Inquiry Units Related to SisterNet or the Afya Project Created by LIS 380 Students: A Situated Study of Online Inquiry in Service-Learning
Bharat Mehra
(b-mehra1@uiuc.edu)
(ready to use)
Coauthors
ASK
Partner Projects
Subject Areas
| Education, Health, Information Science |
Grade Levels
| Graduate, Continuing, Informal |
Unit Keywords
|
Afya Project, SisterNet, LIS 380, inquiry units, service-learning |
Rationale of the Unit
| Universities across the United States are realizing the potential of service-learning for the improvement of society. It is felt that there is a growing need for a "return to a civic mission" that should involve "students in projects of relevance that will prepare them for engaged citizenship" (de la Pena McCook, 2000, pp 164). This inquiry unit documents one attempt in service-learning via the use of the Inquiry Page Collaboratory towards fulfillment of needs of minority and marginalized users. A situated examination of online inquiry applications for building appropriate information resources for SisterNet and the Afya project also reveals the breadth and depth of intellectual resource base of LIS 380 students. LIS 380 (Information Organization and Access) is one of the two core courses for a Master of Science Degree offered in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was taught by Professor Ann Bishop and Professor Les Gasser during Fall 200l. A particular focus of LIS 380 during Fall 2001 was towards "conduct of inquiry in LIS research and professional practice." (LIS 380F Information Organization and Access: Syllabus) |
Background and Resources
Service-Learning
- G. Albert (Ed.). 1994. Service-Learning Reader: Reflections and Perspectives on Service. . Raleigh, N.C.: National Society for Experiential Education.
- J. B. Anderson, K. J. Swick, and J. Yff (Eds.). 2001. Service-Learning in Teacher Education: Enhancing the Growth of New Teachers, their Students, and Communities. Washington DC: AACTE Publications.
- R. Gordon (Ed.). 2000. Problem Based Service Learning: A fieldguide for making a difference in higher education. Washington DC: Education by Design.
- M. James-Deramo (Ed.). 1999. Best Practices in Cyber-serve : Integrating Technology with Service-Learning Instruction. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech.
- K. de la P. McCook, 2000. A Place at the Table: Participating in Community Building. Chicago: ALA Editions.
- K. de la P. McCook, in press. “Poverty, Democracy and Public Libraries.” In: N. Kranich (editor). Libraries: The Cornerstone of Democracy. American Library Association.
- K. de la P. McCook, 2000. "Reconnecting Library Education and the Mission of Community." Library Journal, September 1, 2000, 164-165.
- S. D. Seifer, K. Hermanns, and J. Lewis (Eds.). 2000. Creating Community-Responsive Physicians: Concepts and Models for Service-learning in Medical Education. E. Zlotkowski (series editor). Washington DC: American Association for Higher Education. Published in cooperation with Community-Campus Partnerships for Health.
- An extensive list of bibliograpy on service learning can be found at Service-Learning
The Home of Service-Learning on the World Wide Web
- National Service-learning Clearinghouse
- East St. Louis Action Research Project
- The International Partnership for Service-Learning
- National Service-Learning Clearinghouse
- The Big Dummy's Guide to Service-Learning
- UCLA Higher Education Service-Learning Clearinghouse
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Activities and Open-ended problems
The following are inquiry units related to SisterNet or the Afya project that LIS 380 students:
Method 1: Used "LIS 380 and SisterNet" as keywords in the tool "Search Inquiry Units" located on the Inquiry Page.
Found 20 public and 0 private inquiry units.
Title: Capstone ... Sisternet: Finding resources on the spiritual health of African American women.
Author: McCann, Steve
Last modified: Dec 12, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit locates resources for spiritual health of African-American women.
Title: Capstone: Online Collection of African-American Women's Spiritual Health Resources
Author: Grifffin, Swalena
Last modified: Dec 12, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit applies concepts, theories, and principles from LIS 380 to create an online collection of African-American women's spiritual health resources.
Title: Capstone Project: How can I build a reliable and easy-to- follow web site of health information sources for local black women?
Author: Zhou, Yiqi
Last modified: Dec 12, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit builds a visually communicative and instructive web site for local black women.
Title: Creating a Pathfinder for SisterNet's Bill of Rights.
Author: Pierre-Louis, Elizabeth
Last modified: Dec 12, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit helps local Black women gather information about different Bill of Rights (Form and Content) for their Community Action Plan that envisions the creation of an Action Circle to design a "Bill of Rights" (health/technology) poster for public distribution and display.
Title: What improvements could be made to the current SisterNet web site? ---- A Learning Based on my Evaluation of Similar Web Sites
Author: Jiang, Xueqing
Last modified: Nov 9, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit presents the following in order to make contributions to the development of the SisterNet website:
1.A compilation of web sites on black women’s health;
2.Evaluation of the web sites with application of standard criteria;
3.Comparison and contrast of the web sites;
4.Summary of the merits and drawbacks of various websites; and
5.Suggestions for the construction of the SisterNet website.
Title: Collection Development Policy for information on AIDS support networks (including education & intervention through the church & the library) tailored to the needs of Black women affiliated with SisterNet and the AFYA project.
Author: Spann, Julia
Last modified: Oct 5, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit presents a framework for information gathering on AIDS support networks specifically tailored to the needs and concerns of Black women. It provides a “one-stop-shop” to diverse AIDS-related information and includes multi-media sources as well as information in various formats.
Title: What are some appropriate online resources for the spiritual health of African American women that can be used with the AFYA / Sisternet program?
Author: McCann, Steve
Last modified: Oct 4, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit presents resources on spiritual health for local Black women.
Title: Module II B, Building a collection for the Sisternet spiritual Health Conference.
Author: Pierre-Louis, Elizabeth
Last modified: Oct 10, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: The author was involved in helping Swalena Griffin build a collection of websites for the Sisternet Spiritual Health Plan.
This inquiry page conceives the use of the informal online collection
for a particular public and a set format: a 45 minute computer workshop. It outlines different criteria that were considered important for building the original list; presents a new policy for the collection; and applies the policy in terms of modifications to the original collection.
Title: How do we identify and select sources relevant to African-American women's spiritual health?
Author: Tompkins, Heather
Last modified: Oct 4, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit presents a collection of online resources on spiritual health for local Black women.
Title: What are some good internet resources for Black Women's health concerns?
Author: Lee, Patricia
Last modified: Oct 4, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit presents a collection of websites on health concerns for local Black women. Special focus is on websites that are easy-to-search and contain up-to-date information.
Title: How to develop healthy life styles?-- Health collections for African American women.
Author: Zhou, Yiqi
Last modified: Oct 5, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit presents a collection of online information resources on Black women's health.
Title: SisterNet Spiritual Health Plan
Author: Griffin, Swalena
Last modified: Oct 4, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit presents web resources that may be useful to SisterNet women to develop their spiritual health plans in terms of their vision of a spiritually healthy Black woman.
Title: LIS 380LE Project Report: What are women at the Center for Women in Transition (CWT) accessing the internet for? Are they aware of access to community sites? Does the shelter program encourage them to use the internet often? How? Can internet use help the women at CWT to investigate answers to their questions and needs?
Author: Czarnecki, Kelly
Last modified: Mar 4, 2001
Status: not ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit helps address such questions and presents some resources that may be helpful along the way.
Title: 380 Final Project: What information on alternative/complimentary medicine pertaining to black women's health concerns is available on the internet? How can I help this user group easily locate these sites and become good consumers of alternative health information?
Author: Throop, Eileen
Last modified: Dec 14, 2000
Status: not ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit created for the SisterNet Health Fair helps Black women become good consumers of alternative health information by presenting the following: an explanation of alternative medicine; a list of some alternative therapies for important health concerns; guidelines and suggestions for locating alternative medicine information, especially on the Internet; and, an annotated list of alternative medicine links with reliable information and authoritative sources.
Title: 380 Presentation: What information on alternative/complimentary medicine pertaining to black women's health concerns is available on the internet? How can I help this user group easily locate these sites and become good consumers of alternative health information?
Author: Throop, Eileen
Last modified: Oct 23, 2000
Status: not ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit takes the form of a guide or pathfinder for the Sisternet Health Fair and helps Black women locate sites with alternative health information related to their most important health concerns. In creating this guide, the inquiry unit presents information that will help local Black women become good consumers of alternative health information.
Method 2: Used "LIS 380 and Afya" as keywords in the tool "Search Inquiry Units" located on the Inquiry Page.
Found 24 public and 1 private inquiry units. 17 public units retrieved in this search were also retrieved in the earlier search, hence they are not listed here. The remaining six inquiry units that were retrieved were not relevant to the search.
Title: A Comparison of Two Health-Related Digital Reference Services
Author: Estabrook, Annie
Last modified: Dec 7, 2001
Status: ready to use
Description: This inquiry unit compares two digital reference websites which focus on women's health. Evaluation of the websites was done keeping in mind a specific user community, namely poorly educated women who live in the United States.
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Dialogues, Discussions, and Presentations
This section presents specific comments on the results retrieved using the two methods. It may reveal some issues in keyword searching to fulfil users' needs.
Comments:
1. Observe the title of the following unit that was retrieved using the two methods: Capstone Project: How can I build a reliable and easy-to- follow web site of health information sources for local black women? created by Yiqi Zhou. Even though the words "LIS 380" or "Afya" are not there in the title, yet this inquiry unit was retrieved because "Afya SisteNet" is listed as Partner Projects and/or "380fall" is listed as Unit Keywords.
2. This unit was retrieved during both the searches because of the occurrence of the words "LIS" and/or "SisterNet" in the title. It was not included in the earlier section, because it was created by the Instructor for the class.
Title: Information Needs Assessment: Surveys and Interviews in LIS
Author: Bishop, Ann
Last modified: Sep 28, 2001
Status: ready to use
3. Examine the following inquiry units:
Title: What strategies can I utilize to create a current snapshot of the Inquiry Page that will provide a broad profile of this digital resource?
Author: Kathleen, Lonbom
Last modified: Oct 22, 2001
Status: ready to use
Title: How can creating an ontology of the Inquiry Page help me learn about collection management?
Author: Getty, Lorraine
Last modified: Oct 6, 2001
Status: ready to use
Title: How do We Improve Searching of 380 Inquiry Units?
Author: Estabrook, Annie
Last modified: Dec 7, 2001
Status: ready to use
Title: What Digital Resources are Available for Young Adults on the Topic of Sexuality?
Author: Strauch, Stacy
Last modified: Oct 10, 2001
Status: ready to use
Title: Module IIA: How can one create a selection policy for web resources on inquiry-based
teaching and learning?
Author: Bromann, Natalie
Last modified: Oct 3, 2001
Status: ready to use
Title: Building a library collection
Where to find guidelines on creating a selection policy and how to locate resources that will help novices judge if specific material is appropriate for the collection they are creating.
Author: Miller, Claudia
Last modified: Jan 4, 2002
Status: ready to use
Title: What are possible models for computer literacy programs that counter the widening digital divide occurring in poor, urban areas across America?
Author: Schultz, Jason
Last modified: Sep 7, 2001
Status: ready to use
These inquiry units were retrieved using the two search strategies; however they were not included in the main list because their focus was not on SisterNet or the Afya project.
4. The following two inquiry units were retrieved using both the search strategies; they were not included in the main list since they were cretaed by the instructors for the class.
Title: 380F Creative Activity II.B. How Can We Use the Inquiry Page in the Afya Project to Develop Collections Relevant to Nuturing the Health of Local Black Women?
Author: Instructors, 380
Last modified: Sept 19, 2001
Status: ready to use
Title: 380F Module II: What are the major concepts, issues and practices related to selecting and building collections in LIS?
Author: Instructors, 380
Last modified: Oct 30, 2001
Status: ready to use
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Assessment, Related Questions, and Story of the Unit
This inquiry unit shows the range of LIS 380 students' interest in SisterNet and the Afya project. Students' work emerged in response to the situated context of SisterNet women's expectations, short-term and long-term goals of the group and the Afya project, as well as the time-bound schedules that needed to be followed.
Looking forward to more inquiry units that can be added to this section in the future :) |
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