Tying It All Together

By R. Glass and M. Spiegelman

 

In an all too familiar scenario, a faculty member schedules a library session for students to gain experience with library resources and research techniques.  The students are confronted with a lecture on research tools, search techniques, formats, databases, and catalogs.  A few of the students retain part of the information, but for others, it is soon forgotten because information not reinforced is often lost.   From the students’ perspective, the librarian becomes just another member of the campus rather than a resource, a mentor, a teacher, someone who can be sought out when questions arise. Some students will return to the librarian for assistance with future projects while many will struggle with Google and cite questionable sources.  

Boolean logic has long (since the computer) been the main-stay of both high school and college curricula.  Often students fail to see the logic of studying such.  “Where will I ever need this?” they ask.  The current curricula lack the real-world application of the rows of truth tables, laws and equivalencies and without practice and motivation to re-enforce the properties and students soon forget all they learn. 

 

The goal here was to provide the missing link, to join together the practical research techniques needed with the abstract mathematical theory and present it in a formal Information Literacy setting.   That missing link is the Computer Science area of database access that incorporates the underlying logical operators, and, or and not along with their set theory equivalences union, intersection and complement.  These operators are what one uses to retrieve the information from a database. 

 

After the learning the basics of Boolean algebra, an Information Literacy session is scheduled with the library and the students are introduced to the databases.  An assignment consisting of research topics / terms that one might find in a GLA course is presented.  These terms are presented using the formal structure of Boolean algebra. Since students have been introduced to the simple (statements that are true or false) and compound statements (simple statements connected with Boolean operators they only need to translate and apply them to the database.   They are then asked to compare the number of hits they obtained when formulate the queries in database syntax.  For example, if d = death and p = penalty, the students are asked to determine the hits for d /\ p (where /\ is the notation for and in the mathematical setting).  They submit queries such as  death and penalty along with death penalty and are asked compare the results to the simple statement “death penalty”  Future assignments will ask the student to re-write queries using equivalent laws such as DeMorgans Law.  Other assignments stress the importance of parenthesis and precedence of operators while others will ask the student to develop their own queries and write them in both the database syntax and formal mathematical structure.

 

 

Information is only useful when one can find and collate it.  The students of today are faced with an exponential amount of information along with a growing access to it. Portals such as Google or Wikipedia allow anyone to retrieve and create information.  A careless or non-precise query (or search) can easily return hits (or references) in numbers in excess of six digits.  Still, this incentive falls short.  Today, anyone with Internet access can add to Wikipedia.  What was once only “Have server space?  Then you too can create a web page expressing whatever opinion you have “ we now see blogs springing up everywhere.  Who are these bloggers?  Who are writing those feeds?  What are the qualifications to be a guide on About.com (my students found out) or contribute to Wikipedia? This is not to say that these sites should not be trusted but rather the person of tomorrow must know not only how to find the information but to evaluate it and use it ethically. 

 

 

Get Back To Me On That …

By R. Glass and M. Spiegelman

Every semester, every one of us has a few good students that we wish we could push (or lead) a little farther, have them go that extra mile, show them to recognize that important question and answer it.  In a traditional classroom setting, it is somewhat difficult and unmanageable.  Often your suggestions (or ideas) are lost or forgotten in the mayhem of the semester.  These questions (comments) are something you might not have time to cover (1) or even think about until someone’s posts trigger the idea (2).  It could be the old ” hey good question- look that up and get back to the class” but then we forget and they never do. By having the student’s blog their assignments, the instructor can individualize follow-up suggestions using the comment feature, on their work (3) (4), (5).  With the comment appearing after the students post, both the student and instructor have a running history and dialog.  Other students may become involved in the discussion (5). 

Students are at home in this environment, they have fun and when they learn something new, they  adapt it to thier space. (6) (7).  

We must realize that the “sage on the stage” model is done and that collaboration is not just between faculty members but among faculty and students.  The student will see first hand the first question we generate when we learn.  It is collaboration between student and faculty member in an environment that extends beyond the classroom.  References / examples

1. Comment by Richard Glass on Tower of Hanoi overviewA reference made in post about Seagate Technology applying the Towers of Hanoi algorithm for backups as applied to a home user. 
2. Richard Glass comment Coincidence????? on multiple posts for a calculus 3 assignment where both Kenneth Abbel and Arthur Abbel were cited as leaders in the commonality of computer generated graphics asking were they related.
3. M. Spiegelmans post on researching the reliability of Wikipedia.
4. M. Spiegelmans post on About.com.
5. Receiving RSS Feeds to the Desktop and subsequent follow-ups by Bernie, geshev, Prof. Spiegelman and Richard Glass.
6. Gary suggesting that he has done an A paper.
7. Irene, a GLA student writing computer instructions and then using those instructions to better organize her time.

 

… And The Answer Is

By R. Glass

As I mentioned in my other post, I was looking for a way to incorporate Information Literacy into courses that would not normally have a strong Information Literacy component. I chose three courses in the fall of 2006 where the use of a  blog would augment the syllabus.

The first course was the general liberal arts course, MAT 101: Logic, Sets and Numbers.   In that course, the students learn about Boolean operators, their relationships and properties in an abstract setting.  In Information Literacy, databases use the Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) as the tools used to generate effective and concise searches (queries in the database world).  My objective was to tie the abstract syntax and mathematical properties of the Boolean operators as taught in the  MAT 101 course to the real world application of the same operators as applied to various information databases.  The rationale for this can bee seen as a post under the contribute category on this blog application of this can be seen in the blog glassrmat101.wordpress.com.

The other two courses were second year computer science and mathematics degree courses.  These courses act as a gateway to upper level courses where often research of topics is required.  My goal here was to ease that transition to tough research by not just introducing the fundamental tools and concepts of Information Literacy but also providing the foundation of ethical.  The topics researched should be interesting, informative and readily available.  I wanted reinforce the process rather than the results but at the same time, introducing the student to the humanity of the discipline.  The motivation for these assignments can be found in my post If I Had Known Then … in this blog. 

In computer science, algorithms are sometimes attributed to a person, place or occurrence.  Myself, I wondered who was Eratosthenes in the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm for finding prime numbers, what exactly was the legend behind the Towers Of Hanoi, an algorithm exhibiting recursion.  I looked to topics that had such a duality to them.  One part was the actual algorithm and second required the student to research the legend, person or place that made up the name.  The results of these assignments can be viewed in the blog for the CMP 207: Computer Organization and Assembly Language Programming glassr.wordpress.com.

Calculus 3 is the first course where the student is asked to do mathematics beyond the blackboard.  Students are asked to visualize three dimensional surfaces, consider maps and the information contained within both explicitly and implicitly.  The formal proof of much of the mathematics in these topics within course is well beyond the capability of the student at that level but the understanding of the problem is not.  The goal here was to introduce the student to these classical problems and blog about what they were.  The results can be seen in the glassrcalc3.wordpress.com blog.

I cordially invite other members to not only suggest assignments but implement them and not only in mathematics or computer science but all disciplines.

 

If I Had Known Then …

As a graduate student, research to me meant browsing the stacks, picking up books, looking at the indices in a most random attempt at research.  I don’t believe I knew about the indexes.  I found papers by finding references in books and papers and asking the librarian to get them.  I didn’t realize that the librarian was there to help me.  I thought the librarian was just a … librarian.

Due to my unpleasant research experience as a graduate student I felt many of my courses should require at least one research assignment.  I discovered such assignments were causing more harm than good.  Everything from the students citing (if they cited) the same article or web page, to the endless mantra of how many pages should it be would draw from valuable class time.   Some students felt that since it was a small fraction of the grade they couldn’t be bothered since it was not really math (or CS).  So for a time, I dropped such assignments until recently.

Several factors set me upon this task of resurrecting the research assignment in my courses.

First, today students are faced with exponentially more information along with increasing access and tools to find it.  Information repositories such as Google andWikipedia  are readily available though not necesarily authoritative, and electronic databases are replacing the stacks, card catalogs and indexes.   The researcher of tomorrow must have the skill to extract the required information from these sources in an effective and efficient manner while evaluating and using it ethically.  The need to lay a foundation in information literacy is critical especially in the areas of mathematics and computer science where research starts at the upper undergradulate levels and above.

Second, using Web 2.0 technology, our students interact in an electronic environment.  Many have entries in MySpace or Facebook  along with other social networks.  They post their views, music, images in a public venue.  They understand and use the software.  I looked to make their space a learning space.

Third, I wanted the student to realize that the reference librarian was a professional with an advanced degree whose function it was to assist a researcher in their task.  I wanted to insure that the student had access to a librarian throughout the semester for assistance in research techniques and citation standards.

Fourth, I wanted the assignment to be fun, informative and bring to life the technical information and formulas often exhibited in the textbooks. 

Fifth, the assignment should not distract from the syllabus or impinge on class time.

What follows on subsequent posts are the research assignments I have used or plan to use and hope others will contribute and implement these ideas.