[Air-L] Diary exercise for classes

[Caroline Haythornthwaite]

** Ready made class assignment on media use **

An invitation to join our in-class diary study on media use

Lori Kendall and I, along with graduate students Gail Taylor, Sara Thompson, 
and Bradley Bond, are collecting diary data from classes. Since diaries require a 
fair bit of work from participants, we have created a class assignment that 
requires completion of a 3 day diary about media use, with submission of the 
diary to the study as optional. Instructors devise their own separate assignment 
based on the diary for their students submission for a grade.

We are looking for volunteers to join the study and use our diary protocol -- 
approved by our institutional review board -- as part of their class. Our 
experience to date has been that the exercise is remarkably good for all 
participants to reflect on their media use. So, we find it both a good pedagogical 
procedure as well as a good research tool. 

We have forms available for use -- instructions, a diary template to complete, 
and permission forms -- and procedures for diary submission to us.  When 
students hand in diaries to us for the research, we keep that information 
confidential and do not release that information to the instructor. We can also 
let you know how we has used this diary in conjunction with class assignments.

If you are interested, please contact me off list and we can discuss the use of 
this diary exercise. We are keen to get as many classes as possible using this 
protocol and joining the study, so please do not feel shy about asking!

/Caroline Haythornthwaite







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Caroline Haythornthwaite
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820