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ABSTRACT

The overall goal of the course is to enable each student to develop a systematic and accurate method for finding needed information in any setting. This asynchronous version of Information Strategies will allow our students to access points of instruction which take into consideration learning style differences at times convenient to them through the flexibility of the Internet. The course that we are proposing is a required course for Electronic Engineering Technology degrees offered through Indiana’s Statewide Technology Program. Looking at the broader picture, information literacy is a mandatory life skill in today’s competitive global information-based economy. Instructional goals will be met through web pages incorporating QuickTime video, text, images, PowerPoint presentations, interactive and animated demonstrations, tutorials and tests; supplementary videos; email and a listserv as asynchronous delivery points of instruction, as well as, online chatrooms for synchronous discussions. We are requesting $12,000 from the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System.

NARRATIVE

"As society moves forward in the Information Age, individuals who have the ability to find and filter information effectively have a competitive edge in business and academics."

From "Rational for requiring GS175 Information Strategies." Electrical Engineering Technology Curriculum Committee Memo to Students, Fall 1997.

Purdue University wants graduates to be successful and have this competitive edge. Purdue Libraries currently offers a course entitled Information Strategies (GS175E) which teaches students to identify information needs, uncover and evaluate resources to answer those needs and communicate those answers to others. This is a required course for the associate and baccalaureate degrees in Purdue’s Department of Electrical Engineering Technology (EET), including sites in the Statewide Technology program. We propose to enhance and convert GS175E to a digital format, which will allow asynchronous statewide access.

Employers want employees with a complete set of information strategy skills. Purdue, in all its locations, is one of the largest producers of technical manpower in the United States (Purdue Statewide Technology—A Profile, 1994). Industry views Purdue University as an institution that keeps pace with the latest technological advances, including those related to information retrieval. Gathering information for projects will be an integral part of future work and employers will be impressed with and reward those who can use a variety of tools such as online databases and the Internet. The ability to track the latest trends in research benefits both the employers and employees. Purdue’s Electrical Engineering Technology Department has recognized the value to its graduates of this educational component by integrating it into their required curriculum. As students become adept at using information sources they find that these skills benefit them personally and professionally. Information literacy skills can make finding a new job easier, assist in selecting the best consumer product for one’s needs and potentially, provide the tools needed to navigate through many of life’s challenging situations.

The initial target audience for the course is students pursuing associate and baccalaureate degrees in Electrical Engineering Technology; Information Strategies (GS175E) is a requirement for these statewide degree programs.

State workforce education needs will be met by this course which complements the goal of the Statewide Technology program to provide the opportunity for currently employed people to update and upgrade their technical skills, specifically their information seeking skills.

Student learning and statewide access will be improved by our recognizing that this population of distance learners has additional responsibilities and pressures from full-time jobs and families; therefore, being able to take the course when it is convenient for the individual provides added value. Many learners, especially employed adult learners, prefer asynchronous instruction opportunities because of the added flexibility it provides in accommodating their studies to their business and family responsibilities. The number of people over 25 needing lifelong learning opportunities to enhance their employability and standard of living is increasing dramatically, while at the same time educators are being asked to meet the needs of this population with constant or shrinking resources.

By offering this course in an asynchronous environment, students will be able to meet their specific Electrical Engineering Technology degree requirements with greater ease and flexibility.

Course design will take into consideration individual cognitive profiling and preferred learning style.

Targeted beneficiaries will learn about the program from academic advisors, the course catalog and the Electrical Engineering Technology Bulletin.

Asynchronous learning -- By delivering the course over the web, students will be able to complete the requirements of the class and interact with the subject matter, the instructor and other students at times convenient for them. This will be especially useful for non-traditional students who find it inconvenient, if not impossible, to attend classes offered during normal class times.

Supports a technology-delivered associate and baccalaureate degree program -- This course will be available to any EET student registered at the West Lafayette campus or at any of the Statewide Technology sites that offer an EET degree: Kokomo, North Central, Columbus, Southeast and South Bend. The synchronous version of this class has been taught for three years and has expanded beyond the EET curriculum to include variations for students in management and the liberal arts.

Achieving wide transferability or equivalency status for many undergraduate programs -- All course credits that are a part of the Statewide Technology Program apply toward a Purdue University degree and are transferable to other Purdue sites. In the initial phase, we plan to make this course available as an Electrical Engineering Technology requirement through the Statewide Technology Program. As was the natural progression of the traditional format, we will eventually make this course available to a wider audience, beyond EET, beyond Statewide Technology, beyond Purdue University. The curriculum is relevant to a wider variety of programs within the academic community, as evidenced by GS175M developed by Brent Mai at the request of the School of Management of Purdue University specifically for their students.

Continuing professional education -- This course enhances opportunities for workforce education and continuing education by stressing the important role of information seeking skills and the way these skills can be applied in an information-driven global marketplace. The flow and accessibility of information is essential. Information and knowledge infrastructure have an important role to play in support of knowledge-based economic development. A successful workforce is dependent on the ability to apply information and knowledge to existing resource and manufacturing industries and/or to develop new products and services.

Goals which successful students in this course will achieve include:

  1. Understanding the importance of building research methodologies in relationship to information retrieval and analysis.
  2. Understanding the key concepts of information retrieval, e.g. characteristics of electronic databases, distinctions among types of reference tools, evaluation methods for information found on the Internet.
  3. Attaining a high level of comfort in finding and analyzing information as well as being comfortable with organizing and presenting this information.
  4. Attaining the ability to describe the role information plays in the real world and in the educational process.

Activities to achieve instructional goals:

Designing a course to be taught via the WWW provides an asynchronous mode of instruction. Through web-page design incorporating QuickTime video, lecture notes, images, PowerPoint presentations, interactive and animated demonstrations, tutorials and tests, email and a listserv, students will receive instruction in a variety of modes to take cognitive profiling of learning styles into account. The course listserv will support group discussions at times favorable to the students. Assignments will be turned in via email.

Supplementary video lecture materials will be made available at all Statewide Technology sites for those students desiring in-depth treatment of instructional segments.

Recognizing the need of some students to have real-time engagement, online chatrooms will be used for group projects, online office hours, and additional student-to-student and student-to-instructor communication.

Course design assumes student access to equipment and software capable of delivering all course material.

Unit One: Identification and Evaluation of Resources

Unit Two: Online Keyword and Index Searching

Unit Three: Journal Articles and Indexing Tools

Unit Four: Specialized Literature

Unit Five: Search Strategies

Typical Assignments

Evaluation of Performance

40% - Homework assignments

10% - Participation on listserv/email journal

10% - Case Study

30% - Final group project (web page)

05% - Peer Review (group work/awards for final project)05% - Pre-test/Post-test

Upon successful completion of this course each student will be able to:

    1. Explain how information is organized and disseminated.
    2. Define his/her own information needs and clearly explain an efficient plan to retrieve this information.
    3. Illustrate his/her ability to find information using a variety of tools that are directly relevant to the information needed.
    4. Evaluate a variety of resources and sources and select appropriate resources and sources based upon this evaluation.
    5. Illustrate his/her ability to organize and present retrieved information in hypertext format over the Internet.
    6. Describe a 3-part information strategic process.

Evaluation of Instructors Performance

    1. Student journal provides instructor with ongoing information to evaluate how well the students are achieving goals so that instruction can be adjusted accordingly.
    2. Student evaluation of the course and instructor upon completion of semester.
    3. Compare student pre-test and post-test scores of distance learners to those concurrently taking the traditionally delivered course.
    4. Compare student evaluations and grades to those of the three previous years.

Evaluation of Overall Program

The instructors will solicit and welcome feedback from our colleagues at higher education institutions, which will provide peer review and lead to enhanced transferability. The course materials will be made available for review at other universities and colleges in the state e.g. Indiana State, Vincennes, Ivy Tech, where the course credits may be acceptable and transferable. Indiana University South Bend library faculty have agreed to provide feedback on how well the course is meeting the goals of the students at their local Statewide Technology site.

Comparing student pre-tests, post-tests and evaluations between the traditional and asynchronous versions of the course, will allow measurement of the course’s strengths and weaknesses in order to make improvements. Findings will be published to advance understanding of the various instructional technologies and their place in relation to more traditional modes of instruction.

December 1997--apply for grant
February 1998-- grants announced
February-July 1998-- Web page map created; lecture notes adapted; script writing begins; specific programming and design needs assessed
July 1998-- grants awarded
July 1998-- order software and equipment; learn software; become familiar with equipment; meet with instructional designer and producer/director
August 1998-- hire programmer and graphic designer; videos created in conjunction with producer/director
September 1998-- programming for online tutorials; pre-test/post-test; case study
October 1998-- site tested by student employees and IUSB librarians
November 1998-- site modifications
December 1998-- site re-tested; modified as necessary;
January 1999-- listserv created; chat room started; digital photos of instructors put online; student photos requested
February 1999-- final narrative report to IHETS
January - May 1999-- course offered to distance learners
May 1999-- evaluation, follow-up report to IHETS, prepare results for publication

Technology-enhanced distance learning has a long history at Purdue. The outreach programs of Purdue's schools of engineering were a major impetus behind the creation of the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System. GS175 has been taught as part of the Electrical Engineering Technology curriculum for three years. The Electrical Engineering Technology degree, granted in the Statewide Technology program, is a Purdue degree. GS175 was developed by librarians at Purdue, the home of the Schools of Engineering and School of Technology for the state of Indiana.

Lead Investigator:

Sheila R. Curl, Assistant Professor of Library Science & Engineering Librarian

Co-Investigators:Brent A. Mai, Assistant Professor of Library Science & Assistant Management & Economics LibrarianLeslie R. Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Library Science & Assistant Engineering Librarian

University Senate Minutes, October 20, 1997. "Report by the Director of Distance Learning" Philip H. Swain. Appendix C. pp. 9-13.

Purdue Statewide Technology – A Profile. West Lafayette: Purdue, School of Technology. 1994.

Professor Sheila R. Curl

Education

Professional Experience

Teaching

Professor Curl’s interests include information transfer, professional communication, intellectual property rights and using new technologies to disseminate scientific and technical information. She has developed, adapted and updated courses at the graduate and undergraduate level in information strategies, the literature of science and technology and information resources in engineering. She has also taught online patent searching while at Arizona State University’s Patent Depository Library.

Relevant research in progress involves designing a graduated series of competencies for undergraduate engineering students that are appropriate to the level of the students, from freshman engineering to senior capstone design students.

She is a member of the Engineering Libraries Division of the American Society for Engineering Education. She was the listserv owner for the Society of Women Engineers at Notre Dame and designed and developed several web sites, including: the Engineering and Architecture Libraries at the University of Notre Dame, the 7th North American Masonry Conference and the College of Engineering (University of Notre Dame) Faculty Research Database, a searchable internet-based database of faculty research interests. (http://www.lisa.nd.edu/profiles/).

Letters of support for GS175 Grant Proposal

Emily Mobley, Dean, University Libraries, Purdue University

Larry Hoffman, Head, Department of Electrical Engineering Technology, Purdue University

Judy Pask, Undergraduate Librarian and Coordinator of Instructions, University Libraries, Purdue University

Rosanne Cordell, Library Instruction Coordinator, Schurz Library, Indiana University South Bend



Last updated: June 21, 2006