Conferences are interesting events where the learning, socializing and networking combine to produce a more productive and inspired Bruce. The traditional “sage on the stage” giving a presentation is still a very popular model and one that succeeds in many cases. That said, I like when conferences experiment with different models and that’s what I received today. The day began with “lighting strikes” sessions where presenters have to convey a concept or practice in seven minutes. Michelle Baratta and Sarah Forbes  from the University of Toronto presented on their efforts to use games, both video and real life, to engage students and build engagement.The creativity and energy of these presenters (and others I haven’t mentioned) was a great way to start the second day of the conference.

The “birds of a feather” session (see the official WILU notes on the session) was a free form ‘unconference’ style session. Participants looked at a list of tables dedicated to different topics, sat down and started talking. My table explored the challenge of student motivation. To my delight, another librarian raised Dan Pink’s work on motivation who has argued that the drive for mastery, autonomy and purpose. Others discussed exercises they have devised for students that challenges them to think critically about what they read. I was intrigued by the idea of setting high expectations – university is a demanding intellectual environment – and community. By interacting with their sources deeply, students can join the community of scholars. Intrinsic motivation is the best kind and librarians ought to seek out ways to engage it but there was a consensus that some students appear to be motivated solely by carrots and sticks. I’m not sure that a love of learning can be instilled in every case but it is well worth trying.

In the afternoon, I attended two sessions that sought to explore and understand students more deeply. From Utah State University, Wendy Holliday presented on, “From Active Learning to Activity: Getting Beyond Busy Work and into Deep Learning.” This ethnographic research followed a first year composition class, observing how students and instructors interacted. Reading actual transcripts of instructor-student interaction was enlightening on several levels as it revealed how both parties think about assignments and learning. Many students appear to desire (or indeed, operate from) a check list approach for research that short circuits learning and research. As Holliday argues, “information literacy is a reading problem,” – without deep and sustained reading, students will rarely progress beyond busy work.

The day’s presentations culminated with a deeply challenging but vital issue facing academic librarians; how can we support at risk students? Presented by Janet Goosney from Memorial University, I learned how librarians worked with struggling students, writing centre staff and instructors to support students. One of the reasons given for the success of the program was the history of close collaboration between Memorial’s librarians and writing centre staff – that strikes me as a natural partnership once I think about it but it isn’t an idea I had encountered before. The kind of support provided in thte at risk student program (if failing students take it and pass, they can stay on, otherwise they have to leave the university for a time) is a model of academic collaboration. Some of the methods – such as self-reflective student journalling on education – strike me as an effective approach to stimulate student interest. Arguably, many students would benefit from doing that and it is unfortuante that this practice is not more wide spread.

The WILU 2010 conference began today in Hamilton at McMaster University and it looks like it will be a great event. The opening keynote address was given by Dr James Paul Gee, an American academic who has recently published some very interesting work on the relationship between education and video games. Increasing academic interest in gaming is a fascinating trend that I want to understand better. Gee made the argument that players of highly interactive and flexible games (e.g. World of Warcraft and The Sims) master complex rules, language and narratives to successfully play games. They also construct theories about the game’s operation, build software and teach themselves new skills in cooperation with other gamers.  There was a lot to digest in this address and there is a challenge to discern how to apply these ideas to education and libraries.  One appealing idea is to find ways to increase the speed, quality and frequency of feedback in education. Make a mistake in a game and your character perishes; make a mistake in class and it might be weeks before  you fail a test and realize you have to go back and relearn it.

As with other conferences I have attended, deciding which sessions to attend is always a challenge. In the afternoon, I attended two sessions: “Student-focused learning curriculm planning: starting from the ground up” and “Good, better, best! – in peer learning” both given by librarians from Edmonton, Alberta. The student focused learning session, based on research conducted by Professors Heidi Julien and Lisa Given explored how K-12 education prepares students in research and information literacy skills in Alberta. The preliminary results from this multi year study – which tracks students from the senior year of high school to about half way through undergraduate study – are not encouraging. The median score of high school students on the James Madison University Information Literacy Test was 51% or less than proficient. The researchers identified several possible explanations for this weak student performance including the fact that information literacy skills are not formally tested in the province’s education exams. It looks like there is a significant if not institutionalized disconnect between secondary and post-secondary educational priorities.

The last session of the day concerned an interesting internal training program in place at Grant MacEwan University. As Karen Hering described it, the non-evaluative peer learning program involved librarians observing their peers teach and learning new approaches that they could apply on their own. Designed in cooperation with the Faculty Development Office and library leadership, the program has been a success in encouraging better information literacy teaching and bringing together the institution’s librarians who are spread out over several campuses. One of the critical rules that made the program successful was the participation rule: every participant must observe and be observed. This reminds me of Dr Gee’s opening address where he remarked that gamers tend to insist that all players contribute actively; sitting out and underperforming is noticed.

For four or five years, I have been an avid attendee of the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival held annually in Toronto in late April and early May. Their sheer variety of films and topics available at the event can feel overwhelming but I usually walk away having learned something new and seeing interesting techniques in film making. As with many other film festivals, some fraction of films shown will become more wildly available on either television or cinemas but it is hard to know which ones are “see it here or never!” versus “see it here or in theatres in a few months.” During this year’s festival, I learned about a new project called the Hot Docs Doc Library where you can see a wide variety of Canadian documentary films for free.

According to the site, this project was supported partially through the federal government’s Canadian Culture Online Strategy program. The leadership of the Department of Canadian Heritage in supporting films like this deserves to be supported. As a librarian, I would like to see the library have better organization. It is difficult to search the films or even easily figure out how many there are (my guess is close to three hundred films, including shorts). In the future, I look forward to seeing more Canadian films posted here and seeing how the site evolves over time. Perhaps the administrators of the service will consider taking on librarians and educators to further develop and expand the site.

I have nearly finished reading reading Thomas L. Friedman’s latest book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution and It Can Renew America” and it has been an  inspiration. Friedman’s discussion of the potential for energy technology innovation has particularly excited me. However, he points out significant problems that deserve greater thought including a a lack of investment in such technology. In discussing investment in innovation, Friedman writes:

Before I go into what sort of price signal we need, though, let me underscore for a moment just how feeble the American system has been during the last fifty years when it comes to stimulating clean energy innovation. Let’s start with a statistic. The total investment in research and development by electric utilities in the United States in 2007 was about 0.15 percent of total revenues. In most competitive industries, the figure is 8 to 10 percent. If your total investment in R & D is 0.15 percent of revenues, that’s not going to buy you much more than a few subscriptions to Popular Mechanics and Scientific American. In fact, the American pet food industry spends more each year on R & D than the American utilities industry does.” (p. 294, Chapter 13: The Stone Age Didn’t End Because We Ran Out of Stones)

If you look at the annual budget of your library, research unit or school media center, what percentage of your budget is dedicated to researching and developing new services, programs and ‘products’ for your users? I suspect that academic libraries have good potential for innovation since they tend to foster and incentivize research activity through grants and providing staff with time to focus on research projects. While the innovations developed by library vendors and technology companies have been very valuable, I wonder if some parts of the profession and our sector have grown somewhat reliant on our suppliers for new innovations. I do think there is great work being done by librarians and the evidence based practice movement is promising. I think we need to go beyond that though. Based on my reading of Friedman (e.g. he tells the story of the US company First Solar that took years to produce and manufacture its solar energy technology successfully) and other sources, successful innovation requires going through many failures and trying many different ideas before finding ideas that work. In addition to providing time and funds for innovation, librarians and libraries need to allow and encourage more trial and error, more ideas and yes, more failures to come up with new innovations.

What’s your favourite example of a library or librarian innovation? How was it developed?