1. Washington and Lee University Lexington, Virginia EDUCAUSE 2002 "Juggling Opportunities in Collaborative Environments" October 1 ‑ 4, Atlanta, Georgia http://www.educause.edu/conference/e2002/ “Using Peer Mentors to Promote Information Fluency”

2. Copyright Statement Copyright Ashley Hodgson, Farhan S. Mustafa, Jeffrey L. Overholtzer and John Tombarge, 2002. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non- commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

3. What is it?

4. Background Roundtable discussions including faculty, IT staff, librarians ACS program 190 courses on “bibliographic instruction”

5. Peer Mentors Program ACS grant RESEARCH REPORT ANALYZE CAPTURE & PREPARE DATA DESIGN PROPOSE Information fluency in a specific context Why the Mgmt/Econ 203 (Quantitative Models) course was chosen

6. Components of the Program Peer Mentors Brian Stearns Minitab Farhan Mustafa Excel, MiniTab, SurveyPro Lindsey Harrington Excel Ashley Hodgson Excel, SurveyPro

7. Equipping and leadership from faculty member, librarian, technologist Components of the Program Jeff Overholtzer Director of Technology Education John Tombarge Reference Librarian

8. Web Resources: Components of the Program http://info.wlu.edu Element K: http://www.elementk.comhttp://www.elementk.com

9. Peer Mentors Held office hours 7-9 pm Sunday to Thursday Also available via phone, e-mail and informal contacts Specific Peer Mentors were designated for areas such as research, Excel, MiniTab, and SurveyPro

10. Peer Mentors Peer Mentors assisted students with basic statistics concepts for projects, homework, exams and software assistance for information fluency Conducted laboratory training sessions for statistical and research software tools

11. Peer Mentors Perspectives from the 4 peer mentors: Better location needed for office hours There needs to be more communication among Peer Mentors, professor and organizers

12. Peer Mentors’ Experience Learned a lot themselves through the experience (skills in technology, interpersonal skills, etc.) The Mentors did not always feel they were aware of what was going on in the class

13. Program Goals Teach information fluency skills Provide support personnel Provide instructional documentation RESEARCH REPORT ANALYZE CAPTURE & PREPARE DATA DESIGN PROPOSE

14. Program Methods Trained student mentors Web site Web-based tutorials (ElementK, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) Individual assignments emphasizing information fluency skills

15. Program Assessment (skills)

16. Program Assessment “Results during the winter term on the final projects were clearly superior - there were no poor papers.” Dr. Phillip L. Cline Lewis Whitaker Adams Professor of Management and Economics Professor’s assessment:

17. Supporting Resources

18. Student Evaluations

20. Use of Web Site

21. Student Comments “[The web site] was a good starting point for research and had a lot of information we needed on it.” [The Web site] was pretty comprehensive for what I needed.” “[The Web site needed] more detailed information about the paper and project. Maybe an example from the past.” “Was it [the web site] there?”

22. Use of Peer Mentors

23. Student Comments “The peer mentors are not intimidating... you can still ask them extremely dumb questions.” “[The peer mentors were good for] helping us to understand the graphs on Minitab and how they apply to our project.”

24. Student Suggestions “They [Peer Mentors] know statistics well, but they don’t know where we are in the class. If they know what is going on in class, it would be more helpful.” “Integrate [the peer mentors] into class more than just one day.”

25. Another Perspective Mythology Class: the perspective of a Mgmt/Econ 203 Peer Mentor as a student, being facilitated by other Peer Mentors.

26. Program Assessment Better communication! Include examples from successful projects in Web site Build in individual assignments to measure mastery of information fluency skills Use course management software (Blackboard) rather than relying simply on a specialized Web site

27. Questions “Using Peer Mentors to Promote Information Fluency” More information: Jeff Overholtzer JOverholtzer@wlu.edu http://info.wlu.edu/educause (this presentation) http://info.wlu.edu (additional background) http://info.wlu.edu/educause http://info.wlu.edu