Physics 213: An Example of Faculty/Librarian Collaboration

For several years I have been pursuing the idea of working with a physics class to integrate information literacy skills into the curriculum. In the summer of 2005 I finally got my chance.

Physics 213: Thermodynamics, Electricity and Magnetism is regularly taught at Cornell during the summer. The class meets daily for six weeks. Professor Richard Wheeler, who has taught the course many times, approached me about designing some assignments for the class.

The first step was deciding on our goals. We decided that we wanted to accomplish three things:

• we wanted the students to learn some history of the concepts being taught
• we wanted to learn how the students searched the web
• we wanted to learn how the students evaluate information found on the web

Professor Wheeler and I designed five Internet assignments. The assignments were worth 5% of the students' grades. The assignments were not graded individually; instead I engaged in a discussion with students about their results. We stressed that the students were not to be overly concerned about right or wrong answers. We merely wanted to learn more about how students use the Internet.

The students were given the assignments in Monday's class and I met with them for half an hour on Thursday to discuss results. We collected the assignments and I tabulated the results. Professor Wheeler and I met on Friday to discuss our next step. We designed the next assignment based on the results of the previous week's work. As a result, the web page evaluation form went through several changes. The questions from the assignments are listed below and you can view the complete Internet Assignments at http://hdl.handle.net/1813/2274.

The 24 students in the class were mostly sophomore and junior engineering majors. All of them had taken the required Freshman Writing Seminar. Many of the students realized that it is important to make this type of instruction subject specific. Several of them suggested integrating assignments like this into their Engineering 150 class. For Engineering 150, freshmen engineering students are assigned to an engineering faculty member who shepherds them through their first year. It is a one-credit, required course. Currently, each faculty member develops his or her own curriculum.

Several of the students expressed the idea that instruction of this sort should be hands-on. I agree. At the Physical Sciences Library, we teach a one-graduate-credit class named Chemistry 602, Information Sources for the Physical Scientist. The students in Chemistry 602 learn about the most important information sources for their field. My ultimate goal is to develop a similar class geared toward physics graduate students.

While many of the students felt that they were Internet-literate, assignment #4, a true/false quiz about the Internet and World Wide Web, exposed huge gaps in the students' knowledge:

• Only 2 out of 20 answered all questions satisfactorily.
• 11 out of 20 believe that "You can find any information you want on the Internet."
• There was confusion about the meaning of "peer review." One student gave an honest answer in the form of a question mark.
• The statement "Intellectual property rights apply to the Internet" caused the most confusion. Even those who answered "yes" did not think that it was important to know! Other answers included: "depends," "don't know," "yes/maybe," and "they should -- but they don't."

In response to assignment #4, students made some excellent suggestions for a revised quiz.

Internet Assignment #5 asked the students to write a brief paragraph about their experience. We found their feedback to be very helpful.

What did we learn from this experience?

Professor Wheeler summarizes his reactions to the experience this way:

1. From the very diverse selection of sources students found on the web, given the same problem, I am led to believe there is no uniformity as to how students search the web. This may be good or bad, but it suggests that students could use some guidelines dealing with strategies for finding information and evaluating how accurate and important a given source may be.

2. I found that the students were interested in the discovery process we tried. Most important, they were interested in discussing the issues with each other in class. They learned by this interaction.

He is already planning for the physics class he will be teaching this spring. He and I agree that the exercise would work better with an end product. He anticipates asking for a three-page paper on a physics topic so the students can demonstrate their use of information sources.

I had some of my previous assumptions validated. I was quite sure that students were not clear on the difference between freely available Internet sites and databases that we license. I also feared that they thought that everything is available on the web. Both of those assumptions were accurate. But, I was pleasantly surprised by the interest and enthusiasm the students showed. Many of them suggested more instruction by librarians.

While we did not formally evaluate this process, the students' comments were very favorable:

• "Comparing the layout, citations, information, server, updates of websites was worthwhile, because normally, people don't stop to evaluate the information they obtain."
• "It's nice to learn to use other search engines other than google and compare different sources to validate the accuracy of the internet."
• "One thing I liked about the internet assignments was they made me realize I was not as internet literate as I thought I was."
• "Prior to this class, I was not aware of the Library Gateway's resources. Now I am and I will make an effort to use it more often."
• "The internet searches this summer did help a lot in terms of getting me to evaluate the information..."

Using this experience as a springboard, I hope to create more opportunities to integrate information literacy into the physics curriculum.

Class Web Sites Illustrating Faculty/Librarian Collaboration

ED&G 100 Bonnie Osif, Penn State

{http://www.libraries.psu.edu/eng/edg100spring02.htm}

Physics 213 Pat Viele, Cornell

{http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/phys213/}

Both of the above web sites are scheduled to remain in place for the foreseeable future.

In addition, I have put related materials in {Cornell's Dspace}.