Inspiration can be found anywhere, anyplace, anytime. Before visiting the CN Towers on Tuesday evening we bumped upon this virtual, QR or Augmented Reality shopping. Just pick up the item, and a screen will show you how and where you can use it: user experience. In the afternoon of June 1st the director at Seneca College Library told us that they created a new functional team around user experience (UX) in her library.
We spent the morning of June 1st at York University library: before visiting the learning commons four librarians were so kind as to give us short challenging talks. The pictures in this blog of course refer to what we saw at the learning commons, so the library space, but there was much to learn about other activities too.
Presentations were given by the “Digital Initiatives Librarian” and the “E-Learning Librarian”: interesting functions! The first, Andrea Kosavic, told us a.o. about Synergies (www.synergiescanada.org), where OA material from several Canadian partners is hosted and made available. Kent Murnaghan, one of the persons responsible for Information Literacy@YUL, told us about the 4 strategic priority areas for IL: academic literacies; curriculum integration; e-learning;  andstudent engagement. In the afternoon at Seneca we also talked about IL, and there the brand “SPARK” was used for the IL or AL services: short practical academic research knowledge.
But most interesting for us was the YU approach (presented by Mark Robertson) for the Learning commons: A model of collaboration. YU Library sees their Learning commons as both a learning environment (so the space) and a collaborative approach to academic support. Integration is key, so research, writing and learning skills all together, because when students come with their assignment papers, their ask for help refers to all these areas. The final presentation further elaborated on the virtual learning commons, an online toolkit for faculty support. I would like to quote from the statement of principles, created in April, about the Learning Commons Collaboration: “we approach research, writing and learning as deeply interconnected processes that engage the intellect, unique motivations, emotions, skills and strengths of each individual.”
And as always I like the positive twists, so e.g. at Seneca: instead of plagiarism talk about academic honesty. And the house rules at YU: the red forbidden part gets an underlining “why” explanation.

 

Blog views as per June 25, 2013: 1465. After that date post was migrated to this new url.