Changes in course designators

Oh, the wacky machinations of higher education.

During Spring Semester 2010, the coding for MCTC Library Information Technology career program courses was changed from INFS (Information Studies) to LIBT, although they are all taught by Information Studies faculty and offered by the Information Studies department. So, as we move forward in the tagging for this blog, you'll start to see courses tagged LIBT 1200, LIBT 2210, LIBT 2200, LIBT 2900. Those are the same as the ones that had been tagged previously as INFS 1200, INFS 2210, INFS 2200, INFS 2900. But, some courses I teach (INFS 1000) stay with the INFS coding.

CNI Spring 2009 task force meeting

Phew! I spent today at a very intense and informative conference, feeling a bit out of my league. I was at the Coalition for Networked Information Spring 2009 Task Force Meeting in downtown Minneapolis, and was rubbing shoulders with library directors from all the major research institutions. I was in this one session, and they're going around the room with introductions: let's see, there's the library systems director from the University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Tufts University, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, oh, and Ginny Heinrich from MCTC. :-) I heard the word "metadata" more times today than I have in any other conversation that I have ever had.

On the plus side, I learned a lot about digitization and data preservation projects all around the world. I learned some about what's going on with preservation of U.S. government documents (not enough) and how university libraries are fighting back against publisher restrictions (or at least some are trying). It was a day of learning and firing brain synapses. I'm trying to recover and attend to all my grading and course work after a long birthday weekend with my mom and now this conference, I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'm working on checking through D2L posts tonight, then will hit the grading and assignment development (INFS 2200, I haven't forgotten about your description assignment...) hard tomorrow.

Happy birthday to me!

Today is my birthday, and I'm celebrating by having my mom in town visiting with our family and going to two kid hockey games/practices. I am also working on grading your assignments, and for my cataloging class, preparing your next assignment on description that we'll be working on over the next couple of weeks.

Photo Credits: Creative Commons license from jbelluch's photostream

Instructor update

Wow, am I behind!

My oldest son, who's 10, ended up playing on "championship day" (Sunday) at a hockey tournament, so my planned day of grading and catching up turned into spending most of my time at a hockey rink with no computer and internet access. They lost both of their games, too, so that was a bummer. Yesterday, I was working on coursework but had a doctor's appointment in the middle of the day that burned about 4 hours between getting there, waiting, actually getting treatment, and going home. Grocery shopping burned another two hours. After I got home and made dinner, and was getting my kids to bed with plans of grading after, I fell asleep. So much for grading plans; sometimes your body takes over. So...

INFS 1000 folks - there's a webinar tonight at 8:30 p.m.; come if you can. We'll be talking about searching for periodical articles to support your topics. Assignment 4 was just due last night. You should be working now on Assignment 5. You'll get the midterm after spring break. Keep posting to the weekly topic discussion forums for your class participation grade.

INFS 1200 folks - I botched opening your content last week; I'm working on fixing that and uploading feedback on your verification assignment and abstract/analysis papers today. I have meetings all afternoon, though, starting at 1:30 p.m. until 5, then need to get home, get dinner, and get ready for an INFS 1000 webinar. We have a webinar on Thursday 3/5 at 8:30 p.m. and we'll spend time talking about cataloging more then.

INFS 2200 folks - you should be working on your subject analysis group assignment this week. Quiz 5 closes today, so be sure to take it.

INFS 2900 folks - use the resume critique guide to provide constructive criticism to each other on your resumes. Post internship updates this week as well.

Thanks everyone for your patience!
photo credit: Creative Commons license photo from swisscan's photostream on Flickr

Teacher at workshop

I'm at the Realizing Student Potential conference all day today, so will be off-line much of today. INFS 1200, I know I owe you a TON of feedback; I'm working on it!

Instructor update

I know some of you have posted questions in D2L and I have not had time to respond. I was in librarian interviews for much of the afternoon, and have been working on a couple of big national reports during my workdays this week. Tonight, my son has a hockey game, so I will not be online this evening. I will do my best to respond to posted questions tomorrow morning. Thanks for your patience.

Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

The New York Times recently published an article on grading and student expectations. Since grading has begun in earnest in all of my courses now, and there are many questions about grades and expectations, I thought this article might spur some discussion, either here in the comments or in D2L.

Note that the following citation for the article follows MLA style, save for the hanging indent, because web formatting doesn't love hanging indents. Blogger also doesn't allow underlining, so in lieu of underlining, I've used italics.

Roosevelt, Max. "Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes." New York Times. 17 Feb. 2009. New York Times Company. 19 Feb. 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html

on again off again

My home internet access has been going down periodically over the past few days. I've been haranguing Comcast regularly about it, but it still seems to be a problem. It has meant that I have not been able to grade and comment on work as quickly as I would have liked to over the past few days. I am working hard to catch up with your postings and grading this weekend.

Home tech woes mostly fixed

I was able to get my internet access up and going again at home, so that's all good again. Now I'm fighting a nasty cold, and was out of the office yesterday trying to get better. It's been a rough winter!

I've been looking for questions in online office and in the general course questions and assignment forums in D2L. But, if you've posted questions to me in your work group discussion forums or in the topical discussions, I may not have seen them. Thanks for your patience as I work through your postings.

Home technology woes

Two steps forward, one step back...

My internet access at home is on the fritz, so I won't be able to be online outside of regular business hours until that changes. I just wanted to let you know so that if you post a question or email me, my ability to respond will be somewhat hampered.

INFS 1200 students - we have a webinar scheduled for tonight (2/5); I may have to cancel. Check course news for more info.

Master of overestimation...

Okay, I completely underestimated the demands on my time and overestimated how much I'd be able to be online over the weekend. I'm still in Nebraska, and returning to MN tomorrow, so will be driving much of the day on Tuesday. I will look at questions posted in any general areas and in Online Office tonight, but will probably not have time to do much more before Wednesday. If there are any crises that need to be dealt with, rest assured that I will arrange for any deadline extensions necessary due to my absence.

Thinking about the weekend

It's early to already have the weekend on my mind, but my weekend will start a bit early this week. On Thursday (or Wednesday, if the weather looks bad for Thursday), I will be heading to Nebraska to spend the weekend with my mom who is going to have oral surgery on Friday. I'm an only child, and she lives alone and can't be by herself after the surgery, so I will be staying with her. My plan is to return to Minnesota on Tuesday, Feb. 3, assuming all is well with her recovery.

I will have computer access over the weekend, so will be checking in and working. There are webinars scheduled for Thursday night (INFS 2200) and Tuesday night (INFS 1000), my travel days, but at this point, my plan is to be in one place or another by the time the webinar would begin, so there should not be a conflict. If my plans change, I will let you know as soon as possible.

Friday is the end of open drop/add

Just a reminder that Friday Jan 16 is the end of the open drop/add period. After that date, you will no longer receive a full refund if you decide to withdraw from a course without a petition. Also, after that date, courses from which you withdraw will show on your transcript and will count toward (or against, depending on your point of view) your academic standing.

For students in INFS 1000 and INFS 1200, you must take the course(s) for a letter grade. Students in INFS 2200 can choose their grading option: letter grade, pass/fail, or audit (no college credit awarded). For students in INFS 2900, grading is ONLY pass/fail. More info on taking courses pass/fail are online at:

http://www.minneapolis.edu/currentstudents/registeringforclasses/passfailoption.cfm

The deadline for changing grading option is April 8, 2009.

Cataloging Text Now In

If anyone in INFS 2200 intro to cataloging was still needing to get the Chan text, the MCTC Bookstore has them back in stock now.

If anyone is having problems getting any of the texts for my classes, let me know as soon as possible.

Syllabi and the new semester

Spending a good chunk of last week with a sick kid, and the weekend away on a hockey tournament has put me a bit behind in finishing the updates for your course syllabi for spring semester. I will have the first two weeks posted for your courses by tomorrow (Monday) afternoon, and will have the rest asap.

Access to D2L is open now...

As you have probably noticed, you now have access to your courses in D2L. That said, I will be updating stuff in there all weekend long, so you can look around, but don't start printing things out or freaking out about dates, because much of that will change or shift around. See, here's what happens: I copy the course content info from a previous course. The information is brought in to this semester's courses with all the old information attached. So, all the deadlines, etc., will display from the last time I taught the course, which will either be from the previous semester or from last year. In short, don't panic. By the same token, if you don't see any information in the course yet, it is because I haven't opened the content up yet.

Email me with any questions. I will be out of town this weekend, at one of my kids' hockey tournaments, but will be online quite a bit checking email, etc.

Texts for your classes

The MCTC Bookstore has highly competitive pricing on the texts required and recommended for the courses I teach. You can get them from other sources if you wish, but be sure to get them as they will be useful to have sooner rather than later. Just know that they, erroneously, list the department as Information Sciences instead of Information Studies. Yes, we've told them. No, they haven't fixed it.

The Badke text required for INFS 1000 must be the 3rd edition. The bookstore has the right one. If you obtain the text from another source, be sure you are getting the 3rd edition.

For INFS 1200, the boostore states that the Kao text is a choice text. It is not a choice; you must have that text. The Evans text is recommended, but optional. I have no idea why there's two listings for the Kao text in the bookstore's database.

I just recieved an email today from the textbook purchaser that told me that there were some problems getting the Chan text in for INFS 2200. Again, be sure you are buying the 3rd edition of that text if you don't get it from the MCTC bookstore. Regarding the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules with updates (AACR2, revised), if you have access to the 2002 update or later at your workplace, you can use that instead. If you don't, and don't wish to spend a ridiculous amount of money for something that you'll promptly donate to a library or sell back immediately following this course, you can try to borrow a current version from a local library. But, you must have the 2002 revision or later. You can also join the American Library Association at the substantial student discount rate and purchase AACR2 directly from them and get a 10% member discount.

The MARC of the beast...

Some insider baseball library talk... Good prep for those of you in my Intro to Cataloging class. Check out this post on Thingology.

Welcome to Spring 2009!

Welcome to everyone taking courses from me this semester. Here are some things to be aware of as you take an online course from me.

At Minneapolis Community and Technical College (and all Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system schools), we use Desire 2 Learn (D2L) as our course management software. There is a link to D2L at the bottom of the MCTC web site home page (www.minneapolis.edu), so you can use that link, or better yet, bookmark the direct link to D2L (https://minneapolis.ims.mnscu.edu/). Because the two web sites are hosted on different computer servers, it's a good idea to have them bookmarked separately. That way, if one server is down, you can still get to the other one.

Once you have logged into D2L, starting on Friday, you will see your courses listed separately under the semester. All of your courses will have links, whether or not the courses are taught online or not. Many instructors use D2L for posting grades and other class materials for face-to-face courses as well as using the software for online classes, so if you have other face-to-face courses on campus, be sure to ask your instructor how he or she uses D2L.

The syllabus is the class "master" outline. If you find a discrepancy between the syllabus and something in the D2L course (and I'm sure you will; after all, I am human and I do make mistakes), be sure to ask about it so I can make a clarification or correction. The syllabus for your course will be posted in the D2L content area for the course. You will be notified of any changes to the syllabus via this blog, course posting, and/or email.

And that brings us to communication. MCTC makes an email account available to you through Metnet.edu. You can activate that account, or be sure you have an active account listed in your student information on campus. In any case, it is your responsibility to ensure that your email is correctly listed in D2L and in your student information, because that is the email information I will use when I'm contacting you with course information. If you email me from some other account, I will reply to whatever email you use, but when I generate email, I will pull the information from whatever is listed in D2L. I do not keep track of other email information for students.

Once the first week of class is over, I will set up something I call "Online Office" within D2L. This will be a discussion forum that has two members - you and me. You can use that forum any time to communicate with me. Because it is private, you can use that space to ask about grades, get clarification on an assignment, ask for a deadline extension... whatever you would normally talk to an instructor about during regular office hours, before or after classtime, etc.

In all of my online classes, besides asynchronous email and discussion forum communincation, there will be opportunities for synchronous, real-time communication, either through chat on D2L or through webinars using WebEx. Because, of course, one of the points of taking an online course is so you don't have to be in one place at one time, I know you may not be able to participate in all, or possibly even any, chats/webinars. However, I do encourage you to make time to participate in at least one or more, as students who do indicate that the chats/webinars enhance and improve their learning in the course. In any case, archives will be available for you to review after the chat/webinar event. I will give you more information about these chats and webinars later.

I make use of various media in my courses. I often introduce content or give feedback to you by posting MP3 files, and I use video and Flash files as well. You should be able to use these various file types, and will need to have appropriate plug-ins on the computer you're using for class.

Which brings us to the computer and internet access you are using for taking online classes. It is best to have your own computer at home and to not rely on using a computer anywhere else, such as at a library, at work, or at school. Also, because of the media used in online instruction, having broadband Internet access is best, but you can make due with dial-up. Just be prepared for waiting and long download/upload times. There is information on technology recommendations and common plug-ins on the MCTC web site (http://www.minneapolis.edu/currentstudents/d2l.cfm). If you have any concerns about your computer skills or access, please ask them sooner rather than later.

And, one last crabby-sounding note: maintaining communication with me and accessing the course content and materials is your responsibility. Generally speaking, "technology problems" are not a valid excuse for missing deadlines, not being able to view something, not participating in class discussions or group work, and so on. If you know you have to move and you won't have your computer set up for a couple of weeks, you need to let me know BEFORE you move and work out alternate arrangements. If you're late paying your internet service provider and your internet access is cut off, you need to call me, and then find your way to a coffee shop and free wi-fi, and get online as much as you can anyway. My DH (darling husband) just finished getting his MBA through a distance program at Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, and one student was in southeast Asia when there was a tsunami that cut off his internet access; that was a valid excuse. If you have to flee an abusive boyfriend and don't get to a computer for a week because you're at a shelter, that's a valid excuse.

...Which leads me to one last, I hope "friendly" sounding point: If you talk to me about whatever situation you're facing during the semester, we can almost always work out something that will cut you a little slack but still keep you on track in the class to finish. Please, please, please communicate with me if you get in a hard place in your life. Maybe your mom is sick, or your kid had to go to the emergency room, or you fell on the ice and messed up your back and are on pain meds that keep you from concentrating, or you were just diagnosed with some life-threatening disease, or you're pregnant with twins and while you're not actually due until the semester is over who knows what might happen, or... who knows what? Please let me know what's going on as soon as possible, and we'll figure out how to handle it.

Okay, nuff for now.

I'm basically lazy...

After watching how my colleagues Jennifer Sippel and Tom Eland have used blogs to communicate with students in their classes, I decided to learn from them and create my own. So, this blog is here for me to share information with students in the classes I teach, which in Spring 2009 are INFS 1000 Information Literacy and Research Skills, INFS 1200 Introduction to Technical Information Services, INFS 2200 Introduction to Cataloging, and INF S 2900 Library Information Technology Internship.

Many times, I find myself posting the same information in multiple locations, and I don't want to do that anymore. Less work for me to post here. :-) See, I told you I'm basically lazy.

If you're a student coming here, sometimes information here will be for your class, sometimes for another. I will tag anything that is for a specific course with the designator INFS and the course number (INFS1000, INFS2200, etc.), so if you want to find posts that are only for your course, then you can use the labels/tags to limit to your course number.