Teaching Strategies

After 2 semesters of weekly meetings, we are taking a break from Teaching Teaching. We’ll offer a few teaching workshops over the next few months, and when there is interest, energy, and time, we’ll offer another series of workshops again. Please be sure to let us know if you’re interested!!

For the new instructors, Roz is running a series of workshops introducing the LIB100 curriculum. If you’re interested in seeing the work she’s doing there, you can find it in her LibGuide.

Susan, embedded in Deep South course and co-wrote chapter on embeddedness

• also discussed virtual-only embedded in course
• allows to lurk and jump in to conversation
• teach online
• can hold physical or virtual office hours
• must have to have professor on board
• another example of embedded librarianship is the business center
• could also develop a first year seminar and reach out to faculty
• embeddedness as more useful to students than BI
• can include technology support/innovation as well as and reference

Megan, embedded in History of the Book course

• liaison to the subject area, also provides information about the special collection
• dependent on professor (history of book)
• professor designed course assignment and then librarian came; it could be better if involved earlier in the process
• the course has developed over time; librarian is more and more involved
• is a lot like co-teaching
• students knew who she was and asked questions once the semester was over
• the big question: how get on the syllabus
• librarian and professor have different roles: professor has more subject knowledge, more teaching

Kate, embedded in legal research and writing

• is extreme version
• run own classes
• law librarians also have subject knowledge
• work some in course management system
• law review, work closely with students to find citation

Kaeley and Sharon, embedded in graduate religion course

• sat in on all sessions
• taught 1/2 senior project class (5 sessions)
• looked through syllabus, reordered
• introduce other database than atla
• next spring students will be writing, maybe librarians involved?
• students had to write bibliography and extended outline
• in leiu of lib100, 2 hour classes
• would love to do this in first year of program

Sarah: has folder in a few science BlackBoard courses; puts LibGuide in them

Ellen M: perhaps, by getting on subcommittees can connect with faculty and let them know of services

Carolyn: can ask about sit in on classes in order to learn about program and how fit in

Getting quiet students to participate in discussion

• homework ahead of time
• pair work
• calling them by name
• iphone app to call on random students
• grading each statement
• asking the right question
• Craig’s hands on project, so their project is very different from other classes
• Kaeley’s BI that started with just conversations with students, asked what they want to know about the library, and ended up covering most of what Kaeley had planned

Even if you miss a little something, they won’t remember enough to know. Most recall basic information.

Pros and Cons of having professor in the room

• can feel safer, like they’ll do disciplinary stuff
• but can’t do everything you’d think of

Q: When is a good place to stop facebooking, etc?
A: When it’s distracting to others in the class; also, it’s good to be upfront about your own behavior.

• Intentional conversations before class with students to help them learn about you and see commonalities can help conversations.
• Having a sense of humor and being honest when it’s not as exciting makes students more comfortable

Q: How does the fuzziest point work?
A: Have the students let you know what they’re most confused about at the end of class. They can do this on paper or by email.

What to do with students who are disciplinary problems or won’t turn in assignments?

• put in syllabus that assignments a week late will get a zero
• keep paper trail, though might not be able to speak with parents because of FERPA

Learning Disabilities

• could put a sentence in syllabus about the office
• would get a letter from the main LD office

Late students

• Once, might ignore
• Follow up, see if there’s a reason
• Will ask people to leave if they come too late (one person in law school)
• Quizzing to keep students in class on time

Anything unusual

• will talk to student one-on-one and ask if everything is okay, let them volunteer information. If not fixed, more serious conversation.

Perry’s developmental model

• how they act in class
• behavior changes

faculty ethics on facebook

Erik on his Dissertation Research

• Big six s literacy standards
• Shapiro Hughs’ Information Literacy as a Liberal Art
• The model you adopt shows how to approach information literacy skills
• Cognitive process matrix diagram (very useful! See Erik for it!)
• Start with procedural and move to critical thinking (al la Bloom’s Taxonomy)
• Bloom’s helps you see where to fit critical thinking in
• Structured data: Google Labels and how Google works

Ellen M. on Standards from ALA

• Standards for the 21st Century Learner
• Comes from School Librarians, but very useful

Bobbie on Evaluating Web Resources

• Evaluating web resources exercise on our website (or Google “critical thinking for web”: there are many university sites)
• In 50 minute class
• Evaluation exercise with checklist
• Do this individually and then share in group
• Book: Cultivating Judgment by John Nelson includes activities compiled by subject area
• Give students a question and have them use three search engines. Compare across the three.
• There are also books in reference with activities

Giz demoed Sakai

• Discussed the move to Sakai
• Faculty discussed moving to Sakai at the last faculty meeting

Erik discussed POGIL

• Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning Guided Inquiry is guided inquiry and Constructivism (context is everything) Think: student created knowledge
• POGIL classrooms look like: Group based (3-4 people) students take on roles Presenter, note taker, leader, etc. (six roles, sometimes students take multiple roles) Class time primarily activity based with quizzes.
• Three stages of learning, explore, formulate theory, apply critical thinking, tie in to blooms taxonomy
• Pedagogical theory: student created knowledge, meta-literacy skills, group dynamics
• Some criticisms: cover less content, not expert focused
• Positive comments: student ownership, context/organization to knowledge acquisitions

Erik on Google Books

• Blog post in Gaz on Google Books timeline

Google Books Settlement page

ZSR Library blog entries discussing the settlement

Timeline of developments on Cnet

The EU perspective on Google Books

NyTimes coverage

Editorial by Sergey Brin

• Maybe take the last three and compare
• Easy to incorporate current issues by doing research on web on really current topic
• This gives librarians a good opportunity to discuss evaluation and criticism
• Both the topic and the exercise allows to talk about what it means that it becomes digital and copyright
• Could have people search on both VuFind or Classic or Google Books and share results

Giz & Mary Scanlon on Net Neutrality

• There were 4 Rules of Net Neutrality

1. Accessing content.
2. Using applications.
3. Attaching personal devices.
4. Obtaining service plan information.

• The FCC Chairman added 2 new rules

5. New rule: Non-discrimination.
6. New rule: Transparency.

• Discussion of AT&T gadget that you can get for an additional $20 a month to improve cell phone signal in your house.

Roz on using Newspapers

• Lib 210 and Lib100
• We also discussed Current.tv as a new model
• Plaigarism & quoting wikipeida
• Interesting question: how does a new story change as others report it?
• Interesting question: how do people see corrections if they just do searches?

Kaeley on incorporating these issues into classes

• How do you frame a class?
• Do you tell them its important? Or do you let them read and decide?
• Could do interviews: parents, professors, W-S Journal
• Choose information related research topic

Kate on still incorporating library skills

• Law: the challenge is to show that the tools for the past 200 years still have value (such as controlled vocabulary)
• Activity: split class into two groups–one for books and one for online.
• Books had to use controlled vocabulary, but internet did not (they could, but didn’t realize that)
• Books ran into a few problems like books not being on the shelf. However they found relevant information. The internet group found books with the right keywords, but nothing legally relevant.
• Showed the group the benefit of using print
• Online it’s harder to see the connect (it’s not as intuitive)
• Books make the hierarchy and organization very clear and easy to use
• She could then who how to use print like tools online
• Help students see they’re searching the abstract rather than the full text
• Level of subject heading is so broad
• Discussion of how this applies to other subjects. For example, in Eric, you’d get very different results from “teenagers” rather than “adolescents” or from “mathematics” rather than “math.” Helps students learn value of thesaurus.
• Could do something similar with Google News or Finance vs. Business Source Complete
• Could do something similar with advanced Google searching limited to .com vs. .edu
• Could compare the first five hits from Google vs. Google Scholar
• Discussion of how important search is, made more evident by the Netflix Challenge winners.

Roz on her Junk Science BI

• Uses the Wellness blog at Time Magazine
• Found an article on body image
• Had students read and summarize
• She knew the cited study in it was Open Access, so as long as they got to it through Google Scholar, the students could read the full text
• She then gave them an article from Time and the journal article it cited.
• Had the students look at how they’d find the article, showed how using the database page gives you more information, talked through reading the article
• She specifically picked an article with wrong information to get the students’ interest
• She talked less, but students didn’t talk much either

Database discussion

• When teaching databases, it can be a good strategy to use Academic Search Premier: many can access at the same time and it has the same look and rules as any Ebsco database
• If you want to use a database with a limited number of users, can have small groups go in together
• Another option is to have half the class try one database then the other half try the other. Then they can compare the two and coach each other
• Could have several groups, each group specializes in one, then rotate around to share with each other
• When doing group comparisons, it’s good to leave time at the end for reporting
• For education students, you can have students write down what they like and don’t like about their education. Then they can use Eric to find what research can be done based on this life experience.
• Giz suggested using a model like he uses when teaching Google: 5-10 minute presentation, time for people to play and experiment, 20 minute presentations at the end

Teaching the One-Shot Class

• Could have several groups based around resources (catalog, encyclopedia, database, etc), become expert, switch groups and share
• I talked about my worksheets for LIB100 and how I adapted it for a BI session
• Discussed how to tie into international studies
• Could base a whole class around CQ Researcher: pros/cons, who are the people, what are the organization, how to use the bibliography
• Using pop culture references like fantasy football or zombies
• Get assignment from professor, leave 20 minutes at the end so they can work on it while the librarian is there
• Scheduling is critical. A BI at the beginning of the semester looks very different from one just before the paper is due.

Giz on Facebook

• He’s working with four classes that are using Fan pages to share information/host class discussions/etc
• Good idea to use consistent naming principles to make it easier to locate the course pages
• Students have to become a fan to have the information show up in their feeds
• Professors have to have an understanding of how Fan pages work, how people use them, and be willing to experiment with the pages
• You can get a lot of good statistics from the Fan pages
• Professors add the announcements to the Fan pages
• Students reply to professor posts; this has a benefit over being in a blog, because students are already there
• There is a 430 character limit in the initial post; 840 character limit in replies

Giz on LibGuides

• Pulls together Blackboard, Facebook, Zotero links into one places
• Typical introduction to LibGuides in class
• Uses How To Blog for Zotero help

Susan on Facebook and Twitter

• Likes Facebook because you’re starting with the students are and aggregating content into one place for them
• Started using LibGuides in her class, but moved away from that
• All communication happens through Facebook now, except grades
• Email + Fan page was to confusing. All in Fan page.
• Started using Facebook group with wiki application, but then the application disappeared
• Led to a fragmented approach: students start in Facebook, move to LibGuides
• This last course used groups but simplified, kept discussions in Facebook
• There is a comparison page for groups vs. pages; for example, groups can be closed
• The South Course used Facebook pages because they needed to include video, images, discussion, and Twitter
• Can embed HTML in markup language boxes and can choose to put in box on left side or under its own tab (using FBML)
• The Twitter experiment didn’t work as well as they hoped. People didn’t have a way to read the others’ messages until they had access to a computer with internet again. So, it was all on-way communication.
• If you use Flickr in a page, you can use the MyFlickr app. However, you can only add one per account, so if it’s on your page and profile, the same pictures will show up on both.
• MyCalendar lets you add a Google Calendar. The South Course used this in lieu of a map this year. Locations were listed on the calendar entries.
• Susan and Erik played with a lot of apps to potentially use them in the course, but settled on about five.
• The video upload worked great, but the clips had to be 20 minutes or less
• Students felt okay about the Fan page because it wasn’t tied to their personal pages.
• Six of nineteen students took a survey at the end. All six liked the use of Facebook, but also felt that the video was invasive and they couldn’t be as open as they wanted
• Will leave up until the page goes away naturally. Tried to archive with Archive It, but haven’t dont that yet.

Other notes

• Could have a Fan page for library research
• Facebook could be a portal to BI sessions or subject specific work
• Should look into embedding Toolkit videos into Facebook pages
• Have to invest in using Facebook to make it work for you
• You can get very good stats out of Facebook

Carolyn on Google Docs

• Using Google Docs for group work
• Each Google Doc has 2-3 components, each group member picks 1
• Carolyn and Bobbie put comments in the Documents, but not grades
• This allows students to correct their work
• ZoHo was recommended as an alternative to Google Docs

We’re in the midst of round two of teaching teaching! I have worked up the schedule, and posted it in the side bar. I have paper notes from the first session that I’ll convert to a blog post very soon. I also will rework the tags/categories to still have meaning for this second round. Here we go!

When Roz and I talked about how to organize this semester’s teaching class, we decided to do it a bit differently. Instead of Roz or me organizing each session and lecturing for a while, we thought we’d shift the center of the discussion to the participants.

Each session of this semester’s teaching teaching will be focused around a topic, with 3-5 folks speaking about how they achieve this work in their own classes. Hopefully this will create a good environment for discussion and the participants will be more of a learning community rather than a class of people listening to the “teacher.”

If folks are interested in doing this again, and are interested in returning to a teacher-centered model in the fall, we can certainly do that in the future. At the very least it will be nice to break things up a bit between now and then.

So, in order to make this happen, on the first day I facilitated a list making exercise. In this session we brainstormed a list of all the specific things people are interested in learning and sharing, and I took the list afterwards to see if some topics made sense to group together and how to fit it all into the semester.

Since we’re meeting Tuesdays at 9am, some people won’t be able to attend all the sessions due to BI sessions, LIB100, or evening shifts. I got a list of days people can’t attend and topics those people were most interested in so that I could make a schedule that would allow everyone to attend every session they were most interested in. Hopefully we have a schedule that works for everyone!