Turning Educational
Standards/Recommendations into
Information Fluency Courses
A case study.
A. Ben Wagner, Univ. at
Buffalo – SLA Baltimore
2006
A Gift from the gods

October 2005 - American Physical Society
& Assoc. of Amer. Physics Teachers

Report of the Joint APS-AAPT Task Force
on Graduate Education in Physics

http://www.aapt.org/Resources/upload/TF
GradStudies.pdf
Executive Summary Recommendation
“…that [physics] departments require
communication training and
information literacy/fluency in their
graduate programs.”
Getting the Ball Rolling

Dec. 2005 - Contacted department chair who
was not aware of the report.
–


Lesson 1: Don’t assume faculty have time to track
all the developments in educational standards.
Spring 2006 - Agreed to test concept with a
series of 4 workshops for physics grad
students.
Spring 2007 – Develop a 1-credit course
under auspices of the physics department.
Spring 2006 Workshops



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Heavily promoted to faculty & grad students
Taught 2 sections to maximize attendance
(5:10-6 pm Tue. & 2-3 pm Wed./ 4 weeks)
Pizza party promised if they came to all 4.
Emailed reminders nearly every week
Spring 2006 Syllabus
Information Cosmology: Navigating the
universe beyond Google (Inspec vs.
Google, basics of searching)
 In top 5 Google results for ‘quantum wells’:
Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics
http://britneyspears.ac/physics/fbarr/fbarr.html
1.
Figure 1. Graphical solution for finite barrier
quantum well & energy levels
Note: This illustration from “Britney’s” web site was used as a negative
role model, showing the effectiveness of taking the students directly
from a site with stupid stuff like this to a quick, precise index term
search of INSPEC. The students actually got excited about the power
of controlled vocabulary searching. - ABW
Spring 2006 Syllabus
2. Enrich your studies & teaching: Knowing where to
begin (AccessScience, Knovel, review articles,
Bison Catalog)
--Choose their own topic to use for rest of the course.
3. Diving in deep: Researching projects & theses
(Inspec, SciFinder, arXiv, Web of Science)
4. Finding Data & other hard-to-detect species
(properties, dissertations, govt reports, etc.)
Feedback



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“I learned much more than I thought I would.”
Wanted to be more “efficient” in finding info.
Wanted to do “searches other than Google”
Enthusiastic about 1-credit course – could
take more time to learn and do own
searching.
Lessons



Be pro-active and think marketing.
Track activities of major societies (esp.
teachers of…) educational
standards/recommendations.
If there are no info fluency recommendations
in place, point out what other disciplines
have recommended (keeping up with the
Jones).