Finished!

I completed my report over the week-end and submitted it to dropbox.  It feels great to have everything done a little early.  For those of you who have asked, please feel free to utilize any of the links in the Learnist Research 101 board.  I think they are all great resources, that a variety of students can benefit from.  Hope you enjoyed the class as much as I did.

Training Completed

My four learners have reviewed my learning module with some interesting commentary.  I had a suggestion to move my pins arund in the board by covering APA and MLA style and then including the Zotero pin.  I thought that was a great suggestion.  Another suggestion I received was to add a conclusion slide at the end.  That the learning module seemed to abruptly end.  Both of these suggestions are good, so I will modify my learning module accordingly. 

One of the other comments I received was that one of the LibGuides, Finding Articles at WIU  link had a lot of information available on it, which made it seem overwhelming in comparison to the other links.  I think this is a valid issue, but I'm not sure how I am going to address it.  I want the learning module to include WIU resources.  I also think all of the information in the LibGuide can be important to the learner if they want to review every single tab, but for the purpose of this learning module, I really just want them to be aware of the basic database search.  Another comment I received was that I could remove the slideshare about digging deeper, because it is actually a link on the LibGuide.  I haven't decided what I am going to do.  I think I am going to eliminate the slideshare, and put more instruction into the LibGuide pin, explaining which tabs I think are vital for review and which can be covered at another time.

Overall, I was pleased with their comments and am getting ready to write my paper.

Learners are lined up

I have my learners lined up and am putting the finishing touches on my instructions.  I am really happy with the results of my Learnist Research 101 board.  I did discover a slight glitch in the program.  I created the board with my pc, and everything works great.  However, when I reviewed how many views I have received on my iPad with the Learnist app, the Slideshare presentation I have for one of the pins, will not work on Apple, since it is flash.  Since this is a review that was created by University Libraries' Instructional Unit, and I really like the content, I decided to leave it in the board.  I think I will update the comment next to it, so that Apple users will know this is blank because it has flash.  I will use a pc when I give my instruction.  I am looking forward to the students comments about the resources and what they think about Learnist.

Research 101 Learnist Board Created

I have my Research 101 board in Learnist.  It can be found at http://learni.st/users/tammy.sayles.9/boards/7760-research-101.  Learnist has made some nice upgrades to the program, so adding content has become a lot easier than it was the last time I tried to use it.  The only thing I am disappointed with is that I prefer to recommend Purdue OWL for citation assistance.  However, the Purdue OWL cite has something in it that won't allow you to access the content from a third party program.  I found good alternatives though.  I hope you get a chance to work through the Research 101 Board.

Learning Activity Plan

Research 101

Students are often assigned a research paper, and don’t know where to go to get started.  They aren’t sure what the instructor means by scholarly sources.  The goal of my learning activity is to create a board on Learnist, a Web 2.0 social media site, that will take them to other links that will help them understand what they need to do to complete a research paper.  It will start with selecting their topic; explaining the difference between scholarly sources, primary resources, and secondary resources; how to search for sources; how to determine if a source passes the CRAAP test; the organization of a research paper; and citing their resources in APA style.

The goal for the learner is to allow the learner to review the various websites that cover these topics, so that the learner will be able to create a research paper. The learners will be anyone who has to create a research paper and wants to understand what is expected to be in a paper and how to find and compile resources.  The learner can either be undergraduate or graduate. 

The learning activity will be created in Learnist, so the learner will have to have a computer and access to the internet.  They will not have to have a Learnist account in order to review the learning activity.

The learning activity will contain step by step instructions, and the visual attached to each step, will then have links to additional materials that will expand the learners knowledge. 

To assess the success of the learning activity, I am going to ask four students to review the Learnist board, and ask the following questions:

                1.  What did you think of the learning activity?

                2.  Do you think this learning activity will help you with your next research project?

                    Why or why not?

                3.  Is there anything you would change in the learning activity?

                4.  Other comments?

From these comments, I will revise the learning activity accordingly.

IDT 516 Final Project Proposal

I would like to use Learnist to create an instructional training module on how to research a paper.  In the library we use a tool called, LibGuides, when we do library instruction.  It's great, but tends to be very text heavy.  I'd like to use Learnist, so I can incorporate more visuals, plus I can use additional resources outside of WIU.  We have excellent sources, and my colleagues do a great job with their instruction.  I want to incorporate other great sources from other academic libraries in this instruction.  It will move from being assigned a research project and how to get started, determining good sources, how to find books, how to find articles, putting your paper together, citation and formatting.  I like that I can have a lot of visual images in Learnist, and then link to more text.