1.
How to teach collaboration in Reference courses?

2.
The Reference Course as Currently Constituted <ul><li>Based on a one librarian - one user interaction model </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Desk & digital both </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Worse, exercises tend to be one librarian - no user </li></ul>Jeffrey Pomerantz UNC-CH SILS [email_address] iConference 2010

3.
Common Assignments <ul><li>Canned ready reference-ish questions </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Good for teaching source evaluation, lousy for teaching realistic info seeking behaviors </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Pathfinder </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Good for teaching source evaluation & indirect reference, but an obsolete model of indirect reference </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Reference encounter evaluation </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Good for teaching evaluation, only from the user's PoV, annoys librarians </li></ul></ul><ul><li>IPL question answering </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Good for teaching about what real questions are like, how to compose a user-appropriate response </li></ul></ul>Jeffrey Pomerantz UNC-CH SILS [email_address] iConference 2010

4.
How to Teach Collaborative Reference? <ul><li>Collaborative exercises </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Group work on canned questions, but students hate group work </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Exposure to general-purpose social Q&A </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, etc. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Exposure to subject-specific social Q&A </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Stack Overflow, Math Overflow, etc. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Exposure to collaborative tools for indirect reference </li></ul><ul><ul><li>LibGuides, Screencast tutorials, etc. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Ideally, use of social tools in reference assignments </li></ul><ul><ul><li>cf. the other panelists up here </li></ul></ul>Jeffrey Pomerantz UNC-CH SILS [email_address] iConference 2010

5.
<ul><li>Canned questions answered collaboratively </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Multiple students respond to a single question </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Social Q&A </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Basically the same as the IPL assignment, just on social Q&A sites </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Liaison librarianship / Information consulting </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Research assistance to a faculty member </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Street reference </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Based on the Toronto model, in collaboration with the School's Masters student association </li></ul></ul>Jeffrey Pomerantz UNC-CH SILS [email_address] iConference 2010 My Newer Assignments