It’s an interesting reminder that in addition to faculty and TAs, we work with many career instructional staff who do not have the security of tenure.  According to the article, some have chosen that path due to an interest in teaching, and others are just doing the best they can and trying to remain optimistic.  The arrangement gives the university more flexibility and significant salary savings.  From our point-of-view, there seems to be more turnover among instructional staff, and in my past experience they often carry a heavy teaching load that makes it challenging for them to keep up.  Here’s a short excerpt, “According to the American Association of University Professors, non-tenured instructional staff now account for nearly 70 percent of those teaching at universities and colleges nationwide. Thirty years ago, they were 43 percent.[....]  At UW-Madison [...] about one-third of those standing at the front of classrooms [...] are not faculty.”