Tuesday, June 05, 2007

UWE seminar (2)

Here is the PowerPoint that I used at UWE yesterday http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/
webber-uwe2007-3.pdf
. In it I identify the categories for IL and pedagogy for IL that we identified in academics in Marketing, Civil Engineering, Chemistry and English. I also talked a bit about the ways that I had used the research: with my students, with colleagues in my Departments, and with academic staff elsewhere in Sheffield Uni. In the breakout session, the delegates at the UWE seminar briefly considered their own approach to IL and that of colleagues. We discussed this in small groups and then fed back on three points: an issue that was contentious or problematic, an area on which there was agreement and an unanswered question.

In my breakout group for the first we had both “time” (constraints) for staff and students and the linked issue of getting people engaged with IL in the midst of their busy lives. Of course there is also the issue of getting some students engaged in learning generally, but it can be even more difficult to get them to take IL seriously. The thing we agreed on was the importance of IL ;-)) and the unanswered question was “how?” I don’t think we identified a neat answer - well, I don’t think there IS a neat answer. Some of the academics at the event were interested in exploring further what IL meant in their subject/Department, which obviously I think is a productive route. There was good support for seeing librarians as partners in learning, but as ever there aren’t enough librarians to go round...
Photo by Sheila Webber: Beech tree, Victoria Square, Clifton, Bristol.

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