Last night I gave a session to VET teachers undertaking the Diploma of VET Practice. It was only to be a short session and it needed to at least cover some of our key databases for material on instructional design, e-learning, problem-based learning, needs assessment.
One of my aims was to relate various skills learnt to aspects of “information literacy”. So we talked about the need to analyse a research topic and develop some search expressions, know what resources are available via our Search it listing, be able to search a couple of key resources and modify searches in light of intital results, use the advanced features of various databases, and access and manage the information. Along the way, there were questions on the best ways to keep up-to-date with current information, utlising Google Scholar and so on.
I was keen to emphasise the range of skills and knowledge needed to undertake the search process. We hope that more teachers will involve us in helping their students with these skills also. As would be expected from a group like this, it was a great class and real pleasure to teach.
December 6, 2008 at 6:22 pm |
Thank you for your session. It was very interesting and useful. Since then, I have used the databases quite a few times and downloaded an e-book.
I am planning to meet with our librarian to go a bit further into the database searching and see how much more I can use.