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 [...]

On Facebook

If you want to get librarians talking, mention Facebook. Some hate it, some ban it, some dismiss it, some adore it. And me? In the past two years, I’ve been almost all of the above. 
I didn’t join Facebook when I was in grad school because it seemed a place for the undergrads. Though my similarly-ancient [...]

Blackboardwalla

I’m not a big fan of proprietary course management software. I’ve been a student and librarian with Blackboard, and now a teacher and librarian with WebCT (though we’re switching to Blackboard this fall). None of these experiences has been overwhelmingly positive. Last year a colleague and I decided that Blackboard is Web 2.0 for instructors [...]

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 [...]