Tag Archives: universities

Is textbook adoption immoral?

On Friday a higher ed newsletter headline caught my eye: “Outrage over university’s $999 online textbook.” It wasn’t a typo — the book for a 200 level accounting course at University of Louisiana at Lafayette costs that much.

A couple of weeks ago I attended my community college system’s annual summer symposium. The most compelling presentation I heard was from Robin DeRosa of Plymouth State University. She talked about a subject I’d spent a good bit of time thinking about this summer: OERs, or Open Educational Resources. If you haven’t heard of them, here is UNESCO’s definition: “Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.”

Like community colleges around the country, mine is concerned with making education as affordable as possible, and one of our system-wide efforts is to make OERs a priority. I put together a LibGuide for my campus so that faculty can see some choices and learn about how to adopt/adapt/create their own, and I have found some faculty are already doing this. So I was already an OER believer.

Novelist Paul Harding speaks of writing so readers will think “That’s true, and I’ve always known it but I’ve never seen someone put it into words like this before.” That was how I felt, listening to DeRosa. I already knew much of what she said — students often don’t have a plan for textbook costs like they do for tuition, 2/3 of students report either dropping a class because of expensive textbooks or not buying a textbook because of cost, students who can’t afford textbooks do worse in their classes, and textbook costs have risen more than healthcare.

But then she delivered the words I knew but hadn’t heard said that way before: we’re preventing access to knowledge by continuing to require traditional textbooks, and for those of us in “public” education (in NH, the university system where DeRosa works only receives 10% of its funds from state appropriations) this is a moral issue. She wondered aloud, how can educators require our students can’t afford, in good conscience? How can we support a system that is inhibiting the transmission of knowledge?

And then she went on to describe how she worked on an OER early American literature book collaboratively with her students. This work is known as open pedagogy, and really appeals to me as exactly what education should be about: students not as consumers, but agents of their own education, synthesizing what they learn in work that demonstrates not only mastery, but application of their new understanding to a real world problem or question. Our son was fortunate to have a professor, Patricia Siplon, who was ahead of the curve on this at St. Michael’s College and a few years ago, he was in her class on the politics of HIV/AIDS, where the final project was to write a chapter for a textbook she planned to use with future classes. That’s open pedagogy: learning, synthesizing and producing knowledge, collaboratively.

DeRosa’s class’s anthology is now a Rebus project and she predicts that by the time it is finished later this year, it will replace traditional print anthologies sold in college bookstores around the world. Rebus is a place where people come together to work on OERs. I am hopeful that this is the future of textbooks. Librarians’ role in OERs and open pedagogy is simple. We just need to do what we already do best: teach the research skills that help faculty and students seek, evaluate, and use information effectively and then collect, index, and make accessible the knowledge creation happening on our campuses.

 

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Millennials rock

As longtime readers know, I used to work in a public library and transitioned back to academia a little over a year ago. In both cases I’ve been in management roles, and have been bothered by the negative stereotypes attributed to millennials. So I was pleased to see a new report by Pew Research Center that notes “Millennials in America are more likely to have visited a public library in the past year than any other adult generation.”

Wait, didn’t I just say I’m a university librarian? Yes, but I have always been and will always be a public library advocate — if you’ve read Nocturnal Librarian before, or scroll through my older posts, you’ll see I believe strongly that public libraries are the most important public institution in America. Plus, the report said some things that academic librarians should note:

Pew defines millennials as 18-35, which is also the age of many (although certainly not all) college and university students. The survey asked about public library use, and Pew makes sure to explain: “It is worth noting that the question wording specifically focused on use of public libraries, not on-campus academic libraries.” So, even if they are visiting campus libraries, they may also be visiting public libraries. Or — and this is growing more likely all the time — they may be taking courses remotely and visiting their local public library. They may be using the college or university library’s website; in fact, a link to those resources is very probably embedded in their course management systems and in syllabi. I’d be very interested to know if students consider a visit to their college library’s website, full of eBooks, eJournals, and databases, a visit to the library?

I saw my public library’s website as a virtual branch and that view was becoming more widespread among my colleagues, and I am beginning to hear about this idea in academic library circles as well. I think it’s important to let students know that they can “enter” the library online and in most universities, access whatever they need to be successful. Accrediting bodies are looking at whether the same academic resources are available to online students. it just makes sense to design and promote the website, then, as an extension of the library.

Which bring me to the other point I found heartening in the Pew report: “College graduates are more likely than those whose education ended with a high school diploma to use libraries or bookmobiles in the past 12 months (56% vs. 40%). And a similar gap applies to use of library websites.” So those of us who work in academic libraries may be contributing to lifetime library use. And that is good for all of us, and our communities.

Millennials rock for many reasons — and I’m not just saying that because I am the parent of one (or two, according to Pew. My younger offspring is either a millennial or a Gen Z, depending on whose demographic definition you believe). But their use of libraries is one of my favorite reasons.

 

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Mindset, QFT, active learning

One of the cool things about being a university librarian is that I get to hear what faculty are learning. Today I attended a presentation about a math professor’s sabbatical project, which included working on an OER textbook for a freshman geometry course. Dr. Teresa Magnus talked about her work incorporating active learning, where students solve problems together rather than just listening to her lecture, and mindset.

I’d heard about Carol Dweck‘s theory of  mindset before — the gist of the idea is that we either believe our abilities are fixed, and that there is little we can do to overcome the deficits or augment the talents and abilities we were born with, or we believe we can succeed by working, growing or developing.  Fixed mindset people sometimes give up if they make mistakes, and as Dr Magnus noted, come to believe they aren’t good at something, like math, because they just aren’t able to. Growth mindset people are ok with mistakes, seeing them as a path to progress, and are able to tolerate productive struggle.

My guess is that very few people are strictly fixed or growth oriented all the time for all the things they learn in a lifetime. Lots of people believe they aren’t good at math, for example, and think no amount of practice will help them, but some of those same people are willing to practice shooting baskets or learn to make cookies from scratch without a recipe or some other skill.

I also read about the Right Question Institute today, because an interview with Dan Rothstein, one of the directors, popped up on one of my email lists. This organization is dedicated to helping people teach and learn how to ask questions. It sounds simple, but really, if you look around you can find dozens of examples of misinformation or misunderstandings or miscommunications caused by inadequate questioning.

What does all this have to do with librarianship, you might ask? For me it’s important to learn more about teaching in order to be a better instructional librarian, but even at the service desk, I think librarians could really benefit from mindset theory and “beautiful” question techniques. We are so often helping people who know they need or want some information but can’t quite explain it — and may feel they are too dumb to ask properly, or that they just don’t know how the library works, or how research work, not because they haven’t been taught but because they “just can’t.”

I’ve heard librarians and teachers over the years become frustrated by this or make assumptions about patrons’  or students’ laziness or neediness. What if we approached these situations with open hearts, minds, and ears, and compassion for the little voice inside all of us that says “you’re no good at that, you can’t do it?” What if fostering growth mindset was an intentional part of our work? What if we used a version of Question Formulation Technique to gently guide patrons towards their own best questions?  What if instead of looking things up for people, we made active learning a part of reference interactions? I think these are really important ideas, not necessarily foreign to librarians but perhaps tucked away in grad school or conference notes and not part of our conscious daily efforts. I’m looking forward to thinking about how best to approach more deliberately incorporating them into my life and work.

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Feedback wall

One of the ideas my library’s new Marketing & Outreach Committee came up with this summer is a feedback wall. It’s very simple: we just installed a white board in a hallway, and placed colorful post-its and a few pens in a holder attached to the board.

So far we’ve posted two prompts, with a third planned for next week. As you can see the response has grown. Our first prompt was “Describe your summer in one word.” Next we tried “What was your favorite book as a kid?”

What’s the point, you may ask, of such folly in an academic library where the staff is mostly engaged in answering questions about how to get articles from databases for assignments and how to extract print jobs from cranky printers? We decided that we wanted to build community with our outreach efforts, to try to grow a group of library enthusiasts.

We’ve increased our social media posting, started sending out a newsletter in campus email once a month, postered the campus with lovely Canva creations to advertise programs, and started a monthly “Did You Know” campaign at the desk to promote services. We’ve also tried a crowd-sourced recommendation cart and staff pick bookmarks in books and videos. But of all the new efforts we’ve undertaken, the feedback wall seems to be eliciting the most response.

It’s also really satisfying — whenever I walk past and see a student reading the responses or writing one, or even when I just whiz by on my way to a meeting or a shift at the desk, I feel a little boost in my mood looking at all those little colorful slips of paper. Each represents someone joining in the conversation, pausing for a moment to contribute. I love that.

The feedback wall may not seem like traditional library marketing, but it’s my hope that we’re creating a sense that the library is a place to be heard.

 

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Recreational reading in college

I am taking on something several people have told me is hopeless at my new library: celebrating, supporting, and encouraging recreational reading at a university. I’ve had numerous people tell me students don’t read anything they don’t have to, and very little of what they do have to. Professors, I’ve been told, like to read in the summer but won’t read a thing for fun during the academic year.

Maybe I’ll find this all out the hard way, but I’m convinced that this isn’t exactly true. Maybe most students aren’t reading War and Peace for fun, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t consume any written words, in print, online, or in audio. Yes, I’m expanding my view of what reading is. I know a lot of voracious readers who also listen to audiobooks and no one questions whether that’s really reading. So aren’t podcasts like audiobooks? I think so. I know several (and am married to one) people who read magazine and newspaper articles, essays and short stories more frequently than books.So then, aren’t blogs like other short form writing? I think so.

Yes, I’m hoping people will read books, too, and I’m working on ways to promote our book collection, too. But even more importantly, I’m hoping to affirm this: whatever you have time for, whether it’s your favorite fashion blog or a true crime podcast or last night’s Red Sox scores, you are reading, and if you don’t have time for a book right now, the library will be here for you later when you do.

Stay tuned. And if you have ideas that have worked at your academic library to promote reading, leave a comment and tell me what worked.

 

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