Tag Archives: conference

Fall Research Updates

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We had a busy year of new data collection during 2015-2016 and are looking forward to sharing the results of that research this year.

First up is the Library Assessment Conference in Arlington, VA, in early November. We’ll be presenting on the Day in the Life project with colleagues Andrew Asher (Indiana University), Juliann Couture (University of Colorado, Boulder), Jean Amaral (BMCC), Barbara Fister (Gustavus Adolphus College), Donna Lanclos (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), and Sara Lowe (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). For this project we used text messaging to facilitate students’ self-reporting of their activities, and geocoded the results to create maps of where students traveled throughout a typical schoolday. It’s been so interesting to see the similarities and differences between how, where, and when students do their academic work at the 8 institutions.

In December we’ll be presenting at the CUNY IT Conference on the results of our research on how digital technology can be used by students to create time and can thwart students’ efficient use of time for their academic work. We’ll be talking about data collected during our first round of research in 2009-2011 and a follow up study of student technology use last year in 2015-2016. We’ll post the slides/storify/notes for both presentations as soon as we can.

Connecticut Library Association Presentation

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We had a great time today presenting and talking with academic librarians at the Connecticut Library Association Conference. We began by asking folks to draw a map of their libraries and think about a place that works for their library users and one that doesn’t, and asking folks to share that out with the group. Then we shared what we learned about how students work (and don’t work) in our college and university libraries.

It was a great discussion, many thanks to all who attended, and to the College and University Libraries Section of the CLA for inviting us to speak. Our handout and slides are below, please feel free to get in touch with any questions or feedback!

Activity Handout
Slides

Presenting on Cognitive Maps at ACRL 2015

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We’re just back (and perhaps still jet lagged) from the biannual Association of College & Research Libraries conference, this year in beautiful Portland, OR. We were delighted to present on a panel with our frequent collaborators Donna Lanclos from UNC Charlotte, Andrew Asher from Indiana University, and Lesley Gourlay from the University of London.

This time around we presented on cognitive maps and showcased the different mapping methods we’ve used to gather data about student and faculty learning spaces. We also asked the panel attendees to draw cognitive maps of their own learning spaces, which was super fun to watch. Folks seemed to really enjoy the opportunity to draw their own maps and discuss them with their neighbors as well as share out in the session, and lots tweeted photos of their maps when we suggested it, too.

We’ve put the slides from the session on prezi, and I’ve storified the tweets from the session as well (as usual, Donna and Andrew are much better at livetweeting our sessions than I am). Donna has written up the session on her blog, too.

Qualitative Research in Academic Libraries

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Our springtime of presentations continued this month, and we presented on June 6th at the first ever library assessment conference — Reinventing Libraries, Reinventing Assessment — sponsored by CUNY’s Office of Library Services and held at Baruch College. We were delighted to be sharing a session with our frequent collaborator Donna Lanclos from UNC Charlotte. Donna spoke about the value of qualitative research in academic libraries generally as well as the work she does as library ethnographer at UNC Charlotte, and we spoke about the work we’ve done learning more about how CUNY students use (or don’t use) their libraries.

I threw together a quick storify of the whole session after the conference, though it’s perhaps a bit heavier on tweets from our presentation than Donna’s (because I’m not as good at livetweeting a session I’m in as Donna is). And there’s a great writeup of the conference in Library Journal that includes a discussion of our session. We’ve posted our slides and notes from the presentation here and on the Results and Findings page.

CUNY Students’ Learning Spaces

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It’s been a busy presentation year for us (with a couple more to come in June), and it’s been great to get around the university and beyond to talk about our project. Last Friday we presented at the CUNY CUE Conference at LaGuardia Community College, which was a great time with loads of interesting questions from attendees. We’re happy to share our slides and notes from the presentation (linked here as well as on Results and Findings). Here’s our abstract:

As commuters CUNY undergraduates employ various strategies to find time and space to be students. While students’ constraints may be invisible to faculty and staff, they may affect engagement in students’ academic work. We interviewed CUNY students to learn how they study in various locations. Knowledge of the student experience outside the classroom can inform strategies to increase student success.

CUNY Students’ Technology Stories

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We were delighted to present at yesterday’s Teaching & Technology Conference at Baruch College — many thanks to the always awesome Luke Waltzer for inviting us. The other sessions we went to were terrific: I think I will always want to begin a conference morning with pipe cleaners and paper folding, the Baruch students’ who presented were wonderful, and Jim Groom’s keynote was both fun and thought-provoking, an ideal combination (and we appreciate his complementary words about our presentation, too).

We decided to do something a little different this time around and really focus in on individual students, highlighting their experiences with using technology for their academic work as technology stories. We’re happy to share our slides and notes from the presentation — take a look and let us know what you think.

Post-Conference Posting and Wrap-ups

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We’ve had a great time presenting at a couple of conferences over the past few weeks, and are delighted to share our presentation materials.

First off was the American Anthropological Association meetings in Chicago, where we participated in a roundtable with colleagues at other institutions who are doing similar work: Andrew Asher of Indiana University, Lesley Gourlay of the University of London, Lori Jahnke of Emory University, and Donna Lanclos of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Our session was titled Embedded and Engaged in Higher Education: Researching Student Entanglements with Technology, and we used a Prezi to highlight some of the images and numbers from our projects. We had a fantastic conversation with session attendees, some of which was captured by Donna in her post-conference writeup and a Storify of the Twitter stream that she created. I also blogged about the session, and especially our interactions with attendees, over at ACRLog.

Just last week we presented at the CUNY IT Conference at John Jay, again talking about what we’ve learned in our research specifically about students and academic technology. Many thanks to all who attended — we were flattered that the session was standing room only! Here are the slides (again via Prezi) and notes from our presentation “It’s an internet phone, but I don’t have internet:” Students Using Technology.

Fall Conference Outings

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Popping in here (in the midst of putting the finishing touches on our book manuscript, nail-biting awaiting word from publishers to whom we’ve sent our book proposal, and working with our Data Visualization Assistant on our new project website) to say that we’ve got two conference outings planned for this fall semester. If you’ll be at either, please stop in and say hi!

American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Chicago
We’re part of a roundtable session called Embedded and Engaged in Higher Education: Researching Student Entanglements with Technology, which runs from 10:15am – 12:00pm on Friday, November 22. With colleagues from four other colleges and universities who are also working on ethnographic projects in libraries, we’ll explore the role of technology for students in their academic work.

CUNY IT Conference, John Jay College, New York
We’ll also be presenting at this year’s CUNY IT Conference at John Jay. The schedule hasn’t been finalized yet, but it looks like we’re preliminarily slated for 2:15pm on Thursday, December 5 (we’ll update this post when we have the final info). We’ll also be speaking to undergraduates’ use of technology for their coursework, and the ways that student voices add detail about the college experience that can inform faculty and administrative decisions about instructional technologies.

Slides and notes

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I’ve just uploaded the slides and notes from our recent presentation at Hunter College’s ACERT Teaching Tuesdays. Many thanks again to all who came to talk with us, it was a great discussion! I’ve also added slides, notes, and our paper from our conference travels last fall: MobilityShifts and the American Anthropological Association meetings. All are available on the Results & Findings page.

Analyzing and Presenting

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The new semester finds us busier than ever with the Undergraduate Scholarly Habits Ethnography Project. We’ve finished collecting data at an additional 4 colleges: Borough of Manhattan Community College, Bronx Community College, City College, and Hunter College. This brings us to a total of 30 student and 10 faculty interviews at each of 6 colleges — that’s a lot of data! Our incredible research assistants have done the lion’s share of transcribing these interviews over the summer, and we are immersed in coding and beginning to analyze our data, both textual as well as photos, maps, and drawings by students.

We’ve plans to emerge from our analytical cocoon a few times this fall and have two conference presentations scheduled. If you’re heading to either of these feel free to swing by and say hello.

Mobility Shifts: An International Future of Learning Summit, The New School, NYC
We’re presenting on Saturday, October 15 @ 1:30pm in a session entitled Progressive Digital Pedagogy: Remix, Collaboration, Crowdsourcing. Our short talk will focus on the integration of mobile technologies into the academic lives of CUNY students.

American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Montreal
We’re part of a session called Library Ethnography: Negotiating Information’s Legacy and Revolutions, which begins at 8:00am on Friday, November 18. Our paper discusses how CUNY students navigate and create their own significant spaces, and the effects on their engagement with their college experience.