Visting the University of Borås

The next leg of my journey in Sweden took me to the University of Borås, where Christine Yates and I gave seminar presentations. Unlike at the conference in Jönköping, these presentations were focused on our research in relation to library and information science, rather than on methodology. There is a nice littl news article on the U. of Borås website about the event. Also, I had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with Louise Limberg, a professor emeritus at Borås whose work has been instrumental to my own research. It was fascinating hearing Louise's slightly different take on some of the issues I discuss with my doctoral group.  

The Best of Times

School of Education and
 Communication, Jönköping University

I had a wonderful time in Sweden last week, which began at Jönköping University, where the Phenomenography and Variation Theory Conference (SIG 9) of the European Association of Research for Instruction and Learning (EARLI) was held. I presented the first morning with another doctoral candidate, Christine Yates, from Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Christine  presented the initial findings from her study of health information literacy of aging adults in Australia. I presented on the findings from my pilot (paper on this to hopefully be out soon), and my use of the methods to examine information use as part of overall learning. Christine is a full-time student at QUT in Brisbane AUS, and of course, I am in the Gateway (distance) part of the program, so we had never met. Our presentations both went off successfully and we had an interesting discussion after each. It was exciting, of course, to discuss my work with notable phenomenographers. 

End of Year Musings!

I have been thinking about where I want my scholarship to take me (and hopefully others) over time. I see two strands emerging. The first, which I have described in some detail on this blog, is to investigate how higher education students learn to use information in context (informed learning). The second, which I am just beginning to consider, is the evolving role of librarians. This seems like such an exciting area of investigation! My musing (still forming) questions so far have had to do with the construction of the identity of librarians as teachers. But that may be just the beginning. The real question, I suppose, is what is the role of librarians in making informed learning happen?