The SPIRIT (School Partnerships in Research and Information Technology) outreach program strives to teach information literacy skills to middle school, high school, and community college students and teachers from the local communities surrounding UC Irvine. The program targets underserved, underperforming populations in an effort to increase student’s interest in and eligibility to pursue their education beyond the high school or community college level. The SPIRIT mission is advanced through two main programs: Teachers Information Literacy Institutes and the Day at College Experience. Both programs have been running for five years and have seen hundreds of teachers and thousands of students pass through the UCI Libraries. In addition to community outreach, the SPIRIT program provides a mechanism for the Libraries to partner with academic units in their academic outreach activities. One notable example of this involves a partnership between an Assistant Professor in UCI’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the UCI Libraries SPIRIT program. This professor successful applied for a National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Award which included a requirement to provide outreach activities for the wider, external community. The NSF reviewers specifically mentioned the outreach partnership with the SPIRIT Day at College Experience as a factor influencing the decision to award her the grant. The SPIRIT Day at College Experience combines library research sessions with a hands-on learning experience. These activities help 6th-12th grade students learn subject specific concepts and enhance their information literacy skills in a college setting. Over 5,000 local-area students have participated in this successful program over the last 5 years, The Teachers Information Literacy Institute program provides information literacy professional development institutes for local K-14 teachers. In 2006-07, elementary, middle and high school teachers participated in this program, totaling more than 800 hours of professional development. Teachers participate in a series of professional development workshops in order to develop and enhance their own information literacy (IL) skills and to learn how to incorporate IL skills and standards into the curriculum appropriate to their grade level. All institutes are held in one of the UC Irvine Libraries Technology-Enhanced Classrooms on Saturdays from 9am-3pm.
http://course.lib.uci.edu/ed/spirit/index.html?tab=about
Teach information literacy and life-long learning skills to students and teachers, increasing their understanding and confidence in their ability to locate and use information appropriately.
Assist students in becoming eligible and competitive in order to enroll at the University of California, to thrive academically while here, and to graduate.
We assess the SPIRIT program using both quantitative and qualitative methods. We track the number of students and teachers who participate as well as basic demographic information about the participants. In 2006-07, 1030 students from area middle and high schools participated in the Day at College Experience Program and over 50 teachers participated in the Teacher Information Literacy Institutes. We also ask students and teachers to fill out an evaluation for the sessions they participate in. These evaluations are primarily intended to measure level of satisfaction with the instruction provided and to provide suggestions for future improvement.
The Humanities Core Course is a popular, large enrollment (1200-1400 students per academic year), lower-division course at UC Irvine. It is required of all Humanities majors, but open to students in all majors. The course fulfills several General Education requirements including lower-division writing. The course introduces students to the methods of humanistic inquiry. There is an emphasis on development of information literacy and critical thinking throughout the course. One unique feature of the relationship between the Libraries and the Humanities Core Course is the contribution that the Libraries’ Special Collections have made to the course by providing library research skills sessions that teach student how to recognize and differentiate between primary and secondary sources. These sessions also introduce students to the specialized sources, such as archives, ephemeral materials, and rare or fragile materials, available in Special Collections Departments. In order to make sure that there is a close relationship between the course content, and the introduction to primary sources, the Special Collections librarians select materials from the Libraries’ Special Collections that support the content that students are learning. For example, in previous years, students were required to write an research essay about the impact of the McCarthy era on a topic of their choice. One of the libraries’ unique collections is a collection of political pamphlets from this era. Librarians brought a selection of this collection to the student’s classroom and conducted a session designed to teach students how to recognize a primary source, how to differentiate between a primary and secondary source, and how to examine a primary source in the light of a research topic. The sessions were wildly popular with instructors, students, and librarians, in large part, because of the opportunity to handle and examine interesting materials that most students would not associate with a library collection. This initiative is noteworthy because it is highly unusual for Special Collections departments to contribute in such a proactive manner to lower-division, undergraduate education. In addition to the Primary Source Research Skills sessions, students complete a series of Discovery Tasks, written by the Research Librarian for Education and Outreach, which introduce them to basic information literacy and library research skills.
Students will articulate a correct definition of a primary source.
Students will articulate a correct definition of a secondary source.
Students will be able to differentiate between a primary and a secondary source.
Assessment: We assess the Primary Sources Research Skills sessions both quantitatively and qualitatively. We track the number of students who participate. In Spring, 2007, 1029 students in 48 sections of the course participated in a Primary Source Skills session. The Course instructors and the librarian instructors were asked to provide feedback on the sessions. We have not yet asked for student evaluations of the sessions.
The “Primary Sources” tutorial introduces students to the characteristics of a primary source, and methods for locating primary sources in library collections. http://www.lib.uci.edu/tutorial/
The “Find Science Information” tutorial introduces beginning level science to the ways in which scientific and technical information is created, organized, located, and evaluated.
http://tutorial.lib.uci.edu/index.php?page=find_science_information
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The libraries are partnering with a number of other departments to create a campus portal. The campus portal will provide a single web platform for the integrated delivery of information, services and online communication tools to the University community. The portal will unify and integrate – within a consistent, branded web presence – the vast array of web-based tools, services and resources currently available for UC Irvine undergraduate, graduate and professional students. The portal will provide intuitive, personalized access to information and technology resources in a secure, consistent and customizable manner.
See above
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The transition from high school to the more rigorous demands of university life can be exciting and challenging for both students and their parents. Today’s students often turn to their parents when they have questions about college or difficult class assignments. To help with the transition, the Libraries’ Department of Education and Outreach held a series of workshops for parents of incoming freshmen to help them learn about the library services and resources available. The library sessions included a workshop and tour of the Libraries where librarians described the extensive resources available to students and how technology is used to make information more accessible to them. The sessions took place in the computer labs to give parents a taste of their student’s experience. Parents had the chance to meet librarians and library staff who assist students throughout their academic career.
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UCI Libraries has purchased an island in Second Life which we named Anteater Island found at the slurl http://slurl.com/secondlife/Anteater%20Island/152/188/26/ . The purposes of this investment are to foster and support creative design through course-related instruction and faculty research. In previous quarters courses such as Computer Games as Art, Culture and Technology and Reasoning and Modeling with Graphical Models made using Anteater Island an integral part of the syllabus. Student teams in these classes not only used Second Life as a platform to build computer games, they also used it as a collaborative work environment. UCI Libraries wants to partner with creative faculty who are interested in this new technology. Participation could be limited to holding a single class session in Second Life to using a parcel of the island for an entire quarter.
http://www.lib.uci.edu/online/second_life/
See above
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The Electronic Educational Environment website (EEE), is a home-grown course management system built to serve instructors and students at the University of California, Irvine. EEE offers a variety of tools to enhance learning and manage course administration. Tools include class mailing lists, class websites, online noteboards, class dropboxes, a gradebook and much more. EEE is a collaborative effort that brings together four units from across campus to make educational technology available and effective at UCI. Partners include the UCI Libraries, the Division of Undergraduate Education, the Office of the Registrar, and Network & Academic Computing Services.
https://eee.uci.edu/about/#what
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