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Service Design Toolkit

Many workshop posters and templates available in the Service Design Toolkit. Very useful. Big thanks to the folks behind this. Great resource.

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Personalizing Discovery at University of Michigan

Another presentation from Designing for Digital 2017. I haven’t digested this yet, but sounds super interesting to consider what this would look like and the methodology behind it.

It’s Personal! One Size Discovery Does Not Fit All: Customizing Discovery at University of Michigan by Rachel Vacek

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Hex UX

Nice presentation and overview of a UX method from my MSU colleague Scott Young. 

Hex UX - Designing for Digital 2017

I’ve made up a template of the Satisfaction/Frustration Survey for making replication easier.

I’m currently thinking about how I could use this with some of our library redesign work. It seems like this would be best when a site’s infrastructure is stable (which ours is looking at a pending upgrade), but perhaps this could inform the design direction we take with the new infrastructure.

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Bring Open Textbooks into your catalog

MARC records are available for Open Textbooks https://twitter.com/jwbazeley/status/763437101249474560

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Serious Academic

Great blog pulls apart all the things that are wrong with cultured norms around the concept of serious academics. http://www.thetattooedprof.com/archives/630

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K-12 OER Adoption Toolkit

http://tech.ed.gov/open-education/go-open-districts/launch/ Useful tool to help districts who are ready to move forward with adopting OER by joining #GoOpen

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Tracking Student Progress With Google Sheets

This is a great approach to using Google Sheets and a simple formula to track student progress. In this EdSurge piece Chris Aviles of Teched Up Teacher explains how the system works and how to get it set up.

It’s a simply elegant solution, both technically and pedagogically. Once set up students use a Form to score their classmate’s writing, their scoring gets fed into a master spreadsheet where it is color-coded with conditional formatting to let the instructor know at a glance how the class is doing. The instructor also sets up Sheets for each student, which use a formula to fetch data from the master spreadsheet. The individual Sheets are then used by the instructor and student to reflect on progress and determine areas for improvement. 

 Following these directions and the files in the Google Folder, I had the system set up on my own within half an hour.

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Made up a poster for our current Summer Movies display.

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Open Ed at University System of New Hampshire

Yesterday, June 2, 2016 I caught wind of the University System of New Hampshire’s officially announcement of their open education initiative. Here is the official press release. This story was also picked up by Inside Higher Ed in a very brief news post. So brief is that post that I almost missed the most exciting and potentially transformative element of this initiative.  

UNSH’s initiative is loaded with potential and will be an initiative to watch because it connects Open Educational Resources, Open Access and most excitingly they conceptualize it as “promoting new, collaborative approaches to learning,” in other words Open Pedagogy. I also noticed that in Chancellor Todd Leach’s quote he uses the term “open source education” which has been proposed by others as a potentially useful, relatable way to talk about these movements.

Plymouth State University co-director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Scott Robinson’s quote really hits the nail on the head about what is so unique, exciting and radical about this initiative.

“We have seen very successful OER programs at many institutions, but they have mainly focused on lowering textbook costs for students. While that is an important objective, we believe the broader scope of open education has the power to radically transform higher education, both improving access and making it a learner-driven process that emphasizes collaboration and connected learning. Our vision of open education prioritizes sharing newly created knowledge with the general public in service to the greater good.”

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Relationship Management for Library Liaison Work

Here at MSU Library we talk about refining our liaison work, but there are many different ideas floating out there and we haven’t yet devoted the time and attention to really get at making something new. Most tangibly we’ve talked about team approaches and sharing materials and tips. 

Personally from time to time there is a seed of an idea that keeps popping up. What if we adapted relationship management techniques and tools used in business for our work? I was reminded of this today when looking through some listserv emails and someone else was looking for a tool recommendation. 

I’ve never used one of these customer relationship management tools, but at very least there must be some principles we could use. I can’t quite recall where this idea came from previously for me, but I had a suspicion that maybe EdSurge would have an article on this. And lo and behold, they do - in the guise of Learning Relationship Management.

A quick web search reveals that it seems like some companies are out there trying to make products that suit the need for managing relationships in educational settings. Of course it looks like these are designed for the educational institution as the user and customer. I’d really like to see what a system would look like that puts the learner in control, or co-control. 

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Building Tech Tools Capacity

Frequently through my professional work I find myself returning to the question of how to build and grow tech tool capacity. The Summer Sandboxes have been one way to show off tools I like and let others do the same. So far this has been done as an internal library forum, but I can easily imagine it working for the broader campus too. I guess that the thing that holds me back is the concern for stepping on the toes of others who do this sort of thing too. Ultimately this could be a really good collaboration moment. 

Beyond the interactive workshop/event model I have often thought about easy ways that the library could share in a more asynchronous way. Recently I came across a really straightforward, tangible model in the University of Minnesota Libraries’ blog Land of 10,000 Workflows, particularly their series called How I Work. This series highlights the tool used by students, faculty, researchers and staff across the university. It’s interesting to see what tools rise to the top, which ones come up time and again, and how people fit them all together. Some people really love a tool that others really dislike, which is interesting to see what the reasons are on both sides. I really like their last question which gets at what do you like and what do you wish worked better. 

The only other thing that I think could be added is a question that has less to do with a specific tool and more to do with a technique or practice that helps with daily workflows and productivity. I’ll be looking into finding a space within our ecosystem to run with this model.

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Future Trends Forum #FTFE

Here is a Storify of yesterday's Future Trends Forum from Bryan Alexander. Yesterday's forum featured George Siemens on learning analytics, learning data and such. I missed the live chat and really appreciate this as a way to catch up on this involved, lively discussion.

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Twitter Journal Club

Well this is a brilliant idea. Twitter Journal Club is a forum for discussing articles relating to open education, connected learning, educational technology, digital literacy and related scholarship. I haven’t participated in this chat yet, but I love the idea and am looking to join in the near future. The current hashtag is #tjc16. Check the site for article links and chat times.

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This week’s OER readings

Catherine Cronin’s post #OER16: A Critical Turn

Interesting, creative approach to doing a keynote. Cronin made a post weeks in advance of the conference and invited discussion around her thoughts and questions to be used in her keynote presentation.

Otherwise a nice recapping and linking to many of the presentations and blogs related to this conference. Much to explore and learn about here.

Robin DeRosa’s post My Open Textbook: Pedagogy and Practice

Wonderful first-person account of the process and thought behind developing an open textbook built around student contributions. Most of the text is talking about the positive affordances of OER, but towards the end DeRosa addresses challenges and issues, which I really appreciate too.

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Connected Class on Community Engaged Research

Through my #LTHEchat I was pointed in the direction of this current course going on through VCU on Community Engaged Research, officially called Collaborative Curiosity: Designing Community-Engaged Research. I’d like to participate some as it could be a useful toolset to bring in the student voice and other communities of users into more of my library projects. But I’m also super curious checking it out from an educator perspective, in a meta sense, looking at how this course is put together, organized, facilitated, what technologies, what pedagogy and techniques, etc.

Some early highlights from how it’s put together

Course website, seemingly a VCU Wordpress Multisite, is openly published and has learner blogs feeding sections of it via RSS feeds / bloggregate

Getting started and overview make it clear that there are many ways to be involved in the course, even as community members who are just curious and want to dip in a little bit

The learning outcomes in the Syllabus are awesome in their visual presentation and clear, attractive language

Weekly Twitter chats

Using Diigo I suppose to share links and resources, but I need to investigate this set up more. I’ve almost forgotten about this tool. I recall really liking it at first, but the design is a little clunky by modern web standards. Nonetheless, I’m interested to see how it’s being used.

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Here’s a video that I made with my colleagues Sara and Scott. We had a great time making this and this ended up being one of two winning entries for the FORCE16 Video Pitch Competition. Now we get to start on the exciting work of bringing this vision to reality. 

I’m also considering the different ways that I could share about this project. One one hand I imagine that people would be interested in a behind the scenes look at how this was made and some technical tips and tricks for making great videos. On the other hand I’m also thinking that there may be something to share about the creative collaboration in the workplace.

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Reflecting about writing

Yesterday I tried my best to focus on writing my article on the top-of-mind associations that incoming freshman have when they think about libraries. I’ve been trying to write this for some time and I keep getting stuck in the cycle of writing some and then doing more research, which seems to make it more complicated and interconnected, and harder to see the big picture. Ultimately I found myself spending most of my time trying to get a handle on the literature that will help me tell the story. It’s getting more clear, but parts of the literature keep bleeding into each other and I’m still having a tough time figuring out the major shape that will be useful to me. 

Nonetheless, I’m going to try my best to put down what seem to be the shape of the literature right now. Maybe it’s just a sorting and organizing issue. I’m currently thinking that these are the two big sections, with some possible sub sections.

Library Brand and Stereotypes

OCLC Report - Brand = books, still

Positive and negative associations

Library anxiety / Library ignorance

Information Literacy Transfer Between High School and College

First year experience courses

Library skills and experience

Constructivist approach

Info source preferences