Library Gazette

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.

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

Well, we are wrapping up another successful semester of LIB100 classes. We taught 10 classes this semester. That’s 137 students (24 Freshmen, 50 Sophomores 22 Juniors and 41 Seniors). A few classes branched out to use group projects for the final project, some of us even used Wikis! I taught EndNote Web to my classes and used our snazzy ‘clickers’ during many of my classes. The students seemed to really like them and whenever they came in and we were not using them, they always asked about them. I will be gathering up feedback from all instructors in a wrap-up meeting on Wednesday, May 31st at 1pm in room 476. Anyone else in the library is welcome to attend. This summer we are testing the waters with two LIB100 sections during Summer II (thanks Susan/Erik and Sharon/Vicki). If they don’t make it, we may not offer them again. I’ll be updating the template class this summer to include the options of group projects, wikis and clickers. A HUGE THANK YOU to all of the instructors who spend endless hours preparing for class and grading assignments and final projects. When you get comments like “I enjoyed every class and left every session with a wealth of new knowledge that I am really glad to have gained.” we know it was worth it! As always, anyone wanting to know more about the class, or who is interested in participating as an instructor, assistant or grader is welcome to come talk to me! Not everyone that works in our classes does the teaching - so if that is not your forte, but you still want to be involved, feel free to come discuss it.