Anne Johnston’s Library Blog

I spent yesterday on a course which did what it said on the tin - “considered the pedagogy of collaborative learning, the on-line tools available and the practical techniques needed to engage learners.” The course delivery method was in the style of e-learning we would like to encourage in our students - an initial explanatory section, a session working on my own evaluating examples of hotlists, subject samplers, treasure hunts and webquests and then the rest of the day working in a group to produce a webquest. The day was organised by CILIPS and run by Netskills and had a mixed bunch of participants from school, public and university libraries. Interesting to see, yet again, that we are all dealing with the same issues when it comes to encouraging our library members to carry out research effectively.

I came away from the day with access to a half completed team webquest and an understanding of processes which must be carried out before starting to introduce students to the webquest. It is an effective way of providing a genuine collaborative learning experience which encourages student to locate, synthesise and evaluate information.