Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 06:54:03 -0500
From: Suzanne Stauffer <[log in to unmask]>
To: Open Lib/Info Sci Education Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: most demanding courses in LIS

If that truly is the norm, it explains why my students think I'm so 
demanding.

No, it's not graduate education. It's not even good undergraduate 
education. LSU expects at least a mid-term and a final. As I always 
explain to C&C, I don't give exams because a research paper provides 
better evidence of the student's ability to analyze and synthesize the 
information learned in the class and apply it to a problem or situation.

I'm fairly confident that the SLIS faculty who do give exams give 
short-answer/essay exams, not multiple choice, which also require students 
to analyze and synthesize and apply.

Graduate students should feel that their minds and world are expanding. 
The challenge should not exceed their grasp, which means that it is 
unattainable, but it should force them to stretch mentally.

How challenging a course is surely depends on the interaction among the 
student, the teacher and the topic. Some of our students are challenged by 
any course that requires them to understand the basis of technology, 
because their experience is limited to consumption. For instance, 
understanding what a relational database is and how it functions is 
essential to understanding the relationship between a bibliographic 
database and an authority file. Students who may be fine with descriptive 
cataloging fail at authority work because they simply cannot grasp the 
concept of relational database; they keep merging the authority record 
into the bibliographic record. A perennial challenge in cataloging is the 
student who is doing copy cataloging and has to overcome bad habits; one 
student this semester is struggling with the 490/8xx concept because her 
library still uses 440. The distinction between transcription field and 
access point is not one that has been dealt with on the job. Students who 
never heard of the 440 don't have to deal with this.

After cataloging, reference (by any other name) was probably the most 
demanding course in my MLS program, and it continues to be, both because 
of the amount of work required and because it requires working in areas 
with which the students are unfamiliar. I had no trouble with biographical 
sources, indexes and abstracts, and social science/humanities resources, 
but was driven to tears by maps and government documents.

Others struggle with systems evaluation, because they have no background 
in evaluating technology at that level, or with management, because they 
have no business background, so it is all new.

I have been told that my seminar in the history of books and libraries is 
"demanding" because it requires students to understand and utilize modern 
theoretical perspectives and methodologies and to produce original thought 
(usually a historiography) rather than just read a lot of articles and 
summarize them.

Suzanne M. Stauffer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Library and Information Science
Louisiana State University
277 Coates Hall
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
(225)578-1461
Fax: (225)578-4581
[log in to unmask]

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

--T.S. Eliot, "Choruses from The Rock"

________________________________________
From: Open Lib/Info Sci Education Forum <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Gretchen Whitney <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2014 7:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: most demanding courses in LIS

Greetings,
    Readers have been asking for more discussion in this community, so
here's a set of questions to work with.
    I have been cruising around LIS programs recently, and noticed that in
many syllabi that I can find, many courses ask (in terms of workload) a
few exercises, two-page essays, and a multiple-choice final exam.
    Here are my three questions:
    1) Is this workload requirement graduate education? If so, why (as
opposed, for example, to the composition of a twenty-page term paper).  If
not, why not?
    2) Are university graduate students supposed to feel "comfortable" in
their educational experience (as reported in the local newspaper), and not
feel challenged to "exceed their grasp"?
    3) What are the five most challenging classes offered to LIS students
across the LIS discipline (school doesn't matter), and why?  Answers could
include challenging thinking, workload, tasks, original research,
information technology skills, work within the community and support of
community efforts.
    This could be a really tough question.  If there are any responses I'll
put together a committee of respected individuals and there will be a
collective decision. But the question is really intended to stimulate
conversation.
     --gw

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Gretchen Whitney, PhD, Retired
School of Information Sciences
University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN 37996 USA           [log in to unmask]
http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/
jESSE:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html
SIGMETRICS:http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
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