MLA Conference 2010 - Friday, October 8

Friday, October 8, 8:00-9:15am
A Level Playing Field?: ELM and the High School to College High Jump
Session revolved around an interesting study conducted by librarians at St. Thomas (a private Catholic university). Question was asked: “What expectations should we have as librarians of students’ information literacy skills?” A dichotomy exists between what is being taught/learned in high school and what college faculty/librarians expect students to know. The ELM (Electronic Library for Minnesota) can serve as a bridge to help narrow this gap. They also identified scaffolding opportunities related to this; scaffolding was a new concept to some of the college librarians. Their research was based on a survey to librarians at 30 Catholic schools in the Midwest. They got responses from 15 librarians and made site visits to those locations to have one-on-one conversations with the librarians. They referenced a few articles on this topic that I need to explore and compare to my own high school- community college collaboration grant I completed a few years ago. Another off-shoot of this research project we could consider exploring at Minnesota West is to focus on students who will transition from a 2-year to a 4-year college.

Friday, October 8, 9:30-10:45am
Reading 2.0: Improving Literacy in an Academic Environment
A team from Rasmussen College’s Academic Resource Team (ART) presented ways they have collaborated in attempts to raise literacy. The ART includes librarians, student support professionals, and faculty members. Strategies mentioned included SQ3R, Word Power! (Princeton Review), and other course specific ideas. They are using the MAPP assessment as students come into the college and when they graduate to help gauge literacy increases. They talked about the importance of getting all faculty on-board with the idea of including reading strategies in their courses/programs. One way they worked on this was to get all faculty enrolled in an online course about teaching reading comprehension. They have also instituted the practice that instead of faculty having office hours in their office, they tutor in the library one hour/week. Comments were made about how that time in the library helped faculty learn what students in other subject areas struggle with and also to hear how student peer tutors interacted with students.

Friday, October 8, 11:00am-1:00pm
Luncheon Keynote: Bruce Schneier
Security, Privacy, and the Generation Gap
Mr. Schneier talked about the feeling and reality aspects of Security; there are two different concepts on the same word. He spent time talking about privacy and how that is affected by the generation gap and also how the Internet is the greatest generation gap since rock ‘n roll. I laughed out loud when he said “to search is easier than to sort” = keeping emails and searching through them rather than deleting. Guilty as charged! I also thought his comparison about what was ignored environmentally in the industrial age in the 20th century that we find incredulous now will be akin to those looking back at our lack of protecting privacy in the early 21st century.

I enjoyed my MLA 2010 Conference experience and the wide-range of topics that were available. I believe I was able to gain information on aspects of my job as well as other librarian-related professional responsibilities.