Below are a couple of ideas I will be including in both a first-year and a second-year course. I would like to experiment with them in the classroom, but will likely add them to the online section as well, making it an optional activity.
In one of the first-year courses I’d like to add a component to an activity where students interview a working library technician. This will consist of a Twitter feed for everyone to comment on their immediate thoughts as they listen to the tech comments (will need to forewarn the speakers that students may be tweeting!), or immediately after the talk. For the online section, I’ll add the Twitter component as well, and it will be interesting to see how it compares as the students there are not attending the talks/interviews in a synchronous environment as they are on campus. I will use the same Twitter feed for both classes, giving the students many different viewpoints.
In a second-year course, for an assignment that involves developing a needs assessment for a database proposal, I’m going to give students the option to submit an audio or video component to their report. They could record the interview with their ‘clients’ in terms of what the collection consists of and the problems with the current organization of the collection. Video or pictures can be used to visually describe the collection (they sometimes use pictures taken with their phones now). There may be another opportunity to incorporate something into a web resume assignment, and in an assignment where groups develop a library website prototype adding a social media piece. I’ll make sure they think about mobile applications.
That’s it for now,
Carol