Browsing by Subject "Curriculum design"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Academic librarian's transition to blended librarianship: a phenomenology of selected academic librarians in Zimbabwe
    (2019-05-13) Dabengwa, Israel Mbekezeli; Raju, Jaya; Matingwina, Thomas
    This paper explores the shared experiences of practices of blended librarianship among Zimbabwean academic librarians to identify how adequately they comply with their dynamic roles and functions. The paper relies on the theoretical constructs from Bell and Shank's (2004, 2007) blended librarianship and Lave and Wenger's (1991) Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) to understand how Zimbabwean academic librarians practice blended librarianship in the workplace through engagement in legitimate work tasks. The investigators used phenomenology to explore academic librarians' experiences of blended librarianship. They selected a sample of 101 academic librarians and delivered a semi-structured questionnaire to the sample, conducted document research and interviewed key informants from the sample. The researchers collected data from the Bindura University of Science Education, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Lupane State University, Midlands State University, the National University of Science and Technology, and PHSBL80 Library which chose to be undisclosed. Each institution adopted blended librarianship in its way. Four (4) different categories of blended librarianship emerged from the experiences; that is “transcending blended librarians”, “partially blended librarians”, “intermittent blended librarians” and “aspiring blended librarians”, displaying each institution's level of instructional technology and instructional design roles. The study proposes that the “Academic librarian's transition to blended librarianship” two-by-two matrix that developed was in this inquiry needs further refinement. Further enquiries may test the matrix within the same sites or other locales altogether to corroborate if the results are replicable.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Increasing the signal to noise ratio in a chemistry laboratory. Improving a practical for academic development students
    (2003) Davidowitz, Bette; Rollnick, Marissa; Fakudze, Cynthia
    In practical sessions students lack sufficient time or opportunity for deep processing of information. If the signal to noise ratio is too low, it can obscure the ‘chemical message’ which the lecturer is trying to convey. This study reports on an action research driven attempt to improve on a Hess’s Law experiment, well known in most first year curricula. Data collected in 2000 indicated that students struggled primarily because there were too many practical demands to allow them to focus on the concepts involved. The exercise was thus divided into two sessions in 2001, the first to address the issues related to techniques required, the second, similar to the experiment in 2000. Analysis of data collected in 2001 shows that the changes made a significant impact on the effectiveness of the laboratory session.