I recently had the opportunity to be a part of a library tour and instruction session for the Rural Minority Scholars program at the University of Alabama. I took a group of 3 recent high school graduates enrolled in the program on a tour of Gorgas Library. We went to different floors of the library and I pointed out important things of interest. The students were very interactive and enjoyed searching for things listed on a worksheet given to them at the start of the tour. I thought the worksheet was a good idea to keep them involved in the tour as well as giving them something to take home that had useful information about the library on it. They were particularly interested in certain areas of the library, including the Sanford Media Center and the Williams Collection. Before beginning the tour, I thought that the students might be so preoccupied with finding the answers for the worksheet that they would miss the overall experience, but this was not the case. I enjoyed that they asked questions prompting discussion, and I felt the library tour was overall a good experience for them as well as for me.

After the library tour, there was a discussion where the students shared what they had seen on their tour, followed by an instruction session assisting the students with writing their upcoming research papers. The topics of their research papers were health related, so the instructor shared resources specific to that field. I felt this was helpful for the students to be knowledgeable of resources that are discipline-specific to their program. The instructor even created a LibGuide page for the class with links to these resources to make it easy for the students to find. With technology advancing like it is, it is important for the instruction librarian to utilize these technological tools such as LibGuides to enhance their instruction. The instructor also showed the students how to look up on the library’s website where certain software is available on campus. I felt this was important because many students are not even aware of many tools and resources available to them through the university. During the session, the instructor also asked the students the topics of their research papers and used those as examples when demonstrating how to search the databases and other resources. I felt this was beneficial for the students to be able to see firsthand how to use these tools as well as keeping them involved in the discussion.

Overall, this opportunity was a great learning experience for me. I really enjoyed interacting with the students and answering their questions, as well as getting to see library instruction firsthand. I noticed how important it is for the instruction librarian when presenting the necessary tools and resources to pay close attention to the needs of the students you are instructing and plan your lesson accordingly. This enables students to get as much out of the experience as possible.

Jennifer

In the past week, I have finished teaching all of my sessions and have begun to focus exclusively on collection development for the history department with Brett Spencer. Finishing classes was a great relief, to be honest. I am getting really busy with schoolwork, and the anxiety I feel when I teach only adds to that stress. Teaching, for me, was a really valuable experience, and I learned a lot about myself. I am so grateful that I was given this opportunity, and I know how valuable it will be for me in the future.

I also learned through this process that I really enjoy collection development. Analyzing the history department, creating a conspectus and buying books has been really rewarding and fun. Brett is an excellent teacher, and I have been learning so much about which presses are more reputable than others, how to make sure I don’t buy items we already have in the library, and how to make judgment calls about books in general. In performing collection development duties, I have actually learned that my duties as an assistant to a private library creator were actually very similar to collection development, and so I found that I already had learned some of the skills required of a collection development position. This revelation should seem intuitive–after all, we were building collections–but sometimes it is hard to notice these connections or applications. After all, we were just buying books online and putting together collections for clients at Kinsey Marable & Co. How could that ever translate to buying books online and putting together collections in an academic library?

Yesterday I finished my final teaching session of the semester. True to form, I was teaching the database Opposing Viewpoints in Context and the database would not function. I tried and tried and tried, but apparently the Alabama Virtual Library, the carrier of OVIC, was experiencing technical difficulties. So, my entire lesson was useless and I had to improvise a lesson on the fly. Luckily I had planned to talk briefly about Academic Search Premier and my class was only eight students, so it wasn’t a huge deal and I think the students still benefited from the lesson. The class was comprised of three male freshmen students and five female freshmen students. The women in the classroom were very attentive and tried hard to implement my lessons in their searches. The men very stereotypically looked for the lowest prices on GNC protein powder. What was encouraging, though, was that by the end of the lesson everyone, including the men, were looking for sources for their topics. I was able to individually help everyone search, and in fact one of the protein powder guys had a very smart and fresh take on subject headings, keywords and searching in general. While I was explaining the process to him, he said, “oh, like tags.” What he meant was, keywords and subject headings are like tagging photos on facebook. I found that really encouraging because I think its a great metaphor. I never thought that this student who at the start of class couldn’t pay attention would actually teach me something by the end. This is one of the great aspects of instruction, and it is moments like these that keep instructors coming back to the classroom.

This week I read “Standards and Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators: A Practical Guide.” What struck me about this reading was the common themes that keep popping up in this reading: “collaborating,” “mentoring,” “improving,” “sharing,” and so forth. These standards clearly emphasize instruction librarians’ roles as supporters of one another. These standards emphasize instruction coordinators’ roles as mentors, as supporters of those librarians below them. These standards are really encouraging, and it’s really great to see how they are put into place in our environment. As members of the Jedi Council, we are there each week to discuss our struggles, our successes, and how we might improve upon our teaching. Brett and Sarah both do a wonderful job of motivating and encouraging us, and we, as interns and assistants, have the benefit of seeing how good instruction coordinators and librarians function.

Well, it is all pretty fun to me, even when I am dying (no comments, no laughter, no answers, no questions), as I know that most anything in the classroom can be turn around and headed in the right direction in a heartbeat.

My latest, favorite image is “How is a library like a drinking fountain?”  My thought process related to this image is that water must (in these lucky United States) go through an exhaustive process of collection, filtration, purification, sanitization, and finally, safe delivery before it ever reaches your favorite water fountain.  That is, in this country, we can approach a water fountain and be pretty doggone confident that we are going to get a cool, clear, pure drink.

Relating this process to the selection  and “purification” process that goes on concerning information in a modern library is an easy leap.  Students immediately say “it’s free” (if they only knew!!!), “you can drink all you want”, or “it’s pure”.  You can extend this image and process as far as you like, given cooperative students (the final, best gift).  I was and am thinking about no specific pedagogical method, tho analogy and imagery have long and dependable histories in teaching critical thinking skills.  Asking anyone how x is similar to y always requires a thinking process on the part of the student, and that is active learning and participation.  Simple.  No props, no whiz bang, just get the brains in gear.

I admire and envy folks who have great (and hip) teaching ideas and tools.  My brain sticks to the facts, and that is great when the facts are needed.  I need to branch out, and rubbing shoulders with this crowd, it is bound to happen.

All good things, gisssteve

Early in my session 2’s, I had a moment where I came up with a new analogy for the publication process to help students understand why a resource should be trusted, and why we rely on peer review. My analogy begins with a discussion of what WebMD diagnoses you with when you give it your symptoms, even if it’s a rash and the sniffles, which most of the time is cancer. In contrast, if you go to the doctor and tell him the same symptoms, he’s probably going to tell you that you have allergies. The next portion of this analogy was to discuss why you trust a doctor more than WebMD, including the doctor’s lengthy education and the accountability of licensing, which then segued into how that resembles peer review. The first time I used this analogy, I saw how the classes came to understand why they trusted sources, and I ended up with lots of laughter and a really great discussion.

The comments from my supervisor and peer were both encouraging. They liked the simplicity of the analogy and they found it easy to understand. I enjoyed getting the positive feedback, and hope to do this with other activities.

My favorite classroom moment came in session two. I gave out three different sources to the class, all regarding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. One source was scholarly, one was popular, and one was a webpage from BP itself. I also gave out a form worksheet, and this worksheet’s purpose was to get the students to figure out who wrote the article, whether or not it was scholarly or popular, and whether or not this article was reliable and relevant to the sample thesis provided at the top of the worksheet. After 5-10 minutes, we first discussed the BP official statement webpage. This is where my favorite classroom moment occurred. When I asked whether or not the students would use this source for this thesis, two students simultaneously said ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ I asked these students to explain their positions. The ‘no’ student listed bias as their reason. As I was about to say maybe we would use this source to explain BP’s official position but not as a reliable source for factual information, a student who did not even have this source for the activity took the words out of my mouth.

I really appreciated this moment because I think student involvement is most important in the classroom, and I was so excited to hear these students participate the way they did.

Naturally, this was a hard moment to recreate in our meeting because the moment was all about how the students responded and what arguments they responded with. However, it was really great because I didn’t tell Brett or Kristen what to say, and they also said ‘no’ when I asked if they would use this source. I think it is important for us to remember the context in which sources are appropriate, and I feel that this activity addressed the context problem effectively on top of the sort of standard source evaluation it was geared toward.

Well, I so seldom do things right, that this is really a treat for me. Apparently, I have been doing things ok and not necessarily knowing it. The unknown author begins by letting us know that metacognition is “thinking about one’s own thinking” and frankly, I have been thinking about my own thinking processes all my life. Mostly, my thoughts are doubts about my process, in general. That is, so much of what I feel is absolute bare logic seems to meet the world somewhere between “you gotta be kidding me” and “that’s not how things work.”

All this relates to information literacy being characterized as metacognition, in that the info seekers are required to think about their search and evaluation skills—and how to use them. Cool. So all this reflecting I have been doing upon my inadequacies has served a purpose, and maybe my questioning not only of students but of myself has been functional and fits this model of getting feedback from learners and teacher-learners (including yourself) at the same time. That is, the evaluative voice in my head never shuts up. Before I run around in any more circles, let me move on.

The horror always is that the learners are not getting what they need, and the two-part reflection about what worked and what did not work make perfect sense. The third part of this reflection, I think, should be modified to “did the learners achieve their goals?” Not to quibble. And yes, never throw anything away, are you crazy? Just re-name and date your files so you can trace not only evolution but get back to something that you will not be able to re-do in time, when next appropriate.

And, I always start with questions. I want to get folks involved and the fastest way to do that is ask questions, right off the bat. Nobody gets to sit back and hover under the radar.  [My tip for the week: folks who do speak up in class quite often do so hesitantly.  If the instructor says, out loud, “I don’t hear well, so please speak up,” students will be encouraged to actually sing out, and then the instructor is not caught editing or paraphrasing student input.  This is a real plus, in my opinion.]

We gots lots to do. Get involved. Contribute. Give me feedback. Allow me to assist. Ask me your questions; when you trip me up, make me think, make me explain, I am learning something, and I thank you.

While I thought that “Standards for Libraries in Higher Education” was a bit of a dry read, I think it is really important that we have standards to apply to our performance. We need to be critical of ourselves, and of our performances. It is important that we uphold standards of performances; otherwise we get sloppy.

Another reason I thought this article to be important is that these sorts of standards will be applied when we (hopefully) find employment after graduation. We need to understand and be used to having these sorts of standards applied to our performance as instructors.

However, I am still wary of rigorous standards such as these. If not implemented the right way, these standards seem like they could become stifling of creativity. I would hope that a good institution would hold its staff to standards and push them to be better teachers, but still allow them the space to create and experiment within the classroom.

Last week I co-taught a class with Mark and solo-taught three classes. It was my second big week of teaching, and it certainly brought out all of my anxiety. It was actually kind of interesting because last Tuesday I was expecting to co-teach a class and solo-teach a class with Mark Robison, but our classes did not show up and instead another instructor showed up with a class to the same classroom without a librarian to instruct them. Mark and I waited to be sure that our class was not going to make it, and then we started teaching this class that had shown up without an instruction librarian. Our topic wasn’t exactly built for their class, but the principles were the same. It was a valuable lesson in how you sometimes have to improvise when you are an instructor.

On Thursday I solo-taught for the first time. It was an extremely stressful situation, one I was entirely unfamiliar with. It took a lot of coaching and reassuring words from Sarah Whitver and Brett Spencer to calm me down, and I then taught the class with surprising success. I thought the session went fairly well, and I was composed throughout. It helped that the teacher for this class, Erica Meyers, has a great report with her students and knows how to keep them in line.

On Friday, I experienced mixed results with the two sessions I taught. While I again felt composed in front of the classes, I also felt I needed to get through my material a little more quickly, as we only had 50 minutes to work with. Unfortunately I ended up rushing things a bit too much, leaving far too much time at the end of the classes for individual searching. This usually isn’t so bad, as I get a chance to help students one-on-one with their search processes (and I was still able to do that during these sessions). The problem was that it was Friday, so the students were naturally distracted, and they had already been assigned to find sources for their class, so some students felt they no longer needed to be there. Furthermore, their regular instructor was not there either, and they were instead brought in by a TA. These factors all led to some students feeling like it was ok for them to leave early, and being very new to instruction, I wasn’t sure what to say to these students. After all, it was my fault for finishing the instruction portion so early.

All-in-all, I am happy that last week happened and that it is over. It was a stressful time, but it also taught me a lot about myself and about instruction. Hopefully when i instruct my final two classes in April, I will feel even more comfortable in front of a classroom.