If you have worked in academic libraries for some time you would be aware of, and no doubt affected by, the ever increasing demand and imperative for librarians to dedicate large portions of their day to teaching and learning. For some, this is a match made in heaven, while for others it is a stressful professional challenge that elicits a sense of unpreparedness by this emerged role. Certainly, library and information science courses with the curriculum generally lacking content on effective pedagogical practice does little to prepare the prospective library professional for the role of educator. This column will consider both internal and external professional development activities that are accessible to librarians and other staff at some Australian tertiary institutions, including post graduate qualifications in higher education and accreditation through the Higher Education Academy (United Kingdom) and provide suggestions for enhancing your educational practice.
This document provides a more complete specification of the file Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme and replaces the very brief definition in Section 3.10 of RFC 1738. It defines a common syntax that is intended to interoperate across the broad spectrum of existing usages. At the same time, it notes some other current practices around the use of file URIs.
GIF IT UP 2016 entry by Queensland University of Technology Library from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Source material from the Queensland University of Technology Digital Collections via Trove. The Repository Resource Librarian at QUT Library writes: " This image comes from an album in the QUT Stories collection. We chose the Poul C. Poulsen (1894) Cape Moreton Island Lighthouse Rocket Drill photo from QUT Digital Collections/ QUT Stories because it is suited to animation with the Rocket Brigade action in the foreground. Investigation into what a Rocket Brigade does revealed and intriguing peace of Australian maritime history. A Rocket Brigade was a shore to ship rescue team who deployed rocket technology to deliver a rescue rope to a ship in distress up to 500 yards offshore. This technology was originally developed in Britain in the mid-19th Century and was subsequently deployed in the Colonies. Rocket Brigades were volunteer units which took over from Naval operations – no longer funded for this purpose. Rocket Brigades were often successful in saving the lives of many passengers and crew from stricken vessels who would have otherwise perished. This technology was last used in Australia in 1974. " This gif is made available under a CC-BY-SA license.
Initial teacher education (ITE) programs are still experimenting with how best to make use of the connectivity provided by digital technology. This paper uses two examples to develop a model of how connectivity can be used to enrich ITE by harnessing the intrinsic motivation of teachers. The model draws upon theories of networked learning (Jones, 2015; Steeples, Jones, u0026 Goodyear, 2002) and self-determination theory (Ryan u0026 Deci, 2000).A networked learning perspective places a focus upon the connections that facilitate learning, and how to improve them. Pre-service teachers can connect with and learn from the world outside of the university and/or their school, especially from the greater community of experienced teachers, teacher educators, and subject experts (Kelly, Clara, Kehrwald, u0026 Danaher, In press).This paper describes two interventions that aim to have a positive impact upon ITE: TeachConnect and the Digital Portfolio project. TeachConnect is an online platform that supports Queensland teachers (currently over 600 from 8 universities) from their pre-service education into their career, through online mentoring and through development of a shared community knowledge base. Much of its potential arises from connecting pre-service and early-career teachers with experienced and well-established teachers. TeachConnect is currently being integrated into a number of university programs during practical experience, to integrate online support and gathering of evidence (Kelly, Clara, u0026 Kickbusch, 2015). The Digital Portfolio project experiments with the effectiveness of an online portfolio as a means to support pre service teachers as they collect evidence of achievement at the Graduate level of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Portfolios allowed for the integration of evidence gathering by enabling pre-service teachers to co-create knowledge along with their supervising teachers and university co-ordinators using the Apple iTunes U platform, which could then be used to provide evidence for achieving graduate standards.Both projects have been designed with a focus upon harnessing intrinsic motivation. In self-determination theory intrinsic motivation is described as having three main aspects (Ryan u0026 Deci, 2000): (i) a need for autonomy to be able to carry out the task in a way that is in harmony with the beliefs of the learner; (ii) a need for competence to have the ability needed to carry out the task; and (iii) a need for relatedness to feel that the task promotes, at some level, human connections. We articulate a model for these and future networked learning interventions in ITE to guide design towards intrinsic motivation for learning.
GIF IT UP 2016 entry by Queensland University of Technology Library from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Source material from the Queensland University of Technology Digital Collections via Trove. The Repository Resource Librarian at QUT Library writes: This image comes from an album in the QUT Stories collection. We chose the Poul C. Poulsen (1894) Cape Moreton Island Lighthouse Rocket Drill photo from QUT Digital Collections/ QUT Stories because it is suited to animation with the Rocket Brigade action in the foreground. Investigation into what a Rocket Brigade does revealed and intriguing peace of Australian maritime history. A Rocket Brigade was a shore to ship rescue team who deployed rocket technology to deliver a rescue rope to a ship in distress up to 500 yards offshore. This technology was originally developed in Britain in the mid-19th Century and was subsequently deployed in the Colonies. Rocket Brigades were volunteer units which took over from Naval operations – no longer funded for this purpose. Rocket Brigades were often successful in saving the lives of many passengers and crew from stricken vessels who would have otherwise perished. This technology was last used in Australia in 1974. This gif is made available under a CC-BY-SA license.
There is an acknowledged need for strategies to enhance participation, learning and graduate capabilities for students engaged in STEM disciplines given the central importance of these skills to the future economy. The STIMulate program provides support for learning across maths, science and IT to all QUT coursework students regardless of course of study or campus. Central to the success of the program is the provision of face-to-face peer support by a team of high-achieving, experienced student volunteers; the Peer Learning Facilitators (PLFs). Understanding the motivations and expectations of the diverse team of STIMulate student volunteers is necessary to appropriately manage the program. A survey instrument was adapted from the Volunteer Functions Inventory (Clary, Snyder, Ridge, Copeland, Stukas, Haugen & Meine, 1998) to assess three drivers of participation - autonomy, mastery and purpose, and provided to all commencing PLFs at the initial 2016 training session. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) identified three classifications of motivators for beginning PLFs: relationships and experiences (most important criteria), intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators (least important criteria). The findings of this work represent an important first step towards enhancing evidence-based practice for the management, reward and recognition of student volunteers engaged in academic support programs.
Context: Students enter undergraduate engineering degree programs with a wide range of mathematical knowledge, skills, aptitudes and abilities. A significant proportion of engineering undergraduates struggle with course mathematics requirements. Student pass / fail rates in engineering maths show that QUT's BEng students are no exception. QUT provides out-of-class support to students needing extra assistance with their maths (at point-of-need) via our STIMulate program. Difficulty dealing with the mathematics requirement of engineering courses is known both anecdotally and via a body of published research, to be a major contributor to students failing to complete their degree. Purpose: QUT's STIMulate program philosophy of support-for-learning embraces a social justice framework, student leadership, student-academic partnerships, peer assistance and facilitated learning. The STIMulate program has developed a series of complementary approaches to support academic success. The success of the program can be attributed in part to this combination of approaches and to a deliberate move away from the deficit model so often associated with learning support. The program has proven to be of value to large numbers of students with a range of mathematical knowledge, skills, aptitudes and abilities. Approach: Since 2013 STIMulate has supported student learning in maths, science and IT at QUT. It is a service founded on sound pedagogical practice. QUT's STIMulate program offers a multi-faceted approach of support to all coursework students (both undergraduate and postgraduate). It aims to enhance student learning, to increase capabilities and confidence in mathematical and scientific concepts, as well as to expand information technology skills and competencies. A well-developed consultation framework enables our STIMulate service to integrate with, complement and support QUT's curriculum. STIMulate uses sophisticated planning techniques that accurately predict levels of student demand at different stages of the upcoming semester. Results: Evidence of the positive impact of STIMulate can be found in student grades, retention (attrition), lecturer feedback, client attendance figures and student client feedback (both anecdotal and via planned survey responses). On all measures for 2015 and 2016 (GPA, academic success, retention, attrition) students who attended STIMulate achieved better outcomes than those who did not. It is particularly pleasing to see a significant proportion of students from target equity cohorts taking advantage of our STIMulate service. Conclusions: QUT's STIMulate program offers a model of how to optimally organise and deliver support for mathematics learning. It demonstrates how academics and students can effectively partner to deliver a quality service.
Recent literature on researcher profiles and social media tends to focus either on citation tools with profiling functionality, or the relationship between social media for scholarly communication and formal metrics. Less often does the literature put the researcher at the centre, and discuss the online researcher profile as an holistic persona, with the tools as enablers rather than drivers. The Pimp my Profile initiative was developed by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Creative Industries Faculty Library Liaison Team in collaboration with the Research Leaders in the Creative Industries Faculty, and is focussed on supporting researchers to create their online academic persona, improve their online visibility and develop an individual and institutional ‘brand’.
Liaison Librarians and liaison services are critical to the success of libraries and library services. Gone are the days when Liaison Librarians can spend the majority of their time selecting resources and teaching information literacy into undergraduate classes. In these critical times they need to be broad in knowledge, well connected, agile in nature and possess all-encompassing skills. QUT Library has a liaison team model established in 2012 where Faculty Teams are assigned to the QUT International College and each of the 6 faculties within QUT. Within each team there are three lead roles - Learning and Teaching Lead, Research Lead, and Information Resources Lead. Although this model was a success library staff highlighted that often plans and strategies were developed in isolation, skills gaps were an issue and too much time was spent on reporting. In 2015 a further review of the Library Liaison Faculty Teams was undertaken to ensure Teams were still relevant and essential in an academic environment and addressing the needs of all stakeholders – students, academics and researchers. Achieving further success was paramount to ensuring a robust partnership with faculties and being able to achieve the University’s strategic ambition. A comprehensive literature review identified the challenges and successes of national and international liaison roles and models. Broad consultation with key QUT stakeholders was undertaken where strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the Teams and their services were identified and discussed. Thirty-four recommendations for change were identified, including: • Library Liaison Faculty planning cycle to align with faculty’s strategic planning cycle and target 1-3 faculty priorities; • The introduction of a blended learning lead role within teams; • Development of a skills audit to identify skills gaps and also champions within roles; • Sharing of skilled staff across faculty teams; • Assigning teams to Divisions within the University as well as Faculty; • Rationalisation and simplification of reporting.
Researchers are often time-poor and disinterested in the technical underpinnings of the research support services provided by their institution. Understandably, their focus is on completing the task at hand as efficiently (and painlessly) as possible; be it completing a data management plan, finding research datasets, research notetaking, submitting a completed thesis, disseminating research findings, publishing, storing research data, reporting outputs for research assessment or gathering impact data for grants and promotion applications. At Queensland University of Technology (QUT) there is a digital repository ‘under the bonnet’ of many of the services supporting researchers with these tasks. For some services, only one repository is involved but, in other cases, multiple repositories are working together behind the scenes. The objective is to provide a seamless experience for the researchers. Implementing and managing these services necessarily involves partnerships or collaborations between one or more organisation units including; the Library, Information Technology Services, the Office of Research, the Research Students Centre and the faculties (academic departments). QUT was one of the first universities in Australia to implement an institutional repository (QUT ePrints) and, in 2003, it became the first in the world to endorse a university-wide policy which required staff to deposit a copy of all new peer reviewed publications. QUT ePrints enjoys strong support from both senior administrators and our community of researchers and has been the highest ranked Australian repository in almost every release of the Webometrics Ranking of Research Repositories. It is currently ranked 13th in the World in the Ranking for Institutional Repositories: http://repositories.webometrics.info/en/top_Inst In recent years, additional repository-based services have been implemented to provide support across the research lifecycle. This includes the preparation of data management plans, data archiving and publication, registering the location of code, software and datasets stored in external repositories and the curation of digitised artefacts (including digitised theses and conference proceedings). Currently, QUT is in the process of implementing an Electronic Research Notebook service that will address issues related to notetaking, records mangement, intellectual property, research integrity and data management. Presentation content This poster presents a graphical representation of the research lifecycle overlaid with details of the various digital repositories at QUT and the associated services available to support researchers at each point in the cycle. Text boxes will describes the various partnerships, successes and challenges associated with each of the services. Conclusion Implementing new repository-related services is rarely challenge-free but these challenges are excellent learning opportunities and generally lead, eventually, to success stories. Our experience has been that, to get researcher buy-in, the process of engaging with the service must be simple, supported and, whenever possible, rewarded.
Student engagement and retention is a key strategic priority for QUT. The Library’s Academic Skills Adviser consultation service provides support for students experiencing significant academic challenges. Our project aimed to bring together data to investigate engagement by students referred from the Student Success Program. A dashboard was created with referral and attendance data, Grade Point Average and Blackboard (Learning Management System) hits.
CCAU supports the primary conclusion of the Productivity Commission's Draft Report that ‘Australia's IP system is out of kilter favouring rights holders over users and does not align with how people use IP in the modern era’. Copyright exists to promote the production of new expression and ‘public interest’. Recent changes in international copyright law have tipped the balance too far in the direction of established producers and distributors. This poses significant risks to creativity, free expression and the flow of information, knowledge and culture. CCAU aims to contribute to the discussion regarding copyright law and open access in Australia, with a focus on ensuring copyright achieves the optimal balance between providing protection and incentive for creators of work whilst encouraging innovation and competition through access to works. The Draft Report makes important recommendations that, if implemented, would make critical improvements to ensuring that Australia’s copyright laws are fit for purpose in a digital age. Copyright reform is long overdue. The Draft Report builds on and supports recommendations detailed in a number of previous reports. To date, these recommendations have not been adequately implemented. CCAU supports the draft recommendations, in particular those that relate to ensuring access to and use of content is not unnecessarily restricted and creation and innovation is encouraged; and Supporting open scholarship through the use of open access initiatives and open licensing.
This paper discusses the issue of social media skills using a literacy framework. Firstly, it argues that social media skills are a form of vernacular, or ‘everyday’, literacy and articulates the issues associated with trying to formalise these skills within the curriculum. Secondly, it calls for greater explicit attention to social media skills within higher education, by arguing that social media literacies are a part of new literacies. It evaluates QUT’s “Create a Better Online You” suite of social media resources in light of this framework, and discusses the role of libraries in addressing social media skills.
In response to student requests, a peer leader led revision skills workshop was run just prior to a mid-semester exam in pharmacology. This skills workshop was well attended and received by equal percentages of both accelerated and traditional students (who were in their 4th semester at university). This suggests that both accelerated and traditional students can benefit from peer led revision skills workshops.
Internationally, the focus in Computer Science Education is steering towards the inclusion of coding within all schools. In Australia, the government (2014/15) “…has committed an extra $12 million to restore the focus, and increase student uptake of, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects in primary and secondary schools across the country.” This support includes the introduction of computer coding across different year levels. There are many reasons why our kids and teens should learn to code, but for today’s purposes, we’ll focus on the following five: 1. Coding teaches critical thinking and problem solving 2. Coding can unlock creativity and provide opportunity for self expression 3. Knowing some code provides competitive advantage in the future workforce 4. Learning a new language understood internationally; and 5. Most importantly - it's fun!
“Predatory vs Quality journals,” presented by Paula Callan, Scholarly communications Librarian, QUT and Stephanie Bradbury, Research Support Coordinator, QUT. Presented 5 August via Blackboard Collaborate as part of the QULOC Research Support for Library Liaison webinar series. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
The literature around Library 2.0 remains largely theoretical with few empirical studies and is particularly limited in developing countries such as Indonesia. This study addresses this gap and aims to provide information about the current state of knowledge on Indonesian LIS professionals’ understanding of Library 2.0. The researchers used qualitative and quantitative approaches for this study, asking thirteen closed- and open-ended questions in an online survey. The researchers used descriptive and in vivo coding to analyze the responses. Through their analysis, they identified three themes: technology, interactivity, and awareness of Library 2.0. Respondents demonstrated awareness of Library 2.0 and a basic understanding of the roles of interactivity and technology in libraries. However, overreliance on technology used in libraries to conceptualize Library 2.0 without an emphasis on its core characteristics and principles could lead to the misalignment of limited resources. The study results will potentially strengthen the research base for Library 2.0 practice as well as inform LIS curriculum in Indonesia so as to develop practitioners who are able to adapt to users’ changing needs and expectations. It is expected that the preliminary data from this study could be used to design a much larger and more complex future research project in this area.
QUT Library Research Support has simplified and streamlined the process of research data management planning, storage, discovery and reuse through collaboration and the use of integrated and tailored online tools, and a simplification of the metadata schema. This poster presents the integrated data management services a QUT, including QUT’s Data Management Planning Tool, Research Data Finder, Spatial Data Finder and Software Finder, and information on the simplified Registry Interchange Format – Collections and Services (RIF-CS) Schema. The QUT Data Management Planning (DMP) Tool was built using the Digital Curation Centre’s DMP Online Tool and modified to QUT’s needs and policies. The tool allows researchers and Higher Degree Research students to plan how to handle research data throughout the active phase of their research. The plan is promoted as a ‘live’ document’ and researchers are encouraged to update it as required. The information entered into the plan can be made private or shared with supervisors, project members and external examiners. A plan is mandatory when requesting storage space on the QUT Research Data Storage Service. QUT’s Research Data Finder is integrated with QUT’s Academic Profiles and the Data Management Planning Tool to create a seamless data management process. This process aims to encourage the creation of high quality rich records which facilitate discovery and reuse of quality data. The Registry Interchange Format – Collections and Services (RIF-CS) Schema that is used in the QUT Research Data Finder was simplified to “RIF-CS lite” to reflect mandatory and optional metadata requirements. RIF-CS lite removed schema fields that were underused or extra to the needs of the users and system. This has reduced the amount of metadata fields required from users and made integration of systems a far more simple process where field content is easily shared across services making the process of collecting metadata as transparent as possible.
Digital disruption and an increasingly networked society drive rapid change in many professions and a corresponding need for change in tertiary education. Across the world, information education has, to date, prepared graduates for employment in discrete professions, such as librarianship, records management, archives, and teacher librarianship. However, contemporary information practices are less defined and are demanding of new professional skill-sets and understandings. This paper reports a study that consulted Australia’s tertiary academics about the current circumstances of information education in the academy and elicited a vision and a concern for future directions in Australian information education.
Australian universities are publishing previously unpublished works such as theses in institutional repositories or by publishing scholarly journals on their own presses. This re-invented role of publisher is due in part, to the availability of digital age technologies which scaffold the publishing process and facilitate inexpensive production of digital-only journals. The global push for Open Access to the outputs of publicly-funded research has also been a major driver. Research funder mandates and institutional Open Access policies apply only to publications for which the authors have no expectation of commercial gain. In all cases the primary motivation is to disseminate widely for maximum uptake with attribution to the author thereby increasing impact. This makes works published in institutional repositories and on university presses ideal candidates for Creative Commons licences.
