Graduate IT orientation courses in LIS
Case Study
Elaheh Maleki and Nader Naghshineh
There are 71 LIS departments operating in Iran. This is in stark contrast to the fact that the current number of mostly state funded libraries cannot employ the majority of LIS graduates. In many cases the library and information graduates do not receive any exposure to any aspect of IT development work including basic ICDL skills or programming. Some departments have tried to become more IT intensive, especially in the graduate courses. However cultural and budgetary obstacles often make their investments less productive. The project surveyed the manner of delivery of "IT Basics" on graduate courses in three different "trend-setting" universities in Iran to uncover any shifts or development in training philosophy. Course delivery was analyzed from the stand point of content, course requirements, instructor/students expectations, as well as instruction style. The comparison aimed to test the impact of the IT orientation courses, both on the student body and the faculty.
The paper will outline the differences in student cohort (social and ethnic background), the courses and the staff and students attitude to the courses. For example, in two cases, the students believed that they had not received the IT training they expected. The courses relied on assignment papers and in-class student moderated seminars. One course, offered by Tehran University, was considered to be too hard, especially since the students had no prior exposure to the delivery mode. The course materials were entirely in English. The focus of the course was not on teaching the IT basics, but on how to use IT for problem solving. The course has no grades just a pass and fail standard. The course at Tehran University is actually considered to be insensitive to students IT background. It seems that while the other two courses are less stressful and have a collegiate atmosphere, the Tehran University course seems to be more effective. The analysis of student expectations at the end of the course often demonstrates that in the final analysis the students would not mind being pushed to overcome their professional handicaps and skill gaps.
Currently the UT ICT orientation program is being redesigned to incorporate some of the lessons learned. One is that there would be two tracks, with one track dedicated to a few students who wish to pursue a career as a system librarian. The other track would be helping the students to learn the skills necessary to embed the information service within research and development activities within both academic and industrial environment. Given the ethnic and social diversity in Iran, it is the project team’s belief that the lessons learned here could be of some value to other countries who have a wide-varying spectrum of ICT preparedness among their student bodies.
eLit2006, Wednesday 28 June 2006
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/eLit2006/parallelsessions.html
