Sara, Claire, Paige, and I were able to attend the ALLA conference at the Grand Hotel in early April. We presented a poster about how storytelling has helped us in our library instruction based on the article “How Do They Conduct Class” by Ken Bain. In the poster, I included a story I used during Day 2 of my instruction. I was doing a polling exercise to have the students select a source for different scenarios. One scenario was based on an experience I had with my father. He decided to become a vegetarian about many years of being an enthusiastic grill master. I integrated this to ask the students what type of source they would send to their own parent considering a switch to a vegetarian diet. Many selected articles from medical journals, and I used my own father to explain that someone without medical expertise may not be able to understand these journals. Additionally. the articles are very long, so my very busy father would not have taken the time to read the article. Instead, a newspaper article or even a youtube video may have been better options.
Being able to present a poster at a conference was a great experience. This was my first library conference, and I appreciated the opportunity. We had many fellow conference goers express interest in our poster and ask interesting questions! While I was only able to attend our poster session due to my class schedule, it gave me a good idea of what to expect at future conferences. Furthermore, this opportunity gave me confidence to create my own poster presentation at some point in the next couple of years.
Sounds like you got everything that I’d hoped out of the experience! I’m so glad you were able to come down and present with us. You did a fantastic job this semester!