LITA Instructional Technologies Interest Group LITA

Minutes from ALA Annual 2012

  • 1.  Minutes from ALA Annual 2012

    Posted Jul 19, 2012 10:20 AM

    LITA IG: Instructional Technologies Interest Group Meeting Minutes
    ALA Annual Conference, June 23, 2012 10:00 am – 12:00pm
    Chair: Nicole Pagowsky (Chair); Erica Findley (Co-Chair); Lilly Ramin (Secretary)

    ALA Connect: http://connect.ala.org/node/167966

     

    Agenda: Group discussion (45 min) and Business Meeting (45 min)

    I. Group Discussion

    Q: What news do you follow to keep up with instructional technology?

    A: (replies from participants)

    • Twitter is what I use
    • I look at other people in similar positions but even in non-instruction positions
    • I look in places where new tools are introduced
    • eLearning Guild
    • Non-library lit. I get a lot more out of education literature than library literature. They seem to more directly emphasize application.
    • I set up [journal] alerts

     

    Conferences:

    Computers in Libraries

    LITA Forum

    Sloan C Emerging Technologies Conference |Las Vegas, Nevada July 25-27, 2012

     

    Online Webinars:

    Georgia Library Association webinars: Carterette webinars (archived)

    Q: How do you decide what you are going to play with?
    A: (replies from participants)

    • Depends on the culture of the library (sometimes getting a free trial is helpful). Sometimes the larger the library the harder to justify the time)
    • I use some tools because they are easier for Macs (like Camtasia over Adobe) – I look at developer forums. I review D-Lib and code4lib.
    • I look at JISC (UK) interest Group/Higher Education



    Q: How do you find out your user needs?

    A: (replies from participants)

    • First ask: Will campus IT support it (sometimes we ask, sometimes we do). For example, we use WordPress for campus pages since it’s easier to edit (at work or home)
    • Depends on what technology it is. We love Spingshare products – not flash based so they work on iPads
    • Cloud computing is often said to be wanted even if people don’t understand what it is – it also relates to open source topics. Cloud surveys #1 reason: Cost #2 reason: new applications were cloud based
    • Students accustomed to Google Docs & Evernote. So, their collaborative sharing is being done but they might not know it’s the “cloud.”

     

    Q: Methods for finding our user needs?
    A: (replies from participants)

    • We worked with the Anthropology department and students got credit. It was helpful because we had preconceptions about how tech savvy they were. That doesn’t represent how effectively they are using the technology. We learned about what wasn’t happening more than what was.
    • Reviewed changes at the reference desk. Example more need for download help.
    • Review the literature. Library lit focuses more on millennial skills and education lit notes that students do not all possess the skills yet.
    • Our instructional tech team set up a toolkit for librarians and did a workshop based on survey results. We surveyed grad students and faculty. I also work with instructional techs on campuses who are working with Blackboard.
    • We did a survey. We wrote library questions to be more useful (not about books) but it has taken a few years.
    • Invite users to meetings to create a contact point/liaisons

    Let’s keep discussion boards going on ALA connect!

     

    BUSINESS MEETING: (Facilitated by Nicole, Chair)

     

    Q: What do you want out of this group?

     A: (replies from participants)

    • Best practices
    • Ways of collaborating with instructional technology
    • Not locked down to one systems
    • Place to play with tech (helpful due to budgets)
    • Share LibGuides and toolkits

    In between meetings/virtual:

    • Facilitating an article discussion (people can volunteer) – group liked this!
    • Virtual conferences
    • Someone can start a room (like with Blackboard Collaborate) and invite people since Google Hangout appears to have a limit
    • ALA Connect chat (might have some issues)

     

    LITA Instructional Technologies IG on ALA Connect: http://connect.ala.org/node/167966

    • ALA Connect okay? Group agrees. Let’s try this out for a while.
    • LITA may give us a listserv but no on e has time to administrate it at the moment. Let’s work with ALA Connect for a while.

     

     


    Minutes – L.Ramin