Scholarship as conversation

Teaching Library Science undergraduates with social media:

Learning outcomes:  Students will:

• 1.      recognize they are often entering into an ongoing scholarly conversation, not a finished conversation.
• 2.       identify the contribution that particular articles, books and other scholarly pieces make to disciplanary  knowledge.
• 3.      understand how to understand and analyze a scholarly article/videos and identify and understand all the parts of the article/video.

I have developed the following class activities:

Go on Twitter and discuss or reflect on any you tube clip of your choice:

1. Find online books or articles that you came across that were written in the past year on the topic you researching. Make important notes and post it on a twitter blog where you discuss it with other scholars interested in this topic.
2. Find 2 professional social media sites and share you opinion where you have an ongoing scholary conversation on this topic. 
3. Critically analyze the 2 professional social media sites you selected and share what you think of whatever they contributed to this discussion.

Disposition:

• Students will recognize there is always new research being done and they are often entering into an on-going scholarly conversation and not a finished conversation.
• While doing their research and adding their input students see themselves as contributors to scholarship rather than only consumers of it.
• By critically analyzing the social 2 social media sites, students suspend judgment on the value of a particular piece of scholarship until the larger context for the scholarly conversation is better understood.