Engage

This week we looked at the "Engage" section of the USER model.  In this section, you design materials and deliver instruction. 

Challenges: I think many librarians identify with the challenge of simplifying our lessons.  What comes most readily to mind is the one-shot info session commonly practiced at small academic libraries (since this is what I just wrote my paper on). No one can deny that a user is most engaged when the format is clear and simple--when the design is free of "chart junk" and everything is intuitive and clear.  

When one is pressed for time, one wants to make sure that as much content as possible is delivered--this could be your only time interacting with the students for their entire four years.  This is counter-intuitive, but is still often practiced during one-shot sessions. 

Another challenge for professionals could be engaging the listeners from the beginning.  I sat in on a really good session for my Observation Analysis paper in which the presenter led with the question, "Is Research Hard?"  There are any number of ways to get a user's attention--Booth describes a great pitch she used that both interests the learners and establishes credibility (who knew you needed a Master's degree to be a librarian??)

Despite these challenges, they are pretty easy to remedy if you constantly remind yourself of them before every lesson--simplify, engage.  Not every library info session is going to be a home run, but if we keep striving to simplify our content and engage our users, we're on the right track for success. 

Structure

The Structure phase in USER is all about focusing the things you want to teach into measurable goals and objectives.  This week we have to discuss what we are most/least confident about this part of the information literacy process.

One of my primary struggles with this process is actually setting goals before I dive into the creative process.  I tend to be the sort of person who DOES NOT outline, like, as a rule.  When I was in grade school/high school and had to create an outline for my paper before I wrote the paper, I would either 1) come up with a fake outline just to make the teacher happy or 2) write the entire paper and then create an outline afterward.

I have never been an outline person.

But!

I had a valuable life lesson during the creation of my Online Tutorial.  I had created a couple of quick learning objectives when I was working on the draft for last week and had written the script for my screencast.

After I had finished my recording and was putting the final touches on my tutorial, I glanced at my learning objectives just to make sure I had hit all of them.  And I had not!

I had forgotten that I wanted to make sure students created an ILL account as a result of the tutorial.  Luckily I could add that step in to the TedEd portion of my tutorial, but it was a great opportunity to learn from my learning objectives!

The way I went about it was probably not the most USER-friendly, but it was definitely a start.

Another struggle: goals, objectives, and outcomes are all the same in my head. Need to memorize the differences between them.

Excited that the e-librarian is coming to class today!  I will definitely make sure to form some questions, but, since I have never been an outline person, I don't have many questions currently. :)

Signed,

April Flies-by-the-seat-of-her-pants Youngblood

MLA Three Ways

[social]

This was my second year attending MLA, but my first year attending both days of the conference.  Last year I only attended Day One, had way too many nerves, and didn’t partake in what is essentially the whole point of going to conferences—networking.  I hid behind the sessions and stuffed my face at lunch to avoid small talk.  This time, I convinced myself, I’ll be at MLA for two days, so I’ll be able to get past the anxiety of being surrounded by a million people I don’t know and actually talk to a couple of them. 

My social experience at MLA was completely different than anticipated, though.  My library network has massively grown since last MLA, so I attended sessions with classmates and met people organically—friends of friends.  It is so much easier to grow a relationship when you actually have something invested in the person.  It is also easier to network when you have a comfortable job that you’re happy at—every person you meet is not a potential employer (although they could be, some day) which makes the whole experience a lot less stressful. 

I spent a lot of time hanging out with my coworkers the evening of the first day.  It was so nice to hang out, get some drinks, and just talk about stuff.  It isn’t often that life lends a nice casual environment to get to know your new coworkers—even work lunches have a sense of formality that a hotel bar doesn’t evoke.

[educational]

            I love conference schedules.  Or just schedules in general.  I love planning my day and writing down when I’m going to be where.  Whenever I go to a library conference, I try to balance sessions that are pertinent to my job (i.e., the people paying for me to go to the thing) and the sessions that just look cool.  I am currently the serialist for the Bethel University Library, so I sought out Tech Services sessions to try and gain some nugget of knowledge that I could bring back to show my supervisor. Here was my schedule for the day and what I learned from each session.

Planting Seeds, Growing Collaboration : Duluth Public Library’s presentation on their Seed Library

·         My dream job would be Seed Librarian.

·         Government sucks and should not make awful rules about sharing seeds.

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy: A session exploring a new method of instructional design for reference librarians.

·         I had a hard time staying focused in this session.  They seemed to walk us through ACRL and offered up a few suggestions as to what each of the components could mean, which is very similar to what I’m currently doing in my Information Literacy session, anyway.

Tech Services Time Travel: Examining workflow of the materials services process

·         This session was such a waste of time, and I lamented every minute of it because all the cool kids were at the customer service session taught by my St. Kates advisor.

·         Basically this lady recently became the cataloger at a school where they hadn’t had a cataloger for a while, and developed a “new way” of handling items, which basically just meant changing the order of a few things.  I really should have gotten up and left, but I felt guilty because there aren’t many tech services sessions at MLA and I felt like I had to go to them.

[day 2]

MILE and ALA Emerging Leaders: Why Leadership programs matter

·         Maybe April Youngblood 1-2 years ago would have been super inspired to sign up for every leadership program under the sun, but listening to these people talk about the leadership programs and the applications and such made me feel burnt out and tired.  It might be because I am completing my MLIS at what feels like Warp Speed, lending little to no time for freedom, or the fact that my world has basically become saturated by libraries and the thought of filling what little time I have with more libraries sounds exhausting.  I might revisit these leadership programs after I graduate and have some sanity again.

Putting the “Tech” in Tech Services

·         In this meeting they literally showed us 5-6 different videos of tech services librarians walking around their libraries showing us how they process books when they come in.  It was the second failed tech service presentation and made me feel angry again.

How to Host a How-to Festival

·         Although this was public-libraries focused, it really inspired Erica and I to discover professor’s hidden talents and have a how-to festival in our own academic library!  It was a great end to my day, partially influenced by the fact that they were continuously passing around candy the whole time.

[tech]

            My main tech takeaway was my first experience live-tweeting a conference.  I set up a Twitter account a couple months ago and have enjoyed using it for personal stuff and a few professional articles here and there, but was excited to be a part of the hashtag conference culture. 

            How was it?  Exhausting!  Maybe it’s because my very first session (Plant Library) was spent trying to keep up with Kaia and Tony that I felt really overwhelmed by the experience.  Maybe I would get used to tweeting during sessions in the future, but right now I don’t think it’s for me.  It’s crazy-hard to multitask in that way and still glean something from the speaker in front of you.  Tweeting is harder than just taking notes.  Not only are you adding to the conversation, but you’re retweeting and following the conversations that everyone else is having at the conference and in your sessions, too. It made life feel like Eggers’ The Circle and made my brain feel fuzzy.  I think next time I go to a conference I will just try and send the occasional tweet between sessions.  Keeping up with everything is just not worth it!

The U

[What part of the Understand phase do you feel most and least confident about?]

I feel like reference librarians at an academic library are [/should] always be looking for ways to improve their resources.  Their job is to aid in the research process--whether that means teaching, guiding, or providing online materials. 

The first part of "U" or the "Understanding Phase" is "Identifying the Problem."  Before you solve a problem, you need to have a clear understanding of what it is you're going to solve.  As Booth states, "Identifying instructional problems is rarely difficult--they tend to present themselves regularly" (104).  There's always something to do or fix in an academic library.  Even as a serials librarian I could tell you at least five different things our library needs to create or update--and that isn't because of inefficient staff. 

The text talks about different ways that needs come to the surface--needs can be found due to comparative studies, something that is "felt," expressed, or anticipated, just to name a few.  I think I am fairly good at recognizing comparative needs.  When I started in my position a few months ago, one of the first goals I created was to visit or talk to each of the other CLIC serialists and compare our procedure with theirs.

Something that I feel that I am not-so-good at with regards to this step is discovering needs that don't exist yet, or, being innovative.  This could probably fall into the "felt" or "anticipated" category.  I'm really good at seeing practical stuff.  Our library needs x or is doing poorly in x, so I'm going to interview or research about y & z to figure out why this is.  I struggle coming up with "the future of" this or what such-and-such will look like in 50 years.

As for the second part of the "U," I think the biggest struggle for "Analyzing the Scenario" would be figuring out how to "select fewer topics and examine them in more depth" in order to accommodate different learning styles.  I'm thinking specifically of one-shot sessions in an academic library. 

Is it really best to do the same thing in different ways, to accommodate different learning styles?  Or would students get annoyed by this, and you would be wasting golden teaching time?

Thoughts?

Process and Assessment

Two prefaces to this post:
1. I'm typing all of this on an iPad, which isn't usually my typing-tool-of-choice.
2. I had a hard time figuring out how this weeks' questions were related to this weeks' readings.



The first question asked what the main considerations of the planning process are.  Booth recognizes one of the main considerations the same as the central motivation of librarianship: "catering to the personal learning needs of a diverse community of patrons with information insight, support, and strategy." (95)

So, basically, one of the most important considerations for planning ID is keeping your users and their needs in mind at the forefront.

I found the USER model to be quite intuitive with regards to ID planning.
-First you attempt to understand the scenario as best as possible--the students, the environment, what needs to be accomplished.
-Next, you turn these accomplishment goals into tasks and try and figure out ways to implement them into the lesson.
-The last thing you do before teaching is creating the stuff you will be using to teach with.
-Then you teach!
-But that's not the last step!  An important part of the process is reflection and revision.  Many librarians see to forget about this last step, especially after they've been teaching the same class for a while.  Some of the librarians I observed were really grateful for some debriefing time with a librarian-in-training to help them improve their teaching methods.



The second question this week talks about the difference between program, teaching, and student assessments.  The readings didn't touch on this, but my best guess is that the differences would be rooted in what each assessment is looking for.
Teaching assessments would mostly be a measure of You and how well You did.
Student assessments would probably help you gauge how much students got out of what you taught.  The readings indicate that students usually prefer immediate applicable takeaways, so a low student eval could indicate a greater need for takeaways.
Finally, program assessments would most likely reflect how much of the necessary tools students are to learn is included in what you covered.

I'll show you Mine if you show me Yours.

Guys!  Tell me what sessions you're going to at MLA.  I am not hard-core committed to many of these, but this is what I'm currently thinking.  Which sessions are you going to?

(Click on image to view larger)

Week 5: Embracing Technology & Online Instruction

Remember that old professor from chapter 6 of our reading who refused to use Power Points because of his either a) purist mentality or b) stubborn attitude?  That was me and Twitter.

I'm relatively new to the Twitterverse--I just created an account this summer and have an impressive 130 Tweets and 20 followers (the latter may have something to do with either a) my private account or b) my coolness). 

Up until this summer for the past five years or so, I was super anti-Twitter.  I thought Twitter was for people who wanted to know what Beyonce had for breakfast, or thought people cared enough to hear about what they had for breakfast.  Twitter was, in my mind, an empty shout into the void, hoping to find someone who cared enough to listen.

But, just like that grumpy professor from chapter 6, I discovered that, "When you overcome hurdles or prejudices and interact hands-on with a particular device or platform, you often uncover its unexpected potential to help you respond to learners, address problems, and diversify your practice" (64).  Although reluctant at first, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I've come to love Twitter professionally and personally. 

However, let's say I created an account and hated it.

As I talked about/ranted about in a previous blog post , "You cannot use your personal technological preferences as an excuse to be uninformed about current technology trends in the field you work in," (You know you're really cool when you start quoting yourself in your own blog). 

As Neil Krasnoff stated in his "Twitter in the Classroom" YouTube session, social media is going to be around for a while (I actually think he said "here to stay," but I'm being more hopeful that that isn't the case). 

He mentions later that you can't tell students what not to do on Twitter when you yourself either don't use Twitter or do those things that you tell them not to do.  A good information literacy instructor will embrace new and changing technologies without presenting them in a world-is-ending fashion.

Being anti-technology is not helping you nor our profession. 

Being willing to adapt to changing technologies is not only important for information literacy instruction in the face-to-face classroom, but the online environment as well.  In order to teach effectively online, you need to know information about the resources you're working with in an effective manner. 

Going off of the example in chapter 6, you can't just be like, "Oh, a virtual whiteboard.  I will use this like I would use an actual white board except virtually."  If you want to use a technological tool, you need to investigate the benefits of the tool, any special features, glitches, etc. of what makes this tool great or awful.  Watch videos of other people using the tool well or not well.  The author describes this as "purposeful playing."

Good online instruction will not simply record a lecture and tell you to watch it and post your thoughts on the forum.  Good online instructors will use their previously-aquired knowledge to match the best technologies with the best ways to use them in their virtual classrooms.