We spent most of the meeting discussing various aspects of the MISO survey results.1) Only 85% of faculty reported being satisfied with the degree to which they can provide input regarding library and technology decisions that affect them.  Are there any specific instances where you were surprised by an LIS decision?

• Etextbooks

  • initial email sent in Spring, but actual implementation/training occurred in August, which was too late to really expect Middlebury faculty to engage fully with the technology;

  • the training webinar was unimpressive and not tailored to Middlebury (e.g., expectation that faculty would annotate student texts or keep track of their reading progress);

  • it was not made clear that much of this discussion was around potential ways to use the technology, not expectations for all participants;

  • needed better communication in general – felt too last minute.

  • Ebooks affect pedagogy (ex. to refer to text in class, need to allow laptop use in class)

• moodle

  • similarly, roll-out was too late (August) for faculty to learn and accept a new LMS solution.  Spring appears to be best time to alert faculty about impending changes for the following fall with training offered at various times in the summer, not just at the end of summer.

2) On the other hand, lynda.com seems well-loved.  Brenda mentioned that Lynda.com is working on creating linkable video segments (currently you can only link to full courses).

This led to a discussion about the technological competencies of students.  Many students today do not seem particularly tech-savvy, lacking even basic skills such as using Google Drive effectively (uploading/sharing documents, etc.), or understanding that some web sites are not perfectly compatible with all browsers and students should therefore learn to try viewing sites that don’t display properly with multiple browsers. Some are reluctant to explore applications they are unfamiliar with on their own (ex. Prezi).

Questions from the discussion: What collaborative technology skills do students need to know for technological literacy?  Can we promote the use of workshops or lynda.com for foundational tech skills such as these?  Do we model how to find answers enough to make students self-sufficient?  Are students sufficiently aware of technology security issues?

Possible action items for LIS/Liaisons:

a) Survey (or discuss via focus groups, etc.) faculty about what tech skills they think students ought to know;

b) Provide page of Lynda.com links (or YouTube, other resources, etc.) for most common basic technology questions;

c) Bert Johnson and Barbara Hofer indicated they would appreciate information on screencasting tools in order to create quick tutorials for their students to teach them how to use certain discipline-specific software. Create an LIS blog post with options (easy to sophisticated) so all faculty can be made aware.

3)  The MISO survey suggested that, while the most faculty are satisfied with the liaison program, only 55% say it is important.  Why?  What kind of support or information would faculty like to receive from their liaison?

• Some faculty contact their liaison only at the immediate (usually urgent) point-of-need;

• Others contact liaisons more frequently, especially when the liaison has demonstrated particular skill or expertise.  Carrie M. was cited as an example of someone who provides excellent interactive classroom presentations for students.

• Faculty would like to have mechanism for providing feedback.

Possible action items for LIS/Liaisons:

a) Distribute reminders to all faculty, not just new members, of the various roles/services offered by LIS Liaisons, perhaps something like a most useful “top 10.” Send in early and late (e.g. Aug. 1) summer.  Use email, blog posting, eNewsletter, communication to department chairs.  Over communicate!

b) Provide liaison training for presentation/teaching skills to improve overall quality of classroom sessions

4) Shel asked whether faculty present backed up data.  Most did to varying degrees (external HDs).  Most did not use middfiles, citing the 2012 middfiles failure as reason for lack of confidence in the service.  Other faculty cited the inefficiency of using middfiles (i.e., one needs to make an active choice to save documents there, it is not an automated backup solution).

Possible action items for LIS/Liaisons:

a) Create document/info page/info email on data backup options, identifying various data backup options (including personal subscription options) for faculty.  Send to departments.

b) Should LIS investigate an enterprise automated data back up solution?  There seemed to be support for that among the group.

5) Brief discussion of copyright issues, while initially desultory, revealed some gaps in knowledge about best practices.  Terry talked about a “risk management” approach to using copyright exemptions such as fair use or the face-to-face teaching exemption.

6) Social science faculty indicated the best times for offering workshops during the year are:

• First half of semester;

• J-Term for faculty not teaching.

Thanks for reading,

Terry

Moodle/course hub feedback

Currently there are about 110 active Moodle sites.

Faculty feedback: faculty felt the Moodle orientation sessions and especially the work sessions were great, but there simply wasn’t enough time before classes began to start using it for the fall.  (The delay had to do with our Moodle vendor not being able to implement it sooner).   David thought Moodle will be more useful for his larger classes when he has more students to manage. Bert is using the course hub with links to a public Google site.  He uses E-res for any copyrighted material but posts out of copyright works on his website which isn’t password protected.  Note:  Both the course hub and Moodle will allow faculty to upload an updated syllabus, should the need arise, and faculty can tell students the latest version is there to avoid confusion from different versions via email.

There will be more workshops in Dec. but some thought faculty will be too busy then.  Workshops will also be offered during J-term, so look for future announcements or see http://go/lisworkshops.  Also short Moodle video tutorials are available on Lynda.com http://go/lynda.

Summon (the new library quick search)
Your students are using it – do you know what it is? Do you like it?

Summon is the Library’s Google-like search box. It’s a single search for books, newspaper articles, journal articles and citations, and more. Summon will try to link directly to full-text if we have it. It searches MIDCAT, the Library’s Digital Collections, and over 90% of our journal articles.  For more details see the What’s Summon link next to the search box on the library homepage.  Brenda demo’d how to do a search and narrow it.  See the Summon 2 ½ minute tutorial if you weren’t at the meeting (the link to the tutorial is under the search box).  There are still some issues with some of the links, but usually if the article doesn’t come up directly, you can search the title again and find it at the source.

Summon also searches the 45,000+ new ebooks added to midcat.  You can search the ebook collection directly at http://go/ebooks. These can be downloaded to computers and iPads for 7 days but not to Kindles.  We only pay for the ebooks we use, so we can offer many more titles this way.

Faculty feedback:  David has found lots of useful information using Summon.  Some people didn’t realize you can still get to Midcat (and NExpress and Worldcat) by clicking on the Catalogs tab next to Summon.  Summon is great for doing a search across lots of content, and then narrowing with limits,  but there are still times it will be better to use a specific database for its special features or discipline focus.

Classrooms and Labs
Smart classrooms progress and feedback; update on Econ Stats Lab in the library

Currently there are 44 “non-smart” classrooms on campus, plus several other spaces used as classrooms during the Language Schools. LIS will convene a group this fall to prioritize upgrade requests, resulting in a budget request for conversion.  LIS will also be looking at existing older smart classrooms that need upgrades.  Stay tuned for ways faculty can give input on the priorities. UPDATE: “Bob Cluss is making these decisions, so faculty should probably contact him directly if they want to advocate for a specific classroom space.”

Also the Library 140 classroom is being expanded and converted into an Economics Stats lab with 35 computers.  Economics has long had a need for a larger lab for their large statistics classes and for doing experiments.

Faculty feedback:  Bob suggested that we look at data on classroom use to help inform decisions.

Other LIS updates

Upcoming evaluation of Google Apps/Microsoft 365
Update and how best to get your input about alternative systems we might potentially use (gmail, calendaring, contacts, plus additional collaborative tools like Google Docs).

Shel spoke about why the college is considering such a move.  Storing data “in the cloud” at remote servers instead of on local servers has many benefits. It is both about potentially saving money through economies of scale but also about better redundancy and disaster recovery since Google and Microsoft have better capabilities for backing up data and providing access from multiple servers around the world should problems arise locally.  Service agreements and privacy issues will be evaluated closely.  Look for more information as this progresses.

Faculty feedback:

Faculty expressed concern we might be offered such services at a teaser rate but later be locked into continuing at higher rates, especially if these companies continues to dominate the market.  Also there was concern re: how our information will be used by commercial companies.  Will Google be benign or evil?  Bob reminded us that this is capitalism and the tiger is only acting in his nature to eat the lamb.