Y9 Research Skills Course – information and digital literacy skills to support project-based learning

Background

In 2016  we moved away from a curriculum focused heavily on content to a more skills based approach in Y9. With greater emphasis placed on developing independent learners throughout their school career from Y9 to Y13, I put a proposal to my line manager, Deputy Head Academic, to plan a short research skills course for all our Y9 students, led by the professional librarians. The aim was to teach them information and digital literacy skills to support the enquiry-based projects they would be undertaking throughout the year. This was also intended to lay the foundations for the research skills needed for the HPQ (Higher Project Qualification), EPQ (Extended Project Qualifitcation) and Extended Essay of the International Baccalaureate, higher up the school. The lessons are taught in groups of around 15 – 16 students and and are very interactive.

These skills are essential for life beyond the classroom and projects and coursework. It is crucial for the whole of society to be digitally and media literate. Universities and schools are important drivers in developing students’ digital capabilities. The JISC Digital Capabilities Model is very instructive in this area and includes 6 elements: 1. ICT proficiency, 2. Digital communication, collaboration and participation 3. Digital learning and development 4. Information, data and media literacies 5. Digital creation, problem solving and innovation 6. Digital identity and wellbeing.

Digital capabilities framework, ©Jisc, CC BY-NC-ND

(https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/building-digital-capability)

The JCS Conference 2019 – Digital Literacy in Schools: building capabilities provided librarians and teachers with a wealth of information and discussion on this subject and you can explore the presentations here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lesson 1 (Discovery and search skills) – 55 minutes

  • Learn how to use the library catalogue – look for and find a book in the library
  • Interactive ‘Research Race’ in teams
  • Exploring aspects of the AccessIT catalogue (Reading lists, reservations, loan history etc)
  • Accessing our e-book platform – Browns Books for Students VLeBooks

Lesson 2 (Evaluation) – 55 minutes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Evaluating information – thinking critically.
  • Authentic and fake websites: Looking at information on websites. (Disclaimer, About Us, FAQS, Legal, domain names. Using the C.R.A.A.P test to evaluate sources). There are so many models for evaluating sources and although the C.R.A.A.P test isn’t perfect the students do find it memorable and a useful checklist).
  • Discussion of newspaper bias/advertorials/Opinion pieces etc
  • Card sort game
    – pros and cons and characteristics of different sources
  • Exploring the e-Library resources

My thanks to the librarians at Middlesex University for sharing this excellent idea.  They have developed a wide range of hands-on activities which form useful bases for discussion and group work. All their resources are found here:

http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/MDXGames

 

We’ve had some interesting discussions about what a parody is and the meaning of the word ‘veracity’. It’s interesting to observe that the students are not as proficient at spotting fake websites as they assume they are. We emphasized the need to cross-check information elsewhere and to critically evaluate information not simply go on a gut feeling about a website or source.

Lesson 3 (Academic Honesty and Referencing) – 55 minutes

  • What is plagiarism? What is Academic Honesty?
  • Referencing your sources
  • Discussion of academic honesty and avoiding plagiarism.
  • How and why to cite sources.
  • Using Word to generate Bibliography and references.
  • Showing students that many online resources provide the citation for them to import into the Bibliography.

For this final lesson we have found the Newcastle University Study Skills for 6th Form website very useful – we’ve run the plagiarism quiz and video with our classes and found it very accessible and fun for the younger year groups.

After the research skills course the Y9 students use study periods known as ‘Lab Time’ to research and write 3 mini projects relating to History, Science, Art, English and Geography. There is a large element of choice in these projects so that the students can explore topics that interest them. This is also an opportunity to use the digital resources on our extensive e-Library to research the projects as well as the library printed book stock and magazines and journals.

In Y10 and Y11 all our students undertake the HPQ (Higher Project Qualification) which develops independent study skills further and the librarians support this research with refresher workshops on the e-Library resources and how to find  relevant books and articles.

We are working on greater analysis of the impact of this course but we have noticed a marked increase in searches undertaken on the library online catalogue and book reservations  placed online. We will also be looking at the quality of Bibliographies and the referencing of the projects. We modify the course each year to keep it up to date and respond to feedback from the students.

Useful Websites

FOSIL Darryl Toerien, Head of Library at Oakham  has done a huge amount of work on inquiry learning and I would like to adopt the ideas in the FOSIL model over the coming years. See the Framework of Skills for Inquiry Learning.There is much to explore on the FOSIL website including resources licensed under Creative Commons.

CILIP Information Literacy Group

JCS Conference 2019 – Digital Literacy in Schools: building capabilities

JCS Conference Presentations 2018 From Digital Literacy to Independent Learning

The School Library Association

CILIP SLG

IFLA How to spot fake news infographic

 

Wellington College Library: Developing Independent Learners

I was asked by one of our suppliers of online resources, JCS Online Resources,  to write a blogpost for them about the developments made to the library at Wellington College over the past 5 years. I thought it might be useful to add to our own Library blog as a way of highlighting the role of the library in our school. Below is a version of that post.

Wellington College Library: Developing Independent Learners

Lucy Atherton, Head Librarian at Wellington College discusses the changes made to The Mallinson Library at Wellington College…

In 2012 the library at Wellington College underwent a huge transformation. The rooms of the existing building were brought together to provide a modern, inspiring learning environment for the whole school community. The glass walled pods, each with a giant touch screen computer, lend themselves to collaborative working by our students and the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy means space has been generated by the removal of desktop PCs.

At the heart of the library is a print book stock of around 10,000 items with an additional 20,000 books housed in departmental libraries spread out over the teaching areas of the campus and over 60 magazines and journals. We also have many digital resources, see below, and Browns Books for Students VLeBooks platform enabling students to read on iPads, smart phones and computers.

We invested in a large quantity of huge bean bags to maximise use of the grassy quad in front of the library for informal learning and revision.

The library’s key goals are to support pupil learning, encourage wider reading and nourish intellectual growth by fostering scholarship alongside supporting teaching staff with resources and a flexible workspace. The library accommodates a range of activities from individual study in the small glass pods to collaborative learning in the larger rooms. The library has a set of iPads which students can borrow to use in the library.

Library staff are fully involved in the school’s aim of developing independent learners. The two professional librarians deliver a 3-session course on research skills and referencing to year 9. These newly acquired skills are put to good use in an independent research project – students choose a subject they are fascinated by and use the library catalogue, book stock and online resources to source reliable information.

Digital resources

Over the years the librarians have built up an extensive e-Library of authoritative sources ranging from generic encyclopedias to subject specific sources such as History Study Centre and Gale Historical Newspapers. We also have Audiopi revisions podcasts which are proving particularly popular with our GCSE English students. The Day News Service for schools provides 3 balanced articles each day with additional links, glossaries and questions. It also gives us short articles in modern foreign languages – very useful as topical news resources for the MFL Department.

Three key resources for our 6th form students are Cambridge Companions, Questia School and the JSTOR Secondary Schools Collection. Questia School is a vast wide-ranging database of e-books, newspaper articles and scholarly articles. Each student has a login so they can save search results to project folders and bookmark or annotate resources. Our school-wide licence to JSTOR complements the content in Questia School, providing high level scholarly articles to support the IB Extended Essay and coursework as well as A level coursework and the EPQ.

Whilst we use JCS for a several of our e-resources we also go direct to other publishers and agents to supplement our e-Library as you can see from our Sharepoint page below.

E-Library on Sharepoint

When the school moved from an Intranet to using Microsoft Sharepoint I wanted to ensure that the e-Library looked attractive and inviting – a visual experience rather than simply a list of links where resources can get lost. I created an icon for each resource resembling apps. The resources are also arranged in subject specific pages creating smaller sub-sets to help with locating them.

Promotion

To maximise use of these online resources it is essential to make staff and students aware of them. Here are some ways I try to publicise what is available on the e-Library:

  • Attending academic departmental meetings to demonstrate subject specific articles and raise awareness.
  • Flag up new online resources via our weekly emailed Library News Digest.
  • Remind students of the key resources in end of term letters.
  • Run sessions on the e-Library for all L6th students.
  • Run sessions according to academic subject on online resources for IB students once they have chosen their Extended Essay topic.
  • Provide new teaching staff induction on the e-Library.
  • Talk to staff at every opportunity about resources which might be relevant to them!
  • Use Twitter and the Library blog for promotion.

Conclusion

We aim to make the library as welcoming as possible and reduce barriers to learning. It is wonderful to see students from different year groups working together, an informal tutorial taking place on the relaxed seating or a game of big chess going on in the Garden Room.

Spice up your sources! College-wide access to JSTOR and Connell Guides now available

We have a reJSTOR buttonally exciting addition to our extensive e-library resources for the pupils and staff to access for research and school work. We now have whole school access to JSTOR’s impressive  academic journal databases. JSTOR is a digital library including more than 2,000 academic journals (50 million pages have been digitized with around 3 million added each year). It is an excellent resource, particularly for the 5th and 6th form and particularly strong in the fields of English, Classics and History. It is used comprehensively by university students and becoming familiar with it in College is good preparation for higher education and for developing independent study skills.  All our pupils can use it without the need to login, from any computer on the college network. Instructions are given on the e-library page of the Intranet for accessing it remotely. The librarians are very happy to help with any questions about this.

4th form – give it a try for your IGCSE English projects as you are currently gathering reliable and varied sources for your articles.connell guides2

We have also recently subscribed to Connell Guides. These are attractive, well-written pocket guides to English Literature. They cover a number of the texts taught in English such as The Great Gatsby, Othello, T.S Elliot’s Wasteland and many other classic novels, plays and poetry. The online content (available via the e-library) consists of a monthly quiz, fortnightly essays and monthly reviews. The content is informative and engaging, written by experts in the field of literature.

6th Form Research and Referencing advice

As the L6 IB students embark on their Extended Essays here’s some advice and information which we hope will be useful for all 6th formers, both A level and IB. How much do you know about the EE requirements? Try this quick Extended Essay quiz devised by Sarah Pavey, the Librarian at Boxhill School.

Research

  • Check the catalogue See what books are available in College.
  • Ask the librarians! We are here to help and can get articles and books from other libraries (e.g. British Library and London Library)
  • Use the e-library We subscribe to a large number of online resources. Try Questia as a starting point for e-books and articles on any subject and including international coverage.
  • NewsBank – For local and national newspaper articles indexed up to yesterday and going back to the 1980’s.
  • Google Scholar Get to the heart of the good stuff on Google. Find scholarly or academic articles, research and reports on Google Scholar. If it doesn’t give you full-text access, it is likely that we can track these down for you.
  • Make a note of the details of the sources you use as you go along, this makes it much easier to compile the Bibliography at the end.
  • More information about other online sources on the e-library here
  • Think about the keywords you are using to search for your subject – make a list of alternative words and synonyms to broaden and narrow your search results.
  • Read this excellent booklet: Using Sources – A Guide for Students: Find it – Check it – Credit it
  • For study tips – note-taking, organising your time etc See the Revision and Research Help page on this blog

More web sources:

Subject Portals Pinakes is a website hosted by Heriot Watt University. It provides a “Subject Launchpad”. Portals bring the best websites and collections of documents together in one place. Particularly useful and famous ones are:

  • Bized (for Business Studies and Economics)
  • Sci Central Gateway to the best Science News sources
  • Sapling  Architecture, Planning and Lanscape information gateway.
  • Physics World – News, views and information for the global physics community from the Institute of Physics
  • Philosophy around the Web Don’t be put off by the amateurish look of this website.The main purpose of this site is to act as a guide and a gateway to philosophy resources on the Internet.
  • PubMed Central PMC is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

 

Avoiding Plagiarism

My favourite anti-plagiarism video comes from Bergen University Library. It’s based on Charles Dickens ‘Christmas Carol’ and is very funny.

Using images

Be sure to credit images you use. Here’s a useful website ‘5 good places for students to find public domain images‘ (these are images you can use to illustrate your work but you still need to cite the copyright holder)

Wikimedia Commons

This is an excellent initiative by the creators of wikipedia. People have donated their photos to be freely used by others. This is an excellent source of copyright free images.

 

Referencing

  • For more advice and information on Referencing and compiling your Bibliography see the Referencing & Research page of the intranet
  • Always list all your sources in your Bibliography (include people you interviewed, Tweets, Podcasts, TV documentaries, online sources and websites as well as the more obvious books, articles and newspapers)
  • Always state the date you accessed a website
  • To generate bibliographic references very easily try Cite This For Me
  • Be consistent – choose one style of referencing and stick to it. Harvard is a good one to adopt.

3rd Form English Projects

We look forward to seeing more 3rd form pupils in the Library researching their English projects. Here is a recap of some of the resources we offer. Please ask the Librarians if you need help.

  • iPads – we have 12 iPads you can use for researching in the Library. (there are fantastic new apps on London – A City through Time, Leonardo da Vinci, Evolution from the Natural History Museum, Prof Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe, Titanic, T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland, Shakespeare’s Sonnets and many more)
  • Newspapers – daily  print broadsheets: The Times, Telegraph, i and The Guardian.
  • Magazines and journals – paper copies of sports, general interest, news and current affairs and subject specific titles.(including New Scientist, The Economist, BBC Music, BBC Focus, National Geographic, Cosmos, New Statesman and The Spectator)
  • E-Library – Don’t forget to look at NewsBank (for newspaper articles from as recently as yesterday and going back many years). The Day is an online newspaper with 3 stories written for schools everyday it offers useful additional links and is searchable by subject too. We have the electronic version of “The Week” which is an excellent resource and the whole archive is subject searchable.
  • Need a dictionary? Access the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online
  • The Spiritual Room (also known as the Auchinleck Room) houses the bulk of the non-fiction bookstock. Access the catalogue from the e-library to see what resources are available in the Library and the departmental libraries.
  • Issues and Fact File 2013 are available in the Spiritual Room. These are printed pamphlets on a wide range of topical issues (eg. drugs in sport, poverty, war, religion, abortion, environmental issues, health)
  • Issues Today Online – this is a great resource for topical and controversial issues – similar to the above but in electronic format.

 

 

 

 

Another tip – learn how to mobile print – once you’ve found out your pin number and printed a couple of times it is very quick and easy. You will be able to print from your mobile phones and laptops and collect the print from printers around college. Detailed instructions here.

 

 

 

Study Skills – Advice and Information for 6th formers

University of Sussex Study Skills – This is an excellent website from the University of Sussex. Designed for University students it contains really useful advice for 6th formers.

It is clearly laid out with many useful sections covering:

More Study Skills Advice from Manchester University and Leeds University

University of Southampton Academic Skills This website has some incredibly informative and useful in depth guides to study skills.