Library Gazette

As the Toolkit continues to grow and have more applications, Kevin and I are taking a day to focus some energy on getting it in tip-top shape for the new school year.

For new folks to ZSR: the Toolkit is a service we provide to allow users to find help they need through our website. They can access it when we’re not here, or when they’re just looking to find the answer on their own. The Toolkit is comprised of a number of tools, which are very short narrated videos walking patrons through specific tasks. These videos can be accessed from the Toolkit, but also embedded in Blackboard, Libguides, and other websites.

Today is Toolkit day, and we invite you to stop on by to make a tool for the collection. Starting at 11:00am, at least one of us will be in our offices, with some Starbucks pastries, in case anyone wants to stop by and make one. We have two stations set up and ready to go, so you don’t even need to bring your ThinkPad.If you’d rather just phone us, we’ll make office-calls, too. If you’re new to the process, but want to see how it’s done, we have a page about it in the library wiki.

If you want to participate, but don’t have a tool in mind, we have a wish list of tools we’d like:

The “wanted” tools are requests that haven’t been created yet, and the “update” are tools referring specifically to our classic catalog interface, that should be duplicated in the new Vufind interface. We’ll be updating the list all day, so stop by to see the current wanted/update list!

By recording a tool, you’ll also be contributing to a PRIMO recognized project! Earlier this year, Susan recommended we nominate the Toolkit for PRIMO recognition, and we just found out that it was added to the list. PRIMO is a committee of the ACRL Instruction Section that was created to promote and share peer-reviewed instructional materials created by librarians. From their website: “The PRIMO Committee hopes that publicizing selective, high quality resources will help librarians to respond to the educational challenges posed by still emerging digital technologies.”

So, if you want to make a tool, have questions about the technical side, or have questions about the instructional design side, stop by and have a Starbucks pastry! We’re happy to help in any way we can! Here’s hoping that by the start of fall we have many new tools!

A year ago, Steve Cramer initiated a get together of UNCG and WFU library staff to talk about reference technology. We had a great time visiting our colleagues, talking about common issues, and brainstorming about the future of our distinct part of the field.

Yesterday, we met for a second time. A similar group from UNCG came to visit, and we broadened the group to include NCSU. It was a great time! We met in Starbucks from 10-12:30, had lunch at Shorty’s, and gave the NCSU folks a short tour before they went on their way.

Roz, Giz, Sarah, Mary, Kaeley, Bobbie, Kevin, and I participated from ZSR, and we had nine visitors from the other schools. We talked a bit about how our different institutions are organized, discussed current tools that have potential for instructional work, talked about current projects, and where our work was headed. If you’re interested in seeing the links we discussed, you can find them here.

It’s really energizing to connect with others doing similar things and to see how we’re approaching the same issues from our different institutional perspectives. NCSU was interested in hosting a get together in the fall, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again!

Today was the final day of the teaching teaching spring class. We’ve been at it since January, and we’ve held 14 sessions. We’ve had 14 hours (less the minutes early I left for committee meetings) to devote some serious time to coming together as a group to talk about our teaching and hopefully learn a few tricks. I started today talking about the design for the course. Roz clearly played a large role, and everyone who participated helped shape the course either through conversations outside of the class or by their participation.

And while we’re talking about participants, we had a large percentage of the library staff attend at one point or another, and most people attended several (or all!). The “teaching teaching” participants were Roz Tedford, Bobbie Collins, Lauren Corbett, Carol Cramer, Ellen Daugman, Craig Fansler, Joy Gambill, Kevin Gilbertson, Derrik Hiatt, Kate Irwin-Smiler (from PCL), Julie James (from Carpenter), Sarah Jeong, Vicki Johnson, Steve Kelley, Mary Beth Lock, Leslie McCall, Carolyn McCallum, Kaeley McMahan, Erik Mitchell, Elizabeth Novicki, Mary Scanlon, Susan Smith, and Giz Womack.

We covered a lot of ground, too! We talked about what Instructional Design is, and the different models of ID that are practiced. We talked about taxonomies of teaching, educational psychology, multiple intelligences/learning styles, teaching styles, learning theory, problem based learning, active learning, classroom management, assessment, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. We’re planning a few summer workshops to bridge a few gaps, and we’re planning a fall program of facilitated practical talks on specific techniques. Keep an eye on your email to see when the next teaching classes will be!

I’ve really enjoyed this project, and it’s been a great semester. As I told the group this morning, having an enthusiastic group of participants made it much more fun (and made all of the planning much less burdensome and far more enjoyable). Clearly, this is an example of the culture of ZSR/WFU. The participants were focused on our mission: honing their teaching skills in order to better position themselves to help our students succeed. I can’t wait to see how this course shapes our instruction in the coming semesters. Thanks to everyone who participated! I really appreciate your enthusiasm and engagement!

If you’re interested in seeing what we were up to, you can see the course blog.

Right in time for spring graduation, Mark Taylor wrote an op-ed piece for the NYT Sunday edition called End the University as we know it in which he calls for major restructuring of the higher education system. On first glance it is an interesting read in which Taylor calls for more collaboration and interdisciplinary work (two things that libraries are pretty good at). I was struck by his discussion of the role of educational technology in higher education and the impact of technology on student work particularly in light of the increased call for educational technology support that we have seen over the past few semesters.

Granted, along with these ideas, he suggests some pretty controversial changes to higher education including mandatory retirement(!) and a move away from traditional departments. He also comments that universities are training people for jobs that don’t exist or are already filled to capacity. These are some weighty suggestions so read at your own risk

It occured to me that with the passing of spring break we’ve crossed the halfway point with our Teaching Teaching class! For those who are interested in what we’ve been doing, you can read up on it with our blog. If you’re interested in coming, feel free to drop in any Friday at 9:00 in 476. You can attend as many or as few as you’d like, and we try to make it relevant to everyone, even if they’ve missed prior classes.

Here’s some of what we’ve covered:

Let Roz or me know if you have any questions!

This year I have been able to do a little more work with the Teaching and Learning Center as their library liaison. This has been fun for me, and a good chance to look for opportunities where the library and the TLC can work together on projects that help both organizations with our missions.

Today kicked off one of these projects, and one I’ve been looking forward to for a few semesters.

Every month, on the third Tuesday at 11:00 am, we’re holding an informal Educational Technology Discussion Group. This morning the TLC provided coffee, cookies, and chairs, and a group of 16 got together to discuss the use of educational technology. About half the group were teaching faculty, and the other half were ITGs.

This morning’s conversations focused on the uses of blogs and wikis to enhance out-of-class learning, multimedia projects, clickers, Sakai, and a number of other less widely-used tools. I was thrilled to hear that so many library hosted blogs and wikis have been positive experiences for the faculty in attendance, and glad to know that our willingness to go into classrooms to teach the nuts and bolts of these tools, along with multimedia and podcasting projects, has meant that faculty are more at ease using these tools in their classes.

We also talked about issues that I think of as intimately related to information literacy. The discussion touched on privacy issues, publishing in a Web 2.0 world, finding and creating information on the Internet, and information life skills (such as how to find information to teach oneself how to use a new technology). I tried to pipe up as much as was reasonable on these issues, because as far as I’m concerned, they’re all information literacy related.

Towards the end of the session we discussed how to get more faculty involved in doing these types of projects and joining the group. Two refrains I heard were to (1) help faculty realize that it really is easy to integrate these tools (2) help faculty realize that, if structured correctly, the use of some of these tools will actually save time in teaching/grading the course. These, to me, come down to instructional design issues, so now I’m mulling over how to make this case more effectively, and to a larger audience at the University.

I would love to see more library teachers there next time. I know we’re doing some amazing things with educational technologies in a number of our classes, and this would be a great venue to share ideas, get new ones, and let people know how the library can support this type of work. If you’re interested, here is the next meeting information:

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY DISCUSSION GROUP MONTHLY MEETINGS
Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Time: 11:00 A.M.
Location: Teaching and Learning Center, Room 330, ZSR Library

Today was the first Teaching Teaching class. (For those who are curious, Roz and I had a Google Doc that was punnily named “teaching teaching” since that’s what we were planning… the name stuck.)

Over the course of the spring semester Roz and I are planning to give a one hour “course” on teaching. I’m really excited about this for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is open to all WFU librarians. Today we had two guests, which was really nice. The course is made to be modular, so you can miss some or attend based on topic. There are no readings, assignments, homework, or quizzing. We’re hoping that the “course” is long enough to allow us to present with some depth, without requiring too much time commitment from attendees.

Here is the presentation from today:

& you can find more in the blog. If you’re interested in the individual class sessions, you can see the calendar here. If you’re interested in the topic or the class, feel free to talk with Roz or me, or just sign up for the class!

Yesterday for our LIB210: Social Science Research Sources and Strategies class, Bobbie, Carolyn and I planned a variation on the library tour. We divided our students up into three groups and sent them to different areas of the library. They had three questions to ask:

• What resources or services would a WFU student find here?
• What resources or services do you provide to help with research?
• What is one thing about your department that you think students should know but don’t?

They also took along cameras Carolyn had checked out from the ITC and they took pictures of the departments.

When they returned to class each group told the other students about the departments they had visited. While they talked I uploaded the pictures into a Flickr page. Then this week they will be going in to name the pictures, put in a description and tag them. This will then lead us nicely into our discussions next week about search terms, controlled vocabularies and the benefit of using the subject terms within our electronic products.

We were thrilled with how much the students enjoyed the exercise. They were all excited about going out and learning new things and we heard a lot of “I never new that” and “that’s cool!” from the class as different areas or services were discussed. It worked so well I’m going to do it for my LIB100 class in October.

Many, many thanks to those on our staff who met our students and discussed our services with them. Mary Beth, Mary Reeves, Erik, Kaeley, Mary Lib, Sharon and Vicki. The students all commented on how nice the folks they had met were and how eager they were to help students.

If you want to see the pictures, here’s the site and toward the end of the set some pictures have been named and tagged already. I’m sure they would love to have some comments!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zsrlib210/