No, IPAL isn't an Apple product...It's the Iowa Private Academic Libraries consortium (librarians do like our acronyms, don't we?)! This was the first time I attended this conference which, as I understand it, in the past few years has usually just been treated as a business meeting. This year, however, in addition to the lunch business meeting there were short 20- to 25-minute presentations highlighting the theme "Library/Campus Collaborations."
The day began on the road. It was a little over two hours to drive there and, luckily, my colleague, Dan, didn't get too sick of my constant chatter (I was feeling talkative that day). We arrived on campus with enough time to check in, grab a quick breakfast snack if we wanted, and see some fantastic friends I hadn't seen in a while. It was so nice to catch up with them (and to see Anne Marie's adorable growing baby bump)! The president of the college shared a few words of welcome with us, then it was off to the sessions!
The first session I attended was UD's Jon Helmke's Skyping session, "Collaborating from a Distance: Using Skype to Help Achieve Student and Faculty Goals." During my internship at UD I was aware they had a professor Skyping in to teach an aviation class. In order to accommodate this, the students met using a model similar to that used with graduate students. The full group met once/week with the other class periods used for students to independently complete their course work. Several features of Skype made it the top choice for UD: the ability to screen share (so the professor could share with the students his computer desktop, and vice versa), the fact that it was free, instant messaging/mobile options. Skype not only allowed the professor to lead classes, it also allowed him to be present at staff meetings and, later, when the professor had returned from campus, bring in guest speakers (reducing travel & housing costs and allowing more flexibility for the guest speaker's schedule). The premium service allows for video conferencing between more than 2 users at some cost (similar to Google+ Hangouts). There were some questions from the audience about campus bandwidth restrictions, outages, and clarity of sound/video. For the most part none of these things were an issue in the speakers' experience. UD campus bandwidth is pretty generous, though occasionally things will load a little less quickly or be a little more jerky/jumpy during prime campus-wide usage times. Basic microphones and cameras work well and the professor said, as long as the students were projecting, he didn't have issues hearing classroom discussions or questions on the other side of the camera. They did recommend you consult your IT department to be sure your network can handle such bandwidth use.
The second session I saw was another UD group, Anne Marie Gruber & Marta Abele in their session, "From Cover to Cover: Library-Campus Collaboration to Support At-Risk Students." They discussed their BRIDGE program, which is a summer program that brings at-risk or under-prepared first-year students to campus earlier than the rest of the incoming freshmen in order to better prepare them for their first year in college. Many of these students have an ACT score of 17 and 75% of the group are the first-generation from their family to attend college. Much of the way Marta described the BRIDGE program made me think of Upward Bound or a more intensive version of the federal TRIO program. They discussed the partnership between the BRIDGE program and the library and how the library was involved from the early development stages. The library provided a literature review when the program was just beginning development, and has continued support them by providing materials to support student success & the faculty teaching at-risk students. (Some of the resources mentioned were The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College, The Thinking Student's Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education, & Teaching Unprepared Students: Strategies for Promoting Success and Retention in Higher Education.) The summer program is primarily to orient students to campus and for bonding, not necessarily a time to focus on academic catch-up from what they may have missed in high school. As the year goes on, students will spend time in required study-hall sessions in the library computer labs and take introductory/student success classes. Not only does the library provide the space, they also build connections with the students early (during the summer session) so the students know who to speak with when they have questions about coursework. The librarians also come in and introduce the "Who, What, When, Where, and Why" of research strategies. Students were given a "fake paper," similar to they type most first-year students would receive in an introductory level writing course. Instead of writing the paper, however, they looked at the guidelines and came up with a strategy as to how they would approach the assignment. They answered "Who can help me with this paper? What is the format of this assignment? When is it due and when can I work on it? Where do I find the information I need? and Why am I doing this--what will I learn from this?" This reflective process helps the students see that the "fake paper" is a manageable assignment and it helps them form a strategy that can be applied to other assignments in the future.
The third session I attended was "Collaborating for Information Literacy: The Drake Experience." given by Carrie Dunham-LaGree and Bruce Gilbert from Drake. They discussed their first-year seminar model at Drake and how they've worked to incorporate IL into all sections of the course. One of the sections is led by a librarian, but all first-year experience courses. Particularly helpful was the link to their libguides (http://researchguides.drake.edu/fys) and the example rubrics they shared.
Throughout the day it was nice to meet new people and hear about what other institutions had been up to. In the middle of the day we enjoyed a working lunch where we reviewed the minutes from the last IPAL meeting and discussed new business. Officer nominations were approved and the Secretary/Treasurer's report was given. In the afternoon I attended Dan's session where he discussed the embedded librarian program we have, how it began, and where we're going with the development and implementation of the new Core Sem I courses. There was a lot of interest in what Grand View is doing and several nice questions from the audience. Our plan was to slide out and hit the road early, but Dan got stuck with this Chatty Kathy (points thumbs at self) and we wound up visiting with a good friend of mine from my undergraduate days. We may be chatting more in the future about collaborating on an ACRL presentation proposal, which would be really exciting! The laid-back feel of the conference was nice and it got me even more ready to head up to ILA/ACRL next month!
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