First blog post and first week of class!

Having reviewed the syllabus, I am excited about the objectives and outcomes of this course and what we will be working on this semester, particularly the literature review. I am currently on the research team of a national information literacy study called Project Information Literacy and I am contributing to a literature review on how blog readership is used as a source for lifelong learning. It is hard work! Even working in a team of experienced researchers, I am beginning to understand all that is involved in ensuring that the literature review is more than just a summary of what we read and can make a contribution on its own. I feel like I am constantly sitting back and observing how the rest of the team approaches writing literature reviews—definitely beneficial as I start to tackle this semester’s project. I took Dr. Luo’s ID&T 801 and we touched on what goes into a good literature review as well, so I feel like I have a good foundation of what it will take to complete this on my own. And yet, it is still somewhat intimidating to think of all the work it will take to write a comprehensive, thoughtful synthesis and analysis of the literature. We have a lot of work this semester to help prepare all of us to accomplish this big task, and I think it will be worth it!
 
This is my second semester in the instructional design and technology PhD program and I am still at the stage where I am intrigued by everything we discuss in class, and then all of those interests sound like potential research areas, aka I am still undecided. As a librarian, and one that wants to stay working within my specialty, I do have that to act as a filter and help narrow these potential topics. I am currently toying with the idea of evaluating Open Educational Resources (OER), professional development and instructional training for librarians, and assessing motivation in one-shot instructional information literacy sessions—which is a bit of library jargon, but one-shot sessions are the typical ways in which librarians encounter students and are pretty unique teaching environments. The literature review is a wonderful opportunity to explore some of these topics and determine if they are suitable for a dissertation.
 
But I have been considering using this assignment to help build a rationale for another project I am working on--creating a validated metacognitive self-assessment tool to measure student perceptions of their information literacy skills. This has been something I have considered after the professional organization of librarians in higher education revitalized our professional guidelines utilizing a more constructivist framework. I think this could have a direct impact on my job and help me take a realistic step toward starting a project I have found fascinating for a while. I am really looking forward to completing this class with more practice working on the valuable skill of writing a literature review as well as a completed product that I would hope to ultimately get published.