According to the Quuen’s Gazette:

A group of Ontario universities have collaborated together to create MyGradSkills.ca, a free online professional skills training website that’s tailored to graduate students’ distinct experience. Funded by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities through the Productivity and Innovation Fund, the site cultivates skills and abilities needed to thrive both during and after a student’s degree program.

I looked at the website and it seems it is only accessible from Ontario. One could request access, see:

If you don’t live in Ontario, you’ll still have access to all of the other offerings of MyGradSkills.ca, and we are working as quickly as we can to give access to the modules for students from across Canada and around the world. If you’re a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow at a university outside Ontario, and you’d like your university to get access, just talk to your graduate dean (or equivalent), and have them contact us at gpsontario@gmail.com. We are working out a range of different membership and partnership options to make the modules accessible to as many graduate students and postdocs as possible, so that everyone can benefit.

MyGradSkills.ca also have a blog, which I added to my RSS feeds.

Beyond being a simple object of desire, the announced Apple Watch will be in classrooms around the world soon enough, as Rebecca Koening from the Chronicle of Higher Education points out.

I love some of the comments made by the experts she interviews, in particular Teresa Fishman, director of the International Institute for Academic Integrity at Clemson University as well as David M. Levy, a professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, who teaches a class called “Information and Contemplation.” Both advocate for a shift in teaching strategies.

And, yeah, I really desire an Apprle Watch althought I am not certain I would effectively use it in my daily life. And of course, you’re always better off waiting for the secound iteration of any Apple tech, you wouldn’t want to pay a high price to debug their device… this is the cost of Apple love.

I really like this award-winning poster presented at a recent Library Assessment conference by Dana Thomas and Weina Wang titled “Evaluating Library Contribution to Student Success” (see also this pic on the conference’s Twitter feed).

They obtained data from the registrars office and mapped it out to usage data of various library services for undergraduate students. They could then determine if the performance designation of a student’s academic standing was correlated with their library use.

This is a worksheet I prepared for a presentation about creating table of contents in MS Word. The structured text is below, but you can also use these versions :
– Using MS Word (2007) with Style (PDF)
– Using MS Word (2007) with Style (.doc)

Using microsoft word with style

Outline

Creating a table of contents

– Establishing title structure

– Removing superfluous formatting symbols and styles

– Applying styles to reflect title structure

– Dividing the document: multiple page number formatting

– Inserting and managing your table of contents

Creating a list of figures

Creating an index

Creating a table of contents

Establishing title structure

Before you start writing, think about the structure of your document, such as the different sections and sub-sections. For example, the introduction section could have sub-sections which include an opening, a problem statement or research question, a literature review, etc.

This step does not involve Microsoft Word and is rather an effective writing method.

Removing superfluous formatting symbols and styles

If you are copying text from another document, make sure it is cleared of all formatting and other superfluous formatting symbols, such as empty paragraphs.

A good method if to use: Home > (Clipboard) Paste Special > Unformatted Text

Also, you could show the paragraph marks: Home > (Paragraph) ¶

Applying styles to reflect title structure

Use the style browser to apply a title level to each section titles and sub-section titles. Section titles are “Title 1” and sub-section titles are “Title 2”.

The style browser: Home > (Styles)

Dividing the document: multiple page number formatting

First, you must divide your document into different sections. Insert section breaks to a new page: Page Layout > (Page Setup) Breaks > (Section Break) Next Page

Then, access the page footer to make it different than the previous:

Insert > (Header & Footer) Footer > Edit Footer

Toggle this option: Design > (Navigation) Link to previous

This allows having different page numbering styles. Now, for each section, you need to do two things. First, you need to configure each footer’s page numbering style (Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, letters). Second, you need to insert the page number. Here’s how:

1. Format page numbering for section: Insert > (Header & Footer) Page Number > Format Page Number
   1. Select the desired Number Format
   2. Select Start at 1 (toggle from Continue from Previous Section)
2. Insert page number in the section: Insert > (Header & Footer) Page Number…

Repeat for each section with page numbers (you can have a section with no page numbers).

Inserting and managing your table of contents

Now, once you have applied styles to your section and sub-section titles and the formatting of the page numbers for each section, you are ready to insert the table of contents:

References > (Table of Contents) Table of Contents > Insert Table of Contents

This will open the table of contents dialog box. You can select a Format for your table of contents as well as cluck on the Options button to decide which “title levels” to include.

If you later change your document, you can update the table of contents with a click of the mouse. Just hover the cursor over the table of contents and activate the contextual menu (“right-click”) and select Update Field > Entire Table.

Creating a list of figures

First, below each figure, insert a caption:

References > (Captions) Insert Caption

Then, insert a table of figures:

References > (Captions) Insert Table of Figures

To update the table of figures, just hover the cursor over the table of contents and activate the contextual menu (“right-click”) and select Update Field > Entire Table.

Creating an index

First, manually go through your text. Each time you refer to a concept you want included in the index, mark the entry:

References > (Index) Mark Entry

Then, insert an Index:

References > (Index) Insert Index

To update the index, just hover the cursor over the table of contents and activate the contextual menu (“right-click”) and select Update Field > Entire Table.

A note from the IP Watch service indicates that Poland’s parliament is considering a bill to require that higher education institutions use plagiarism detection software in theses.

Happening right now is the 6th International Integrity & Plagiarism Conference in the UK. For a summary of day 1, go to PlagiarismToday.com for a summary of the first day.

Two resources of interest on apps for kids:
– this great article from MindShift: Apps That Rise to the Top: Tested and Approved By Teachers (this is a radio station in California that has an education K-12 blog)
– Also, see the Edululu website, from the great people at TFO, the French-language public broadcaster in Ontario, the most populous province of Canada.

I’ve recently watched a great video about paraphrasing from the Lehman College’s Leonard Lief Library, located via Sheila Webber:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6T2lZ51iFI&w=560&h=315]

Another colleague of mine has been trying to create their own plagiarism / citation videos in French using simple tools, like a voice over of a presentation. The videos are interesting but the sound could be a bit better.

Another colleague highlighted this simple website from Dr. Lipson, a Political Science professor at Concordia University (where I work), where he guides students through Plagiarism.

In addition, a colleague of mine indicated that this book on academic authorship discusses plagiarism:
Belcher, Wendy Laura, 2009. Writing your journal article in 12 weeks: A guide to academic publishing success, Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, USA. Pages 161-163.

Tony Bates has just posted a call for comments on the first chapter of his open textbook about open education. (talk about putting your money where your mouth is!)

Dr Bates has extensive experience in university teaching and administration – I’m really sorry I missed his talk at Concordia a few months ago (as a dad with young kids, it is hard to make evening events).

I’ll read this chapter soon, but it seems very interesting. I also really like the tool that he is using, namely the PressBooks web-hosted book publishing system.

Interesting, this list of top 20 articles compiled by the Library Instruction Round Table, see page 6 of their latest newsletter. This one seems of particular interest:

Stowe, B. (2013). Designing and implementing an information literacy instruction outcomes assessment program. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 20(3-4),
242–276.
This case study describes and analyzes the efforts of the library faculty at the Brooklyn Campus Library of Long Island University who are involved in developing, testing, and implementing a ground-up information literacy outcomes assessment program for the undergraduate core curriculum. Based on the increasingly prominent role given to information literacy by re-accreditation agencies, the library was prompted to significantly upgrade its assessment practice of collecting anecdotal evidence and administering clickers-based exit surveys. To detail the process of the upgrade, the article discusses such issues as key external and internal institutional forces that influence the development of an outcomes assessment programs. The library faculty members discuss choosing the appropriate assessment instrument (standardized or locally developed), establishing a hierarchy of priorities of assessment areas/goals, determining the actual assessment questions, and building the iterative assessment cycle (pre-assessment and post-assessment). The author includes examples from early versions of the evaluation instruments as well as the revisions of such instruments. The honesty of the library faculty members is disarming—they freely refer to the persistent personnel and managerial issues their library had been facing for some time and are generally very open about the challenges this represented in terms of developing a sustainable assessment program. As a result, this article provides an invaluable resource for other institutions trying to build their outcomes assessment program from scratch.