Posts Tagged 'library instruction'

Metrolina Information Literacy Conference

Published June 23, 2011 conferences Leave a Comment
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Last week a few of us attended the sixth annual Metrolina Information Literacy Conference in Charlotte. It is always a great conference and very popular with the UNCG crowd. You can read about last year’s conference and see our slides from this year.

Here are some notes from other sessions. Slides and more have been posted on the Metrolina site if you are interested.

RAMS: Developing a Master Teacher Program…That Works with Michael Frye, Carl Leak, Thomas Flynn

  • RAMS is a Master Teacher Program at Winston-Salem State University Library. RAMS stands for restructure, align, measure, and success.
  • They have developed a RAMS recipe book with communal lesson plan examples for their staff. It is based on the info lit cookbook.
  • They have an interesting approach to help out people without teaching backgrounds.
  • They bring in experts on particular techniques (like Amy Harris and Jenny Dale!).
  • The librarians write a narrative assessment of a few consultations and journal entries on some library instruction sessions; these journals help with ‘observations’ in the sense that they must provide some feedback.
  • Next year they may look at librarians training each other in subject expertise.
  • This summer they are developing lesson plans for five classes not currently taught and will take those to the professors to market library instruction – great idea!

50-Minute Makeover: Creating effective library instruction for a new English curriculum at High Point University with Kathy Shields, Amy Pace, and Robert Fitzgerald

  • An overhaul of High Point University’s English composition program led to changes in the library instruction program.
  • You can check out some of their class activities on their libguide for English 1101, 1102, 1103
  • Kathy has a great keyword brainstorming exercise with bubble clouds. I need to find out from her how it works again, but I’m sure she’d be happy to share if you are interested.
  • They did an assessment at end, which was an embedded google form (in the libguide). I had no idea you could do this!
  • At the end of the semester they were able to get access to student papers and compared those classes with instruction and those without. They saw a big difference in use of scholarly etc resources versus websites across the two groups. Those without instruction used websites more frequently than library resources.\
  • Through their assessment they were able to see the holes in their instruction. Places to improve were with teaching and/or, research as a process, reading and comprehending sources and citing sources.
  •  They mentioned citationproject.net as a helpful resource on citation/plagiarism research.
  • For next semester they will create an annotated bibliography assignment for early in the semester that will use a select group of sources that are academically-inclined but not scholarly (e.g., New Yorker or The Economist articles).
  • Great discussion of the process of creating a new program!

Embedded Librarians: Looking Backward/Looking Forward with Jennifer Ballance, Dough Short, Grant LeFoe, and Amy Burns

  • Joint group of librarians from Central Piedmont Community College and Southern Piedmont Community College.
  • CPCC has a huge number of online classes – 465 classes and 11,791 students – and the library realized it needed to reach out to this group.
  • They embedded in the CMS of these online classes and created a “your” librarian button, which was an area for the librarian assigned to a particular class. To help with the project, they made embedding in one online class mandatory for all teaching librarians! Wow!
  • In the future they will do some usability tests that do not just test the interface but actually test the learning outcomes after the student takes the tutorials. SO FREAKING SMART!
  • SPCC had to use WordPress.com to integrate into Moodle because no extra space to embed. This is nice work around if not have libguides. You can see Grant’s personal page as an example. The faculty were very happy with the effort. In the future they will try to include the classes they see in person and blended courses as well in the embedding project.
  • Best practices for online embedding: 1) let students know when you will check your email and how often (e.g., once a day before 10am) – I need to do this with my class next semester!; 2) know the assignment and possibly even do the assignment; 3) send timely announcements; 4) check stats; 5) have more information on first page for assignment (not as much welcoming stuff)
  • They also gave suggestions for building rapport such as creating jing tutorials with your voice, having a picture of YOU, creating rapport with the faculty. These were all great suggestions that could even be used in an in-person embedded experience.

The sessions were all informative and fun. I especially enjoyed seeing our former intern, Kathy Shields, give her first ever presentation. Amy Harris, Kathy, and I also gave a poster presentation on our intern program. It was crazy popular and now I have a lot of emails to write!


Teaching techniques galore!

Published February 28, 2011 reading Leave a Comment
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In preparation for a presentation at the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching, I read Practical Pedagogy for Library Instructors: 17 Innovative Strategies to Improve Student Learning. The book was very helpful, both for our session and my teaching. Below are some rough notes if you are interested. Some chapters were more relevant to me, so I’ve fleshed out those notes a bit. All of the chapters are interesting and I would encourage any librarian instructor to pick it up! It is definitely worth the read.

And more to come soon about Lilly! It was a great conference, but there was lots to process.

Chapter 1: how teach makes difference in what students learn; “Effective instruction demands the use of many strategies.” (pg 2)

  • direct instruction (objectivism): present info effectively and efficiently; behavioral change is ultimate goal; demo of databases is example of behavioral direct instruction; using analogies (compare this database to online searching) is cognitive instruction;
  • Use of instructional objectives is major contribution of behavioral theories (“planning for outcomes can make a difference in your teaching”)
  • tailoring to different learning styles is example of cognitive style – students are active, but the focus is on teacher shaping classroom to elicit desired behaviors
  • acrl info lit competencies: develop research plan, identify keywords/synonyms, select controlled vocab, construct and implement search strategy and search
  • student-centered learning (constructivism): focus on the situation in which student in which student is engaged (pg 5); focus on students learning by having students interact with each other; social justice component

Direct instruction (objectivism) examples:

Chapter 2:

  • cephalonian method = students are given color coded cards with questions to help them guide (in a way) the library tour. They are called on through the “tour” to ask certain color categories while the librarians are presenting a powerpoint of the “tour”. The tour is held in a lecture hall.
  • the cards are color coded for different categories of info (blue = basic info, yellow = recommend reading, red = services & facilities, green = misc)
  • PowerPoint slides correspond to the cards (but this would be great for prezi)
  • Process: played music at beginning, hand out cards, ask students to stand and ask question based on colors; asked questions at end of session to test crowd knowledge
  • my thoughts = could be easily adapted to a variety of sessions, the planting of questions may seem artificial but students often don’t know what questions to ask us. This way it is guided but interactive. I may try this in my residential college session in the fall.

Chapter 3: universal design for learning – use different teaching strategies to reach diverse groups of learners

Chapter 4: clickers; used in a plagiarism session

Chapter 5:  brief lecture followed by library research game; good discussion of how she implemented the game and the questions she asked. While I wouldn’t ask the same questions, they provide fuel for creating your own.

Chapter 6: transferability of concepts learned in instruction session.

  • instruction sessions emphasize concepts and transferability;
  • metaphor helps with understanding;
  • first asking students what they have done already re research; next use google for searching;
  • they use guess the google game in class to help with thinking about keyword brainstorming (http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/)

Chapter 7: teaching with stories/analogies

Chapter 8: jigsawing

  • cooperative learning – using small groups to reinforce student learning;
  • subset of wider idea of collaborative learning;
  • refers to this article as good one for LI (http://www.libraryinstruction.com/active.html);
  • they used half-jigsaw because of time constraints;
  • half-jigsaw = divide students into groups; teams given info resource to explore and basic instructions and tasks; students present to the class on findings; assess entire class with short exercise on what they learned from group presentations (keeps students focused on what groups are presenting)

Student-centered learning examples
Chapter 9: peer-led criteria creation

  • peer-led discussion groups to develop evaluation criteria for an “information text” (adolescent non-fiction);
  • gave students a “graphic organizer” with guided questions;
  • REALLY COOL!

Chapter 10: the imaginary undergrad

  • Because effective researchers are process-driven and not tool-driven (!!!) how to get students to think like they do?;
  • she creates an imaginary undergraduate with the students and then asks them for research topics for the students;
  • for the research process she asks them to come up with the process and use the computer to see if it works;
  • works best in small classes (6-9 people!) and upper-level students with general need to focus on research process (and not need to know about specific resources);
  • really cool approach but would it work in our one-shots? not so sure.

Chapter 11: personality tests

  • uses a short modified meyers-briggs personality quiz to teach boolean logic (called discover your perfect career which no longer seems to be on monster.com!);
  • asks students to raise hands if they match AND conditions based on their personality tests versus OR conditions (seems a bit convoluted to get to this activity);
  • next translates that to the library databases; then translate the library database to google search logic

Chapter 12: plagiarism tutorial

  • super cool plagiarism module in a info lit credit course (I’m going to use this with Ashby);
  • peer interviews, find the plagiarized text on google, paraphrasing exercises with hands-on group activity;
  • each activity took a week’s lesson

Chapter 13: Wikis and instruction

Chapter 14: Library session based on amazing race (for the equivalent of a UNS tour); involved chaos and running (my faves!!)

Chapter 15: Electronic portfolios as assessment tools

Chapter 16: Students presented their research findings in a movie format; talks about implementing the session and using technology in instruction

Chapter 17: Great chapter on creating an experiential instruction session/experience for ESL students. Asked students to fill out a matrix that compared the American library with their home library according to certain questions (e.g., How do you check books out?) (pg 165)

Chapter 18: Students created their own zines as part of a course on inequalities. The zine creation led up to a traditional research paper, but the students indicated that they felt better prepared for the research process. Pretty nifty!

Tuesday = Data! #libday6

Published January 25, 2011 the profession 4 Comments
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This is my fourth go at Library Day in the Life and I’m the Data Services & Government Information Librarian at the University of NC at Greensboro.

In retrospect Tuesday was a day filled with numbers: crime rates in Cary, demographics of the Hispanic population, and the number of Southern Baptists in NC. Good times.

  • 8:15: Arrive and COFFEE!
  • 8:30: Looked at air travel to IASSIST in Vancouver for our annual data conference.
  • 9:00: Met with Susan Farr, our documents manager, about upcoming personnel stuff.
  • 9:30-10:00: Found a flight to Vancouver. Not the greatest flight, but it gets me to where I’m going and I won’t have to pay for an extra hotel night.
  • 10:00: Worked on notes and handout for Political Science 302
  • 10:30: Researched question on whether Brazil is a consensual democracy for psc 350 student. The consensual democracy idea is contrasted with majoritarianism. Check out Patterns of Democracy by Lijphart if you are really bored and want to know more.
  • 11:00: Looked up sources for English PhD student studying the rhetoric of presidential speeches. Not quite sure what he was asking, so hopefully I’ll get more info back from him.
  • 11:15: Spent lunch reading through some interesting blog posts. Here are my faves:
  • 12:00-12:15: Wrap up lunch and head off for Political Science 302
  • 12:30-2:00: Political Science 302. I’ve taught this class three times now and I love it, even though it is the most basic demonstration class you could ever do. I have plenty of activities for the students, but I can’t really just let them jump into SimplyMap and World dataBank without some guidance first. I guess that is the nature of some sources, especially numeric databases. Data libs and friends: How have you taught these in your sessions? If so, what activities worked?
  • 2:00-2:45: Consultation with an undergraduate research assistant looking up demographic statistics on Hispanics in NC. SimplyMap and American FactFinder go head to head for the love and approval of all.
  • 3:00-3:30: FREEDOM! I have hit a slow period in which I will get some more coffee (I am falling asleep as we speak) and catch up on random to do’s. Thank you RTM for being my brain.
  • 3:30-4:30: I started doing a quick check-in (look through my inbox, go through to do’s) but suddenly got an urge to write a blog post on the Assoc of Religion Data Archives. The PSC 302 prof and I were talking about it and I realized it had never been featured on the dataland blog. For shame!
  • 4:30-5:00: emails
  • 5:00-5:30: Listened to the ICPSR recording of the ARDA and Roper Center presentations. I had never gotten around to listening to them and I’m on a kick! A cool feature is the religion family tree. Sweet!

  • 6:00-7:00: Meeting of the UNCG LIS Alumni Association Executive Board. I’m the Communications Director, which means I maintain our blog, Minerva’s Library, and Facebook and keep the contact database current. I also tell Kathy Shields, our Assistant Communications Director, what to do :)   Amy Harris and Erin Sapienza are joining our Executive Board, which is super fun!
  • 9:00: Hopefully I can stay awake for the State of the Union Address. Granted these aren’t as much fun as the days when I would yell constantly at the screen (Ah, I kinda miss you Georgie…Only kinda).  I can’t wait to try out the enhanced SOTU materials on this website (fingers-crossed that it doesn’t crash!).

gym. consultations. outreach. repeat. #libday6

Published January 24, 2011 outreach , the profession Leave a Comment
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I’m the Data Services & Government Information Librarian at the University of NC at Greensboro and this is my fourth go at Library Day in the Life.

So, the title is an attempt at levity, but it is also my new mantra. I feel ten times better on days that I exercise before work (even if just a quick walk). I’m a nicer person too. Thank you endorphins. I also discovered that I could read the Kindle New York Times while using the elliptical without killing myself in the process. Lynda is a happy girl.

  • 7:00-8:00: Gym & newspaper: I count the newspaper in my work duties because if as a political science and government information librarian I didn’t keep up with current events, I would have some difficulty. Of course these aren’t counted in my actual work hours, but it is the overall package of professional life. Just trust me on this one.
  • 9:00-10:00: Coffee! And prepped for outreach talk with the Warren Ashby Residential College and for a consultation on coup d’etat data.
  • 10:00-10:30: Coup d’etat consultation (A prof is building a event data set on coups, coup attempts, and failed coups in Latin America. I got to show ICPSR to an undergrad research assistant. Fun times.)
  • 11:00-11:30: Met with Warren Ashby Residential College to promote our librarian-in-residence service.
  • 11:30-12:00: Quick lunch and look through email
  • 12:00-1:00: Taught Political Science 240 (international system) instruction session. I will miss working with this professor. He now has a full-time gig at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse (I’m jealous of you, Rachel Slough).
  • 1:00-2:00: Went to Ashby for an office hour. No questions yet, but it is early.
  • 2:00-3:00: Attended the Ashby Residential College staff meeting. We talked about the upcoming class offerings. They have classes set through Spring 2013, which is super helpful for me in planning how to support them.
  • 3:00-3:30: Agraphia group. Our untenured library faculty have a writing support group. Read more about Paul Silvia’s idea in my previous post.
  • 3:30-4:00: Catch up on email and buy a chocolate treat!
  • 4:00-4:30: Created flier for RIS intern program for recruiting in our LIS classes and typed up notes for the short presentation I am doing at 5:30.
  • 4:30-5:00: Got photos of our Game Night on Friday and uploaded to Irma’s Flickr and Facebook
  • 5:00-5:30: Mad rush to finish printing fliers for …
  • 5:30-5:45: Presentation on our Reference & Instructional Services Internship Program to new LIS students. Woohoo. Come join us!
  • 5:45-6:00: Talked with a political science professor about traveling and budget woes. I think I offered to teach a class. I am insane.
  • 6:00-7:00: Dinner at the office. Yummy! Talked to one of our former interns about his recent job interview (woohoo Will!).
  • 7:00-?: Friends of the UNCG Libraries book club meeting. We are reading The Ghost Map. You can read my thoughts (if yer bored) at my blog-in-the-works.

(Yes, the title is a reference to Jersey Shore. And yes, I know I should cite my sources. And no, I don’t watch Jersey Shore. … At all.)

Library Instruction Marathon: Debriefing

Published September 13, 2009 the profession , work Leave a Comment
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It’s funny that I feel like I’m finished with library instruction sessions this semester when I have around 15 more classes. The difference? The upcoming classes are English 101s and University Studies tours. The tours require no preparation (beyond a big smile and raging enthusiasm) and English 101s need minimum prep. English 101 sessions needing lots of prep are usually (though not always) the result of poorly written assignments.

Side note to all English instructors out there: if you are going to require a research assignment, make sure it can actually be done. For example, don’t limit your students to print sources only and disallow electronic equivalents for a contemporary novel that was written five years ago. They will just hate you, period. And they should because it’s a dumb assignment. If you want them to come into the library, require that they come into the library to do something that makes sense and is useful.

OK, off the soap box.

So, I’m done with my political science sessions. I may have a stray one come up later in the semester, but the bulk of the sessions are over. They went well, but I can’t help feeling like the students were short-changed in a couple of the sessions. The upper-level political science classes seldom have prerequisites because the department needs the bodies for enrollment, and I spend a good deal of time making sure everyone is up to speed on the basics of searching. I’ve tried to skip over basic Boolean searching only to realize while walking around the class that many of them don’t know how to do basic searching. Do I ignore the poor souls who have never had an intro library instruction class?

On average I save about 10 minutes at the end of each class for the students who could benefit from being pushed or challenged in their research. But, that is about it. I rarely get time to do justice to my specialty areas of data and government information, which honestly would be a lot more interesting for me to teach and them to learn. Of course they can always come visit with me (and oh, so many do), but they have to take the initiative and time out of their busy days to stop by the library. Plus each consultation lasts on average 30 minutes. In the spring semester I had over 40 poli sci consultations alone, plus around 25 data and 25 government information. That’s over 45 hours spent with individual people. Over a week of one semester was spent with one-on-one consultations. That doesn’t seem like a big deal in this profession, but I can’t help wondering how many of those poli sci questions could have been dealt with in the classroom setting if I had simply had the time.

More and more I wish we could teach discipline focused research classes. Poli Sci, as most other disciplines, has a research methods course, but it is focused on quantitative methods. To supplement that I would like to see a research methods class focused on research strategies within the discipline. Wake Forest University has created LIB 200 research courses that focus on research in a larger disciplinary area like social sciences or humanities. Each week features a different discipline within the social sciences and its special concerns (so, NGO research in the poli sci week). The primary point is to teach students studying in social sciences disciplines about the unique needs and characteristics of social science research. I love this class especially because the poli sci majors are required to learn a bit about research in economics or anthropology thereby supporting the liberal arts purpose of general education requirements. But it does the gen ed thing in a way that is focused and makes sense (as opposed to taking random classes simply because it fits your schedule).

I’m sure these classes have their own challenges, but I for one am a HUGE fan. Sadly, we would have difficulty implementing them at my school because of our size. Most subject librarians would need to commit to teaching a semester long class and I don’t see that happening. But, I see plenty of proposals going through the Undergraduate Curriculum committee every semester that pay much less attention to the actual needs of students. A course like this would be relatively easy to justify. If we had library-wide support, I don’t see why we couldn’t do it. As staffing shifts at UNCG, we may see some changes in the way research instruction is handled. Will this be one change? I certainly hope so, but we will see.

Do you have ideas for discipline integrated instruction? How does your school go beyond basic information literacy initiatives to support disciplinary literacy initiatives? At UNCG we teach to specific assignments as a form of “curriculum-integrated instruction,” but is that enough? The embedded librarian approach may be the future, but how do you fully embed in multiple classes in a high research department (like political science and others)?

T.S. Eliot was dead wrong

Published August 28, 2009 the profession , work 1 Comment
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August is the cruellest month. And September is a close second. At least in academic libraryland. But enough with butchering lines of poetry for my own purposes. That’s not why I came here today.

I came here because my personal blog is now becoming sporadic just like everything else. The past two weeks have been a study in infrequency with sporadic writing sessions, sporadic meetings, sporadic sleeping, sporadic meals. I can’t even seem to finish reading a blog post. I can’t complain really because the masochist in me loves the chaotic periods, but it is a bit overwhelming to go from a quiet lazy summer day in the library to a sudden onslaught of people, meetings, work, and stress.

And of course teaching. Next week I will be teaching nine classes, three introductory tours (piece o’ cake) and six upper-level political science classes. The “Lynda” students encounter on the tours is usually a different “Lynda” from the one political science students get. The tour version of me is some annoyingly enthusiastic doppelganger that I often don’t recognize. Actually, the real me would probably want to smack around the “tour version” of me. The political science students get the me that has had to do the exact same assignments and conduct the exact same research to get the exact same degree. They get the authentic me, I guess. They are the reason I stayed in academia after all.

In college I aspired to be a teacher, not of high school students, but at the college level. I blame bell hooks and her book Teaching to Transgress for inciting such madness. I went to a PhD program in political science because I wanted to teach. Three years later I realized that I had made a huge mistake. I had taught twice–I was a Teaching Assistant! after all–and I knew absolutely NOTHING about teaching. Zero. Later when I entered library school I was a rare LIS student who took a class in library instruction and information literacy where I learned about learning styles and educational theories. I practiced with my peers and spent time observing others. It was the most training I have ever received in instruction. I was also amazed how much time librarians spend talking and writing about teaching compared to the “teaching faculty.” Now entering into my third year in my position I spend a good deal of my time with instruction—large groups, small groups, one-on-one. My path was definitely circuitous but I finally got here.

Staying with the theme of randomness, this blog post has no overarching point except to say that I love teaching. And I was thrilled to see that the latest post on In the Library with the Lead Pipe was about teaching. Carrie Donovan’s Sense of self: Embracing your teacher identity is like a mini call to arms for all the academic librarians out there about to start the fall semester. She makes the case for authenticity in our teaching by “[p]utting away the “persona” of teacher and disclosing more of the personal.” While this is so hard to do in our one-shot sessions, I definitely take home her point.

When I first started teaching library instruction sessions, I would write out full sentences for every portion of the session (I didn’t read it, thank goodness). I would have the exact details of every search I would conduct, knew what search terms would be successful and pick out the exact citation for discussion. The students would see a polished example of research without failure. I was the embodiment of A BIG FAT LIE. Period.

Research is messy and iterative and at times frustrating. Sometimes you are successful and sometimes the databases conspire against you. But once you start seeing the patterns—in the names, in the ideas—it becomes euphoric. I remember the first time I conducted real research in college and hit that moment of connection. I was researching air pollution regulation in Central Europe and read everything I could find. I was sitting in my bedroom floor with all of this stuff spread out around me when I realized that I finally got it, that I was capable of creating something interesting (if not groundbreaking) from all of that research. I love to see my political science students enter that space with their work. And I love that I might be able to serve as a guide on their journey. It is rare, but it makes the stress and the cruelty of August (and September) so very worth it.

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