ILU Meeting Minutes
Meeting room 3-211 (MIL)
3rd floor, OISE Building
252 Bloor St W
June 18, 2014, 9:30 am- 11:00 am
Heather Buchansky (Admin), Susan Barker (Law), Monique Flaccavento (OISE), Carolanne Graham
(Discovery Commons), Carla Hagstrom (Gerstein), Angela Henshilwood (Engineering), Eveline Houtman
(Robarts), Nich Worby (Robarts), Jesse Carliner (Robarts), Angela Henshilwood (Engineering and
Computer Science), Cris Sewerin (Engineering and Computer Science), Wendy Traas (UTM), Rita Vine
(Admin), Nich Worby (Robarts)
Regrets: John Bolan (Bora Laskin), Whitney Kimble (UTSC), Courtney Lundrigan (Trinity), Sylvia Vong (St.
Mike’s), Jenaya Webb (OISE)
1. Selection of a secretary: Jesse Carliner
2. Review of minutes of the last meeting:
 Carla did give her regrets.
 Wendy was a remote attendee.
 Item number 5 should read “ACRL Threshold Concepts Workshop.”
 Eveline: Number 11 re: SAILS and RAILS. Delete “not effective” comment. Change to
“there are issues with them.”
 Angela added the notes from WILU about faculty engagement to the wiki—the minutes
say that she forwarded them to everyone.
3. Business arising from the minutes: None
4. Update from Rita
a. ITIF funding:
 Theme of “Large Classes.” Looking for proposals and ideas to foster engagement.
 Due on June 27th
 Notify Julie Hannaford and cc Rita. Will look for similar ideas and match people up
who have similar ideas and would like to work together.
 Library was a recipient from an ITIF grant which funded the FIXIT tool.
 All the details are up on the web, and the link is in the agenda and here:
http://testsoft.ati.utoronto.ca/wordpress/avi/archives/507/
 Monique asks about proposals that were turned down and if Rita had any
information regarding the reasons. Feedback is necessary to improve proposals. Rita
will follow up with Avi Hyman regarding getting feedback from the adjudication
committee.
b. Instruction planning meeting reminder:
 June 25th from 10 am- 12 pm.
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Send Rita your open workshops attendance statistics. Registered or
unregistered.
Work study student will compile the statistics to look for trends.
Even if you don’t have the time the workshop occurred, still send what you
have.
Expecting many attendees.
Will discuss how we can offer programming across the St George campus. (UTM
and UTSC do their own thing and don’t offer open workshops.)
Will do some brainstorming activities and hopefully come out of the event with
a clear sense of direction and priorities and planning (at least for the fall).
If you cannot attend, please send someone from your unit so everyone is
represented.
c. Update on Blackboard (BB) collaborate:
 Working group ran synchronous webinars using the BB collaborate tool as a pilot
program.
 Result of pilot: BB Collaborate is not the most suitable tool for the sort of webinars
that the library offers because it does not offer demonstrated browsing or even cobrowsing.
 If you want to offer webinars in early September, let Rita know and she will try to
expedite securing a temporary alternative, though this will be challenging.
 Carla used WebEx to offer webinars to demonstrate (no co-browsing) Medline.
There are paid and free versions. Carla used the free version; her webinar wasn’t for
a large group. They were just watching her. There was a phone connection, and they
could ask questions. Is there a participant limit with the free version?
 OISE will be offering webinars but will be using Adobe connect—an OISE only
license.
d. Update on planning activities for CTSI:
 New faculty orientation day July 25. Back to school week during the week of July
25th.
 For all faculty who are interested in innovations in teaching and learning.
 All new hired permanent stream librarians will be invited to the day.
 Breakout session for the new perm status stream librarians in the afternoon.
 Promotion of the new syllabus service for course reading through blackboard.
 Also for programming, information about the library will be included in it. In the
areas of what to do on the first day of class. Assignment design and planning will
also include info about including librarians in that.
 Overall planning for CTSI planning for the events year: Librarians will have
touchstones in all of their programming throughout the year.
 If you or your colleagues are thinking about reaching out to faculty, streamline it
through CTSI, because they have the best marketing. Send it to them and have them
send it out.
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The CTSI librarians are presenting in Kingston on the history of the CTSI/Librarians
collaboration.
5. Update from Heather on FIXIT feature in Blackboard:
 A working group was formed in February to look at the FIXIT tool in Blackboard that lets
librarians customize course sites.
 A survey was conducted as part of the redesign to find out what user expectations are
when they enter the area.
 Other libraries were looked at to see where they have their library resources section in
their CMS to inform the redesign.
 ITS will be working on the revised version of FIXIT based on the feedback from users.
 Heather will continue to provide updates through ILU meetings, RS meetings and
listservs and will present the updated beta version when ready.
6. Update on ACRL workshops- Jesse
 On June 3rd Mindy and Whitney led the first in a series of workshops focused on the
ACRL’s Draft Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, and how the
threshold concepts proposed in the document can be translated into practice. This first
workshop was focused on two threshold concepts: “Scholarship is a Conversation” and
“Research as Inquiry.” 23 librarians participated in the event, including one from York
University and four from Ryerson University. Mindy and Whitney led participants
through group and individual exercises, and discussions. Jesse wrote a blog post about
the workshop which can be found here: https://librarians.library.utoronto.ca/?p=1007
 Those interested are encouraged to sign up for the second workshop here:
http://utoronto.ca.libcal.com/event.php?id=687267 It will be facilitated by Silvia and
John. All the details are on the description.
 If you have something to share regarding the ACRL framework or how to apply the
concepts to practice, please contribute to the wiki: http://try-2014-acrlframework.wikispaces.com/
 Reminder that the latest release of the framework is out for everyone to take a look at.
 Discussion: Should enrollment be expanded if the workshop fills up? It would be good
for everyone who wants to be involved to be able to attend.
 Also the new framework is out so take a look at that. Threshold concept: Information
has value.
7. LibCal update- Eveline
a. The ACRL workshops enrollment was done in LibCAl.
b. Recommend going forward with it taking into account the pros and cons:
 Best to have only one calendar
 Can have multiple user accounts
 Adjustable permissions
 Can add different colors
 Too easy to erase someone else’s class.
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Old scheduling system was very frustrating and hard to set up. Has glitches like sending
out messages to people registered from five years ago.
c. Further discussion of LibCal: Excessive granularity does not necessarily make for a better
registration process. Can always make an adjustment as we go along. Can the LibCal take
into account multi day or multi week courses. Can it do recurring events? Does it work like
LibGuide? Are there filtering options, so students can choose to see only events from UTM
or OISE? Eveline will follow up on these questions.
d. Suggestion is put forward to request that Eveline and Jenaya create an action plan. Eveline
will discuss with Marc whether or not moving forward with LibCal is possible in terms of ITS
workload. Will also discuss with Marc Lalonde about different ways of showing it. E and J
will work together on a timeline.
e. Eveline would like the ILU committee to email her questions and comments regarding
LibCal, and she will make sure they are addressed.
f. Will follow up at the July meeting
8. PD Day 2014:
a. Size and participation:
 What size should we cap at?
 Do we invited York and Ryerson? If we want to combine then we should include reps
from York and Ryerson to share the planning. What are the benefits (aside from cost)
for including Ryerson and York.
 Decided: first figure out what we want to do, because maybe that will determine if we
want to open up participation.
b. Funding:
 Use the model for TRY conference
 RV: aside from the cost sharing what are the benefits of opening up to R and Y.
c. Discussion of possible theme/topic of the day:
 Library Anxiety and Library overconfidence
 Ethnography of students: Ethnographic researcher as a speaker. The University of
Rochester, studying students, the undergraduate research project.
 How to impact the biggest number of students. We are interested in large classes and
interested in finding ways to engage with them.
 Invite Anne Marie Deitering, used to be a first year engagement librarian
 Alternate formats? e.g. soft chat, articulate, asynchronous models (used at U of A)
 “Articulate storyline” Create a working model that can rolled out, so we have time to
start thinking in groups a module for plagiarism. Last year we looked at identifying the
needs of the users, and this year we could start from there.
 Redesigning our one shots: CTSI has a course redesign institute. Maybe we can apply
this to our one shots. Incorporating the ACRL framework concepts.
 Concern that there is ACRL fatigue.
d. Volunteers for the organization of PD day:
 Susan Barker
 Eveline Houtman
 Heather Buchansky
 Jesse Carliner
 Will go to Jenaya Webb for coordination.
e. Date of event:
 Typically the first week in December.
 Needs to be planned around Scholars Portal day.
f. First steps for the planning group:
 Pick a date, then do a hold the date.
 Create a preliminary budget.
9. Follow up on discussion with Larry and Julie:
a. IL instruction planning and coordination:
 How to move forward in a collaborative way?
 Support from the university teaching and learning group is coordinated out of the office
for Faculty and Student Engagement (Rita).
 No appetite for a common IL stream for first year students.
 Maybe there is a department that could be a pilot. Some guidance from the group for
Heather and Rita to explore ideas in this area would be helpful.
 Suggestion that the aim for universality could be achieved through blackboard.
 Continue educating Larry and Julie about what we do. IL is not only about promoting the
library-- we can do so much more than this. Promoting the library can be done in an
orientation session either at the library or in a new student orientation session.
b. Assessment:
 Issues around assessment. What methodology? How to do it? Must be careful trying to
tie it to grades.
 Definitely a need for the office of Faculty and Student Engagement to collect assessment
from students. The office has not been collecting them from students of IL sessions.
 Would be easy to create a common one minute paper, that could be online that as
many instructors can use as they want. Way to get a “value proposition” on IL. Rita can
undertake from her office.
 Maybe there can be a working group to look at assessment including a lit review? Rita
can get her student to pull the essential bits out of existing lit reviews and put together
a report. Does not need to be comprehensive, just cover the most important studies.
Carla volunteers to look at the Medline studies regarding assessment. Monique suggests
developing a one minute survey doc for faculty to fill out at the end, as well. Have CTSI
endorse it, send it, etc…
 The challenge of getting faculty support when there is no fixed IL goals:
o Many institutions have been able to define IL goals with faculty and been able to
align in with faculty and act to implement this.
o Other universities have accreditation requirements that act as a common driver.
U of T does not, so we need to look at a course by course level not necessarily
an institutional level.
o Faculty interested in success in terms of disciplinarity. We need to stay flexible
in terms of how the community of academics see success.
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Building connections with instructors is the primary goal. We have a way to go
towards deepening our connections with faculty at St George. Julie wants us to
deepen and enhance our connections with faculty.
o Larry came from accredited institutions with common IL curriculum. It’s up to us
to keep educating Larry about the differences between those institutions and U
of T. Suggestion for the creation of a lit review digest to give to Larry.
 Suggestion to create a connection with writing classes. Schools with required writing
programs can embed IL into it.
 Suggestion to collaborate with the WIT program (Writing and Instruction for TAs). This is
done on an individual department basis. A competitive program administered by the faculty
of arts and sciences.
c. Maximizing reach:
 Larry said find a way to touch every first year student.
 We don’t do it through IL, but we can do it through the personal librarian program.
 Gradually growing the co-curricular record program.
 Library participation in orientation.
 If there is a dedicated course, there might be no uptake.
 If we forced them, they might be there under protest.
 Could be an embedded course: Carla’s sessions are embedded into the course.
 First year IL programs are not a perfect solution either. They may be scheduled for when
students need them and are outdated in design.
 We need to find opportunities that when pulled together has the result of touching
every student in a meaningful way.
d. Budget planning for 2015-16 starts this fall. Rita posted some money into the budget to get
outside consultants on putting together an IL online module.
 Why outsource? Speed and expertise around designing these modules. \
e. Further discussion: Bring this line of discussion back at the September meeting for follow
up.
f.
ACTIONS- Rita Vine
 Start to collect assessments from students and code them properly.
 Collect and summarize the literature on correlation.
 Create a faculty assessment tool that can be collected.
 Explore WIT program alignment and integration.
 Reach out to liaison librarians where they a) have good relationships with their faculty
and departments, b) where there is first year intake and c) where there is interest or
openness to doing a pilot.
10. Chair position:
 Will come forward at the next meeting.
 Jenaya is working on this.