Monday, March 16, 2009

Week nine (3/16-3/20)

Monday
Today, this is the first time I need to talk with students very seriously. Normally, I believe they are in the university and I would treat them as adults and respect them. However, there were three students keep chatting and doing google image search instead of searching on the database and be familiar with it. Therefore, I stopped them and was very seriously told them image search won't be helpful for their research papers and they need to search articles.

The good thing is that Toby, my supervisor, has told me that there might be students will try to do something else during the class, and told us that we could ask professors to stop them. Even though I was not surprised when students were interrupting the class, I also noticed that asking the professor to keep students pay attention on the class is really necessary.

Wednesday
Even though there are classes have problem, there are also classes that have no problems and students have the experience of researching. During today’s session, I found out that students have experience of using databases for their research paper since high school. Therefore, instead of teaching them how to search articles and books basically, I also talked about cross search; use GetText, cross check different subject areas for their topics such as ScienceDirect and Opposing View Point for both science article and pros/cons of their topics.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Week eight (3/8 - 3/14)

After meeting with librarians for my collection management project, I start studying SJSU library mission and collection management policy, SJSU catalog for corporate finance management major and computer science major which are subject I will cover for my project, and library catalog and CUS union catalog for those subjects.

Monday
One of the professor's topic is pertinents of San Jose or silicon valley, which students need to access information from newspapers. However, they won't able to learn searching skills from databases. In addition, they can browsing on San Jose City Council meeting web page for information, but it is not searchable.

Therefore, the literature class won't be helpful for them. At first, I was thinking to give a lecture style class and pick up one topic, which I can find books on the catalog and articles from Academic Search Primer, to show the students how to use catalog/Link+, Academic Search Primer, San Jose Mercury News, and Spartan Daily.

After discussion between the professor and Toby, they decided to have the workshop style that ask students to try on their own. But there aren't handouts for searching on San Jose Mercury News and Spartan Daily. Thus, I give a longer lecture for how to accessing different databases, including showing them where are San Jose Mercury News and Spartan Daily on the list. In addition, I showed them the federal government collection on the lower level of the library and search on the catalog for their topics.

Wednesday
Even though students know the topic, they didn't decide their topics for the paper yet. Therefore, I separated them into groups and asked each group to choose one topic and demonstrate their searches to the class.

Thursday
The professor canceled the class which is at 7:30am, but sent the email at 6:30am to Amanda, who is the one to contact professors for us. But she wouldn't able to tell me, and I already left home at 6:30am. Till 7:30am that I saw the professor, who came to tell me the class was canceled.

Because of it, we have decided to send the instructor's email and/or cell number in case the professor needs to cancel the class; the could contact to us directly.