Why I don\u27t use the library

I am a user. I was your user. Now I am just a user - of information. You never see me, you never hear from me, yet I am there. Am I there because of you, or am I there in spite of you? I am a rated researcher. I am a prolific supervisor of postgraduate students. I am a contemporary academic. Yet you never see me in the library. It is because of you - but are you to be thanked, or to be blamed? This talk will take a light-hearted look at the way in which contemporary information users find, process and produce information. It will give the audience a perspective of the processes through which these users go, rather than to present a list of tools that they use. Finally the presentation will provide a useful framework to be used by post-graduate students in their initial engagement with the literature. From this the presentation will speculate on the role of the librarian or information specialist in a technology-rich environment

Learning Paradigms through Fundraising Systems: the RoboBeggar and the InfoKiosk Cases

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Qualitative assessment across language barriers: an action research study

If students cannot express themselves in the language of the assessor, and if the assessor is not familiar with the cultural constraints within which students operate, it is difficult for the assessor to collect evidence of adequate performance. This article describes the assessment of three digital artefacts where the assessor strove to understand, rather than rate the students and their achievement. Three distinct approaches were followed. The first was positivist, rubric-based. The second was post-structural/interpretive, with groupwork and peer assessment. The third was feminist/holistic relying principally on students’ own presentation of video material of what they did. Data sources include artifacts produced by students, assessment rubrics and assessment scores. Results indicate that qualitative assessment with criteria negotiated between the instructor/assessor, the twelve learners and their peers over a period of two years, allowed for a ‘thick description’ of the evaluation experience that adds to student development. Further research needs to be conducted into standardizing the procedures of auditing assessments, rather than standardizing procedures of assessing

The Future of Our Field – A STEEP Perspective

ArticleI hope you are reading this electronically. Otherwise, what is the point of writing about the future when you are decoding it with the technologies of the past? I will present an exploration of the future of our field looking not so much at the field itself – instruction and technology, but rather at the trends around the field that may influence the direction in which we are moving. Two questions drive the essay: 1. What are the trends around us, and 2. How are these likely to influence our field. To frame these questions I will use four simple definitions. I admit from the start that there are much more elegant and possibly scientific definitions out there, but I use these four because of their simplicity. They are not my definitions, but they are in the public domain in the sense that I have been unable to find the actual source of any. The first definition is that of learning. Learning is becoming able to do something one was unable to do before. The second is education. Education is acquiring the knowledge, skills and attitudes to cope with the world around oneself. Instruction is the process of facilitating education through enabling learning. Technology is stuff we use to get things done. In answering the first question, to find a way of categorizing the trends I have decided to use the social, technological, economic, environmental and political elements of culture, also known as the STEEP categories (Analyst 2015). These categories will form the headings for the rest of this paper. Others include categories such as ethical, legal and even spiritual models. I will deal with these as sub-categories of the STEEP framework where appropriate. The second question, the influence on our field, will be dealt with under each of the STEEP categories

Alternatives in evaluating multimedia in secondary school science teaching

While different approaches to evaluation will yield different results, depending on the purpose of the evaluation this article describes an evaluation approach that was aimed at investigation the mental models of users of the programme. The study was driven by questions about the differences in mental models of the instructional designers and the learners, the time learners spent working through the program and the observable changes in their mental models. In this design experiment, a program was developed to teach basic principles of electricity. Three boys and three girls one each of high, medium and low achievement in science were selected from an advantaged urban school, and a similar sample was taken from a disadvantaged rural school. They were asked to draw their impressions of various concepts of electricity and then allowed free access to the program, where they could visit any section even if they had not completed a previous one. Afterwards they were asked to draw sketches again. Other instruments included an opinion questionnaire and observation of the learners working with a “think aloud” protocol. It was found that there were considerable differences in the mental models of the learners and designers about what to expect from computer-based learning. While navigational freedom allowed fast learners to move through work that they knew already, weaker learners tended to get lost. The sketches that learners made before and after exposure to the program provided valuable insights into the growth of their understanding of the concept

Information society needs of managers in a large governmental organisation

Dealing effectively with information and communication technology in the information society is a complex task and the human dimension is often under-estimated. This paper tries to give a voice to some managers about their experiences with information, communication and technology in their working environment, which involves participating in a learning organisation, knowledge management and communities of practice, competency management, ICT-Security awareness management as well as and innovation and change management. Managers of a large governmental organisation in the Netherlands were polled in a questionnaire requesting their responses in using ICT as well as involvement in the above categories. The responses of 246 of them were analysed. It was found that they knew full well that their strongest need was for a conceptual understanding of the implications of ICT in their changed work environment. This need overarched the elementary end-user training needs of what buttons to press to achieve what end. The research findings emphasize that as education is increasingly need-driven instead of content-driven it is necessary to reconsider the curricula of higher educational institutes especially with regards to management training. Furthermore, this research highlights a need for on the job training and performance support for middle managers

Design research and research design – bringing the two together.

This paper will consider the phenomenon of Design Research as described by Van den Akker (2007). It will then consider Peter Rowe's (1987) four research positions, and then it will present a perspective of Design Research through the lens of Burrell and Morgan's (1979) model of research paradigms in social science research. The paper will show how Rowe's four design perspectives map directly onto Burrell and Morgan's research paradigms, and how by rotating through these paradigms, a design research cycle is formed. Finally, the paper will discuss four research questions that drive design and development research and illustrate this by way of a case study

Exploring information and communication theory in graphic design education with activity theory

In the context of a university in a developing country, large class size and inadequate studio space have become the bane of graphic design educators. Students go through the process of ideation with limited lecturer-student interaction. The problem has been compounded by the introduction of information and communication technology (ICT), which should be used as an advantage rather than a menace, since educators are not clear with the right pedagogy for ideation. This paper discusses the application of activity theory as a lens, in analysing the process of ideation as a way of looking at distortions in the current pedagogy. It concludes with the conviction that ICT has radically changed students learning practice. Educators need to find a way of tackling this, especially when large classes seem to be emerging