Fall 2013: New tutorials designed for student research success

New!

You can find them by going to the Austin Community College District Library Services home page at http://library.austincc.edu/ and selecting Online Tutorials.

Know How Tutorials Now Available:

• Choosing a Topic 
• Identifying Keywords
• Academic Honesty  
• Evaluating Information

Go, IL Team, Go!

A shout out to the amazing IL ReDesign Team at ACC's Library Services... David Wilson and Ashley Carr have done a fantastic job in building a tutorial that is:

• Discipline neutral,
• Focused on one learning outcome;
• Portable for ease of faculty adoption;
• Interactive to engage students;
• Assessment embedded to track efficacy and assure learning is occurring;
• Flexible, in that it can be delivered via web, CMS, android or iDevice...

Go Team!

Wrapping our heads around the redesign...

As we think about our redesign, here are some of the connections we see that we will be putting to work to build a more literate citizenry.

Back to the Future with the ACC IL Team

So, I am reviewing the redesign plan for our IL Program. Two words that are the driving force of the plan are "strategic" and "sustainable". We heard from many stakeholder groups that they love our instruction content, but that the products themselves are too long, too inflexible, and, in some cases, outdated in their look and feel. 

So, our plan is to re-use parts of the content, creating smaller pieces that offer the desired flexibility, strategically supporting what our faculty have expressed they need. And by making those pieces discipline neutral, we create a more sustainable IL Program.

It's a good day.

How we got here: Standing on the shoulders of Giants

At the conclusion of AY 2011, our Dean, +Julie Todaro, in conjunction with the Library Leadership Team (LLT) at Austin Community College, charged us with a ReDesign of the award-winning Library Services Information Literacy Program. Recognizing that something as successful and effective as our historic IL program should not be changed without careful consideration and forethought, my IL Team members, +Ashley Carr, +David Wilson and I began our undertaking by looking at mountains of data. This data was from three sources:

• ACC Classroom Faculty (both full-time and adjunct);
• ACC Faculty Librarians; and  
• Research from accrediting and governmental bodies (SACSCOC, SCANS, ALA) as to how stated learning outcome requirements match with our College's programs' stated learning outcomes found on departmental websites, syllabi, an ACAP Report and other public reports.

Wow. Have we learned a lot! And have we come a long way! We have met many of our faculty colleagues in the process. Some of whom have sung the Library's praises (thank you!) and some of whom had strong words for us as to how they would like to see us change and improve (thank you, too!! We have listened and are listening still! And we are working on many of the changes you have requested while preserving the fundamentally strong and vigorous IL program so many of us have found invaluable to our students' success.).

As we continue on this journey, we will share our progress and direction. The changes we implement, most of which have been requested by you, some of which have been driven by evolving good practices, and some others that have been driven by changes in the academic world, will be shared here in this blog, and within the library website. We welcome you to track our progress, share your thoughts and suggestions, and watch our students succeed!