THES top university rankings

The Times Higher Education has released its World University Rankings, with RMIT (just) making it into the top 200. The SMH has an article on Australian universities and the rankings. The Library also has (password) access to Times Higher Education online.

There seems to be quite a few articles on the rankings in University World News, which is a newish publication quite similar to the Chronicle of Higher Education or Insider Higher Ed. It includes an article by Simon Marginson.

UNSW on YouTube

The SMH reports that the University of New South Wales is publishing some of its lectures on YouTube in Lectures online for YouTube generation. According to the university’s own press release:

 UNSW on You Tube will be a channel for communicating research and selected teaching material to a wider audience. This will broaden public access to some of Australia’s top teachers and researchers.

See the University’s YouTube page for the range of available videos.

Q&A — Gloria Latham

I thought I’d break the flow of one-way information here by including a regular Q&A item from a School member about their teaching and research interests/habits. I hope this will be fairly relaxed with subjects themselves choosing from a standard set of questions. This type of information helps the Library greatly in creating a picture of the teaching and research needs of the School, but I’m sure it will be of interest also to other people within the School. Many thanks to Gloria for agreeing to kick this off.

What are your teaching/research interests?

Well, at the moment I am working on teacher/research in two directions. One area involves helping teachers interrogate and seek to change unwanted habitual practices. The Virtual School we created is trying to move teaching into new times. It is called Lathner Primary and it’s a school that is educating for change to show our Preservice teachers what might be possible in the near future. I am reading a lot about educational change and critical reflection. We will be doing a second edition of our book Learning to teach: New times, new practices in 2009 so I am gathering research for that as well.
I am also researching how practice before theory might lead to better student engagement and outcomes.

A favourite educationalist/author/theorist and why.

It would be difficult to narrow it down to one theorist or author as I have many. It’s not just about finding out about their great ideas. It’s also about finding speakers and writers who resonate with your thinking. The timing has to be right too. I love Georgia Heard’s text For the Good of the Earth and the Sun. I think I love it because Heard, a poet, shares her vulnerability teaching poetry for the first time. With scholarly texts I often leave my discipline of literacy education to find writers waiting in other disciplines. I’ve explored texts from medical doctors (Robert Coles, Oliver Sachs, and Anthony R. Moore) who write about questioning and learning to listen, ignorance logs and the art rather than the science of medicine. These writers have so much to teach me about teaching and learning.

How do you find out about newly published research?

Sometimes I go over to the library and just browse. Even when I go over to the library with a specific purpose I always return with armfuls of far more books than I went for. The new books on the shelves always catch my attention. I subscribe to a number of professional journals and the articles in those often lead me to new research which I try and follow up. My research leads me to other research. Conferences are other place where new research entices.

Are professional networks important to your research/teaching? How?

I am part of several educational learning communities and I value them greatly. One is online with educators across Australia in literacy. Colleagues and friends of mine also share children’s literature, novels, films and research we find exciting. We talk books together. The students I supervise and teach also suggest material they’re reading. It’s not just new research that attracts me it is research new to me, authors who demand to be read.

Describe your personal library.

The books on the shelves are not ordered and yet I know where each one sits. The content is very eclectic. I just moved again so I got rid of a lot of books I will no longer return to but there are so many books I could never give away because they are like family to me. Once I get into my new place, I’m not content until I fill the bookcases.

Something you’d like your students to know and understand about the Library?

I’d like my students to explore the library more- to spend time and see what’s there. They just don’t spend enough time searching.

Something you’d like to change about the Library?

I just love the new remodelled library. There is really nothing I would change.

PapersInvited database on trial

The Library has a trial of another unusual type of resource: a multidisciplinary database of calls for papers for upcoming conferences and special issues of scholarly journals.

It comes via the CSA platform that many will be familiar with from searching ERIC. It is updated three times a month, it allows cross-discipline searching, there is an alerting service for receiving emails on items that may interest you, and there are outside links to conference websites etc.

Login details are available from the Library news page, where you will also find a link to the feedback form if you wish the Library to consider subscribing.

Government publications

Libraries Australia have just announced a service called GovRAP, which is a free monthly listing of recently catalogued Australian government publications. The records are available in Dewey order so go to the 370s for education items. Each item also has a link to the the Libraries Australia record and the URL for the item online if available.

The RMIT Library is able to create its own catalogue record with a link for any of the online items .

Of related interest is the monthly listing of Recent Australian Publications (RAP) also organised by Dewey number.

Google Scholar and library resources

Many within the School will know about Google Scholar for accessing scholarly resources. What is sometimes not realised is that when you access items via Google Scholar you are often doing so via the Library’s paid subscriptions. The publishers and other providers give access to their online resources via computers with RMIT’s IP address. This means that if you are searching Google Scholar on campus then you will often get immediate access to that journal article or other resource.

This is important to know because if you are off campus then you can authenticate as an RMIT user by accessing Google Scholar via Search it. Simply click on Search it and log on, go the Search it Databases tab and type in Google Scholar. Click on the Google Scholar entry and it will recognise you as an RMIT user and give you access to the paid subscriptions.

SAGE eReference database on trial

I’ve mentioned online reference items before, but we now have a trial of SAGE eReference.  This comes as a package so you can not only browse particular reference works but you can also search for a topic across the different sources. Use our evaluation form to let us know if we should subscribe or not.

When Wikipedia is the assignment

There is an interesting article from a recent issue of Inside Higher Ed reporting on a paper at the Educause conference in the US. Martha Groom tells how she had her students submit their term paper to Wikipedia as an article. This allowed them to immediately engage with the idea of peer review, give consideration to copyright and references, think about the tone of the article and so on.

Another very good reason for this kind of exercise is that it allows students to understand what type of resource they are getting with Wikipedia. They’d be able to see that Wikipedia is open to all to contribute; that has a transparent editing and discussion process; and most importantly, it would emphasise the need to assess whether the information is credible or not.