Concurrent Session Eight
Friday, April 28th - 11:00 AM - 11:45 AM
Title: SAILS, Take 2: A New Look at Students’ Information Literacy Attainment Levels Over One Semester
Abstract: This presentation follows up on the Spark 2016 presentation, “How Information Literate Are They? A SAILS Study of First-Year(ish) U of L Students.” Our research team (R. Graham, N. Eva, S. Cowan) gratefully received another Teaching Development Fund grant in 2016 to extend our 2015 study by using a different presentation of the SAILS test to gauge whether students’ test scores improved over the fall 2016 term.
In fall 2015, we used the SAILS international cohort test to evaluate the information literacy skills of LBED 1000 and WRIT 1000 students at the beginning and end of the term. In fall 2016, we used a new form of the test that became available in January 2016—the Build Your Own Test (BYOT)—which, unlike the cohort test, supports comparison of individual students’ pre- and post-test scores. Fall 2016 testing involved students enrolled in LBED 1000 again, as well as LBSC 0520 and LBSC 2000.
This year’s presentation will compare the cohort test to the BYOT as well as our findings from both rounds of the study. Lessons learned will include benefits and drawbacks of the two types of tests, areas of strengths and weaknesses revealed by the SAILS test results, and whether the BYOT pre- and post-test results suggest our students’ information literacy levels changed for the better over the fall 2016 term.
Presenters: Rumi Graham - Librarian, Library, Sandra Cowan - Librarian, Library, Nicole Eva - Librarian, Library
Room: M1090
Title: 50 years of motivating students to learn
Abstract: The three presenters represent three time frames in the life of the University. Dr. George Zieber was one of the founders of the geography department at the University of Lethbridge and taught between the time frames of 1967 – 1989, Dr. Mark Zieber’s first teaching contract at the University of Lethbridge was in 1996. He accepted a full-time faculty position beginning in 2003 till the present. Ryan Phillips began teaching for the University program in 2016. He currently is a full time educator in the senior’s health portfolio with Alberta health services, and a part-time clinical educator with the faculty of health sciences. We will discuss how motivating students has evolved and changed over the years.
Presenters: Dr. Mark Zieber - Assistant Professor, Health Sciences, Dr. George Zieber - Professor Emeritus, Geography, Ryan Phillips - Instructor, Health Sciences
Room: M1035
Title: The benefits of being a “Slacker”
Abstract: In our own classroom settings we have been perusing a variety of free apps that are either designed for or can be easily adapted to teaching and evaluation at the university level and for larger class sizes. For example, the business communication app entitled “Slack” (www.slack.com) can be used in a classroom to open up dialogue between teachers and students and engage them in new ways. Another free app we have been using recently entitled “Socrative” (www.socrative.com) has some interesting and fun learning opportunities which we believe have greatly enhanced the experiences of our first year students. Our initial assessments of these techniques and tools have been that they (on the whole) appear to cultivate a safe environment for students to become active participants in their learning experience. In this presentation we will delve deeper into our approach for utilizing these apps, along with a discussing a few other techniques or tools we have developed over the years to enhance student engagement and open up dialogue between teachers and students. Please download in advance the socrative student app to your phones or laptops to participate and experience the pHun .
Presenters: John Eng - Instructor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Tracey Roemmele, Instructor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Room: M1060