We want to send a HUGE thank you to listener, Megan Ondricek, for volunteering to help us catch up and create transcripts for our past episodes (starting with episode 9 below) and provide this important resource to our community! Amanda: Welcome to episode ten of the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching podcast! I’m Amanda. Jessica: And I’m Jessica. Amanda: And on today's episode, we are talking to the authors of the new book, “How to Thrive as a Library Professional,” Susanne Markgren and Linda Miles. Their book covers topics that range from determining a career vision and cultivating relationships to using narrative to make connections and employing mindfulness, compassion, and self forgiveness. This book will help librarians at all stages of their careers to take charge and forge their own way in the vast and shifting landscapes of information science. A little bit about our guests: Susanne is the Assistant Director of the Library for Technical Services at Manhattan College, in Riverdale, NY. She has worked in libraries for more than twenty years, and has written articles, book reviews, essays, and chapters for a variety of publications. She is the co-author of two books: “Career Q&A: A Librarian’s Real-Life, Practical Guide to Managing a Successful Career,” and “How to Thrive as a Library Professional: Achieving Satisfaction and Success.” She received her MLIS from the University of Texas at Austin, and her MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville College. Linda Miles is the Assistant Professor, Open Educational Resources Librarian, and Liaison Librarian to the faculty of Early Childhood Education and the Visual and Performing Arts at Hostos Community College – City University of New York. Linda has been very active in the library community in NYC for some time, and currently serves as the co-chair of the ACRL/NY chapter’s New Librarians’ Discussion group and a co-convener for the Metropolitan New York Library Council’s Reference and Instruction Meetup. She researches, writes, and presents about students’ reading- and college-readiness, game design for media literacy instruction, and librarians’ career development. Jessica: So welcome to you both! Thank you so much for coming to talk to us today. Linda: Well thank you for having us! Susanne: Thank you so much for having us. This is so fun! Jessica: [chuckles] Well as soon as we saw the title and the description of the book we knew we wanted to have you on to talk about the book and how it can be a part of reflecting on our careers and the work that we do. So, the name of the book starts with how to thrive so we wanted to ask you, What does thriving mean to both of you? Linda: Well, it's a great question. I think that thriving is really a combination of two things: success and satisfaction. It’s really both about accomplishing good work and also feeling good about it. Um, it feeds on itself too, it adds up, it's cumulative. For success, sort of, success can be almost anything, and it's different for different people. It's whatever you need it to be at a given moment, and it certainly changes over time, even for an individual, and it changes with context. In the book our focus is really on this sort of steady and deliberate and creative approach to building a career over time. So success in that sense is kind of a journey, there's a, there's a, time dimension to it. You start from establishing a vision of where you're headed, and then as you progress in your career you recognize milestones that you reach along the way. And I think everyone interprets success differently and celebrates it differently as well. And it's also important to understand that success is never something you achieve and then that's it. It's never one and done, and it requires some maintenance, some care along the way. Susanne: Yeah, absolutely. And, in full disclosure, the word “thrive” was kind of, um, picked for us from our publisher and our editor, which often happens when you write a book. But we, we, we’ve grown to kind of love it so, you know, it's kind of a catch-word, a keyword, but also just to talk about the word, you know, “satisfaction” also. And the title, similar to success, it's, it's really defined individually. And it's an affective experience. And, you know, speaking from our own personal experiences, it comes from a combination of feelings, really. So feelings, um, like what we do is helping in some way, which is really important. Whether it's helping the patron, the organization, the world, you know, just feeling connected with colleagues, feeling competent and supported by our own organizations and optimistic about what's coming next is kind of a big thing. And also feeling excitement at the next challenge, rather than feeling stressed or fearful or overwhelmed, which is often the case. Linda: I was just gonna say so, it does, it adds that layer of the affective, the way you feel about your career to the actual nuts and bolts of getting the work done. Jessica: Right, yeah, exactly. I think that was something that I never reflected on when I started in my career. I think I always just had that idea of the very external-based idea of success, you know, write papers, or present at conferences, get promotions, but did I even really want those things? I don't think I ever reflected on that, and it took me, you know, into my 30s to really figure out what success looked like and that it was okay for it to change. So I think that the, those are very important points, especially for someone who's new joining the field or new to their career so I think that's a great way to define that. Susanne: Yeah, I think it's very true and I've, you know, I've held many different types of jobs throughout my long career, and it's different, wherever you go and you have to define that yourself, and you have to grow from the next, you know, job to the next job, and it's it's great, you know, I think that's, that's the whole point like we, we learn and we grow and our success and satisfaction changes depending on what we do and what we want to do, and it has to be internal I mean it's external obviously, as well, but it has to be also internal. Amanda: Yeah definitely, I can definitely agree with that. Um, you know I've been at one place for pretty much all of my library career - it's been over 10 years - and I've held different positions in this, you know, in this college, at Berkeley. But the success definitely changed as my roles evolved. And I think success internally has gotten a lot harder for me as my responsibility and my roles have increased and changed and broadened so it's definitely, success is definitely different for me now, for sure, than when I first started. [7:44] Amanda: So another question we have for you guys is, you know, the library world is small, in ways. So that can you know be a positive and a negative for building relationships. Based on your research, what are some tips you recommend for librarians at any stage, to develop, you know, those networking skills within and outside their job environments. Susanne: Okay, this is great, like, this is huge for us so we're all about building relationships and networking and it’s how Linda and I met, but this is like so crucial and important to our career successes and satisfaction so yeah we can talk about some of the research in the chapter that we did, but also just our personal experience of all, you know, along the way doing this building different relationships. But personally, like the people that I've met throughout, you know, from library school through my various jobs to where I am now have been absolutely critical in my entire journey, and that brought me to where I am and, you know, I will say that, I will scream that, you know, at the top of the mountain. And I'm still in contact with so many of these people, and they're so important in my life right now, people that I've known for 20 plus years, you know, past library school classmates, past colleagues, past directors, past mentors, and I still call them, you know, my mentor, I'm still so, um, you know, ingratiated to them it's been fantastic. And so, I can't stress that enough and they've all had an impact so big on my career and I, and I…. That's why I'm so invested in giving back, and I hope that I've impacted other people's careers, and I'm very passionate about mentoring new librarians and people, you know, you know, getting into the field, and I've been a part of the ACRL New York mentoring program I helped to develop that and it's been going strong for about almost 10 years now and I've been the coordinator of that program and it's been fantastic so I, I, really can't stress that enough. Linda: Yeah I would say that mentoring is a really important relationship for me too. Um, we were talking a little bit about, sort of, the emotional satisfaction you get from your work and those relationships are part of that satisfaction and part of why we do what we do. And you're right, you know, some people do find it difficult to even figure out how to do the networking, especially if they're new, in the field. And I think you mentioned, you could be in a very small library or a small organization or maybe you don't have a very supportive network within your organization. So, we would often encourage people to go outside of their institution to get the support that they need. As Suzanne mentioned there are mentoring programs like the one at ACRL New York; joining local associations can be really big. Volunteering for committees, um, really finding people who do the same kind of work you do in a different, in a different context, in a different library, anyone I've ever reached out to to try to make a connection has responded positively and some of those relationships are still going strong as well. [11:20] Susanne: So, in the book, um, was some of the research that we found we talked about different types of relationships. Some of these are, as Linda and I just talked about, uh, mentoring, uh, mentor-mentee relationship but other types of relationships that they talked about are sponsor, friend, colleague, supervisor, and how these different roles are, you know, can be very beneficial at different stages of one's career, and then they can also overlap like it can be, You know, one or two at the same time with different people, um, and they can also be very complex so it's it's good to, kind of, think about the different relationships you have with the different, you know, the people that you work with, and how you can grow these relationships or if they are beneficial to you or if they're not, because sometimes we can be in positions that it's, it's not a healthy relationship with certain colleagues and that's just, you know, we've probably all been in positions like that before, and you just need to realize that and then, you know, you need to maybe step outward and find someone else that you can have a healthy relationship with that will fill that role. So we talk about that, a little bit, in the chapter and we also talk about collaborators and accountability partners, and that's - kind of, defines Linda and I’s relationship very well. [All chuckle] We collaborate on so much and we have, you know, over the years on, you know, the book and presentations and programming, and... Linda: We definitely hold each other accountable! Susanne: ...and we hold each other accountable. So I mean, the biggest tip is just try to surround yourself with as many good people that you can to fill these roles, who can help you, you know, with people that can help you, push you to the next level to help you succeed. [13:21] Amanda: Something that I, I've been, I've been hearing that you're not really saying, but I think, you know, it's worth to point out is that, you know, these types of relationships take maintenance, you have to continue to develop them. And, you know, if you want to stay in touch with people from library school you have to make that effort to keep that relationship alive because it's very easy to like, I don't, I don't have a professional relationship with anybody in library school. But since I started my career, I've maintained the relationships that I've gotten professionally, but not through library school but I think it's so true that the maintenance part of it, it's work, you know you need to sometimes be the one that reaches out and follows up in order to help a relationship grow. Linda: You’re - that’s exactly right and, what can be frustrating for some people is that they'll see that it doesn't seem quite as effortful for when others are doing it so some people get discouraged because they feel like they're the only ones who find it difficult, but it really is a task on everybody's to-do list, you know, whether they're explicit about it or not, whether they put in place systems to know, “Oh I need to...I know I need to reach out to so and so every six weeks so let me put that on my calendar.” I mean there are things you can do to hold yourself accountable as well. But you're absolutely right. It takes effort to maintain. Susanne: Yeah, I agree, it does and you just have to put yourself out there and just do it, just reach out to people, and I'll get together maybe once a year with an old, like, old, old, old director of mine who I consider a mentor. And she's like, “Let's get together for lunch,” and we’ve maintained that, so yeah. Jessica: And I think if we all talk about it as a community and realize that this is how these professional relationships work it makes people more confident to feel like, “okay I can reach out now that it's - even though it's been a year,” um, maybe give people a little confidence to reach out, because we all understand that that's just how this maintenance process works. Susanne: Absolutely, yeah. And we're all busy individuals and, you know that, so just, yeah, to have that kind of awareness and be like, “You know what, whenever you need, just reach out and we'll get together.” Jessica: Yeah, exactly. Great. So, one of your other chapters is on um, habits. So Amanda and I have always been big fans of being self reflective on our habits and doing things in ways that are most productive to achieve our goals. So what are some of the habit pitfalls that people may fall into when trying to develop new habits? Susanne: Great question! This is...and, and in all honesty this is probably one of the hardest chapters to, to really write, and to think about, and to reflect on, because habits are hard. And Linda and I agree, like it's, it's, it's really, there are a lot of pitfalls. So, you know we tried to cram a lot into this chapter of different ideas for different people because everyone has different, different ways to deal with this. So, um, and, and habits can change and we know that as people's jobs change and routines change, but it's, it's kind of just paying attention to the different habits that we have currently. And then trying to think about, um, are these healthy habits like right now in my, in my current life or my current work environment, and can I develop better ones that are maybe going to work better for me, and better for my routine right now. So, it is…it's tricky, we totally get that. But that's, I mean, that's kind of the point of reflection and reflection is like a, you know, we've said this before, reflection is as our final chapter in the book but it really covers all of the chapters, we've talked about reflecting on all of the things, and all the chapters, and it's just reflection habits work really well together because we have to kind of reflect on what our current habits are and if they're working for us, and try to develop new ones, and develop good routines that are going to help us be successful. [17:50] Linda: Yeah. So on the one hand one of the reasons that you want to develop habits, right, is to make certain things a little bit automatic, so that you don't have to think about them so much and you can divert that energy to other things that may be more important or that you may have to be more present for. But, pausing for the reflection, kind of is, um, it’s a little ironic, right? You want to not pay attention to these things, but now we're saying, “Wait, hit the pause button, let's pay attention to this for a minute and see what's really happening.” And, and how our habits, and our work routines are operating. And then there's another potential pitfall that in my mind is a little bit the opposite of that, and that’s that some people, myself included, tend to fetishize new techniques that come out for organization or time management. And I kind of get into this endless cycle of trying out new approaches. I like to call it the “New Year's Eve resolutions syndrome” or something. Every semester I need to try out some new thing, a new way to stay organized and on top of things. One semester it was, you know, that “getting things done” GTD system from David Allen. One semester it was bullet journaling. And then when it kicks in and it takes some effort to learn that new system and maintain it, then, you know, it just becomes too much, and my resolve just sort of fades away. So this is a problem that I recognize in myself and I think it's a big pitfall when it comes to these um, productivity habits. And I haven't completely solved the problem, I'm just really attracted to new ways of thinking about becoming organized, but I think there's two concepts that helped me manage this a little bit. I stopped beating myself up when I quote-unquote, “fail” in this way, because that just paralyzes me further, and I give myself permission to modify whichever model I’m trying in the current semester in order to customize it to my needs and I think recognizing the fact that these out-of-the-box systems that worked for so-and-so or so-and-so aren't necessarily gonna work for me, without that customization. And again, taking a reflective approach helps me, sort of, understand myself - how I work best and what might work best for me. And, um, with habits as with - I don't know, I would say maybe with a lot of things - adaptability and flexibility are really important. So if the thing that I say I'm going to do on New Year’s Eve I end up not wanting to do anymore after January 15, I can grow and I can change and I can try something else. There's a little bit in our, in this chapter in the book about Carol Dweck’s concepts of the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. And anything you can do to sort of, avoid a defeatist attitude and develop some optimism about your ability to manage your routine at work, I think that can all be very constructive. Jessica: Yeah definitely. I think it’s, it’s interesting like you almost have to make a habit out of reflecting, because you can't just reflect once, and then be done with it, because, as you said you - you're starting these new things but you have to reflect at some point is it working? So, a habit in itself is reflection and continuous reflection, it's not a one and done kind of thing. Linda: Yeah, right. Amanda: Yeah, yeah. I'm definitely with you, Linda. I definitely like to try new models and constantly downloading productivity apps and trying to figure out new ways and um, you know, I keep going back to, just like an online Google task list. And that's it. And I, no matter what I try, I keep finding myself going back to the same thing, so I stick it out now for a while to see, um and I do think it is working for me, but I have to force myself to not want to jump to a brand new one right away, um, or so quickly. Linda: Yeah. My mom, I always say my mom can’t pass a bookstore without going in. I can't pass by a new, you know, productivity idea without trying it. Amanda: So uh, another thing that seems to be everywhere, right now besides habits, is mindfulness, it's a big topic that's being discussed. So how does your chapter on mindfulness and self compassion suggest that librarians tackle this topic? Susanne: Great question, um, yes, so yeah, definitely mindfulness is, has been, extremely popular lately, and, and it's something that you know we've all heard about that probably something that we don't all actually practice or relate to our professional lives. But we've definitely, you know, that it can, you know, practicing mindfulness and self compassion at work can help us be more aware of how we relate to others. How we react and respond to certain situations and, ultimately, kind of how we judge ourselves. And so in, in the chapter on mindfulness, we do offer several tips for how to implement it, which you know stems from like the very personal, of, like doing mindful meditation breathing exercises, and then to the more broader, offering mindfulness programming or classes to your library, which many different types of libraries are doing. And then reflecting on our own positive qualities and stuff like keeping a gratitude journal. These are some of the ideas or exercises that we have in the chapter on mindfulness. Linda: Yeah it’s easy, sometimes, to let your workload get the best of you, you know, you say yes to too many things, and you end up over-scheduled and really consumed by the things you're trying to get done, and by the things you’re not getting done, and you can, it can really affect your perspective and your, your frame of mind, so that you might feel less engaged, or you might feel a sense of complacency, or even burnout. And I think again deliberately taking some steps to focus in the moment and increase confidence, and um, take better care of yourself, helps us better relate to our emotions and it also helps us deal, I think, more productively with both success and failure, in a sense. [25:03] Amanda: I definitely agree with that, um, when we track our instruction at Berkeley, I have a, we have a form that we use, and on the form I ask, we ask librarians to say how did it go? And it's a sliding scale from one to 10, and sometimes, you know, librarians are like, “Ugh why do I have to do this every single time?” But at the end of the year at the annual review process, they can go back and see how they felt! You know, because in my experience sometimes those really bad opportunities stick out in their head but when they look at the bigger picture, it's, it's a small percentage of the other successful, you know, experiences that they had. So, you know, it's just one little way for them to kind of, like you said keep the successes and failures in perspective. Linda: Yeah. Jessica: Alright so, thank you guys so much for answering those questions about the book! Uh, we're going to move into our weekly segment called triumph and fail so we're gonna share, um, you can share one or the other - a triumph or a fail - or you can share both, if you have them. Amanda, do you want to start? Amanda: Sure, so, I was invited into a class last minute, it was a management class, and I wanted to do something interactive like the presentation was already put together and, but I wanted to do something a little more engaging with the students, and I didn't have a lot of time like literally, I had like two hours in the morning to put it together, and I ended up just like, you know, kicking it old school with like a paper form no tech at all. And they did group work, and it was so successful, they just, they were talking to each other, and they were filling it out like they were excited about filling it out on paper and they were just, they were writing a lot, like I couldn’t believe how much they were writing, I was so excited. And it really, it kind of set the tone for the rest of the class because they had them do it right at the beginning before it even started. And it really just felt so good, to get them that engaged over something so simple. Jessica: Right, exactly. That does feel nice! [chuckles] Great so, Linda, Susanne, do you guys want to go? Linda: Sure, I um, I would call this a win, or is that what we're saying? Win, or, or failure? So I, yesterday I taught, I had three library workshops back-to-back for the same professor, and it’s um, a public speaking course, and I had worked with her before there's - she has a worksheet that she has the students do and it’s called the library exercise and it takes them through a few steps and um…. So I had been doing it, and I did it this way, this time too, I've been doing the exploration of how to brainstorm a topic and think about a topic and manage a topic, and then going into this little unit on strategies for searching and using interfaces, first focusing on the Gale Virtual Reference Library and then focusing on our one-search discovery layer, and I've done it in that that sequence ever since I started teaching this course to her and I kind of had an epiphany yesterday, in the middle of one of those classes, that I really needed to do the Gale Virtual Reference Library first, where they're getting background information, then have them brainstorm topics, and then take that more specific information into using the discovery layer. So I can't say that I've implemented it yet, but I consider it a win because it's what I'm going to implement next time, next semester when I work with the same professor. Jessica: Epiphanies count as wins, that works. Susanne: Yeah, great. I think I have a fail and a win. I'll try to, try to be quick and also I'm not an instruction librarian so, sorry guys, but um, this is, I'm tech services. Um, but I was, um, we recently acquired O’Reilly for Higher Education, which was the old Safari thing, and I needed to put all the MARC records into the catalog. And I - it’s 54,000 MARC records - and I needed to...and I categorized some of them wrong. They were all, I put them all in as ebooks, which wasn’t correct because some are, 8800 of them were uh, videos. So I had this huge file in MarcEdit and I was trying to wrap my head around how to parse out the film, versus the ebook and, and then I called in my colleague who was, who is very smart, and the two of us, as we usually do, figure it out together. And we played around with um, find and replace, and if/then statements, and, and, and it worked. So I removed the old file and put in the new file, and all is good. Jessica: Woo hoo! Susanne: And I'm not a cataloger I'm a tech services person but I'm not...so I was like, “Yay!” success. Jessica: (chuckling) That's awesome. So it was a fail that you turned into a win? Susanne: Absolutely. Jessica: That works. [All chuckling] Jessica: So mine's kind of about instruction, it’s about faculty outreach. So I've only been at Pace for four and a half months or so. So I'm trying to do some outreach to some of the departments that we don't do as much instruction for, and that I haven't made connections with yet so, I've been doing that over the past two weeks and I've had a lot more bites than I was expecting and I have my first meeting with the Environmental Services department tomorrow. So very excited, get to talk about [inaudible] ourselves in the department. Amanda: Well that’s great! Linda: That’s awesome. Susanne: Amazing. Jessica: Alright, so thank you guys for both talking to us about the book and for sharing your triumphs and fails. Amanda: Yes thank you so much. Susanne and Linda: Thank you for having us! Jessica: We’ll definitely include in the show notes where people can get the book. Linda: This was really fun. Susanne: Yeah, thanks you guys. Jessica: Thank you! Jessica: Here’s where you can find the podcast! You can find the podcast on Twitter at: @Librarian_Guide. You can find me, Jessica, at @LibraryGeek611. You can find Amanda at @HistoryBuff820. And send us an email at [email protected]. Be sure to rate and subscribe wherever you listen! And send us an email or a tweet to share your questions, ideas for potential discussions, or your triumphs and fails in the classroom. Summary keywords: library | habits | success | career | book | relationships | mindfulness | routines | reflect | mentoring |
0 Comments
We want to send a HUGE thank you to listener, Megan Ondricek, for volunteering to help us catch up and create transcripts for our past episodes (starting with episode 9 below) and provide this important resource to our community! Amanda: Welcome to episode nine of the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching Podcast! I’m Amanda. Jessica: And I’m Jessica. Amanda: On today’s episode we are so excited to talk to Barbara Fister to discuss the new Project Information Literacy report called Information Literacy in the Age of Algorithms. It was released on January 14 and Barbar is a co-author on this really interesting report that has great data and recommendations for librarians, educators, and anyone interested in the future of information. Barbara Fister is a Scholar-in-Residence at Project Information Literacy and co-researcher on PIL's latest study, "Information Literacy in the Age of Algorithms: Student Experiences with News and Information, and the Need for Change." For three decades Barbara coordinated the library instruction program at Gustavus Adolphus College, a liberal arts college in Minnesota. In addition to collaborative teaching with faculty across the curriculum she has developed courses on research methods, book culture, first term seminars, and most recently launched a new course on Clickbait, Bias, and Propaganda in Information Networks. Jessica: Welcome Barbara thank you so much for talking to us today! Barbara: It’s great to be here! Jessica: We were both very interested to read this report when Project Information Literacy first promoted it and it does not disappoint. There are so many insights into technology, student behavior, information literacy, and education in general. So we are excited to talk about it. I guess first, could you give listeners a quick summary of the report for those who may not have read it yet just to frame our conversation? Barbara: Yeah, um, so if you don’t know, I don’t know how familiar your listeners are with Project Information Literacy, but for 10 years, a little bit more than 10 years, it's a independent non-profit research institute with Alison Head as the principal investigator and she's been leading these studies of student experiences of information - college students - and their experiences of information now for ten years. This one came about after the last study last year which dealt with, it was a big study, that dealt with students and their experience of news, how do they consume news. And so this is a kind of follow-up, it’s a smaller, qualitative study that looks at how students relate to the algorithmic networks that we experience so much of our information through these days. So it was really a chance to talk to students about what do they know about it, what do they think about it, and how does it influence their experience of information and selecting and evaluating information. So it was a qualitative study with 103 students in 16 focus groups at different institutions and we also interviewed 37 faculty members at those institutions and analyzed what we heard from them and drew out some kind of key takeaway points from those conversations. It was really interesting for me, it was the first time I had worked on a project information literacy research project and it was just very cool to see this team pull all this information together. So, we had, like, four takeaways from this research. We found for example students do take defensive measures when it comes to their privacy. Much more so than the faculty who we talked to, actually. They learn from each other, um, they are very interested in figuring out how things work from peers, rather than expecting to learn any of this in the classroom. Um they are highly skeptical of information and actually just not trusting information was a bigger problem in many ways than their skepticism which is well developed um, and they had this ambivalent feeling between um, feeling both sort of resigned to dealing with these algorithmic systems that they feel powerless to change or influence but also really frustrated with the way that they take their private information and use it and influence what they see. Um, so those are some of the takeaways that we found as we talked to the students. The biggest surprise to me, and this came both through the conversations with the students and with the faculty members, is that there really isn’t much conversation about this in the classroom. This isn’t their experience of what we call information literacy or even the critical thinking that their professors talk about. Um and that seemed very surprising to me because the faculty were very concerned about this for the most part, like, “Wow, this is really big problem, this is a big social issue, we need to really think about this as a society, it has so much impact on everything right now.” And then when I asked what are you doing in your classes it was like, “Um, oh well, oh, um, hmmm… we do critical thinking. We talk about peer review.” [Barbara chuckles]. But not really drawing the connections between what was really concerning to them and how students learn about information in their courses. And from the student perspective we also heard kind of a dismayingly, um, a sense that what they were learning in their schooling, both in K-12 and in higher education just didn’t really relate to the way that they experienced information in the world in their daily lives, um, so that was a big wake-up call for me personally. Jessica: Yeah I agree I think that was definitely one for me as well, I mean, I do probably 99% one shots and have for my whole library career but even that take away and the combination of the fact that the report also said that, kind of, the research that Project Information Literacy had done on student behavior over the past 10 years - that their learning behavior hadn't really changed over that time either - and it really made me consider, well, what am I doing in my one shots that I could change to make more of an impact on both of those issues. [7:00] Barbara: Yeah it’s an interesting point because a lot of the report, the first section is really kind of looking at what do we mean by the “age of algorithms,” um, what does that entail, but then also looking back at what do we know from 10 years of this Project Information Literacy research and some of these issues that keep popping up are, well, for somebody that has been has been involved in information literacy for 30 years is really kind of depressing [Jessica chuckles] that uh you know we haven't really changed a whole lot. One funny thing too, and this is kind of a minor footnote, but I noticed um one of the Project Information Literacy studies looked at what kinds of assignments are students given and so much of it is this traditional term paper, like research paper, that’s very kind of rigid in its design and has things like, things have to be cited a certain way and the margins should be a certain limit, and so on. And so, um, like 80% of the assignments they looked at were of that traditional type and then I found a study from the mid-1980s saying, “Guess what? 80% of the assignments are the traditional research paper” and we found a survey from 1960-something, ‘64, I forget what it was, saying “80% of assignments are the traditional research paper.” So that - that’s a real challenge for us, I think, because we haven’t really in spite of all our work, and in spite of a lot of faculty creativity, we still haven’t really nudged away from that kind of traditional box that we use to define research for college students. Which is troubling, and not really helpful in an age when so much information is coming at us and is being mediated through some methods that are changing the way that we relate to each other and society. Jessica: Right Amanda: Yeah. It kind of reminds me of a conversation that we had on a previous episode about critical digital pedagogy. Um, we were talking about sometimes online learning can be rigid and they're very particular about their assignments and, um, we were talking about well how can we create these, you know, critical assignments and one of my recommendations was to make it a low-stakes assignment because um faculty don’t know how to assess these crazy dynamic critical, you know, out-there projects that don't fit into that specific rigid paper mold, um, can be a challenge. And you know we’re trying to break that mold but as you’ve said, you know, over the years, you know… It's funny I was working today on chat and a student was asking for help with citation and said I'm not finding the sources that I want that I need to use but I'm finding other sources outside of the “approved resources” I'm allowed to use. And it just made me think like, ugh let me talk to your professor! [Jessica and Barbara chuckle] So uh, I definitely think it’s still a challenge for sure. Barbara: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah. Amanda: So um, you know we talked a little bit about the summary and the takeaways, um in another part of the study you guys make some recommendations. So which recommendation do you think would be the most difficult to implement? [10:29] Barbara: Yeah um, I’ll tell you it was kind of scary trying to come up with recommendations. [Jessica chuckles] After all of this to kind of figure out where should we go with this? And I really wanted us to have recommendations that had some practical value, because I know how hard it is to do information literacy instruction in the... all these, sort of, structural impediments that you run into when you’re dealing with departments and faculty and all of these conflicting incentives, um, just being able to talk to faculty can be a challenge much less really change things. Um, so we tried to keep some things that maybe people could look at and say, “You know what, we could do this thing, we could start something in here” as well as some bigger picture ideas. Of the 4 recommendations one of them is aimed actually at the journalists and the journalism organizations. In part because one of our funders was the Knight Foundation along with the University of South Carolina Library & Information Science program um, ER&L which is an Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference, helped fund this. Um, a lot of individual donors, um, contributed to this report and we also had funding from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. So with Knight in mind we thought you know, we’re talking to journalists as well as to educators in higher education. So one of them is kind of for them. And does it really deal with what librarians do although I think there’s some really interesting potential to work with local news organizations in some ways because they’re very motivated to find ways to help people understand good information and find out who you can trust. So there’s some possibilities there. Of the other recommendations the one that I find most challenging I think it has to do with responding to what we heard from students, which is that their experience with information literacy across K-12 into college was so disconnected and so scattered and in many cases they really felt it was inadequate to a large extent. They were, you know, like, “well we have these checklists but they don't really help us out with the way that the internet works today.” Or, “you know, they keep telling us to trust .org instead of .com.” That was bad advice 20 years ago and apparently it’s still happening in various places. So I think it would be really helpful to try to get together and build some kind of cohesive program across the entire educational experience with students in mind. And, you know, Canada, the UK, Australia, they have this kind of thing embedded in their education system but we don’t because we don’t do education that way. We’re all rugged individualists around here. [Jessica chuckles] So you know we have some suggestions for maybe ways organizations can work on this and this can be really hard. Um, but maybe on the local level people working information literacy can maybe call a meeting with some teachers working in the local school system and maybe some people involved with adult education in the public library and say, “What are we all doing? What kind of words are we using, what language, what strategies, how can we help each other out, how can we, kind of, build a scaffold for our students so that what they learn in the school system carries through to what happens in their entire education and where do you see the need for students?” Because I think there's a lot we can learn from each other and we could do a lot better job if we had those bridges of creating a system that students would find more coherent and meaningful. Jessica: Hmm yeah definitely that was one thing I was thinking when I was reading the recommendations I was thinking, “Oh this would be amazing if this could happen!”, but just knowing what I know that all these areas are just so siloed that it's like how do we break down the silos to make this happen and I was thinking about, you know, well has this been shared it needs to be shared so widely with all these people, but that’s a good point that you make that if the donors are involved you would hope that the donors are also sharing it with those that they know in journalism and higher ed and then even lower ed as well. Barbara: Mm-hmm yeah yeah. And there has been a lot of initiatives to try to promote, um, all kinds of literacies especially since 2016 and the fake news crisis with the attention people are paying to it. And yet, we don't really have a good sense that anything has been the “silver bullet” that has really worked. Um the Stanford History Education group came out with a study not too long ago, one of several studies they've done, of students and how they, um, deal with what they call civic online reasoning. And when it comes to like evaluating things they find on the web, they’re really not good at it. They also studied how historians evaluate what they find on the web. They’re really not good at it either, they don’t really have the sort of heuristics for dealing with the kind of information that comes flooding at us. The people who they studied who did get it was um fact checkers and they had some strategies to help them very quickly, like, you look at a source and then you go out and find other sources and compare it to them. You don’t do that in-depth analysis and go through long checklists trying to figure out all kinds of things about the source without first doing that kind of comparative work. So um that it was depressing because they did a study and said you know what we’ve been doing so much work in schools now to try to do news literacy and boost people’s ability to make assessments of what’s true and what’s false online. And it doesn’t seem yet to be working terribly well. Jessica: Yeah Amanda: Yeah. You know what’s so interesting that you mention local level and kind of building that bridge in the K-20 because I am currently living that challenge. I have been a part of, um, a committee it's - we call it a user education committee. And it's been a project that we try to do every few years I mean I've been on this committee for like 7 years now and every few years we’re like, “we have to reach out to, you know, the K-12 teachers we have to let them know what's going on in college and blah blah blah…” And it's just we start it and then it never goes anywhere. And it’s so frustrating because you would think it’s so simple but it’s just... it’s hard to get off the ground. Barbara: And we have very different cultures and we have different incentives and different barriers that I think make it really difficult to do what seems like a pretty simple thing but it’s really complex, so, I do think that would be quite, quite the challenge of these recommendations. The one that I think, I feel, would be most fun or exciting is the last one, which is to see this as an opportunity to think about algorithmic literacy as education for democracy. And think about ways that you can find people at your institution who are coming at this from different perspectives and pull them together and try to build a way of educating the community about some of these issues. And I think for librarians and for our instruction programs it's a real opportunity to show leadership because people really are concerned and they're really baffled; they’re like, “I have no idea what to do about this.” Well that’s a great time for us to step in and say, “You know, well as information professionals we do have some ideas and here's some things that we could work on.” Um, I know last, um, the last time I sent out an announcement to the faculty who were teaching the first term seminar. We used to send out “connect with a librarian, we can do these things with your class, we’d like to work with you…” And it was fine, it kind of chugged along for years and years… But we had this idea of let’s create a menu of options. We can talk to your class about fake news, we can talk about copyright, you know, a bunch of things. How do you evaluate sources, how do you… anyway, it was a long ambitious list and I sent it out and then suddenly all the faculty were like, “Yeah! We want to do all of those! [Jessica and Amanda chuckle] “Like can we do the fake news one and I wanna do a copyright one…” And then all my colleagues were like, “Oh my god what did we get ourselves into..” So we had to quickly come up with imaginative ways of talking to first semester students about these issues but it was the best fun and I think for the faculty it was kind of a wake-up call like, “oh so you're not just going to show us databases how wonderful! And you know what, you know, we didn't really know how to tackle this ourselves so this is great.” Uh it was some of the best instruction I experienced in thirty-some years, it was really fun. The other thing is, you know, talking to the students in the focus groups and when I’ve talked to students about these things in classes they’re really interested - they find this fascinating. You know how they can kinda get a little glazed looking when we’re helping them do things to manage that assignment blah blah blah, peer review blah blah blah... I’ve done this before do I have to do it again? You know, we don’t get an opportunity that often to talk about really, kind of, meaty, meaningful, ethical issues so I think in some ways if we can pull this stuff in and draw on their own experiences and their own thoughts about this…. I mean I was really impressed with the way some of the students in the focus groups would start out just talking about like, “oh yeah the ads they follow me around, it’s creepy.” But then when you started, we kind of broaden the conversation to, you know, “what do you think when people are getting different kinds of news because of the way the algorithms are feeding them and what do you think about the way algorithms are influencing things like who gets hired for jobs, and who gets a loan, how long a prison sentence you’re going to get.” That surprised them, like, “oh yeah actually algorithms are being used in these ways.” And they got really engaged. And then they would pull in stuff that they learned in their history courses or sociology, you know some course they took in racism in society or something. And we’re applying all of that knowledge in some really interesting ways to information problems, so. I just think there’s some great opportunities to do some meaningful information literacy work that engages them in those questions. And...and... isn’t going to hurt at all when it comes to doing what they need to do for those courses. Um, although yes there will be times when do they have to use a peer-reviewed source and they’re not allowed to use those other sources but I think it could at least put those things in in conversation with what they're actually experiencing in the rest of their life and maybe give us a chance to talk about what is peer review, why does it matter. Why does scholarship matter, why does it matter that experts weigh in on these things and do so in a way that follows certain ethical guidelines. How does that relate to other kinds of information? So I see great potential here actually, for making life interesting. Jessica: Yeah. So, um, Amanda do you want to ask your question? Cause I think that leads more into what she was just talking about. Amanda: Yeah sure! So, we, you know, it really depends on the environment, but uh, what are some of the first steps librarians should take to start to implement algorithmic education into their classes? We know some of our listeners, you know, teach credit bearing courses over a semester. But the majority of us do one shot instruction. So, how do we get started in incorporating this, um, into our instruction? Barbara: Yeah, I think you're right, there's some real kind of structural and power relationship barriers to being able to do everything that we would like to do. Although I, like I say, faculty were really responding well when we said “hey we can talk about this stuff.” “Oh, great because I have no idea how to talk about it.” I know that we, um, we had, I did a session for a first-term seminar with a colleague about fake news and the teacher afterwards said, “Y'all have to have a course on this, this is really important, you need to teach a course - everybody should take your course!” And of course, that wasn't something you were necessarily prepared to do for the entire campus but it did lead to us developing and proposing a course. And it fits into students schedules, ‘cause it’s just 2 credits, um, and it's “Clickbait, Bias, and Propaganda and Information Networks” so it gave us a chance to really talk about systems and algorithms, and, um, how do you actually find your way through this, and then the students researched and wrote book chapters about the different social media platforms that they were interested in. And so it was a new course, it was not a required course but it gave us some, some chance to try out some things that we could then, maybe part of an exercise or thought into other classes as well. Umm yeah, I think, um, we certainly heard from faculty that they found it hard to know how to relate this to their subject areas, but we did - I interviewed one faculty member who was all over it, he was like, “This ties in beautifully to my subject area, I can use this to engage them with ideas that really then connect to theories about sociology and this is great.” And he was wonderful. And he just spoke in full sentences and just was very passionate about this and said, “Every student should have this.” So he was, he was very refreshing to hear that from. And I think in a lot of cases there are examples we could go in that relate to health sciences, or, um, biology, or certainly political science, statistics, there's so many ways that I think we could take one little thread and plug it in there and say, “And here's a story, you know, that came across recently that is about this issue and what do you think and how do you think that works?” I think just as a way to kind of open up conversations, um, it would be possible to pull that into a number of instructional situations. But it might take a little, a little finesse to try to figure out how to, how to bring that up and fit it in, maybe at the beginning to the start students where they are experiencing information in their lives. And how do you sort through that and what's going on with that, yes, there are these algorithms doing these things. “What do you think about that” before you move into the “And here’s what you need to do to your paper.” Jessica: Right Barbara: Perhaps that would be a way to engage them and also to, you know, kind of pull out some of the, the knowledge they have about the world they're experiencing and fill in some of the gaps that they do definitely have. But particularly if you can find in a one-shot a way to tie it to that topic of the course, the discipline at least, and I think almost everything has something that would connect in some way. And I had - one of the people we interviewed - actually teaches an information literacy course, and was making the case that you can't treat this like a vaccine; you can't teach it once, you can't even have a for-credit, credit bearing course and say, “okay we're done.” This has to be something that comes up again and again and again, because we're here once or twice, it's scary. And you don't want to deal with it, you just wanna like, back away, like, “ugh, I can't deal with that.” Um, I have to use these systems. I don't like what they're doing, but I guess I’ll just try not to remember that I'm using them and what's going out in the background. And so, you know, I really liked what she had to say which said, “Just keep bringing this up through their four years so that they get a chance to practice, and to really think about, you know, that computer they carry in their pocket, what's going on with it and what are the implications and what are the kind of information ethics around the ways that society is using data, these days. Jessica: Right, right. Yeah. [27:51] Barbara: And I think the other thing is for us is to be leaders in terms of helping the faculty learn about this stuff. If you have a faculty development program of some kind or a teaching and learning center. You know, we would be really good people at helping faculty come to terms with this and think about all of the implications that I wish my students were aware of and thinking about, because, you know, they really seem to be looking for some leadership in this area and some guidance. This is stuff that they're concerned about so maybe this is a chance for us to not necessarily just teach the students, but to really work through faculty who have such an influence on student learning that, you know, if we can help them learn about this, maybe they will be able to take some of that and integrate it into their teaching and learning too. Jessica: Yeah. And I think that ties nicely into our last question, because it seems like there's a lot of that helplessness versus I want to change things paradigm kind of in society at large, especially when you look at places like Twitter where people want to post petitions to complain and spread awareness, but at the same time they just surrendered and they're still using Twitter and Facebook and all of those platforms. So, how do we help students who kind of feel that same way of kind of they've surrendered but they're angry about it, push past that threshold of helplessness and really move to change their motivation to the next level, how can we do that as librarians and educators? Barbara: Yeah, and I think that's a really good question because it's not just the students, the faculty too are feeling really lost here. And so I think one thing that we saw students doing was teaching each other about how to protect their privacy. So, you know, bringing that kind of knowledge out and helping each other out is one way of doing it. It shouldn't be on individuals, though, this is a social issue of unequal knowledge and power between us and these companies that we rely on. So I think it would make sense to talk about what can we do, how can we change the culture and how can we, um, how can we be activists about this, how does this connect to the things you care about. And are there ways that we could bring this to, to other people, to build action about this, what kinds of legislation might be considered or is under consideration, because I think it's really important for people not to feel powerless. We held a group of people - an interdisciplinary group of people - who came together to discuss the first findings that we have in this report and one of the people was really into, you know she was saying, “We can't just let them feel helpless, we got to help them with action, you know, moving through their helplessness and realizing they have agency, they can influence society.” A lot of our students are activists. They're, they're really in touch with ideas and they really care. And so, I think, just saying, you know, “We don't have to take it. There are ways to change this. We can push against these things as a society” is really important and helpful, I think, for them too. I'm reading a book by Ruha Benjamin right now, Race After Technology, which does this really good job of analyzing how all of these technologies have a racist element or they can amplify hierarchies and racism in ways that are hidden behind a kind of weird neutrality. Instead of just talking about it as a problem, she's also really interested in solutions and so I haven't finished the book yet but she has a whole lot of... I mean she's really interested in this issue too to say, “You know what, here's some things we can actually concretely do about it.” So I think that would be also worth our thinking about as we work this into our teaching and learning plans for students. Jessica: Right. Right. Exactly. Great. Well, that's all the questions that we have for you and thank you so much for sharing all of this information and your insights into the report. And not only is the report itself really valuable and choc-full of information you had so many resources within, like the “Thinking Leaders” section and things that they recommended so we recommend that everybody read it from start to finish [chuckles]. Barbara: Don't be daunted, it's long but there’s nice little chunks you can take and there's a list of suggested readings and we're feeding new information onto the platform too so that if you want to see what are some new news stories about these issues we're trying to keep it up to date. So yeah, I hope people will get something out of it and if you're really pressed for time there is a 3 page executive summary you can at least take a look at. Amanda: Great, thank you so much! Barbara: Great. Thanks for having me on your podcast! Amanda: We're now going to share a tweet of the week. This week's tweet comes from Jesse Stommel, who tweeted about an article that was recently published about a professor who makes his students turn in cell phones at the beginning of the class. Um, this tweet was interesting to me on several levels, first because he decided not to share the article, in, in his tweet, so I had to go and find out who he was talking about at first. And then, um, I really thought it was interesting, um, how, there were so many points, wrote up about the article and I think what was interesting to me is that this is still happening in classrooms, because to me I mean there's studies and, in, in this tweet chain that we'll link to in the show notes. So many people list all of these studies that talk about how cell phones are a great way to engage with students, when it’s appropriate and in dynamic ways. Yet people are still having these conversations that, um, we shouldn't be using cell phones in the classroom. Another thing that I thought was really interesting was that people were writing comments on this article on the website of the publication, and the author, actually, was responding to people's individual comments. Jessica: Whoa that's interesting. Amanda: I thought that was kind of intense so it's been an intense week. A lot of people have been talking about this piece. Jessica: Yeah, that is, his tweet was definitely powerful and so were a lot of the responses that people had to it. And I liked some of the questions that he brought up because as you said this is a problem that's been happening for a while. And he brings up these questions like, people should be asking, professors should be asking, who are our students? Why are they here in our classrooms, what challenges did they face, getting there, what level of basic respect do teachers and institutions owe to students? How does that basic respect help them learn? I mean, I consider myself, if I was going to college, and my son was in daycare, I would want my phone to be able to make sure that if anything happened… I mean it did happen. A couple of weeks ago my daycare lost power, and they said I had to get my son in three hours if it didn't come back. So, if I was in a three hour class, what would have happened? And a lot of people were tweeting about the fact that that's, you know, it's racist, it’s against those in a different socioeconomic status, people have families and things that they need to - this is how we live now, right? So we need to adapt instead of penalizing our students in this way and as Jesse said you know have that basic level of respect for our students. It was, um, an interesting chain. Amanda: Absolutely. Jessica: And that's it for episode number nine. We hope you enjoyed it. So here's where you can find us. You can find the podcast: @Librarian_Guide on Twitter. You can find me, Jessica, at @librarygeek611. You can find Amanda at @HistoryBuff820. And you can email the podcast at [email protected]. Be sure to rate and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen! Amanda: You can also send us an email or a tweet to share your questions, um, ideas for potential discussion, or your triumphs and fails in the classroom. Or suggestions for a tweet of the week. You can also hashtag your tweets with #LibrariansGuideToTeaching. |
About the podcast:The LGT podcast is hosted by two instruction librarians interested in sharing their experiences teaching information literacy, discussing current trends, and having meaningful conversations about librarianship. Archives
May 2021
Categories |