Information Literacy and the Substitute Teacher

I was asked by a professor of biomedical engineering to give a library lecture to a class in biomedical computing.  It was a 300 level course, so I assume that the students were juniors.  The professor was away at a professional meeting and asked me to give the lecture.  The graduate teaching assistant told me that students were advised in advance that the professor would not be in.  Remember how we liked it when a substitute teacher came to our elementary school classes?  It was party time.

There were 28 students registered for the class, but only about half showed up.  I gave my standard lecture to biomedical engineering students as posted on http://library.njit.edu/researchhelpdesk/subjectguides/Biomedical.php .  During my lecture 3 students walked out.  I observed that other students were inattentive.  I guess Friday afternoon didn't help.

It was very disappointing to see that students were not interested in learning about databases that cover their field of interest. We put effort into preparing these lectures and is just disappointing that students are not interested.