University assessment 2.0?

A recent news story in the technology sector identifies Queensland’s Griffith University as being one of the first to use Twitter as a tool for assessing students:

…About 340 first-year Griffith University journalism students have to Tweet ongoing assessment pieces this semester.

Lecturer Dr Jacqui Ewart said she understood Griffith to be the first university to use the social media tool to test students.

“We thought it was important to introduce it because increasingly employers are asking employees to use these kind of (social networking) mechanisms and marketing and promotional devices,” Dr Ewart said…

The lecturers in the article acknowledge the importance of using social media tools not just in response to industry demand for specific skills, but also because they are seen as a useful way to incorporate professional networking activity into the curriculum.

You can read the full article online here: “Griffith University journalism students to be marked on tweets”.

Are these the kinds of things that we would find beneficial to incorporate into LIS degrees as well?

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Twitter for librarians

For anybody wanting to become more familiar with the ways that microblogging service Twitter is being used by libraries and librarians, an article in the May edition of Computers in Libraries by Sarah Milstein gives a brief overview:

For many people, the word “twitter” brings to mind birds rather than humans. But information professionals know that Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a fast-growing, free messaging service for people, and it’s one that libraries (and librarians) can make good use of—without spending much time or effort…

You can read the free full-text version of the article, “Twitter for Libraries (and Librarians)” here.

You can also read about some of the ways that Twitter is being incorporated into real-life educational settings (albeit in this case not for LIS education), for example by reading about the respective classroom experiences of Monica Rankin and David Parry, both from the University of Texas at Dallas.

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