Student blogs

As I mentioned earlier, students in LALT 101 are blogging their assignments this semester. While several students opted to shut down their blogs to all but their classmates and me, several others left theirs open to the world. Students aren’t required to use anything other than the standard WordPress template and certainly aren’t expected to [...]

Student blogging

There are real challenges in teaching a required information literacy class to college freshmen, but we keep trying to make our class, LALT 101, more relevant and interesting to our students.
Through last spring, students took weekly quizzes through WebCT. It made for easy (read: automatic) grading for the instructors, and it helped students prep for [...]

Google strategies in library databases = FAIL

Like many students everywhere, AUC students are inclined to use Google or Google Scholar for their academic research. Like many students, they attempt library database searches with natural language like they’d use in Google. Perhaps because English is their second language, they seem to have a harder time learning the lesson of finding keywords and [...]

Why not use Google?

Classes started at AUC two weeks ago, but we’re just starting our first real session next week, in part because of an exemption exam and in part because of some construction delays on our new campus. In any case, as I prepare to teach two sections of our semester-long library class, I find myself wondering [...]

Moving…

My university, the American University in Cairo, is moving to a new campus for the fall semester. The old campus is in downtown Cairo, near the Egyptian Museum and close to the Nile River. The new campus is in (the euphemistically named) New Cairo, east of downtown and in area that was all desert just [...]

Library instruction in MLS programs

Last week at the ACRLog, StevenB shared results of a survey of what librarians might like to see in an LS Academic Libraries class. Instruction was high on the list. According to StevenB,
Those items that received the highest percentage of “essential” ranking were information literacy, instruction and higher education industry.
I’m not surprised, and commented as [...]

Creating an information need

As I wrote about in an earlier post, each semester I teach two to three sections of a required library class here at AUC.
The class seems like a great opportunity for students to engage with library resources. We have about 13 hours with them… a dream compared to 50-minute one shots.
The problem, however, is that [...]

Required library classes

Each semester here at the American University in Cairo, I teach at least two sections of LALT 101, a required no-credit one-hour/weekly information literacy class. Some students do exempt out of the course via an exam, but most undergraduates take it.
I really enjoy working with the same group of students all semester. It’s a nice [...]