Research skills for education students

As people are currently planning courses I thought I’d just quickly note how I saw the Library contributing to research skills in the various education programs.

Streaming and downloading video for your online course

I have been helping several lecturers with linking material to Blackboard — I can help with items on ereserve, journal articles, and general library information.

I have mentioned previously that we are having a trial of streaming video. This is limited to on-campus access at the moment so our multimedia people have also started making video also available as downloadable files linked into your course on the DLS.

For copyright reasons we can only do this for material that is recorded by our Off-Air Television Recording Service. We have started doing this for the course ‘Contexts for New Learning’ where we will be making available episodes of ‘Ugly Betty’ and the documentary ‘Wirriya small boy’.

This is all still part of the trial but if you are interested, let me know.

The School’s active library borrowers

We ran a report recently on the number of active borrowers by School during 2007 (the report is purely on the different class of borrower not on individuals). There were 1957 students from the School that didn’t borrow a book this year, 1334 who borrowed at least one book and 233 who borrowed over 30 books. This is generally consistent with other Schools and reflects the changing patterns of library usage with the array of online resources now available. Still, it does emphasize the importance of strong and relevant print collections and the importance of research skills sessions for new students.

I’m always very happy, of course, for teachers and lecturers to get in touch either about the library sessions or title recommendations for the collection.

Q&A — Judy Maxwell

Here is the second of an occasional Q&A to an RMIT staff member on their research/teaching interests and habits. Judy is from RMIT’s Study and Learning Centre and is undertaking her PhD within the School of Education.

What are your teaching/research interests?
Currently both teaching and research interests relate to postgraduate study. My PhD research looks at how candidates perceive the respective cultures of professional, practice-based and traditional doctoral education in the School of Education. With other staff from the Study and Learning Centre, I’m also beginning to work on an interactive website for RMIT postgraduate students covering learning and writing issues common to postgrads, such as thesis writing, supervisory relationships, maintaining momentum, etc.

Website/online resource you regard as indispensable?
Google Scholar is wonderful.

A favourite educationalist/author/theorist and why.
There are many, but currently Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice interests me because his constructs of field and habitus as well as cultural, social and symbolic capital allow the individual learner and the rules and rituals of education structures to be viewed through one critical lens. It helps to explain how some students seem always to feel like fish out of water at university, while others seemingly come to university with an implicit feel for the game.

Where do you do most of your teaching preparation/research?
I do some teaching preparation at my office desk, but all of my PhD study and most teaching preparation are done in my home study. I find when I’m at work my time is taken up with coordination duties.

How do you find out about newly published research?
I subscribe to academic journal publishers’ email alerts which let me know when new journals are published. I can quickly scroll down the articles in each journal, dipping into those that are interesting and relevant. I also check other specific journals through the library databases every couple of months for relevant research and attend conferences when possible.

Are professional networks important to your research/teaching? How?
They are incredibly important because there are relatively few academic language and learning advisers in each university/TAFE compared to those in, for instance, pre-service teaching. The Association of Academic Language and Learning (AALL) is our national organisation and provides an important network. The Association website has a discussion forum which is very important, but perhaps of even greater importance is the email discussion forum called Unilearn. There are biennial AALL conferences and each state has its own AALL organisation – in Victoria we have two informal seminars with academic language and learning advisers from other universities in Victoria. Learning and language advisers in Victorian TAFEs have also set up a very useful network which meets twice a year. All of these networks are vitally important in terms of benchmarking of our practices, sharing pedagogical approaches, research, etc between universities and TAFEs.

Describe your personal library.
It’s an eclectic mix. Apart from novels, I have sections on linguistics, TESOL, general education, sociology of education, philosophy, gardening and cooking. However, the section I find more interesting right now is where I’ve put my sons’ favourite children’s books (which I could never throw out!). I’m now getting them out to read to my grandchildren and it’s exciting to see the same delight in their faces as I remember on my sons’.

Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica?
I know that articles in Wikipedia haven’t been monitored for accuracy, but it’s a very quick and easy way of getting the main ideas about things and this makes it easier to further construct knowledge through more reputable sources. It’s also more up-to-date than Encyclopedia Britannica because articles are being posted constantly.

Something you’d like your students to know and understand about the Library?
I’d like some students to know what a joy it is to sit in one of the quiet sections of the library and read a book!

Favourite journal?
Because academic language and learning is informed by a range of disciplines such as linguistics, TESOL, sociology of education, discourse analysis, educational psychology, etc, there are many relevant journals. Some favourites are Higher Ed. Research & Development, Prospect (Aust. Journal of TESOL), Aust. Ed. Researcher and our professional organisation’s new journal, the Journal of Academic Language and Learning.

Something you’d like to change about the Library?
Nothing! I think it’s a much more user-friendly and welcoming place than it used to be (both Bundoora and Swanston) and I just LOVE the number of full-text journals and books. Being a full-time teacher and part-time PhD student with no time at work to check out either work or study resources, this has been absolutely essential.

Worldcat identities

 

 

WorldCat have developed an interesting new site they call WorldCat Identities. It uses the library holdings information from WorldCat (a combined catalogue mainly focused on the US but with international holdings also) to draw together information about an author.

You can see from this page for education writer Peter McLaren that it draws together cover images, book descriptions, a publication timeline, books about the author, related subject areas and so on.

It works with published authors with holdings in the libraries covered by WorldCat. Here are some more local RMIT School of Education authors.

Endnote sessions for the School of Education

Library Endnote sessions

The different library sites hold Endnote sessions throughout the year that staff and students can book themselves into via the Library online booking system.

Additional sessions for the School of Education

In addition to these regular sessions, I have scheduled some more sessions specifically for the School. By the end of the session participants should be able to:

• Create Endnote libraries and manually input references
• Insert references into word documents
• Use Library catalogues and databases to build Endnote libraries

Date	Place	Time
Wed 23rd Jan	Bundoora Library Seminar Rm Three	2.00-3.30pm
Thu 24th Jan	Swanston Library Seminar Rm Two	10.00-11.30am
Mon 7th Apr	Bundoora Library Seminar Rm Three	10.00-11.30am
Tue 8th Apr	Swanston Library Seminar Rm Two	4.00-5.30pm
Wed 9th Jul	Bundoora Library Seminar Rm Three	4.00-5.30pm
Thu 10th Jul	Swanston Library Seminar Rm Two	10.00-11.30am
Weds 1st Oct	Bundoora Library Seminar Rm Three	11.00-12.30pm
Thu 9th Oct	Swanston Library Seminar Rm Two	4.00-5.30pm

Email me to book a place in any of these sessions. Sessions without bookings will be cancelled.

Melbourne: city of literature and literacy

The Age reports on Melbourne’s attempt to follow Edinburgh in becoming a UNESCO City of Literature. The article goes onto to stress the importance of literacy in all this and the need to foster a reading culture.

“Learning to read, to decode, does not create literate people. Reading does,” wrote Agnes Nieuwenhuizen in her essay, How we lost the plot, published last August in The Age. Ms Nieuwenhuizen, the former manager of the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria, was lamenting the prescriptive teaching methods, with their focus on the three ‘T’s — texts, titles and testing — and their lack of fostering interest in reading. Her most acute conclusion was this: “It seems to be established in perpetuity … that enjoyment has no part to play in the curriculum.”

UPDATE: Agnes Nieuwenhuizen in the Saturday Age, How to help our young enjoy reading.

Education in the news

From The Australian Higher Education: focus on English language competence on international students in Sector gridlocked on English language problem and Universities get tough on ESL; feeling of inadequacy among young academics in Rise of the inadequates; WA plans to admit students who haven’t sat the tertiary entrance examination to teacher training in Teacher training without the TEE.

From SMH Education: Australia’s slipping literacy levels in Australia slides down global reading list; a different approach to civics education in Politics proves child’s play as pupils get to govern.

Cancellation of the RQF implementation

As reported in the Australian Higher Ed section. From the ministerial press release:

“I want to implement a less cumbersome and less costly process that still provides the Australian Government and taxpayers with an efficient and transparent process. A process that ensures valuable research dollars are allocated to the university sector using internationally verifiable measures,” Senator Carr said.