IRIS 42: Information and Research Instruction Suite for two-year colleges

About Iris 4-2

We didn't want to reinvent the wheel...

We just wanted to modify it a little bit. The concept of these tutorials was inspired by TILT: The Information Literacy Tutorials, which have been retired. Having used modified TILT modules in our library for nearly five years, we know the value of the TILT tutorials as well as the drawbacks and limitations. We listened to comments and requests from both students and faculty; we also knew that we needed a more versatile tool to meet the growing demand for information instruction. We also needed a tool specifically for meeting the information needs of community college students.

During academic year 2008-2009 Librarians and faculty at Clark College used IRIS in a variety of classes. This trial year provided us an opportunity to work out bugs and refining the content and quiz.

A central feature of the tutorials is the Quiz: 30 questions that many WA librarians contributed to via the CLAMS listserv. Currently the quiz is set up so that students at Clark can take the quiz and have scores sent to their instructors. But anyone from anywhere can take the quiz and print their score. We added a separate Plagiarism Quiz during the trial year.

The project was funded by a grant from the Distance Learning Council of Washington. Grant Coordinators are Tom Moran, Interim Dean of Library, Media, and Distance Learning at Shoreline, and Lynn Chmelir, formerly the Interim Director at Clark College.

Credits:

As much as IRIS 4-2 has going for it, there are many things that I had to put on the wish list of future modifications. Please contact Kitty Mackey if you are intersted.

Resources for Librarians

Open Publication License

For more information, please contact Kitty Mackey (kmackey@clark.edu)