Kia ora koutou,

Welcome to the second issue of Inside Out.  This week I am writing about teaching developments inside and outside the Library, recommending an article that envisions a Kaupapa Māori citational practice, and sharing a miscellaneous heart-warming story.

Momentum Year

Anne and I attended a workshop run by Catherine Moran’s team (AVC Academic) focusing on providing a ‘momentum’ year for our students, where the University provides active guidance to help students achieve from the beginning of their university experience.  The three elements of a momentum year are:

• Making purposeful choices when selecting courses (enabling students to plan but not be too rigid)
• Undertaking a programme of study that provides credits in core literacy and numeracy, and provides any other learning support required
• Supports a ‘growth mindset’ in students so they are resilient to challenges

The workshop included student support representatives from Future Learning, Careers, UCSA, Te Waka Pākākano, Library and academic departments and provided a great opportunity to plan how we might work together for student success.

Aropapaki and the Future Learning Team

Since lockdown last year, the Future Learning and Development Team (previously E-Learning support) have been focused on developing online versions of on-campus courses. The workshop process they have been using to develop these courses is called Aropapaki, and the Learning Teaching and Research Team have been involved in each of these workshops.  This has been a huge commitment for the team but has resulted in academics having a better awareness of what the Library can offer.  Some courses now have information literacy content included, providing students with the skills they need to be successful users of information.

The Future Learning Team are also working on the development of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which pose some different issues for the Library around access to resources and copyright compliance.  If you are interested in seeing what courses are currently being offered, you can check (or even enrol) here: https://www.edx.org/school/ucx

Referencing at UC

I have been working with the vice president of the UCSA to try and encourage the University to simplify the number of referencing styles that students are required to used.  This is an ongoing issue, as referencing has been identified by our students as a source of additional stress.  In some cross-disciplinary degree programmes students are asked to use up to 6 different citation styles, and when even mastery of APA can be tricky, this adds a layer of anxiety for our students when they are writing their assignments.  This, of course, is not news to anyone who answers questions on AskLive!

I read a very thought provoking article about referencing this week (thanks to Fiona Tyson for the reference), where three Māori Academics outline how they endeavour to cite from within a Māori world view, rather than conforming to the western scholarly paradigm that does not serve their research needs.  You can read it here, if you are interested: http://www.journal.mai.ac.nz/content/calling-forth-our-pasts-citing-our-futures-envisioning-kaupapa-m%C4%81ori-citational-practice

Puaka James Hight Architect visit

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of showing one of the original architects for Puaka James Hight around the building.  Bruce Boland, along with his wife and daughter came to see the building he still refers to as “my library” to see how it is being used by students after almost 50 years.  He was very touched to hear that students still consider this building to be the heart of campus, and that it was one of the first places they wanted access to after lockdown last year.  Bruce gave an insight into the creation of the ridged concrete panels used throughout the Library – apparently the panels were created whole and then had lumps knocked off them by a person with a hammer to achieve the distinctive rough effect.  He was also was very complementary about the input of the University Librarian at the time – Cliff Collins, who made a big contribution to the planning of the building.

Ngā mihi,

Sara