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Three professors will discuss how they used Lafayette grants to work with librarians and integrate information literacy concepts into their classes noon today in Skillman Library room 217. Lunch will be provided.
Librarians helped the professors develop assignments for classes last semester that required students to learn how information is disseminated and gathered in a field; to examine their own research process; and to explore some of the economic, social, legal, and ethical issues surrounding the production and distribution of information.
History 354: Seminar in Russian History
Students of Josh Sanborn, assistant professor of history, studied the Stalinist period and the historical debates surrounding it. In a series of short assignments and class exercises, seminar participants explored the English-language literature on Stalinism as primary sources that reveal the nature of historical paradigms and the ways that they are challenged. The class discussions and exercises led to a major paper examining an important issue related to Stalinism and the different ways historians have tried to make sense of it over the past 50 years. Librarian: Reid Larson.
Government 236: International Conflict
Students of Katalin Fabian, assistant professor of government and law, applied what they learned about theories of conflict and conflict resolution to semester-long case studies. In the course of examining one conflict, student groups looked at how popular and scholarly sources differed in describing the conflict and how and why information about it may have affected the course of the conflict. Throughout this project, students were asked to reflect upon their own research process and become more selective in the information they used both to form their arguments for the class and their opinions as citizens, consumers, and members of the local community. Librarian: Mercedes Benitez Sharpless.
Engineering and Policy 452: Applied Systems Analysis for Engineering Policy and Management
Students of Sharon Jones, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, looked at issues of data quality as they learned about Geographic Information Systems and other information analysis techniques. For one project, students located spatial data via the National Spatial Data Infrastructure and evaluated its “fitness for use” by examining the accompanying metadata. Special attention was paid to how and why the data were created, the spatial reference system used, and depth of entity information. Pre-course and post-course evaluations were administered to assess how much students learned about issues relating to information quality. Librarian: Amy Abruzzi.