Beginning of a new semester

September 4, 2009 – 8:57 am

We’re at the end of the second week of classes already here at Saint Mary’s, and believe it or not, I’ve already done two instruction sessions — one of which was at 8:00 a.m., heaven help me.  I’ve got big plans for this semester, including incorporating a bunch of stuff that I learned last summer at Immersion, and working toward building a curriculum-integrated information literacy program in our Nursing department, which I hope will serve as a model for other departments at the college.  We’re also putting the final touches on our new General Education program, which we now know will include information literacy outcomes as part of a first-year seminar, so that’s another exciting step forward.  It really feels like there’s so much potential here, just on the verge of blossoming forth.

But in all the rush and bustle of the beginning of the semester, I haven’t managed to post here about an example of fulfilled potential that just blossomed forth right under our very noses!  I am delighted to announce the launch of the Cushwa-Leighton Library’s new, completely redesigned and rebuilt web site!  Here’s a quick screenshot:

I can’t take much direct credit for it — it’s been a massive collaboration between the staff and librarians here at the library, our web guys in the college’s Marketing and Communications department, and our wonderful web designer — but I’m very, very pleased with how it’s turned out.  It’s built on Drupal, so it offers us an easy way to distribute the work of updating and maintaining the site, while maintaining consistent formatting and clean, standards-compliant code across the whole site.

We’re still fixing a few bugs here and there, and I’ve got a wish list of additional features that I’d love to get implemented.  But the core functionality is there, and we’re already getting positive feedback from our faculty and staff.  We’ll be doing user testing with students and faculty later this fall, and I’m really curious to hear what they have to say about it.  In the mean time, we’re just basking in the glow of a really really big, and nearly completed, project.

By Catherine | Posted in SMC Library web redesign | Comments (1)

Help the Louisville Free Public Library

August 5, 2009 – 10:25 am

Hey folks, Louisville just got slammed with some huge thunderstorms — reports indicated something like 6 inches of rain in 75 minutes — that caused flash flooding, leaving about 4 feet of water in the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library.  Their book processing area, bookmobiles, and server rooms were pretty much destroyed, as well as staff offices and $50,000 worth of new computers for a new branch that’s about to open up in a couple of weeks.  Initial estimates put the damage at over $1 million.

You can see pictures of the devastation here (this one shows the office of a guy I kind of know from the interwebs — the water level is at the doorknob of his office door).

A disaster recovery fund has been established; you can mail a check to:
The Library Foundation
301 York Street
Louisville, KY 40203

And if you’re one of those goofy Library Society of the World types (like, um, me), you can join in a coordinated fundraising drive that Steve Lawson is running, which is PayPal-enabled for easy clickage.  I’ll be sending a check to Steve because I’m PayPal illiterate, but I know and trust Steve (actually, I know and trust Steve better than PayPal, go figure).  Take your pick, but every little bit helps.

DON’T SEND BOOKS

First of all, the book processing area of the library is still underwater, so they can’t receive any books you might send them.  And we learned after Katrina that your idea of the books that a library might need often doesn’t match up with what the librarians, staff, and patrons know that they actually need.  So please don’t send books at this time. The LFPL has an Amazon wishlist, which is an awesome way for the public to contribute books that the library really needs, but again, they can’t receive those books, so until you hear otherwise (and I’ll update this post when I hear about it), just let that sit for a while.   They’re smart people, so I’m guessing they’ll be adding a bunch of stuff to that wishlist soon.

By Catherine | Posted in Helping out, Professional issues | Comments (3)

Back from Immersion!

August 3, 2009 – 8:35 am

Gulf of MexicoSo I got back from ACRL’s Immersion program at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida late on Friday night and I’m still processing all of it. As anyone who’s been to Immersion will tell you, it’s intense.  It’s four and a half days of probably the most focused, hard thinking, never-slacking-off work I’ve done since…well, at least since the summer before I did my comps in grad school (the first time around, not the cheesy comps we did for our MLS).  Possibly not since college.  One person in my cohort described it as “imagine your worst week in college.”  That about captures it.

We were going from 8:15 or 8:30 in the morning,1 straight through the evening most days.  Monday we went right through until 9:00 pm; Tuesday we had some “free” time after dinner with some “optional” activities; Wednesday evening was a beach party2 — fun, but exhausting — and Thursday night we were all cramming to get our final projects done before the opening plenary at 8:30 on Friday morning.  I knew this going in, but I keep having to explain it to people:  it’s not like a conference, where you can decide to skip out on a session or two and go do something fun or relaxing, and you can’t just sit in the back of a presentation and mentally check out for a while.  They take their active learning damned seriously at Immersion, and for very good reason.

In at least one respect, the intensity was good, because it kept me distracted from the fact that I was about 1,200 miles from my husband and son for five and a half days, and that even though my parents came up to help out for a couple of days, Chris was really taking on a huge chunk of responsibility in order for me to do this thing.  I’m terribly grateful to him for enabling me to go, and I now know that I don’t want to spend that much time away from my family again for a long, long time.

A lot of librarians find Immersion to be a truly transformative experience:  they come out feeling like their whole idea of what good teaching looks like has been turned completely on its head — in a good way, though, and with the energy and enthusiasm to make that vision of good teaching happen on their campuses.  That didn’t happen for me, mostly because I had the terrific good fortune to work with Megan Oakleaf in my first post-MLS job, at the NCSU Libraries where Megan was the Instruction Coordinator at the time.  Megan is one of the Immersion faculty; she works primarily with the Assessment track, but has also done the Teacher and Program tracks.  So the core principles of Immersion — learning outcomes, authentic assessment, student-centered active learning — were already familiar to me going in.  My experience was more like an enrichment program, fleshing out the skeletal ideas I’d gotten from my “Immersion Lite” mentorship with Megan, and deepening my understanding of how to put it all together.

One thing that did surprise me, though, was how much I enjoyed some of the right-brain-y kinds of things we had to do:  one day we had to use crayons and pens to color a paper bag puppet of our most or least favorite student, and introduce him/her to the group.  On one of the first days, we had to choose the word that, for us, best matched “authentic” and then draw a picture of it.  Another day we used Play-Doh to sculpt “idea” and explain it to the group.  (This was my favorite, because I do love me some Play-Doh.)  I don’t have much patience for “woo-woo” stuff, so usually I take a very dim view of these kinds of activities.  But last week, I totally got into them, and I have no earthly idea why.  Maybe because all my left-side brain muscles were all worn out, I don’t know.  But I’m going to continue to think about them.  And maybe bring some Play-Doh to my instruction sessions….

I did some fun and new things too:  I took my first ever yoga class (interesting, both invigorating and relaxing, but not something I’m going to bend over backwards [har har] to fit into my schedule).  I put my feet in the Gulf of Mexico for the first time (unbelievably warm and not at all refreshing on a hot day) at the beach party.  I saw egrets, ibis, and a pelican3 — on campus — and lots of tiny little lizards.  I can now say I’ve been to Florida, and I can also say that I don’t exactly have a burning desire to go back.  I finally videotaped myself doing instruction (though I have yet to actually see the tape).  I rode in the back of a Ford Explorer, driven by a guy I’d never met whose name I didn’t even catch, on a harebrained run to CVS with seven other librarians.  I did not do karaoke.

But the important thing is, I have an action plan for things I can do immediately, with virtually no preparation, to make my instruction better.  And I have a list of larger things I can work on over the next semester or two, to make my instruction even better.  And I have a vision of what really really good instruction looks like, and the confidence and imprimatur of Immersion to say, “no really, I know this sounds crazy but I do know what I’m talking about.”

  1. Though I have to point out that when I looked at the schedule, my first thought was, “wait, you mean all I have to do by 7:45 in the morning is get up, get dressed, and go to the dining hall for breakfast?!??  This is luxurious!”  On an ordinary day, by 7:45 I’ve gotten both myself and James dressed, fed, out the door, and am on my way to work after dropping him off at daycare.  Mornings were a breeze for me. ↩
  2. And let me tell you: you really haven’t lived ’till you’ve sung “YMCA” but substituted the letters “ACRL,” or seen a tattooed (female) librarian sing AC/DC’s “Big Balls.” ↩
  3. One of the ibis actually wandered into a plenary on Thursday, poor thing. ↩
By Catherine | Posted in Assessment, In the classroom, Instruction, Professional issues | Tagged | Comments (4)

Off to Immersion!

July 24, 2009 – 8:27 am

Today is my last day in the office before heading out on Sunday to fly to Eckerd College outside of St. Petersburg, Florida, for ACRL’s week-long Immersion program! Ever since I got my library degree, I’ve been told by everyone and anyone, “oh, you simply MUST go to Immersion!” Every time I turn around, I meet another fabulous person who’s been to the program and had a great experience there.

Well, I finally have a job where Immersion is actually relevant, and I finally have some (very, very generous) professional development money to support my attendance, so I’m finally going, and I’m really really excited about it.1

So I expect I’ll be back in a week with lots of new ideas and new professional contacts.  I already know two people who are going:  my library-school classmate Jenny Emanuel, and my former co-worker at the NCSU Libraries Amy Gustavson.  And I “know” two other attendees through Twitter:  Dana Longley (@disobedientlib) and Jessica Hagman (@hagman).  Gotta remember to put both my business cards and my Moo cards in my luggage…

  1. Though I must say, did it have to be in South Florida, in late July, this year?  It couldn’t have been in, say, Minneapolis?  Or Portland?  Bangor?  One or two years ago it was in Vancouver!  Oh well, I expect that I’ll be spending 99% of my time in the (air-conditioned) conference center anyway. ↩
By Catherine | Posted in Instruction, Professional issues | Comments (2)

Library software training, from the trainees’ perspective

June 22, 2009 – 9:26 am

I posted this to FriendFeed over the weekend, but I wanted to expand a little on it here, because it relates to information literacy instruction:

My good friend Vardibidian, who works in a library but is not, generally speaking, a library blogger, has an hysterical post up about attending a “training” “webinar” for his library’s new ILS. Go and read it (you’ll thank me, especially when you get to the paragraph about fraughtness) and then come back here.

So in addition to being a cautionary tale for any of us who’ve ever thought about going into software training1 I think it’s pretty obvious that his story is also a cautionary tale for those of us who do library instruction, whether it’s online or in person.

So for example, whatever database, catalog, search engine, or software tool you’re teaching your students about today, make sure you know it inside, outside, upside down.2  I know I’m guilty of not following this advice on occasion.  The 80/20 rule governs most of my library work:  80% of my (students’) needs are met by 20% of the software’s functionality, so I don’t often take the time to educate myself on its more intricate nuances.  Being caught by the shorthairs by an interface change, even a small subtle one, in the middle of an instruction session can likewise damage your credibility.

The flip side of being caught by the shorthairs, though, is that it’s an opportunity to model “what to do when you don’t know what to do” behaviors.  I had this happen with me at the reference desk last semester, when all of a sudden EBSCO changed its default settings so that a search that turned up no hits was automatically re-run as a “Smart Text” search, with oo-gobs3 of wildly irrelevant results.  That was, to put it mildly, no fun at all, and we changed that default as fast as humanly possible – but it allowed me to talk through, with the student, my thinking about what had happened, what had caused it, and what we could do to fix it.  It’s probably the kind of thing that works better one-on-one than in front of a classroom (and certainly not in an online session!) but if you frame it that way, you’re less likely to lose credibility with your students.

Vardibidian’s example of the canned search is also relevant:  I think it’s becoming more and more popular to take search topics from the class in a library instruction session, rather than demonstrate a canned search, because it’s more immediately relevant to the students and captures their attention better.  And that’s all fine.  But if you need to demonstrate a particular feature of the tool you’re teaching, you’d better have a canned search that will demonstrate it hidden up your sleeve in case their searches don’t happen to uncover it.  And, you’d better confirm that the search really does demonstrate that feature before you go into class:  I’ve been tripped up by changes to our e-journal subscription content such that links that I thought would take me to full text, didn’t (or vice versa).

So anyway, all this is to say, don’t be unnecessarily cavalier about your tech when you’re doing library instruction.  Which you’re all smart enough to know anyway.  But it’s also to say, “hey, go read my friend’s post!  It’s really funny!”

 

  1. And, like Dorothea, I admit that I’m now thinking idly about it, because, holy technical competence, Batman! I can certainly do better than that. ↩
  2. That was a toddler joke, just to keep you on your toes. ↩
  3. That’s a technical term. ↩
By Catherine | Posted in In the classroom, Instruction, Those dang databases | Comments (2)

What do we do in the summer, anyway?

June 4, 2009 – 12:53 pm

So we’re well into the summer intersession here at MPOW, and faculty often ask me if the librarians work in the summers. The short answer is that we do, as most of us are on 12-month contracts. The building closes at 4:30, so we all get off work a little early, and we don’t staff the reference desk as reliably as we do during the semester (one librarian does tend to work out there during much of the day), and there’s virtually nobody in the building most of the time, so it’s a nice quiet period after two busy semesters.

But I’m an instruction librarian. My bread and butter, in theory, is teaching students, and when there aren’t any students to teach, what exactly do I do?1 Well, here’s a short list of some of the things with which I’ve been occupied during the last two weeks:

  1. This morning, I consulted with a faculty member who needed help with the design of a website for an online journal that she and the Center for Women’s InterCultural Leadership are starting up.
  2. I’m comparing Camtasia Studio 6 and Adobe Captivate 4 as possible tools for creating screencasts.
  3. Later this week I’ll probably install a trial version of at least Camtasia and play around with it. I’ll need to borrow a microphone from somewhere, though.
  4. Yesterday, I wrote a sample “How Do I” item for our in-progress web redesign, to use as a model for further “How Do I” items which will feature prominently in the new page. (Sneak preview of the content, utterly devoid of formatting niceties)
  5. Also this morning, I fixed a communication gap with our web designer, whose outgoing email server apparently ate the latest version of the mockup of our new web design.
  6. Also also this morning, I revised Oberlin College’s list of ten information literacy proficiencies into a set of eight learning outcomes for Saint Mary’s College’s new general education program. (This was actually the result of several days’ work and quite a few conversations.)
  7. Next week I’m going on a bus trip to Grand Rapids, MI with others from the college to see the Steelcase University classroom.
  8. On Tuesday, I had the first of several meetings of an ad-hoc faculty group that is working on a grant application to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to enhance the college’s programs in support of career flexibility for faculty. The application is due July 1, yikes!
  9. Yesterday I learned how to create and edit content in Drupal. This is good, as the new website will be built with Drupal.
  10. Later today and/or tomorrow I’ll be training a couple other librarians in how to create and edit content in Drupal.
  11. Last week I wrote up the section of the library’s annual report that addressed our bibliographic instruction work.
  12. I’m doing homework to prepare for Immersion later this summer.
  13. Last week I wrote short, jargon-free descriptions of each of our 61 subscription and free databases, and also compiled their coverage dates and inclusion of full text.
  14. In the process, I proposed that we eliminate several databases, either because they don’t meet our curricular needs or they duplicate other content.
  15. Since we don’t have subject liaison librarians, I’ve been assigning databases to each department/program/subject field at the college in what I hope is an only moderately capricious manner.2
  16. Earlier this week I pestered our Student Affairs office again about the library’s participation in Fall Orientation for new students.

So yeah. I might not be in the classroom during the summer, but I’m not bored.

 

 

  1. Saint Mary’s College has a wee little summer term, but it’s so compressed that library research is impractical, so professors tend not to assign research projects. ↩
  2. I’m kidding: the selection of databases by subject is entirely arbitrary. ↩
By Catherine | Posted in SMC Library web redesign, Those dang databases | Comments (6)

Wikipedia, and the librarians who hate and fear it

May 14, 2009 – 11:00 am

There’s been another 10-librarian pileup on the ILI-L in the last couple of days concerning Wikipedia. This kind of thing happens every few months on ILI-L: someone starts it by reporting a funny story about Wikipedia, or asking how others use (or don’t use) it in our teaching, or what have you. This time it was the story of how a number of journalists have been caught by the short hairs for copying a bogus quote about composer Maurice Jarre1.

These are usually good for several things: 1. they clog up my inbox for a day or so, 2. someone usually says something amusingly ill-informed about Wikipedia, 3. I find some awesome Wikipedia articles on things I never dreamed I’d be curious about, and 4. I get some good ideas from how others are using Wikipedia as a teaching tool that I might be able to use in my own teaching.

This time, though, I was surprised and a little dismayed at the tenor of the conversation: there were enough librarians saying essentially, “I can’t believe librarians are using this awful tool, and actually recommending that their students use it, when there are so many other good tools they could be teaching”.

Some librarians countered with reasoned arguments about using Wikipedia, and to be honest the tenor of the discussion has moderated quite a bit since I initially got the bee in my bonnet to write this post. But early on, other librarians actually came back with (and I’m paraphrasing here) “I tell students not to use it, and I’m disappointed that all the rest of you don’t, also.”

And then, one librarian likened telling students not to use Wikipedia to telling medical students not to use the theory of humors when diagnosing a patient, and I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut any more.

Leaving aside issues of the reliability or validity (note that I don’t say “authority”) of Wikipedia as a source, I don’t think it’s at all helpful to tell students, “these are good sources; use them. Those are bad sources; don’t use them.” Whatever happened to teaching our students to fish? Sure, we recommend sources to students all the time, but a) in doing so, I don’t think we’re drawing a black-and-white line between “good” and “bad” sources, and b) there is no black and white line between good and bad sources. They’re all shades of gray, and even the crappiest ones teach us something.2 If nothing else, they give us a barometer for what a bad source truly is.

And then there’s Wikipedia itself. Sure, there are probably better sources for getting an overview of a topic like Archbishop Oscar Romero or the guillotine (two articles I’ve used to help actual students with actual research), but are they available to your students online 24/7 in a format they’re already intimately familiar with? (NetLibrary books need not apply.) For the guillotine question, we found more information, and more references to additional sources, in Wikipedia than in any of the print sources at our disposal, including the Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, the Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, the Encyclopedia of European Social History, and Britannica. Beat that with a stick.

Oh, and by the way, as of 8:00 am EDT on May 14, 2009, neither Biography Resource Center nor Oxford Music Online had updated their entries on Maurice Jarre to note his date of death. The man passed in late March, and these are online sources, people, not print.

One librarian closed her defense of Wikipedia by tossing off the line, “where else can you find a exhaustive article on World of Warcraft?” Indeed. Lots of topics are covered, and covered comprehensively and accurately, in Wikipedia that are not in any standard reference source and may never be.

I don’t generally talk about Wikipedia in my teaching because of the constraints of time and faculty members’ requests for what they want me to cover. When you have 50 minutes to cover everything students need to know about library research, you just can’t spend time on Wikipedia. But sometimes students (or faculty) ask me about it in class, and I always give my frankly honest opinion, which goes like this:

  1. I love Wikipedia and use it every day. (This usually gets some interesting facial expressions in response). But not for anything having to do with money or health.3
  2. Wikipedia aspires to be truly encyclopedic. (This is usually met with varying degrees of shock and surprise, including by the faculty member.)
  3. Wikipedia aspires to have every statement in it documented with “reliable sources.” (This is also met with varying degrees of shock, especially by the faculty member.)
  4. Wikipedia’s definition of “reliable sources” is remarkably similar to the criteria we teach students for evaluating information — any information, not just information on the web. (Definitely cue the shock and surprise.)
  5. The sources, references, and external links in Wikipedia articles can be gold mines of good, solid information — or not, but it’s certainly worth checking them out.

When I asked if she’d checked Wikipedia, The student I helped with the guillotine question said she was “afraid” to look at the article there. I gave her my standard spiel about Wikipedia, and then we looked at the article together. As I wrote above, it turned out to be more useful for her than any of the print ref sources we’d consulted up to that point. I’d hope that, regardless of whether they use it or not, whether their professors accept it or not, students aren’t afraid of any source of information. If we’ve taught them that, we’ve done them a disservice.4

  1. See the ILI-L archives for May 13 and 14, 2009; look for the subject line “Wikipedia and journalists.” ↩
  2. Good gracious, even the kilogram isn’t a constant. If we can’t rely on international standard measures for “truth,” what is there? And yes, I realize I’ve linked to the Wikipedia article there, but show me a better source for explaining the issue in lay terms. Go ahead, I’ll wait. ↩
  3. This is not precisely true. If all I need to know is which kind of diabetes is Type 1 or Type 2, then I’ll use Wikipedia. But it’s a useful shorthand for “not for anything really really important.” ↩
  4. I should also link to Kathryn Greenhill’s brilliant post on a similar topic here. She says much the same thing, but better, shorter, and with visual aids. ↩
By Catherine | Posted in Critical thinking, Instruction, Professional issues, Students | Comments (14)

Library Podcasts: a two-part post

April 22, 2009 – 1:35 pm

Part the First: Adventures in Library Instruction

So I finally got around to listening to the first episode of the “Adventures in Library Instruction” podcast, and the first thing I have to say is, “woo hoo to Jason, Rachel, and Anna for putting this together!” There is seriously not enough going on in the library/web/blogo-2.0-sphere about library instruction, and this is a most welcome addition! I’m definitely adding it to my feed reader and will be watching for future episodes.

Listening to it, especially the opening chat portion, was a lot like listening in on a particularly good hallway convo at a conference, and that was kind of fun. Anna’s section on the Cephalonian method was a good summary of the method and example of how she used it in her instruction work; I was already familiar with the method and in fact have used it, so this wasn’t as useful to me as Rachel’s section on a cool active-learning classroom activity she did called Critical Evaluation Family Feud. I’m definitely going to have to go back and listen to that section more carefully and take more detailed notes, because I think there are some really great ideas that I can use in there. Gaming (in libraries or outside of them) isn’t really my thing, so Beth Gallaway‘s interview wasn’t as useful to me. But these are sharp, articulate, and creative librarians, and I’m looking forward to future episodes.

Part the Second: On Podcasts In General

So, like my Facebook confession earlier on this blog, I’m a little embarassed to admit that this is the first podcast I’ve ever listened to. Like Facebook, it’s not because I don’t understand the underlying technology. With podcasts, it’s because I simply don’t have the time, and I sort of wonder how and when people who do listen to podcasts do it. I don’t have a lengthy commute (a fact for which I’m terribly grateful) and for a good chunk of it, I have a babbling toddler in the car, so listening while commuting is out.1

I suppose I could listen to podcasts on my iPod (that’s what one is supposed to do, right?) while puttering around the house, but a) my iPod’s earbuds tend to fall out when I move around (I have weird ears, okay?) and b) again with the babbling toddler. And I don’t much feel like listening to work-related podcasts while I’m not at work. I can’t very well sit at the reference desk with headphones on (though I’ve been tempted many times), and I definitely can’t concentrate on work at my desk while someone’s chatting in my ear about library whatever.

To listen to Adventures in Library Instruction, I basically had to carve out an hour to sit at my desk, with headphones on, and just listen, which was remarkably hard to do. And felt kind of weird – I kept thinking that I should be doing something, and kept having to remind myself that I was doing something: I was listening to a podcast. So that’s the biggest issue that’s been preventing me from listening to podcasts.

But then as I was listening, and taking a few notes (on paper!), I realized a couple of other problems with podcasting: first of all, there’s no way to bookmark a particular moment in a show to be able to refer to it later. I’d love to go back and listen again to Rachel’s bit on active learning, but I’d have to fast-forward and rewind until I find it. (Anyone remember cassette tapes? At least some players had counters that let you note particular spots in a tape.) And there’s no way to copy and paste ideas or make notes as you listen along – the good folks at Adventures in Library Instruction helpfully include links to some of the things that are mentioned in the show on their blog post for the episode, but that seems like a slightly clumsy workaround.

All in all, I’m really not clear on how a podcast is more effective than a text-based medium like a web page or (gasp!) a print journal article, unless the substance of what you’re trying to communicate is originally in an audio format, like a radio newscast or music.2

So to wrap this up, I’ll definitely be listening to future episodes of Adventures in Library Instruction, because it’s good content that I find useful to my work. But I’m really not sure about my long-term commitment to the podcasting medium, and I’m not particularly inspired to go out and search for additional podcasts to listen to.

  1. The flip side of this is, if podcasting had been around in 2002-2004, when I was commuting 2-3 hours a day to library school on a bus, and I could have listened to a podcast of yesterday’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition on the ride to and from school, I’d have been a happy, happy camper. And I wouldn’t have done any of the reading for my MLS program, since I did it all on the bus. ↩
  2. This is a little bit related to my puzzlement at video clips that are essentially a person talking to a video camera – like the questions that were submitted for the Presidential debates and the ALA election via YouTube. Unless there’s some other visual component in addition to the person’s talking head – and granted, some videos included such a component – what’s the point? ↩
By Catherine | Posted in Off-topic blather, Professional issues | Comments (8)

A short note on assessment data

April 20, 2009 – 12:57 pm

So I’ve been working lately on a presentation idea that I’ve been kicking around for a while, that I intend to submit for LOEX 2010, and as a result I’ve been looking through a bunch of messy assessment data that I’ve collected over the past year and a bit. And I was reminded of something in those data that puzzled me.

I tend to use the classic “Minute Paper” assessment tool (also known as the “Muddiest Point”), where the students are given a minute or two to write down on a scrap of paper one useful thing they learned from class that day, and one thing they still have questions about. Last semester, I got a little creative and decided to ask them to write down three things: one useful thing they learned, one thing they already knew, and one thing they still had questions about.

The responses for “one thing I already knew” were interesting. In a lot of cases, it was pretty much what you’d expect: “I’ve already had a class on searching for articles.” “I already knew how to find books in the catalog.” Famously, there was “I already knew pretty much everything because I’ve had this same library class four times now, but your presentation was definitely the best.” Uh, thanks? I think?

Anyway, what struck me about the “already knew” responses wasn’t what they said they already knew how to do, it was what they said they already knew to do: “I already knew to start my research with encyclopedias.” “I already knew not to cite Wikipedia in an academic paper.” “I already knew that it’s important to evaluate information on the web.”

And the only thing I can think is, “okay, you know to do these things, but do you?” Judging from the foot traffic in our print reference collection, I’d say no. (But wait, students could be starting their research with online encyclopedias, right? Actually, no, because we don’t subscribe to any. Oh, except for Wikipedia, of course, which it turns out they’re probably all using, possibly even appropriately.) And I think that their professors would say that, in some cases at least, they’re not evaluating their web sources sufficiently.

So what should I take away from this information? Do the students actually do the things they say that they know to do? I suppose you’d have to do some serious qualitative research, like the anthropological studies at the University of Rochester (PDF), to find out. How do you get past that barrier of the student thinking, “yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all this, but I don’t have time to do it”? Or is it some other barrier that prevents them from doing what they say they know they should do?

Incidentally, I don’t include that third question any more; it was taking too long for the students to do the assessment, and in a lot of ways it was too frustrating and demoralizing to see the huge range of what the students already knew (or didn’t).  Once we get a better information literacy curriculum plan in place with our new general education program, I may bring it back.

By Catherine | Posted in Assessment, Instruction, Students | Comments (3)

What Instruction Librarians Could Teach The Rest Of Us About Conference Presentations

April 7, 2009 – 9:03 am

How many instruction librarians would actively choose the following scenario for maximizing learning in their classrooms?

Instructor stands at the front of the room, behind a podium, reading from or frequently consulting notes, while students sit passively in chairs facing the instructor, taking notes (or not). The students don’t have computers of their own in front of them, unless they brought their own laptops. The instructor projects Powerpoint slides onto a screen, which is distant from the podium, but the instructor never leaves the podium to go point at the screen or draw attention to certain features or elements on the screen, and doesn’t move around the room. The instructor talks continuously for nearly all of the class time, only allowing a few minutes, if any, for questions — and often runs out of time before s/he is through her content, thereby having to race through the last few slides. Students aren’t invited to talk to each other or collaborate in any way, and the instructor doesn’t ask them to contribute to the presentation in any way.

Does this not sound like the very opposite of active learning?

So why is it still the dominant-to-exclusive model for professional library conference presentations?

At Computers in Libraries last week, it was pretty much one “sage on the stage” after another. And I have to admit that it almost didn’t occur to me to expect anything different. Only late in the day on Tuesday (day 2 of the 3-day conference) did I suddenly realize that I’d been an incredibly passive learner all day. I should have started thinking about it after the Unconferences session, but it took a while to sink in. Now granted, some of those “sages” had excellent presentation skills, and the keynotes, especially the interview of Paul Holdengraber by Erik Boekesteijn, were terrific and inspiring (and, notably, made some use of multimedia content). But if we’d been doing this to our students, rather than to each other, we ought to have been ashamed of ourselves.

To give credit where it’s due: a few LOEX presentations that I’ve been to have broken free of this model — and they’ve been the best sessions, by far, that I’ve attended at LOEX — but those sessions have been very clearly labeled as “interactive workshops” rather than “sessions,” and there’s always language in the abstract that indicates that there will be audience participation. (Which sometimes sounds to me like a warning along the lines of, “if you want to sit in the back and snooze, you might want to pick another session.”) And those interactive workshops have, in the past at least, been a minority of the sessions at the conference, though I hope that will gradually change.

So what can we do about this? As a start, I’ll throw out there that I’d like to see all conference presentations include at least some element of active learning, and I’d like to see some conference presentations radically re-thought in terms of audience participation, to the point where they’re more unconference-like, and the “presenter” is really just a facilitator.

I know, I know – “but there’s all this content that I have to transmit to the audience!!!” Yup. Same here: ever try to tell 25 undergrads everything they need to know about searching JSTOR in 50 minutes? Guess what? It can’t be done. So don’t even try! Give them what they need to get started; give them the tools they’ll need to learn on their own, and then set them loose. Librarians are smart folks, we’ll figure it out.

Update, April 9, 2009: Here’s a great example of what I’m talking about: Sarah Houghton-Jan (the Librarian in Black) did a presentation for the Texas Library Association last week, and her slides are up on Slideshare. Take a look at slides #15, #23, and #32: in each one, she asks audience members to turn to the person next to them and discuss what they’re doing in response to a particular question. This is super, because it can work with any number of people in the audience, it provides little breaks in the presentation, and it gives audience members a chance to learn from each other. Great work, Sarah!

By Catherine | Posted in In the classroom, Professional issues | Tagged | Comments (7)