Monthly Archives: May 2013

2nd Plenary: Dr. Richard Besser

2012-2013, MLA

Dr. Richard Besser, a pediatrician and health correspondent for ABC News, was our 2nd Plenary speaker this year at the MLA conference. Ditching the traditional PowerPoint slides, Dr. Besser focused on the power of narrative storytelling to engage us. With a rich history of fascinating roles, his narratives were great for this session. In particular, he reviewed the unique circumstances of his 6-week stint as interim CDC Director in 2009. As the Obama Administration was handling its transition into office, Dr. Besser found himself covering this short period of time before final position appointments were made. Unfortunately, pandemics don’t necessarily abide these same timelines, so Dr. Besser found himself having to manage the swine flu outbreak. Despite the best laid plans and ideal scenarios, swine flu did not stay on a small isolated island near Java, but quickly became a serious issue that threatened the world. To help *accurately* inform the public, he choose to do as many direct interviews and debriefs with the public and with the media as possible. His approach was validated after a weird and distorted interview with Fox News (his assessment & Jon Stewart’s analysis [checkout Snoutbreak ’09 series], not mine).

Returning to his original theme, Dr. Besser brought us to the present and discussed how he approaches his current role as Health Correspondent for ABC News. With segments as short as 30 seconds or as long as a minute and 30 seconds, he has the challenge of creating engaging, informative pieces about current health topics. Narrative is the answer. For examples, he discussed his piece about pneumonia in Kibera, Africa and the increase rate of ACL injuries occurring in children.

Questions about his work, use of information, etc were pretty normal from this crowd. Gasps filled the room when he said UpToDate was his first tool when working as a pediatrician. While he doesn’t have much say over ABC segments, he is happy to have a Twitter conversation about information resource issues. For those interested in learning more or engaging with Dr. Besser, you can participate in the Twitter chat on Tuesdays at 1PM EST.

Consultation as teaching space: lessons learned from the Writing Center

2012-2013

For the last two years, some of my librarian colleagues have served as Writing Center fellows, including completing the semester-long course and apprenticeship and serving as tutors for a year.  Here are some findings from the project thus far:

  • As Writing Center fellow, got to see more assignments, class work, and product
  • Students sign up and fill out form describing details, such as topic, issues they think they have, etc., and tutor sees that
  • Tutors also have access to see other report forms, debrief forms from all previous consults student has had in the Center
  • WConline software used for appointment management and was created by writing centers
  • For students, Writing Center consults are a “Show your work” opportunity
  • For us in the Sciences, the latest edition of the Writing Center’s newsletter notes that 41% of UWC appointments by Major is Science – http://www.jmu.edu/uwc/site_images/newsletter/uwc_mar_apr13.pdf
  • Prof recommendation is highest rate of reason for attending Writing Center, but some spikes in usage after Writing Center tutor comes for in-class presentation
  • Writing 346 class (tutor training course)
    • background theory about tutoring, write, research, revise
    • students have to go in and get tutored
    • apprenticeship to current tutor
    • students do research on their own within this area
    • guest speakers from overlapping services
    • this class does a good job deploying peer leaders and mentors
  • What does the Writing Center think of plagiarism detection tools?
    • Not super useful since they are usually after submission – no time to engage learning
    • Tutors are not seeing the SafeAssign reports come in to consultation sessions
    • Discuss flipping that model of plagiarism detection tool usage, as noted in ILI listserv discussion.  In short, students can use TurnItIn to get feedback, especially since it now offers grammar highlight support, prior to final submission, giving them time to reflect on their writing or consult with a professor or tutor to understand what was wrong
    • Writing studies is doing work on how students use and don’t use sources – something we share co-curricular space/transdisciplinary space
  • Writing Center has done a writing design workshop but they are only getting new faculty – have downloadable 14 point guidelines available on site about this
  • Personal statements and job application essays are some of the more challenging writing assignments, but also more freeing outside of the grading model
  • The Writing Ctr has a lot of writing in groups come for consultations