SubscribeLibrarian Tim Siftar Hosts Instruction Sessions for Rising College Freshmen
For the fifth straight year, the Libraries' Tim Siftar, delivered a series of research instruction sessions for a class of 15 rising college freshman from the nonprofit Philadelphia Futures organization. Siftar, liaison librarian for education and information science and technology, combines English, math and library research into a three-week college preparatory curriculum, conducted at the Drexel campus.
During nine sessions, he introduced the class to scholarly literature. Students learned to refine searches in the Libraries’ databases, save articles in the citation management software RefWorks and produce a topical "mind map" outline of keywords that pertained to a career exploration topic of their choice. Each student produced a final project using the text2mindmap.com graphical organizer and gave a final presentation to their peers using Adobe Connect, a simulcast platform. Peers critiqued their work via IM chat.
Philadelphia Futures is a nonprofit organization which provides scholarship and academic enrichment for high school students from across the Philadelphia school system with demonstrated high academic potential and economic need. More information on Philadelphia Futures can be found at www.PhiladelphiaFutures.org.
