Renee's Final Project Blog Post

Collecting, Organizing and Citing Sources: Zotero

Final Project Blog Post

 

A description of your environment: your teaching scenario, learners, purpose or end goal, and timeline. Are you teaching face-to-face or online? Is this a tutorial or a course? A one-shot library instruction session? Be specific.

Teaching scenario: My final project is a set of online tutorials pertaining to collecting, organizing, and citing sources. Each tutorial will be 2-3 minutes. One tutorial will be focused on why collecting, organizing and citing sources is important, with a focus on the concept of research as a conversation. The other will focus on Zotero, a source management software. This will be a more practical application, which an emphasis on teaching students functionality. Both of these videos will be offered on the library YouTube channel, as well as Moodle.

*For the purpose of the final project, I will focus on Moodle

Learners: The learners will be primarily undergraduate students, although the tutorials will also be available to graduate students. The videos are very introductory and are for a beginner audience, or a refresher for more advanced learners.

End Goal: To help students reframe their understanding of why they cite sources from “so I don’t plagiarize,” to “research is a conversation, and citing sources shows that I am aware of that conversation and ready to join in.” another goal is to give them a basic introduction to Zotero, a tool that will help them keep track of the scholarly conversation, and add their own voice to it.

Your learning outcomes. These should be based on the needs and expectations of your environment. Are these outcomes appropriate for your learners?

Tutorial One : Research is a Conversation

Learning Outcomes:

1. Identify that research is a conversation

This is an appropriate outcome for learners, as these videos are designed with a beginner audience in mind. This will help them give them a basic understanding of why sources should be cited, as well as helping them contextualize future steps in the research process.

Tutorial 2: Zotero

Learning Outcomes:

1. Create Zotero Account
2. Add two items/sources to your Library
3. Learn key Zotero functionality

1. Add notes and tags
2. Create a collection (called a ‘folder’ in my previous posts. Zotero diction says ‘collection’ though, sorry!)
3. Sync your Library

These are appropriate outcomes for learners, as they are a very basic introduction to the functionality of Zotero, with a basic introduction to how to use these functions more deeply. With such a small amount of time to impart information, I do not want to overwhelm the user with information.

How will you assess your learners? What formative and summative assessments would best fit in your teaching scenario? Do they align with your outcomes?

Learners will be assessed primarily through summative assessment during the video. For both tutorials, there will be directions to pause the video after a significant concept or functionality has been explained. This will give students the opportunity to think about/try out their ideas, and also allows for questions to be posed to students regarding their grasp of the matter. For example, when using Moodle, a quiz function allows for questions and direct assessment. For the tutorial that focuses on Zotero, after each pause, a summative assessment question can be asked to get a gauge on student learning. For example:

1. Give an example of one of your notes and tags. How prepared do you feel to make notes in the future?

For formative assessment, instructors who assign the tutorial with their class can be urged to either include questions regarding the content on a midterm, or perhaps incorporate the use of Zotero in future assignments. These assessments align with the learning outcomes because they make sure that students understand a concept, as well as remember how to use Zotero to their best advantage. 

 Learning theories and other instructional approaches to implement. What learning theories best support your outcomes? How might you leverage these theories to develop content and assessments? 

The instructional tutorials have components of both cognitivism and constructivism. The first video that addresses ideas behind why we collect and cite sources is more constructivist, as it will ask students to examine the real world situation of joining a conversation, and the actions you take before joining in. While not quite roleplaying, it will require the user to imagine himself or herself in a situation they have been in before, and will be in again. Depending on the context of how the video is used, students can take a more social approach and discuss the questions and ideas posed in the video with their peers. 

The second video that focuses on Zotero has more elements of cognitivism, as it uses modeling to show students how to use the software. It organizes information into chunks designed to help students remember which functions to use to get a desired result. There are some constructivist components built into the questioning in the Moodle module; however, I am still examining how to bring more constructivism into both of the tutorials. 

Both of these theories can be leveraged for assessment. The cognitivist aspects will give feedback that is direct, and easily assessed. For example, after a chunk of the Zotero video, students can be asked whether or not they were able to perform the action. For the constructivist components, assessment will be more nuanced, such as asking them to come up with a situation where knowing how/why collecting and citing sources is relevant.

What tools will you use to deliver this content and have learners interact with your instruction? What might work best and why?

Videoscribe (http://www.videoscribe.co/) and Camtasia are currently the two tools I plan use to deliver instruction.

Animation in general enhances instruction by making tutorials more dynamic. Videoscribe will be especially useful to illustrate some of the more theoretical concepts, such a research being a conversation; for example, I could use visuals of a conversation during that section, etc.).

Screen-capture software will help me demonstrate how to use Zotero in the second tutorial. Camtasia will allow me to show learners exactly where certain functions and features are on the software. I also hope this motivates learners by lessening confusion and helping them feel empowered to excel in their task (going back to the flow theory of motivation).

I will also direct users to the LibGuide on Zotero (as part of “next steps” at the end of the tutorial), as it will give them more in-depth help if the content of the tutorials is too basic and introductory for the particular user.

Reflect on what you have learned. What has been most useful? What do you feel you are still struggling with? How has this course changed how you approach instruction? 

This course has been quite useful in helping me to plan future video tutorials. I found revisiting Bloom’s taxonomy especially helpful, as well as the theories of motivation. Bloom’s taxonomy was helpful for me because it will assist me in matching the the content of the tutorials with the learning outcomes. While I had been introduced to it before, I am a relative newcomer to making instruction videos, and had not clearly connected the types of learning objectives to the appropriate assessments.

I also feel a though the motivation section has helped me think about how to make students more motivated during these short videos. Past tutorials have built-in motivation because they clearly help a student reach a relevant goal (for example, developing a topic). However, as I move into territory that is less obviously relevant, it will be important to think about ways to motivate the learners. My hope is that students will be personally motivated to learn and use the tools, rather than only having external motivation (such as passing a class).

 

Finally, did you find any of your coursemates' blogs particularly helpful? Link to any particularly useful posts or entire blogs from your peers. What have you learned from your peers?

I want to give a shout-out to all of the people who participated in this course. I feel like I learned something from every blog I read. I actually really enjoyed reading the discussion under Tess Aitken’s “Library Orientation part 2” post. It gave me a lot of ideas about how to make instruction more fun, and ways to use humor and pop culture in future videos.

I also want to thank Karen Heskett, who had a great blog. While her project is slightly different, we are both working on video tutorials that are both stand-alone and part of a whole. Reading through her posts helped me think more critically about my project. She also mentioned Zaption to me in a comment on one of my videos. I believe this is a useful tool that can help me in the future! Thanks, Karen!

Thanks for an awesome course!

 

 

 

 

Week 4- Renee Romero

~Collecting, Organizing, and Citing Sources: Zotero~

Week 4

What technologies (and these can be old, new, or emerging) might be most appropriate for your final project?

I have had the question of which technologies to use floating around in my mind as my final project is an online tutorial.

I believe the most appropriate technologies to create the tutorial(s) will be:

1. Videoscribe
2. Camtasia

Does your final project align with any of the trends represented in the Horizon Report you reviewed?

My final project aligns closely with the long-range trend to continue progress in technology, standards, and infrastructure. The report defines this trend as the growing use of “...providing remotely accessed online resources” to students (14).  While the report gives an example of a digital collection, research help is also a precious service that libraries provide to students. My final project is part of a larger goal to make such services available to students in a way that is accessible, practical, and also able to be individualized to an extent. This can also connect to the collaboration between organizations spoken of in the report, with the opportunity for my final project to live in online repositories and platforms such as youtube. The project also connects  increasing accessibility, as online materials are often more accessible than face-to-face workshops.

How does your choice of technology enhance or improve instruction, or motivate learners?

Videoscribe (http://www.videoscribe.co/) is animation software that allows a user to make animation videos. Animation in general enhances instruction by making the tutorials more interesting, and capturing the attention of the learner. Videoscribe will be especially useful to illustrate some of the more theoretical concepts, such a research being a conversation; through animation, I can more clearly convey the metaphor (ex., using visuals of a conversation during that section, etc.). Videoscribe is also unique because the canvas was designed to function as a “whiteboard,” which allows for me to “write” out learning goals in the video for students to focus on completing.

Camtasia is screen-capture software that will allow me to demonstrate how to use Zotero, in the second tutorial. This will enhance instruction by showing learners exactly where certain functions and features are on the software, rather than only an auditory explanation. This will also motivate learners by lessening confusion and helping them feel empowered to excel in their task.

 

Final Project Post: Digital Research Notebook

Instructional Environment

A description of your environment: your teaching scenario, learners, purpose or end goal, and timeline. 


For my final project in #IDE15ALA, I am exploring the development of a digital research notebook that could be used as a flexible starting point for undergraduate researchers at UCLA working on a small to medium scale research project (e.g., a short research paper in an undergraduate seminar or freshman cluster course). One of the key inspirations for this idea is the book "How to be explorer of the world." Described as a "guided journal" this book is a series of explorations, investigations, and reflections on the world around us. There are many insights in the book for emerging researchers, and as I read I started to wonder what a similar "guided journal" might look like for a research-based creative process.


My first exploration of this concept came in a course called Honors 101i - "Research Today," an upper-division undergraduate seminar on research methods that includes both extensive in-class interaction and a strong self-directed online component outside of class time. The research notebook words quite well in this course, but its current success relies on the extensive in class engagement and learning community that forms in the course.

The adaption I'm considering here would likely be quite challenging, as it would involve creating a notebook that could be used by students on their own (i.e., w/o the benefit of taking 101i) to achieve similar (though likely fewer and less in-depth) learning outcomes to those we cover in the seminar course.

If successful, I hope the research notebook would be useful in at least some of the following contexts:

• incorporation of the entire notebook or modular elements of the notebook into other courses seeking to strengthen the scaffolding of the research and writing process outside of class time;

• as a resource in support of a reference interview in which peer-to-peer research assistants could help students focus on their current research/writing challenge, and then identify subsequent steps as activities in the research notebook;

• as a recommended resource for students engaging in writing consultations with the Undergraduate Writing Center;

• as the foundation for the development of a series of self-directed, sequenced learning modules in research skills and strategies. 

• as the starting point for a student in developing their own, more personalized version of a research notebook useful for future research, writing, and creative projects.

In this post I plan to lay the groundwork for (rather than attempt to finalize) some of the core instructional design considerations involved in creating the notebook.

Learning Outcomes

Learning outcomes should be based on the needs and expectations of your environment and appropriate for your learners. 

Possible learning outcomes, include the following:

Through active and sustained engagement with their research notebook, as well as active collaboration with their collaborators, students will be able to:

• Develop a general topic or idea into a set of exploratory research questions.
• Narrow (and broaden) research questions using a variety of strategies (e.g., geographic areas, cultural aspects, groups of people, time spans, or other strategies)
• Identify the potential audience(s) for their research topic/question.
• identify the compelling questions currently under discussion and debate by these audiences related to the student's topic.
• explore and evaluate their topic/question from a variety of perspectives, particularly in the context of diverse audiences for their research project.
• Identify the local (UCLA+LA) communities that are currently available to assist with their research project and/or currently engaging with similar questions.
• Form a personal learning/researching/writing community (team?) around the research project, to include at least several of the following roles - research advisors (e.g., library staff available for research consultations), writing advisors (e.g., the undergraduate writing center), sounding board (a friend or classmate willing to listen and provide feedback on your ideas), a member of your potential audience (perhaps your instructor or teaching assistant, but also possibly a member of the research community currently discussing your question/topic). 
• Generate and apply a robust vocabulary of keywords and an evolving and strategic approach to search
• Develop skills to actively broaden and narrow search results, and to use search results to launch new searches and gain new insight on the research project/process.
• Begin to articulate the significance of their research topic/question for their audience and their own personal research.
• Identify two or more UCLA Research research guides and three or more databases related to their topic/question.

.....

Assessment Strategy

How will you assess your learners? What formative and summative assessments would best fit in your teaching scenario? Do they align with your outcomes?

An ideal assessment scenario would involve students "opting-in" to share their research notebooks for evaluation purposes. Other assessment strategies might include partnering with composition (and other) courses that have adopted the research notebook, and incorporating direct assessment of student writing (e.g., assessing the quality of sources integrated into a research paper).

The research notebook should include multiple opportunities for students to provide feedback to the developers at each stage of the research/creative process, likely through quick surveys integrated into the notebook.

A development process involving diverse stakeholders (e.g., students, library staff, composition instructors, freshman cluster instructors) would likely evolve into an assessment team, identifying which learning outcomes seem more (and less) successfully implemented and working on continual improvement.

Learning Theories & Approaches

What learning theories best support your outcomes? How might you leverage these theories to develop content and assessments? 

One of the most significant challenges for this project involves adapting the social constructivist approach we use in the current seminar, to a context in which learners would need to form and engage with their own learning/researching/writing community. As such, a key component will need to be encouraging and motivating students to form a team around their project to include library staff, writing center staff, as well as friends, fellow students, teaching assistants, and ideally, members of the research community currently discussing their topic/question.

Also particularly challenging here will be keeping the notebook necessarily generic to apply to a variety of instructional contexts, but specific enough to be relevant for individual students. In 101i we are able to make continual adjustments to the course based on students evolving research interests. The notebook would have to search as more of an open platform, evolving with students as their projects develop. This sounds pretty challenging to do well!

Learning Tools

What tools will you use to deliver this content and have learners interact with your instruction? What might work best and why? 

Currently:

• Campus google docs: http://g.ucla.edu/
• CCLE (UCLA's Moodle instance)
• A growing series of YouTube videos on research strategies
• And perhaps also Zotero/Endnote, online mindmapping software, and other digital research tools.

Reflections on  #IDE15ALA course & community

Reflect on what you have learned. What has been most useful? What do you feel you are still struggling with? How has this course changed how you approach instruction?

This has been a fantastic course! It has been wonderful to take another look, both at 101i, and at the idea of a more generally applicable research notebook that we might try to make more broadly available and with an impact at a larger scale. I have really enjoyed the review of learning theories - particularly in the context of library instruction (most of my "theory" came in the context of language instruction). Struggling with? Time!! I would love to have been able to invest 3, 4, 5 times as much time into this course. It is fun to think and write about teaching!! I also hope I'll get to actually make what I have been exploring here (time needed there, too!).

I'm looking forward to working with our UCLA cohort on the next steps, including offering an instructional design workshop for all library staff this summer. That should be fun if we can pull it off!

Regarding the course community - I think that has been super, too! Everyone has been very supportive and it has been great to see so much exploratory and brave work being done regarding instructional practice. I wish I had more time to devote to reading through people's blog posts - I know there have been TONS of awesome ideas generated that I haven't read yet!!

Super course! BIG thanks!!

Final Project - Julie

Below is my final project. Thanks, everyone, for a great course!

Environment

English 3 is an introductory writing course, most often taken by lower-division students (although a few students wait until their junior or senior year to take it). English 3 instructors who choose to include a research component in their courses commonly request in-person one-shot sessions from librarians. These one-shots are tailored to the research assignment and can range from basic database demos to discussions about critically evaluating sources.

The English 3 one-shot is 1 hour and 15 minutes long, with the general goal of acclimating students to college-level research and familiarizing them with library resources.

Learning Outcomes

Although learning outcomes can vary from session to session, these outcomes are at the core of many sessions I teach:

Students will be able to:

1. successfully find useful sources for their assignments using library resources;

2. distinguish between scholarly and popular sources

2. get help from UCLA library staff

Assessment

I plan to use a Google Form that will ask for the following information based on each outcome:

1. Students will paste a link to at least one source they find, along with which the search terms and database or other resource they used to find it.

2. A brief quiz will describe different sources (eg., a magazine article written by a scientist) and ask them to classify them as scholarly or popular.

3. Students will be asked to list at least 2 ways they can get help from Library staff.

Learning Theories

Outcomes 1 and 2 rely heavily on constructivist theory. In each segment of the class, I will allow students to experiment first and then follow up that experimentation with explanations and troubleshooting. Since most of the class is focused on helping students learn how to use databases and other tools, having them dive in is usually more effective than demonstrating features to them. Details like using subject headings can get swallowed up in a lecture, but if students already have articles or book records up on their screens when I mention subject headings, they can instantly connect the concept to their own research.

Outcome 3--and 1 and 2, to an extent--also relies on behaviorist theory. I want students to know that they're more likely to get a higher grade if they get help from a staff member.

Tools

The course will be based around the English 3 LibGuide, which contains links to all relevant resources and tools. I find that the LibGuide works best because students new to college-level research can be overwhelmed by the vast array of resources available at the library. I also plan to use Google Forms for several assessment activities: a pre-session questionnaire, a method for students to send me sources they find, and a quiz.

Reflection

I'm so glad I know about Backward Design! Planning my assessment activities first has not only helped me improve my assessment methods, but encouraged me to think more deeply about the way I deliver content. I'm also glad that I know a little more about Bloom's Taxonomy, because it will help me match my assessment techniques and learning outcomes to the skills the students need to acquire.

Coursemates

Everyone's blogs were so good that it's hard to choose just a few. However, I'm eternally grateful for the feedback I received in the forums! Raquel Gabriel's response to my Week 3 post was especially helpful.

Critical Pedagogy

Unfortunately, with the limited time and scope of the class, I'm still struggling to incorporate critical pedagogy into my instruction. The closest I've come is my scholarly/popular exercise, in which I show students some sources that disrupt the dichotomy of "scholarly good/popular bad" and encourage them to think about all the ways one can evaluate a source. For example, is an article on poverty written by a journalist automatically less trustworthy than a study performed by a sociologist? Are experiments performed and written up by scholars automatically objective and unbiased, or do scholars have agendas, too? Flawed and retracted scholarly articles are very useful for demonstrating that you can't blithely trust something simply because it's in a scholarly journal. I'll probably use this retracted paper as an example in my next class: http://retractionwatch.com/2015/05/20/author-retracts-study-of-changing-minds-on-same-sex-marriage-after-colleague-admits-data-were-faked/

Week 4 Post -- Julie

Thoughts on technology in my English 3 (Freshman Composition) one-shot course:

What technologies (and these can be old, new, or emerging) might be most appropriate for your final project? 

English 3 isn't dependent on lots of emerging technologies. I'm very interested in using Google Forms for assessment and feedback; other than that, I feel comfortable sticking to low-tech teaching tools like paper and small prizes, and existing technologies like our LibGuides. We use the English 3 LibGuide as a starting point for students' research, and that seems to work well.

Does your final project align with any of the trends represented in the Horizon Report you reviewed? 

My use of Google Forms aligns with data-driven learning and assessment. I hope that integrating forms into the class session (eg. asking students to submit links to articles they've found in the databases) will give me a wealth of data to draw from when assessing a session and planning future classes.

How does your choice of technology enhance or improve instruction, or motivate learners?

I'll be able to see what keywords students used in their searches and what articles they found. I'll also be able to compare students' search habits before the session (through a pre-session survey) and after the session. If I'm able to also review the papers students turn in, then I'll have a very clear picture of how the library session affected their research methods.

Week 3 - Renee Romero

Collecting, Organizing and Citing Sources: Zotero

Discuss which theory/ies might be most applicable to your instruction and outline a specific activity/assignment/exercise that would facilitate learning according to that theory

.

The instructional tutorials have components of both cognitivism and constructivism. The first video that addresses ideas behind why we collect and cite sources is more constructivist, as it will ask students to examine real - world situations (that they may have experienced) in which organizing and citing is necessary. There can be an element of role-play where students act out a situation that emphasizes the various ways in which research is a conversation. Depending on the context of how the video is used, students can take a more social approach and discuss the questions and ideas posed in the video with their peers.

The second video that takes a more practical look at Zotero is more cognitive, as it uses modeling to show students how to use the software. The second video also organizes the information into chunks designed to help students remember which functions to use to get a desired result. There are some constructivist components built into the questioning in the Moodle module (there can even be an element of role-play in the tutorial, as students imagine what they would do with a given task or assignment); however, I would like to try to incorporate more into the YouTube module.

Activity: Constructivism

While a better constructivist activity would have students attempt to take notes before the pause, I have yet to work out the best way to do this in a video tutorial

1. Video pauses after students learn how to take advanced notes using Zotero.
2. Students are directed to think of their research  
3. Fill in the notes with content that examines how the source will be useful to your research argument, rather than summarizing the content of the source

Next, consider what you learned from Small's article on motivation and address how you are going to motivate your learners/students.

Small’s article on motivation was very interesting. I enjoyed the various factors that motivate different individuals and that the article recognized motivation is multi-faceted. With Zotero, I feel that the “flow theory” of motivation is applicable. On page 4 of Small’s article, Small explains that “the flow theory creates a “flow state” that [helps students:]

1. Suspend time and space while fully immersed in a challenging activity
2. Focus attention on a limited stimulus field which provides clear and unambiguous feedback on his/her actions
3. Experience a sense of control
4. Find the experience itself rewarding (Csikszentmihalyi 1975; 1990).”

As learning how to use software through a screen capture recording can too easily fall into categories such as ‘boring’ or ‘uninteresting, ’ keeping in mind the 4 components of Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory will be quite helpful to make sure students are motivated to learn.

Yet another motivation is identifying the beneficial functions for students early on; such as the fact that Zotero auto-generates bibliographies! I would be motivated by that if I were a student, and have seen that function generate excitement first-hand.

 

Week 4 - next steps for the digital research notebook

Throughout #IDE15ALA, I have been reflecting on a possible adaptation of Honors 101i - "Research Today," an upper-division undergraduate seminar on research methods that includes both extensive in-class interaction and a strong self-directed online component outside of class time. In this class, students create a digital research notebook in which they explore and develop their topics and reflect on the research process through guided weekly assignments. During class, students engage in a variety of collaborative activities, including sharing their research notebook progress, providing peer feedback and review, and generating and sharing ideas.

For my final project, I hope to lay the pedagogical groundwork for the development of  a new version of the digital research notebook that could serve as the basis for a self-directed "course" or perhaps more accurately, "sequence of activities" on developing research skills. If successful, there could be a variety of potential applications for this notebook:

• incorporation of the entire notebook or modular elements of the notebook into other courses seeking to strengthen the scaffolding of the research and writing process outside of class time;
• as a resource in support of a reference interview in which peer-to-peer research assistants could help students focus on their current research/writing challenge, and then identify subsequent steps as activities in the research notebook;
• as a recommended resource for students engaging in writing consultations with the Undergraduate Writing Center;
• as the foundation for the development of a series of self-directed, sequenced learning modules in research skills and strategies. 

That all sounds rather ambitious at this point, but - it is good to dream, right? ;-)

1. What technologies (and these can be old, new, or emerging) might be most appropriate for your final project? 

• Campus google docs: http://g.ucla.edu/
• CCLE (UCLA's Moodle instance)
• A growing series of YouTube videos on research strategies

And perhaps also Zotero/Endnote, online mindmapping software, and other digital research tools.

2. Does your final project align with any of the trends represented in the Horizon Report you reviewed? 

Related trends from the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Edition:

Scaling Teaching Innovations 

It is hard to say whether Honors 101i is innovative or not, but our assessments to date have all shown that it has been an effective course, both in terms of helping students develop a deeper and more diverse personal approach to the research process and in building a supportive learning community. For me the trend in this case is not so much "scaling teaching innovations" but rather: how do we scale effective instructional practice, particularly for a course that involves extensive engagement and interaction both online and face-to-face (f2f).

The question of scaling effective instructional practice is an exceptionally important one for us. Continually increasing enrollment increases the pressure on our existing service models for instruction and reference. For instructional services, our team is at or near our capacity. For research assistance services, while we are not currently close to our service capacity, our campus partners at the Undergraduate Writing Center are frequently fully booked. As we continue to learn the secrets of their success, we have the potential to greatly increase the number of students engaging with research assistance services in the future. Our challenge then is not one of advocacy or "inserting ourselves into the curriculum" -- in many ways we are already well integrated into the curriculum in strategic areas, and likely have more opportunities for embedded/consultative librarianship than our current staff size can effectively deliver. As just one example, there are multiple Undergraduate Education Initiatives with research components where we would welcome an opportunity to increase our instructional engagement given the staffing/capacity. This will only be possible if we learn to build on the success of our smaller-scale engagements, and make some of those learning outcomes accessible to large groups of the undergraduate population through at-scale solutions. This speaks for the creation of a service ecosystem built out of the interaction between our existing services, and the innovative development of more scalable solutions.

Integration of Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning

One could call the current approach to 101i "integrated" in that it attempts to bring together collaborative f2f instruction with independent and reflective learning outside of class time. By some definitions it is "hybrid" or "blended" instruction, though it would be hard to say whether the instruction leans toward either the face-to-face or online..... I think of the course as instruction involving a variety of modes, and find it challenging to imagine a course called "Research Today" taught without some sort of mix of the digital and "traditional."

The possible adaption of the course I'm exploring here relates well to the "integration" trend mentioned in the Horizon Report in that it is an attempt to adapt an effective instructional practice currently delivered in one context into a framework or collection of "de-bundled" instructional elements potentially impactful across multiple contexts and/or modes of learning.

Virtual Assistants?

It is interesting to imagine the potential connections here. This trend is identified as later in the adoption timeline ("four to five years"), but nonetheless a few possibilities and ideas come to mind (all quite imaginary at this point). One could imagine the research notebook being combined with a next generation Research Project Calculator, enhanced with google calendar integration, text reminders, and "smart" applications of learning analytics and the quantified self to assist students with the planning, personal organization, time-on-task, and meta-learning required for success with a long format research/writing assignment. Of course, we would want to make sure that in all of this, we would not be following entirely in the footsteps of clippy.



3. How does your choice of technology enhance or improve instruction, or motivate learners?

The technology here is not absolutely essential, and I hope that in addition to developing the google docs version of the research notebook, we will at the same time be able to develop a similar series of paper handouts that accomplish very similar learning outcomes. The higher-tech version would benefit from the use of supported campus technologies (like http://g.ucla.edu and http://ccle.ucla.edu). There is also a potential benefit from the integrated use of multiple tools (e.g., google docs + zotero/endnote + ....).

The general idea though, is to further diversity our instructional toolbox, and create learning opportunities for students that include but extend well beyond the one-shot, are effective for diverse learning styles, and are discoverable at a variety of points of need (including the syllabus, course management system, and through direct engagement with library service structures).