Library Gazette

I figure since we’re about halfway through Teaching Teaching, it might be time for a Gaz update! This semester we’ve taken a different approach. Instead of Roz or me organizing the topics, lectures for each class, and activities, we’re acting as a community of learners. As a group we came up with topics that we wanted to address on the first day of the “class.” Each week several people share on the week’s topic based on their experiences and we have related group discussions based on what we hear.

So far we’ve heard about:

• Facebook, Twitter, and LibGuides as course pages
• Active Learning in One-Shot Sessions
• Incorporating Current Information Issues into Library instruction
• Sakai and POGIL
• A Pedagogical Approach to Teaching information Literacy Skills

(Attendees will be glad to see I’ve finally updated the blog!)

The topic for next Tuesday is “writing objective quiz questions and creating assignments.” So far I’m the only one who has volunteered. Does anyone else have anything they’d like to share on this day? There’s a lot of interest in creating quick and easy to grade assignments, and this is the period set aside to discuss that topic!

Since this semester has been a little bit crazy and folks haven’t always remembered the sessions they wanted to attend, I’ve added each session to the PDC. You can sign up for each “teaching strategy workshop” on our Staff Development page. This way you’ll get a reminder for the session in advance. Of course, if there’s something you’re interested in and you don’t sign up, don’t worry about it! Come on along anyway!

See you next Tuesday at 9am!

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!

Yesterday the Teaching and Learning Center hosted it’s annual Teaching and Learning Fair. The library had a booth, and as the library liaison, I chatted with attendees about some of the interesting and innovative ways that library staff teach their classes. Here are the slides that I used on the poster:

Many visitors were really interested in using blogs, wikis, google docs, or podcasting in their classes. In those cases, I made sure they had the information they needed in case they want to use the library hosted blogs/wikis/podcasts in their own classes.

The fair was a great opportunity to share what we’re doing, and talk up some of the tools and services we offer. Hopefully, we’ll see an increase in interest in some of these tools as a result of the fair. And if your faculty want to incorporate blogs, wikis, or podcasts, please let them know that we’re here to help!

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

After midwinter, I came back to a busy week of teaching. But the presentation that I was focused on the most was for the Teaching and Learning Center. It was the first presentation that I have done with them, and we had 27 people signed up to attend! The group was fairly chatty, so instead of a presentation I facilitated a discussion. In case anyone is interested, here are the materials I created for the session:

The presentation:

And here’s the (non-copyrighted part) of the handout:

View Syllabus Handout on Scribd

It was a fun time, and a nice opportunity to collaborate with the TLC. If you have syllabi questions, please let me know!

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!