Last week, we read and discussed “Researched Writing” by Rebecca Moore Howard and Sandra Jamieson. This article discussed how the research paper may no longer be the best method to teach research skills. Instead, research projects or portfolio could be used in writing classes to teach the skills on a step-by-step basis. As I read this, I was reminded how integral one-on-one instruction can be especially when teaching material as complicated and individualized as research. I then started to wonder if Universities with MLIS programs could work to engage their graduate students as “research mentors” for entry level composition classes. These “mentors” could then be available to meet with students on a one-on-one basis and walk them through the research process based on the professor’s instruction. While reference librarians can fill this role, freshmen seem hesitant to engage with librarians. The graduate student may be viewed more as a peer as well reducing the intimidation. The mentor could lead the student through early stages of research based on the professor’s assignments then refer the student to reference librarians for finding their own sources and higher level research projects.

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.

What I was expecting: The four of us standing in front of our poster awkwardly and getting no questions from anyone.

What happened: Once we began the session, our colleagues showed up. Once they began talking to us about our poster, more people started approaching us and asking questions. We fielded them as a group, explaining each of the stories that we had on our poster and why we chose to tell them.

We had some very interesting questions that had nothing to do with our poster. A person came up and asked me about storytelling software and if I had any suggestions for a good one. I told her that it was a different kind of storytelling that we were doing in the information literacy classroom, but then suggested that she look at other programs who were doing storytelling projects that may have a better idea of what to use. She then asked questions about the storytelling in the informational classroom which rounded it out nicely.

Everyone who approached loved the look of our poster with the bright green and the avatars. They liked the creativity that went into it and I believe it made the poster more inviting.

One component of instruction that I had not considered was the element of the EN102 professors in our sessions. Through my many observations and my own teaching sessions I was able to observe many professors and how they interacted with the librarians and the material for the library sessions. Here are a few examples. Some of the professors were very involved in the session, interjecting comments into the librarian’s lecture. Other professors were completely indifferent to the sessions and spent their time in the back of the room on a computer, answering email or checking social media. Those professors who landed in the middle between these two groups gave the librarian the lead and seemed to keep half an ear on the session and interjected comments if necessary. The professor that I dealt with for my classes fell into this category. Outside of the sessions she was very interested in what material was going to be covered and how I was going to connect it to the theme of the class. While in the sessions she let me take the lead and only had a few comments. She also requested some online tools be added to blackboard and was very grateful for the content I added on particular databases. Overall she seemed very pleased with the instruction sessions. It was helpful to receive her feedback, and gave me a better understanding of all of the elements that effected my instruction sessions.

Creating  a poster for a conference was a new experience for the semester. Going into the project I had absolutely no idea what a conference poster should look like and what information should be included on it. Therefore, this was great experience for me, and I feel like I really learned a great deal. It was very interesting watching the poster take shape. I feel it truly was a collaborative effort, as we all had particular sections of the poster to contribute to. The poster itself went through several different versions and was improved upon each time.  It was really nice to see that a poster can truly be what you make of it. For example,  a conference poster does not have to be heavily inundated with research and data. When presenting the poster at ALLA, it was a truly enlightening experience. I feel going through this presentation process I really grew as a library professional.

Leading a class for the whole class time, independently, was a new and daunting experience for me. I have some serious anxiety  when it comes speaking  independently in front of large groups. This experience was helpful, in allowing me to combat some of that anxiety. I found that each time I spoke to my classes I gained more confidence, and felt more comfortable.

When planning for my solo sessions I put great thought into my lesson plans. I tried to really connect the lesson to what the students were working on in class at the time. For example,  they were reading a dystopian novel at the time of our first session, so I really researched the main themes of this novel. I tried to work the themes into specific points of the lesson as examples of particular learning goals I had.

Looking at the actual sessions. I feel like all of my classes went well and that my teaching improved with each session. One hiccup I experienced was for my Day 2 classes, there was a snow day the day before, and it was unclear if the university would hold classes the next day. Therefore, I felt slightly at the mercy of the weather, and unsure what the next step would be should the university delay or close.

Overall solo teaching was a great learning experience for me.

I enjoyed creating my asynchronous instruction tool on narrowing a research topic. I took my lesson plan from my day 1 instruction and reviewed it. I then took the slides I had created for that lesson plan and created them in PowToon. I made them more visually attractive since the slides will be a focal point of the tool whereas in the class they were simply a point of reference. After creating the slides, I worked on a script. I typed out a general script and then created a couple of additional slides to ensure the script and slides matched up. I recorded the voiceover one slide at a time. After the voiceover was complete, I was able to add it in PowToon and adjust the timing on the slide so the slides and voiceover would match up. This was an informative exercise to see how to translate an in-person instruction lesson plan to an asynchronous, online tool. I was able to create a tool I am proud of and would use!

Check out an online tool for helping you narrow your research topic: http://www.powtoon.com/show/cmHsdjQJEds/#/

After successfully completing my Day 1 classes, I felt more freedom to get creative with my Day 2 lesson plan. I began by giving a quick overview of what we had learned in the previous class to ensure we were all on the same page. I then did a polling activity to help the students recognize what sources are appropriate in which context. I briefly spoke on popular versus scholarly sources. Based on my experience from Day 1, I tried to ask more questions and keep the class more engaged during this section instead of lecturing at them. I believe further practice would have made that more smooth, but overall it seemed to work. The class was already pretty knowledgable about what is a scholarly source and what is a popular source. The final activity was multi-faceted and gave the students opportunity to work in groups and individually. They all used the same sources and ranked them so they could think about what sources have the most authority and where that comes from. They then worked individually to evaluate the source. After working online, everyone who had picked the same source got together to compare their answers. This gave the students the chance to teach each other and engage with each other instead of me talking at them.We then discussed all the sources as a group. I felt this activity was useful for the students and allowed them to engage with sources and get a better understanding of the context sources exist within and what makes a source credible.

Solo teaching an EN 102 class for day 1 of their library instruction was a great learning experience. I followed the outline used by many other Gorgas librarians and feel I was able to mend these tools and activities to my own teaching style. I do feel that I spent too much time talking for Day 1. If I redid my lesson plan, I would not make many dramatic changes but would work to engage students more instead of talking at them particularly when discussing the research process. Integrating a polling activity into this section of the lesson might have been effective at achieving that goal. I believe the highlight of my Day 1 lesson was a worksheet I created to allow the students to reflect on what they learned and practice it themselves. I created this worksheet in part because I was not sure how I would do with the timing of my lesson plan. I knew this worksheet gave me flexibility; if I finished too quickly the students would have time to go through this worksheet while in class. If I did not have enough time, the worksheet could be given to them as a tool to use individually when starting their worksheet.

One other note, my professor was very hands-on and encouraged his students to participate and made sure they were engaged. This was very helpful as the students look to the professor as he is the one they are familiar with and leads the class daily.