A Little Bit Can Go a Long Way: An Examination of Required Service in the Basic Communication Course

This study examines the utility of service-learning pedagogy in the general education basic communication course to meet service-learning outcomes, with an emphasis on civic engagement. Results of the data suggest that students in both a one-time service site and multiple-site condition indicated that the service experience enhanced three of the four service-learning outcomes: (a) personal and interpersonal development, (b) ability to understand and apply knowledge, and (c) sense of citizenship. The service-learning outcome of perspective transformation was not a frequently mentioned theme but did emerge in intensity in the multiple-visit condition. Findings of the study extend experiential learning theory as well as civic engagement theory and support the inclusion of a service-learning basic communication course in the general education curriculum to promote the LEAP initiative.     

Teaching intercultural communication through service-learning

Course: Intercultural Communication

Objectives: After completing this intercultural service-learning activity, students should be able to (1) apply effective intercultural communication skills in culturally different sites; (2) analyze cultures different from their own through service-learning; (3) compare and evaluate course readings with service-learning experiences through directed reflection; and (4) build critical empathy, relational, and reflexivity skills by communicating with people who are culturally different.     

Service-learning in Crisis Communication Education: Revisiting Coombs' Objectives for the Crisis Communication Course

The purpose of this study was to revisit Coombs' suggestions for teaching the crisis communication course using service-learning as a framework. The author sought to assess the effectiveness of using this method in terms of the benefits to both students and the partnering organization and students' perceptions of whether they met the learning outcomes for the course. The results of this study demonstrate that a semester-long service-learning assignment can enhance the practical application of course concepts and overcome the limitations identified by Coombs in his original proposal.     

The Library as Service-Learning Partner: A Win–Win Collaboration with Students and Faculty

ABSTRACT

This case study of a quarter-long collaborative service-learning project, repeated over several quarters, involves technical communication students and librarians at Eastern Washington University. The librarians needed to promote RefWorks, while the technical communication faculty needed a client with a computer-based tool for students to learn and then teach to others. Working in teams, fifty-eight students planned and executed fifteen RefWorks workshops for students. The majority of students liked using RefWorks and gave successful presentations to their peers. This project increased awareness and usage of RefWorks while also affording librarians a student-centered perspective on teaching and using this tool. In this win–win collaboration, students learned useful skills in addition to developing a sense of community with the library.     

Food as social justice: Critical ethnography as a lens for communication activism

Courses: Public Speaking.

Objectives: This semester-long service-learning activity examines access to affordable healthy food as a social justice issue, using critical ethnography as a framework to help students understand the link between activism and public speaking skills. After completing the project, students will be able to: (1) develop a narrative speech that links their respective identities to food justice; (2) adapt a persuasive message that connects a community partner's food justice goals to a target audience; and (3) communicate ethically with a public while participating in a food justice campaign.     

Making a difference: A community-based campaign that promotes diversity and inclusion

Courses: This semester-long project is suited for courses on persuasion, diversity, social media, communication and technology, social advocacy, service-learning, or social justice.

Objective: This assignment challenges students to research, design, launch, maintain, and assess an anti-hate social media campaign.     

Study Abroad Partnerships: Librarians,Business Faculty,and In-Country Facilitator Develop an Innovative Experiential Learning Program

This article profiles the development and implementation of an undergraduate study abroad program developed by librarians and a finance professor at the University of Maryland (UMD). The authors collaboratively developed and taught, in 2012, 2013, and 2014, an innovative short-term course to Nicaragua, BMGT 448N: Doing Business in Nicaragua: Microfinance in Action, in which UMD students provided hands-on consulting to Nicaraguan entrepreneurs, an international microlending organization, and small business start-ups affiliated with a Nicaraguan University. In keeping with the UMD's mission of internationalization this course provided students with a service-learning and a study abroad experience.     

Connecting Forensics and Assessment in the Twenty-First Century

A major feature of education in the twenty-first century is assessment. Forensic educators should heighten the importance of learning outcomes and utilize assessment efforts to directly measure how forensic programs develop educational foundations for students. This article focuses on the use of tournaments and noncompetitive educational outcomes, such as engagement within academic communities, service-learning, and the promotion of the value of forensics, to connect the educational benefits of the activity to help define the mission of forensics in the twenty-first century.     

Reimaging Public Libraries as Learning Communities: What Library Stories Can Tell Us

This article describes a study conducted in York County, Pennsylvania, on its countywide library system framed within the context of the statewide “Reimaging Libraries” Get Storied initiative, developed and marketed by organizational story consultant, Michael Margolis. Understood as an essential aspect of culture re-imaging and change, narratives were collected from library personnel by undergraduate students at Pennsylvania State University-York as part of a service-learning initiative (directed by the first author). Working closely with the library district consultant (second author), we assess the success of the initiative and make some recommendations for culture reimaging through the practice of storytelling.     

Study-Abroad Programs as Information Producers: An Expanding Role for Support of Our Students Studying Abroad

ABSTRACT

Though increasing numbers of students spend time studying abroad, there has been little discussion regarding the needs of study-abroad students as a distinct user group. The little research that has been done in this area focuses on support for study-abroad students as information users. This article expands the conversation to consider the librarian's role in supporting study-abroad students as producers of valuable information, particularly as study-abroad programs expand to nontraditional locations and focus on project-based and service-learning activities of direct benefit to their host communities. A model for creating digital libraries that supports the work of study-abroad programs in Monteverde, Costa Rica, is presented. Through multi-institutional collaboration, use of graduate student interns, and digital library technology, information produced by study-abroad programs of relevance to both local communities and future researchers is now accessible. Options for wider future support for study-abroad students as information producers are considered.     

A Value-Added Partnership Between a Chief Learning Officer and a Medical Librarian

A community-based participatory research project was conducted to identify health information needs of clients (an underserved population) at a homeless shelter. Staff at the shelter, medical students, and public librarians were sought as outreach partners; their needs and challenges in accessing health information resources to serve underserved populations were also assessed. The community needs assessment yielded results that helped shape a medical library's efforts in supporting medical students’ service-learning activities related to humanistic education. The resulting data also informed library decisions on health information education outreach programs tailored to vulnerable, underserved populations and community partners serving the specific populations in the communities.     

The relationship between the developmental level of persuasive strategies and their effectiveness

Research on the development of persuasive communication skills has described the emergence of four basic strategies in persuasive messages. This study includes two experiments to assess the role these strategies play in the process of gaining compliance. In both, college students received messages requesting they volunteer for an experiment and advocating compliance. Messages differed in the level of strategic adaptation of the compliance‐gaining appeal they offered. In general, form of request (supported versus unsupported) and content of specific message appeals influenced compliance, but level of strategic adaptation made little or no contribution to message effectiveness.     

研究生学科服务需求分析及服务策略探究——以中央财经大学为例

[目的/意义] 以对研究生的学术资源需求和学科服务需求的调研分析为基础,构建基于研究生学习和科研活动周期的学科服务体系,深化学科服务模式,为高校图书馆向研究生提供全面且有针对性的学科服务提出对策性建议。[方法/过程]采用访谈和问卷调查相结合的调研方式,针对不同年级和学历层次的研究生群体特点,分析完整的研究生学习和科研活动周期,掌握不同阶段研究生的学术资源需求和学科服务需求。[结果/结论]提出基于研究生需求的学科服务策略性建议：立足研究生完整的学习和科研周期,制定有针对性的学科服务方案,构建专业的研究生信息素养培训体系;设立论文写作中心、学习研讨空间和创意活动空间,满足研究生各方面的科研和活动需求;完善以研究生需求为导向的学科服务模式,推进高校图书馆全面学科服务的改革。     

Critical communication pedagogy and service learning in a mixed-method communication research course

ABSTRACT

Course: Mixed-Method Communication Research Methods

Objective: The purpose of this semester-long activity is to provide students with opportunities to cultivate mixed-method communication research skills through a social justice-informed service-learning format. Completing this course, students will be able to: recognize the unique strengths of quantitative and qualitative research methods; locate, evaluate, and utilize scholarly literature for a literature review; conduct an original research project using quantitative and qualitative research methods to gather and analyze data; and raise self and community awareness about a social issue through collaboration with a community organization.     

Faculty Liaison:

This case study describes a cooperative venture between a progressive faculty member and two librarians. The venture began as an experiment to introduce students to the kinds of external information sources they would likely encounter in the business world, to aid in strategic planning and to achieve (or maintain) a competitive edge. It was a revelation to some students that many of the same information sources available in their library are precisely those used in the corporate world. The session was team taught in a classroom using a mobile instruction unit, and included a discussion of various external information sources, their format and scope, followed by a CD-ROM demonstration (focusing on search strategies). Questions were encouraged throughout the period. In, addition, "lab" sessions in the library featuring a hands-on CD-ROM session and the demonstration of an online search (using DATA-STAR) were scheduled for those students unfamiliar with these information sources. The venture proved successful and was repeated.     

Turning a Service Learning Experience into a Model of Student Engagement: The Lighthouse Heritage Research Connections (LHRC) Project in Hong Kong

The digital shift has provided easy access to academic library users, and yet, the usage of archival collections continues to be low. At the same time, the need for innovation in library services for cultural heritage scholarship and its advancement is emerging. This paper outlines a library-led service-learning program that connects students with lighthouse artifacts, archival collections, scholars in global academia, and wider communities. Student engagement cases are provided to illustrate the way in which the librarian utilizes the Framework of Information Literacy for Higher Education by ACRL to work closely with students. These cases also demonstrate how students can contribute to knowledge creation and preservation efforts for a specific cultural heritage topic that is not static, but which keeps receiving new contributions or additions to the depository. Thus, this paper is an answer to the ACRL's call for pilot projects to be assessed and shared with the wider community of academic librarians and support staff. It also builds on emerging roles for academic libraries like engaged learning. Librarians must move beyond simply seeing themselves as partners. Instead, librarians should see themselves as prime facilitators that co-create and co-develop cultural heritage research and historical projects by connecting actors and resources more effectively than any single actor can do alone.     

Collaboration with the Business Career Services Office: A case study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This article presents a case study of the collaboration between the Business Career Services Office (BCSO) and the Business and Economics Library (BEL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The collaboration with BCSO helped BEL to become a strategic partner to both the College of Business and to graduate Business students. A survey instrument used for program assessment demonstrated that library instruction helped students to realize the benefits of using library resources for their research and to feel confident in their research skills. This article suggests that instructional collaboration with student services can be a powerful tool to demonstrate the role of academic librarian as pedagogical partner, both to classroom faculty and to other campus constituencies.     

Librarian integration in a four-year medical school curriculum: a timeline

The Taubman Health Sciences Library (THL) is integrated in all four years of the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS) curriculum. Information resources are introduced at strategic points throughout the curriculum so that students receive training at times when they are most likely to need the resource. Most of the core instruction sessions are taught in teams that consist of librarians and UMMS faculty, which provides unique learning opportunities for students. This article describes each THL instruction activity in the four-year undergraduate UMMS curriculum and provides commentary on the overall effectiveness of this integrated approach to instruction.     

A Review of: “Essential Evidence: Medicine that Matters”

The Taubman Health Sciences Library (THL) is integrated in all four years of the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS) curriculum. Information resources are introduced at strategic points throughout the curriculum so that students receive training at times when they are most likely to need the resource. Most of the core instruction sessions are taught in teams that consist of librarians and UMMS faculty, which provides unique learning opportunities for students. This article describes each THL instruction activity in the four-year undergraduate UMMS curriculum and provides commentary on the overall effectiveness of this integrated approach to instruction.