Engaging Alumni and Prospective Students Through Social Media

Social media provides institutions an opportunity for a new level of engagement with prospective students, alumni, donors and community members. This chapter begins with an overview of social media in higher education, who is using it and for what, then provides a few talking points to consider with others before beginning a push into social media. The remainder of the chapter includes a few examples of ways in which social media are used to engage alumni and prospective students, including utilizing Twitter as a free SMS service to provide updates to prospective students during their recruitment, creating an iPhone application for alumni weekend as both an information and engagement tool, and using live tweets from alumni during homecoming to provide an authentic look at the day’s events

From Cradle to Grave: The Life Cycle of a Digital Learning Object

Most librarians have probably experienced finding that a website they liked has disappeared, perhaps a video on YouTube, a tutorial, or even just an informative webpage. Sometimes the URL has simply changed, and the item can be found again. Other times the item has truly been retired. Without trying to track down the original creator or hosting body, we may never know exactly what happened nor why. Since we also place links to some of these items on our library webpages, disappearing websites create broken links or “link rot.”1 Librarians are also creators of some of these disappearing websites

Problems and Promises of Using LMS Learner Analytics for Assessment: Case Study of a First-Year English Program

Learning management systems (LMS) are widely used in education. They offer the potential for assessing student learning, but the reality of using them for this is problematic. This case study chronicles efforts by librarians at Marquette University to use LMS data to assess students’ information literacy knowledge in Marquette’s first-year English program

Measuring Readers Flow State with a High Medium Interactivity Online News Story

The rapid maturation of the Internet has enabled journalists and news media companies to push the boundaries of traditional journalistic narrative by utilizing the techniques of literary journalism to integrate pictures, audio, video and other multimedia elements into interactive and immersive multimedia rich stories. These immersive stories, while aesthetically stunning, are neither easy nor cheap to create. This study uses expectation confirmation theory and the theory of flow, with uses and gratifications as an umbrella theory to examine whether individuals who read interactive stories experience higher levels of media disorientation than readers of stories presented in a traditional online story format. The study results demonstrated that medium interactivity of an online news story does not impact a participant\u27s state of flow

Create or Curate: An Environmental Scan of Digital Learning Object Development

A 2012 survey focused on the sharing of information literacy teaching materials (PDF) found that current practice amongst many librarians creating digital resources is to find existing learning materials before developing their own. In 2017 we conducted a survey to examine whether this continued to be true for librarians creating or reusing Digital Learning Objects (DLOs) and what best practices regarding design and development of DLOs were being used. We adopted the New Media Consortium (NMC) definition for DLOs which describes them as “any grouping of materials that is structured in a meaningful way and is tied to an educational objective.” Examples include: a video on YouTube, an interactive online module, or a stand-alone activity or website that includes a mix of videos, and interactive components

Introduction to the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm: An Online Course for Librarians

This article discusses the development and delivery of a three-week asynchronous online course in Jesuit history, education, and the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) for librarians working in Association of Jesuit Colleges and University (AJCU) institutions. Created by two instruction librarians and one instructional designer from a pair of AJCU institutions, the course explores incorporating the IPP—a contemplative learning model—into a one-shot, single class library instruction session. Included is a practical description of the development, revision, marketing, and success of the online course, along with a list of the class contents. Over three course offerings in 2017 and 2018, thirty-one participants discussed readings and videos, and shared ideas about their current teaching practices. They reflected on how the IPP, or at least some elements of it, might become part of their teaching, despite the time and content constraints. Other topics included the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) “Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education,” critical librarianship, and social justice. The intent of the article is to raise awareness of the course for interested librarians and to offer guidance to anyone working to develop an online course related to Ignatian pedagogy and teaching

Redindling Community Connections with Digital Holiday Cards

The Raynor Memorial Libraries dean has a tradition of sending holiday greetings to the campus community and colleagues at other institutions to maintain strong personal connections and, in a small way, raise awareness of the library\u27s expertise and collections. To that end, each year, the library\u27s instructional designer and marketing coordinator have worked together to identify creative, standout designs for these greeting messages

Multifaceted Promotion and Outreach of Banned Books Week Library Programming

Are you interested in how to better engage your community through marketing, outreach and social media? If yes, then download and listen to this narrated PowerPoint as we share our strategies for diversified and interactive library promotion. Through illustrating the Raynor Memorial Libraries’ Banned Books Week campaign, this presentation will deliver numerous strategies on how to reach your audience where they are and bring them into the library. Topics covered will include program development, cross-campus collaboration, creating an interactive LibGuide and displays, promoting events through campus media, and documenting the event through photos and videos