Thing 21: Student 2.0 Tools

The Assignment Calculator

The Assignment Calculator is a great student-tool and can see our students using this more quickly than the RPC. Time is such a major constraint for our students, since many of them work and then go to school. The Assignment Calculator can really help them stay on target. FCCJ students may see the RPC as taking more time to read and incorporate than their time will allow, even though their results would be better.

The RPC and Teacher's Guide

I love these tools. I am going to add them to our library blog to both the faculty and student sections. I plan to create an email to send out general to our faculty at the beginning of next term about these tools.

In the Teacher's Guide there were several very useful documents. I'm going to print out and keep a couple handy. Narrowing the topic down is a problem I see often. Students have a general topic like the Civil War and do not know how to narrow it down. One of the handouts covered this beautifully and gave a concrete example that could be adapted to most any topic.

The RPC would need a faculty introduction in class for students to use it. I think I'll explore working with a faculty member to do a joint project in the fall as a beta test of using it. I think the Assignment Calculator and some of the handouts will be adapted immediately.

Thank to the Golden Gophers' faculty for the tools and to NEFLIN for the introduction!!!!!

I have been thinking so much about the students that I have not had time to think about library projects specifically and these tools. Helping faculty and students is our primary job.