Comments on: No Wonder Students Think It’s A Waste Of Time

By: Confirmed: College Doesn’t Make Kids Smarter, Just More Liberal | Mere Rhetoric

Sun, 02 May 2010 19:42:25 +0000

[...] education. Students get convinced they’ve already got a handle on what’s going on. They don’t bother learning anything new. Their reading skills are stunted. Misplaced confidence on specifics causes increasingly liberal [...]

By: Encouraging Engagement

Encouraging Engagement — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:30:27 +0000

[...] Engagement It’s no secret that students often find their library sessions to be boring and spend the time messing around on the computers, sleeping, or chatting. Some of these are [...]

By: Info Literacy - A Waste of Time? » BiblioTech Web

Info Literacy - A Waste of Time? » BiblioTech Web — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:03:06 +0000

[...] out Steven B.’s excellent article about the 2008 ECAR Study and its findings regarding student learning styles and proficiencies with [...]

By: Gordon

Gordon — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:49:41 +0000

My solution to this issue is a PBL (problem-based learning) approach. Start the class with a problem. “You need five peer-reviewed articles from medical journals on [some topic]. Go!” Give them ten minutes to flail away and do whatever they know how to do. Then have a discussion to elicit what they’re doing, whether it’s working, and what problems they’ve encountered. “Gee, hard to narrow down to peer-reviewed journal articles on Google, eh?” Then show them your approach to the problem. At that point they’ll be thinking about the flaws in their method, and will be receptive to the idea that your approach may be better.

By: The Daily SLog » No Wonder Students Think Itâ€™s A Waste Of Time

The Daily SLog » No Wonder Students Think Itâ€™s A Waste Of Time — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:45:07 +0000

[...] ACRLog: ECAR report suggests thereâ€™s more to IAKT Syndrome than I thought. Hereâ€™s why. Students were [...]

By: r

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:40:09 +0000

I find that students are most motivated when their professor has timed the instruction session such that students already have their research topic for a major class project. Then the session becomes one in which students start their research, finding and emailing themselves articles. It’s practical for them at that point, not an abstract “intro to library research.”

By: ellie

ellie — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:40:49 +0000

Thanks for pointing out this report. I’ve been working on how to improve my instruction sessions and have definitely run into the IAKT syndrome. Moving away from lecture and towards discussion amongst the students seems to be a good starting point for addressing this.