Amanda: Welcome to the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching! I’m Amanda…
Jessica: And I’m Jessica! Amanda: On today’s episode, we have Bonnie Lafazan as our guest and we’re going to talk about all things professional development. Why it's important, how to make time for it and how to build a culture of lifelong learning at your library. Bonnie is a former media licensing lawyer who changed careers and became an academic librarian in 2008 and has not looked back. Bonnie works as the Library Director of the Woodbridge Campus Library at Berkeley College in Woodbridge, New Jersey. Bonnie is a robust contributor to the professional librarian community both locally in New Jersey and nationally, currently serving as past president of the ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) New Jersey chapter, also NJLA CUS (New Jersey Library Association College & University Section) and now co-chairs its Strategic Planning Task Force. Bonnie serves as a board member for LibraryLinkNJ, a New Jersey library cooperative and serves as a board member of the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information Advisory Board. Nationally, Bonnie is the past co-convener of ACRL’s Library & Marketing Outreach Interest Group, is currently on the ACRL Professional Development Committee and the ACRL Conference 2021 Committee. On a personal note, Bonnie and I and Jessica, we’re all close friends and colleagues and we've done a lot of different collaborative projects together so we're so excited to have Bonnie on the show today. Amanda: Welcome, Bonnie! Thank you for coming to talk to us! Bonnie: Hi! Amanda: All right! So we're going to jump right in. Let's talk to personal development. Why don’t we all start with our experiences with professional development either as a facilitator or participant? Also maybe discuss why we think professional development is important. Bonnie, do you want to go first? Bonnie: Sure! So for me, professional development whether it’s required or not to my position will always be one in the same. I find that professional development is really enriched in who I am as a lifelong learner. And it's as a librarian professional who always is continuously learning and teaching others. I feel really grateful that I have opportunities for professional development and all these different experiences I’ve had because it’s really helped me grow as a leader and as an instructor and as a librarian. Amanda: And maybe share an experience? Bonnie: Yea, so I've had many different experiences as you might have heard some of what I've done in my bio but I've both presented at conferences, attended conferences, I’ve been in a number of different types of sessions as both participants and also as a facilitator in workshops, panel sessions, poster sessions and more. And beyond that I’ve served committees that have planned conferences such as the New Jersey Academic Librarians Conference. I have served as co-conference chair with Amanda in the past and that was a really incredible experience. Also in my work and my committee work, we’ve presented as committee members together at local conferences and also in my work at ACRL, the Library Marketing and Outreach (LMAO) Interest Group. I also presented with professionals from all over the country which is really cool. Amanda: Great. Jessica? Jessica: Great! That’s really cool. Yea, I’ve had a variety of different professional development experiences too much like Bonnie. We've presented together at national and local conferences so I've done poster sessions and presentation sessions. And actually I got my job at Berkeley from presenting a poster at VALE and meeting you guys! Amanda: Yea, that’s right! Jessica: Yea, I talked to you guys and you said there was a position open at Berkeley coming soon I got the scoop on that so you know that can be a benefit of professional development in networking. I also really loved creating, co-editing the Library Buzz with you, Amanda, our bi-weekly staff development newsletter. I miss doing that. But I am on a team now at my current job, a staff development committee, so we're working on creating a different process we're not going to do a LibGuide or anything but we're kind of polling everybody to figure out what professional development they’ll find rewarding. And we’re creating some type of experience because that culture doesn’t exist yet. So I think that’s gonna be fun. Amanda: And maybe a little bit about why you think professional development is important? Jessica: Yeah I definitely agree with what Bonnie said about lifelong learning. I mean as librarians,I think we always just like to enrich ourselves and know what's going on in the field, keeping up with trends. I think sometimes it can get overwhelming to try to do too much and take on too much and we can talk about that a little bit later I guess, how to balance everything. But I think it's just important to keep up with what's going on in our field and to network with others and learn from others. Amanda: Yeah, so true. So I'll share a little bit of my experiences. So I've done a wide range of things. I've done external professional development where I have presented at conferences and shared what was going on, what we’re doing at Berkeley. I've also, as Bonnie mentioned, I’m the conference co-chair of our ACRL New Jersey Annual Conference so that's something I’ve been doing and I just finished up my 5th year of running that conference. I've also been invited to facilitate workshops at other institutions. I’ve done some courses through ACRL and RUSA (Reference and User Services Association) where I’ve facilitated month long courses. I’ve also done a lot of internal development. I think internal development is so important. I think you don't have to spend money to learn and grow. I think every single person in your team has a talent that they could share and I think it's an untapped resource, honestly, when it comes to professional development. I think professional development is so important because you have to be a lifelong learner. You have to keep learning and moving forward and changing with the time but I also think as an instruction librarian since a lot of us don't have that formal education the only way we're going to grow and learn is if we make space and time to work on learning new things in our given field especially with that instruction focus. Jessica: That’s very true. My mom always asks because my mom has a master's degree in art therapy and when she was coming out of it she always had to do continuing education credits and she always thought it was funny that we don’t have to do that. We’re not required to do that for any certification that we have but I always tell her that it's just such a part of librarianship that we're kind of doing it anyway. Because it's just important. Amanda: Agreed. Jessica: Alright, so Bonnie, could you share some examples of professional development experience that you have either facilitated or participated in over the years? Maybe one that was successful and one that wasn't so successful? Bonnie: Sure! Some of my favorite professional development experiences and that were very successful were panel sessions that I’ve helped facilitate. I find that having quick lightning talks in a panel session of maybe four or five academic librarians from different institutions is really successful because you can hear stories and struggles from each both successes and maybe failures. But we all know that no matter what type of institution we’re in, sharing our stories and a lot of it is more of the same than not. Jessica: So I guess a follow-up question - how do you decide which opportunities to take? Did you just in the beginning of the new librarian, just going to take everything that was presented to you just so that you could get experiences? How would a new librarian decide where to go with these opportunities like the ones you had with LMAO? Bonnie: Yes, I think it was a slow learning, a lot of these were slow learning opportunities where eventually there was an opportunity to be a committee chair of an organization or to co-chair or convene an organization. But I think it it started out as becoming a member and participating in meetings and participating in online webinars and online YouTube channels. Jessica: Right, so people can't just expect to join a group and then all of a sudden be presenting. Bonnie: No, you have to be part of the team to get those opportunities that come. So let's say I was chairing a committee and I said, “Hey we're going to have academic librarians talk about their, you know, successes in marketing and outreach in a library, do you want to be on the panel? Because that person was part of that committee and was on that meeting they have that opportunity to be a part of that. Jessica: Right, right. So then what about maybe one that wasn't so successful? Bonnie: One that wasn't so successful - I remember presenting with you Amanda a while back at our New Jersey Library Association Conference and I know we were so pumped for our session. The topic of the session was actually about learning and growing together as a library or library department. How when you align your own personal interests and strengths as a library you can really grow professionally. But it just didn’t go over well. There weren’t that many people in the session, not that that it always means it’s going to be successful. You can still have a successful session, in my opinion, even if you don’t have 50 or more attendees. It was just that the ones that were there just didn’t seem really engaged. They seemed bored. It was just disappointing. Amanda: Yea, I remember that. It seemed like it fell flat. I think it could have been a combination of things - that it wasn't the right audience, that they didn't have that culture or they felt they would never have that type of culture. So it was a variety of things. But I agree with you, that was probably one of those experiences where it didn't click for people. Bonnie: But on the flip side, we’ve had so many successful experiences. That reminds me of when we presented the internal workshop on how to present at conferences. Amanda: Oh, yea! Bonnie: We had those interactive activities in the workshop where participants actually planned out proposals, like real conference proposals of ideas of what they're working on at our college. And some of them went on to present after that. Jessica: Yeah I did! I presented a poster. Amanda: That’s right. I was just about to say that. Bonnie: That’s right, Jessica, you were in that when you first started with us. Jessica: Yea, that was like the first presentation I went to. The first professional development thing I went to at Berkeley that I went to. And yea, it worked out into a poster. That was great. Bonnie: So to me that was a true success because it was internal, we didn’t have to pay, we didn’t have to take a day off of work, and yet so much came out that. I know that others presented a poster at ALA, too, from that session. Amanda: Yea, those are great examples. I definitely agree with some of the points you made that it just starts with just participating. That’s how I started. Someone said to me, “Hey you might be interested in this committee” and I joined the committee and three years later I was the co-chair of that committee and then three years after that I was asked to run a conference and I did that, you know. And a lot of the collaboration across institutions happens in these meetings. It's where you have dedicated time to network with your peers and talk about professional development and not feel guilty about it. Because I think sometimes we feel a little guilty like sometimes I'll find a really great article and I’m like, “Oh, I really want to read this article but I'm not going to take the time at work to read it” even though it’s all about work. So I think participating in those specific committee meetings gives you that space to feel like it's okay to talk about things that you wouldn't necessarily get to do everyday on a daily basis. Jessica: Yea, and everybody learns in different ways so some people need to talk it out. Some people need to be in a group of peers and have a conversation about a topic as opposed to just reading an article about it and sometimes I think that's why podcasts are successful because you hear other people talking about topics and it clicks a little better for people. Bonnie: I think we live in silos. We all as librarians, we all have to work together, no matter what library you’re at or what type or what type of institution you’re at. Amanda: Agreed. Agreed. And I think it allows us to sometimes extend the conversation because in New Jersey at least, we do get to see our colleagues present but we don't necessarily get to have the conversations with them that we want to but when we see them we get to maybe talk and say, “Hey I saw your poster and blah, blah.” It really does put it into a different context and it extends the conversation in a way. Jessica: Yeah and going back to, you know, like you said being an instruction librarians we have to grow and I think presenting taught me a lot about being a teacher. Because I'm presenting and doing...I think that has always been the least successful part of my teaching, the part where I had to go to the most, was in the doing things on the fly, presenting to a group getting over my stage fright, and I think presenting at conferences and doing posters was a part of my growth. It really helped me, even internally within to my colleagues, I mean sometimes that is scarier to do a presentation for 10 of your close colleagues as opposed to 150 strangers. That can be even more nerve-racking, so you know professional development can actually connect to your job responsibilities when you're practicing new skills that you may not have the chance to practice otherwise. Amanda: Yeah Bonnie: What you guys were talking about before just you know about being an instruction librarian really just, it came to me about. ACRL has a model/role model for what a teaching librarian should look like and one of those roles is that he or she is a lifelong learner, they’re always seeking out opportunities for continuous learning. So we should never really feel guilty because that is what it is to make us better teachers. Make us reflective in our approaches to instruction. Amanda: I totally agree. And I think that actually lends itself really nicely to our next question which is how do you make time for professional development? Bonnie, you want to start? Bonnie: I think I make time for professional development because I enjoy it. So when I see that article I'm going to read it because I want to. And I think it's part of also what I do. So I know at some institution’s it’s required as part of your tenure position or things like that but I think it’s part of who I am, of being a librarian, like I said earlier. So if I have a meeting that has to do with an organization that I am involved with it goes on my to do list. If I have tasks that have to do with my professional development activities, I put it on the list with all my regular work tasks. Amanda: Jessica? Jessica: Yes, so I think for me it's a kind of a balance between doing things at work and doing things at home. I used to want to learn about so many different things and get a deep understanding of everything both out of curiosity but also to stay involved in library discussions. But I just realized I don't have the mental bandwidth for that. Because professional development is supposed to be that. You’re developing yourself on top of representing your institution and networking and all that but I've noticed that if I'm rushing through it to get to the next thing I'm not developing, I’m just memorizing things. And after I had my son and having some health challenges you know I really had to prioritize my health, by sanity, and doing less stuff at home. So I push myself a lot less and I do less overall and I think that's okay, you know? I'm re-prioritizing what topics and projects are important to me and what I do at home and what I do at work. So for example I used to be really passionate about marketing and outreach. And I used to do a lot of that with Bonnie. But it's so much less of my position now, so while I'm still in the amazing Library Marketing and Outreach Facebook group, I’m spending a lot more of my time researching things that make an impact on my students like on a teaching in critical librarianship which we talked about. And honestly, I really have to make time for things that are free. We haven’t really touched on that a lot yet but I don't have a lot of funds for most of the things that maybe used to be covered from my job and we share a big pot of money and I have really have to show justification of what I can attend. But there's so much information out there and free opportunities that librarians should be taking advantage of those and maybe we’ll include some ideas in the show notes. For example you know I follow a lot of people on Twitter for article recommendations, I listen to podcasts, I read the publications that come with our memberships from ACRL and ALA. And while presenting does take work, it does create more of an incentive for our institutions to fund us for conferences so I do like to spend time writing and presenting to make that happen and that kind of stuff, like Bonnie said, I do that at work because I am presenting for my institution so there's a benefit to them there. And there's also a lot of scholarships that people should apply for. Don’t be ashamed to apply for a scholarship. I remember winning an ACRL new librarian scholarship for the ACRL national virtual conference and I got access to all that content in one of the first year after grad school and that that was really valuable. Sso I think it's a balancing act in a lot of different ways. Amanda: So true. Jessica: What about you, Amanda? Amanda: So for me, I have to schedule it. I have to make time for it and feel - I have to prioritize, too. I’ve had to make decisions. There were sometimes I’d say in the last 5 years where I’ve just presented anything and everything, any opportunity I could get, but I really have to be a little more selective just because of personal reasons. I have a daughter now and you know, monetary reasons so for example, this year with the way our budget falls is the Distance Library Conference (DLS) and ACRL 2021 falls in the same budget year. So I have to prioritize and I’m not going to go to DLS, I’m going to go to ACRL because it’s a little more important to me. And it’s sad because I really, I like both of those conference but you have to prioritize. I also oversubscribe to a lot of things. (Jessica and Bonnie laugh) A lot of list-servs. And then I browse through, you know, like if I find myself in between tasks, I’ll stop and I’ll browse the list-servs and try and follow the conversation. I'm very active on Twitter. I follow a lot of people on Twitter. My Twitter is all library stuff mostly. Where I get a lot of my free professional development from. You know, I also look for those found moments to read. When I’m standing on a line or when I have a few minutes in-between meetings or something, I'll pull out whatever article that I printed out in my bag and just read. And I’ve been doing a lot of audio these days. I drive about an hour each way depending on what campus I'm supporting that day so audio is really easy for me to have access to and have the time to listen to. So those are some of the ways that I make time for professional development. But I agree with both of you, conference proposals or chapter writing, all that stuff I do make time for that during work hours because you're right you are representing your institution so to me, I don't feel as guilty so I've learned to get over that guilt. Jessica: And like Bonnie said we're talking about being non-tenure. I know a lot of tenure librarians, maybe not everybody because I can't speak for them, but you know they have writing time or they can take research days and stuff like that, you know. We're talking about not having that but still wanting to get in that professional development. Amanda: Agreed. So I guess one last question to wrap things up is a few of our listeners might be thinking, how do you build a culture of professional development at your library? So perhaps we can share a few tips on how to build that culture at your library? Bonnie, you want to go first? Bonnie: Sure. I think one way and I think I've done this over the years is by setting an example by being an active participant in your local library organization, whatever that might be. Attending conferences. I mean we have a free academic librarian conference in New Jersey every year, and going back and sharing. Sharing with colleagues. Sharing with others. And I think just by hearing about it that others wanted to be part of it, too. Jessica: Yeah definitely. I would also say kind of to make it fun. I think that was one thing about the Library Buzz that made it interesting for everybody. I mentioned it before. It was a biweekly LibGuide that we emailed out to everybody that was Amanda's brainchild and everybody could submit things and it was all in different format and it was fun for us to create. We even started our first mini-podcast on there which was the brainchild for this. So it was fun for people to be able to participate in that so it made them want to. But also you know getting input from everyone. Where I am now we don't have that same culture that we had at Berkeley of staff development but are University Librarian wants to build it and so he asked us to get input from everybody and ensure that everybody's job responsibilities are represented especially at libraries where not everyone is a credentialed librarian. That's why we don’t use the term professional development where I am specifically for that reason so we’re just ensuring that there’s a culture of respect first as well which is key. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, that's true. I’ve spent a lot of my time in my recent roles, I’d say the past five or six years to build a culture of professional development at Berkeley and a few things that I think are really important is it to have to give people a wide range of options. People might feel comfortable attending a one-day workshop but then there's other people who maybe want to tackle something more challenging. I created a thing called 23 Things where librarians had a whole entire year to master 23 technology skills and that gave people the space to learn on their own time. And then I have also done things where it’s a week-long course. So I think giving people a range is important because everyone is at a different level. I also think it's important to give people a say in what their professional development is. Every year we are very fortunate that we do an internal conference that you know sometimes it's 2 days or 3 days and all of the workshops are done by Berkeley College librarians. But it didn't start out that way. In the beginning it was me and one other person that planned it and we would force people to collaborate. We would force them to research particular topics that we thought were important and people resented it. People were not happy. People would not feel like they were learning what they wanted to learn. So we completely changed that process. Now it's very much vote on what you're interested in. Participate if you want to participate. I think it's really helped develop that culture of people wanting to learn and being a little more open to say, “no, you know, I really don't want to learn how to do this” or “No, I don't want to participate this year as a presenter but I really want to learn x, y, z.” So I think that’s another thing. And I think you also have to not make assumptions about people’s skill levels. Even things like, and this kind of a generic answer but, don't assume everyone has the same skill level of making a LibGuide. Everyone is on a different level and that's okay. But don't just say, “okay we’ve had LibGuides for 5 years. Everybody should know how to make a LibGuide.” I think you're going to shun people away and they're not going to want to learn new skills so I think it's important to be ready and prepared to help people where they’re at. Jessica: Yea. Bonnie: Yea, absolutely. So I know also because I'm a library director as well. So I really, as a manager, really try to encourage it. And in a lot of the tips that you said and making it a goal. Making the yearly goal to participate in a conference or to join a committee. And I think that by that sort of mentorship I think also helps build that culture of professional development as well. Jessica: Yea, it has to come from the top down, definitely. Amanda:Yea, yea. So that wraps up our questions session for this. We have a question for our audience that we hope you share with us whether you tweet us or email us - what are your go-to’s for professional library development? We hope to hear from you! Jessica: Alright! So we're going to roll into our weekly segment and we’re going to do a work triumph and work fail with Bonnie. So Bonnie, do you want to start? Bonnie: Yes, a work triumph for me this week is I finally incorporated a legal research introduction module and advanced legal research module into three courses this week. I worked really hard with Amanda who's the director of research and instructional services here at Berkeley College for several months in creating these active learning tutorials and they're now in the classes, they’re now live and we're really excited to see the responses from the students and also feedback for the faculty. (Amanda and Jessica say, Yay!) Amanda: Go ahead, Jessica. Jessica: Alright, so my triumph is that I am updating my English instruction with some critical pedagogy concept. So I have about five different lesson plans to update. I removed a lot of the demo, I added a lot more discussion, I updated my examples to include more social justice information so I'm really looking forward to teaching those in the coming semester. Bonnie: Yay! Jessica: For a fail, it’s kind of a fail in that I didn’t expect students to respond a certain way in a discussion board so it became kind of a missed opportunity. I’m in this online class for the intercession. It’s a short class so students had to participate in like half a week for me. And I should have asked them to tell me what their topic was when they posted a bibliography but half of them didn't. So I didn't get to really respond to them because all my response was like “what's your topic?” Because I wanted to give them research context for their sources and so they never responded because they had to move on to the next thing. So I should have edited the discussion board instructions to say post your topic but I didn't think about that in advance so it was just a little bit of a missed opportunity but the professor said it was valuable for the ones that did participate. So womp, womp. But that’s ok. What about you Amanda? Amanda: I have a fail. So in our last episode we talked about critical digital pedagogy and breaking that mold of online instruction and I did not break that mold. I, and you know what, I think it was hard because it was two of our winter semester and I just was not prepared to revamp something so quickly. And it really frustrated me halfway through the week because I was responding to these students and I'm just like, “Ugh, this could have been so much better.” Like it’s been on my to-do list for awhile to revamp this course and I just didn't get to it and I really paid the price and I was just like this is so awful. It's just, and it’s my fault you know. I totally mismanaged my time and I just didn't revamp the content in time to make it dynamic like all those exciting ideas that we talked about in episode 7. So it's definitely on my to-do list because I do support this class every semester so it’s definitely on my to-do list. I think I'm actually going to start doing it now so that I don't run out of time, and it doesn’t sneak up on me again. So fail on my part but I know the students got something from it but it wasn't that amazing spectacular critical digital pedagogy instruction. Jessica: Right, I mean, also like Romel said it too in episode 4, you fail and you get back up and you do it again. Next time will be awesome! Amanda: There’s always next semester! That’s how I look at it. Bonnie: There’s always next week, next semester and there’s tomorrow. Jessica: Exactly (Chuckles) Amanda: Alright, so thank you so much, Bonnie, for being our guest. We’re so excited we got to talk to you and share all your exciting ideas with everybody about professional development and how to get started. Bonnie: Thanks so much for having me! Amanda: Alright, so that wraps up episode 8! Jessica: So you can find the podcast on Twitter at Librarian_Guide. You can find Jessica at LibraryGeek611. You can find Amanda at @HistoryBuff820. And you can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to rate and subscribe to the podcast 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. You can also hashtag your tweets with #LibrariansGuideToTeaching!
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Jessica: Welcome to episode number seven of the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching Podcast! I’m Jessica…
Amanda: And I’m Amanda. Jessica: On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about a topic that was requested on Twitter - online information literacy instruction and some related concepts as applied to that environment such as critical pedagogy. But before we get started with our conversation, how are you doing? Anything exciting happening this week? Amanda: Anything exciting happening? (Laughs) We’re recording this during the holiday break and my little one has been sick so I’ve been quarantined home so I've been spending a lot of time at home so nothing exciting going on. I'm actually looking forward to getting back to work next week and getting back into the routine. What about you? Jessica: Yea, pretty much the same thing here. I keep seeing all of these memes on the Internet about how nobody knows what day it is and that this is like the lost week where people are just eating all the food and losing track of time. Today is my sister in law’s birthday and I had to keep reminding myself to call her this week, not because I don’t remember it’s her birthday but because I just really don’t know what day it is. (Laughs( But also, I’m kind of looking forward to getting back into a routine and into the new year like you said. And just getting off to the right foot. We have wanted to do an episode about online information literacy Instruction for a while so we were happy to see this request on Twitter when we asked for suggestions on what you all wanted to hear about on this episode! Librarian, @melodylynn457, suggested an episode on online instruction and added a few specific concepts like critical digital pedagogy and open online pedagogy. But before we get started with those concepts and how we feel that they could be incorporated into the online environment, let’s start with our basic experiences with online instruction. So, do you want to go first? Amanda: Yea, I can definitely start. So I've been doing online teaching for about 10 plus years now since I basically started at Berkeley. I basically got thrown right into it. I’ve done a variety of things. I've just placed, you know, Powerpoints and videos into online LMS’s (Library Management Systems), I've supported discussion boards, some that were mine, others were that faculty had created the questions and I just kind of jumped in here and there. I’ve also created self-paced learning opportunities. You have done this with me before with our Honors Program where you have a stand-alone LibGuide for the Honors student where it's integrated into their curriculum but it's basically online activities. I've also done at the very basic level generic “Ask a Librarian” discussion board where students at any point in a semester can ask a librarian a question. Which in my experience I've never had a lot of success with but I’ve heard other librarians having some. I guess it just depends on the students and how engaged they want to be with their embedded librarian. What about you? Jessica: Yea, kind of similar. So you've done a little bit more activity related stuff but I’ve really only done one shot instruction online with the exception of one embedded type class where I had an English professor who wanted me to be embedded the whole semester. That was pretty much a one-time situation. Most of the instructors I work with just wanted it to be a one-week discussion board facilitation so I would create a PowerPoint or a video as the lecture part of the week. So yea I just went along with what the faculty wanted up until about the last year or two when I would still maybe do a Powerpoint but then I would do more of a workshop type LibWizard form to have them search for sources for their upcoming paper as opposed to just having them put that information in a discussion board. It seemed just a little bit better to do it in a LibWizard form. So right now since I’m still pretty new in my position, I’m still in the process of developing relationships with faculty so I’m hoping that 2020 will be the year that I get to incorporate some new stuff into my online instruction. To be honest, I wish I had had more knowledge on some of the concepts for today’s show because it really could have improved some of my previous work so I’m looking forward to talking about these. Amanda: I have to say that from talking to a lot of librarians about their type of online support to us it seems like, I know I get very frustrated with it but when I talk to my other colleagues at other institutions they're not even doing anything like that in some instances. So sometimes they don't even - they're not even supporting online classes and if they are they’re literally just emailing the professor the PowerPoint or the video and that's it and then the professor embeds it into the course. So I know we're very fortunate at Berkeley that we have that flexibility and status but I think after we finish having this conversation today I know that there are so many more opportunities that we could be taking in terms of supporting our students in online environment. Jessica: Right! So that’s interesting to know that there’s such a wide range of spectrum of opportunities taking place across higher ed libraries in terms of online instruction going from doing nothing to just the faculty taking off work and putting it in all the way up to this great stuff we’re seeing with critical digital pedagogy. Amanda: Yea, definitely. So why don’t we drive right into some of these concepts. Do you want to maybe give a little bit of a definition about critical digital pedagogy? Jessica: Sure so when I was doing some research on this concept because we already talked about critical pedagogy a little bit with Romel in episode 4 so I was looking for things about implementing this digitally. And I came across a website by Sean Michael Morris. He is the Director of the Digital Pedagogy Lab which is an experimental, exploratory professional development gathering for a global digital pedagogy community. So he’s got a blog on his site which has some great information. And he runs the Digital Pedagogy Lab as I said which helps educators implement these concepts. So I’d like to paraphrase some things from his writing that we felt captured these concepts. The first one is a quote: “Where critical pedagogy centers on social justice and liberation, critical digital pedagogy fronts with the complications of learning in digital environments, critical instructional design looks directly at applications” and it really does forces us to ask what are the first steps we should be taking to teach a concept, not just allowing assessment methods or library management systems to dictate that for us. He also says quote: “The critical instructional design approach prioritizes collaboration, participation, social justice, learner agency, emergence, narrative, and relationships of nurture between students, and between teachers and students. It acknowledges that all learning today is necessarily hybrid, and looks for opportunities to integrate learners’ digital lives into their digitally-enhanced or fully online learning experiences….it works against the standardization of so many educational technologies, and aims for the fullest inclusion possible.” So critical digital pedagogy asks the big why and how questions around technology in education. So around privacy surveillance, assessment, representation. So how do we communicate these issues to our students.Those are some of the things that are being asked in this concept. Some other questions we should be asking would be how can students participate in meaningful learning in meaningful ways in the online classroom? And make the online college environment as good as on-campus learning. And that's something that we'll talk about it a little bit later. Lastly, in an article that we’re link in the show notes Morris quotes Henry Guiroux who writes in his text on critical pedagogy that quote “critical pedagogy asserts that students can engage their own learning from a position of agency and in doing so actively participate in narrating the identity through a culture of questioning that opens up a space of translation between the private and the public while changing the forms of self and social recognition.” So as I was reading this all of this stuff I was just like wow that is not what my online pedagogy looks, right? Amanda: Yea, no, definitely not. Jessica: Yea but then that led well into the other requested concept which was open pedagogy. So you want to bring that up a bit? Amanda: Yea! Sure so when we were doing research for this episode there was this great website, it was called the Open Pedagogy Notebook - Openpedagogy.Org. which we’ll link to in the show notes. It defines “open pedagogy we engage with it, is a site of praxis, a place where theories about learning, teaching, technology, and social justice enter into a conversation with each other and inform the development of educational practices and structures.” The website goes on to say - “First, we want to recognize that Open Pedagogy shares common investments with many other historical and contemporary schools of pedagogy. For example, constructivist pedagogy, connected learning, and critical digital pedagogy are all recognizable pedagogical strands that overlap with Open Pedagogy.” This website has some really great examples of open work projects which I think really helps people get a little better understanding of what this concept really means and how to actually implement it. So with that being said now that we provided some context definitions, what do you think this looks like for online library instruction whether it be credit-bearing, one shot or embedded? Jessica: Honestly this took a lot of thinking outside the box. In reading up on this topic, I listened to two episodes of the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, which is awesome if you don’t already listen to that as well, and both guests I listened to discussed how online instruction is really so new compared to the teaching that we’ve done and studied over the past hundreds or thousands of years. So we’ll link the episodes in the show notes but the guests were Flower Darby who spoke about her book “Small Teaching Online” and Rajiv Jhangiani who is the co-director of the Open Pedagogy Notebook which we’ve also linked in the show notes. They both talked about the fact that what we’ve really done in online instruction is just let the online LMS models dictate what we can do - like stick the PowerPoint here, get students to respond there - but what we should be doing is critically thinking about the teaching and pedagogy and making the online environment work for that. And I’ll admit, I never really thought about it that way. I’ve been letting the LMS and the faculty lead the way whereas I know we’re capable of doing a lot more in this. When thinking about the one-shot model it does seem even harder to adapt critical digital pedagogy in online instruction because there’s can be such a limitations of one week of class which seems like it’s more than the one and a half hours we get for on-site teaching but it’s really not when you have to give students days and hours to to respond and participate. So there's the timing aspect and then there’s the limitations of technology, right? Amanda: Yea, I definitely agree. I think it's easy to fall into that cookie cutter trap of how an online class is set up and expectations of online learning. You know, online learning is marketed as “Complete the work anytime that's convenient for you! You have all this extra time to do work!” And you know I was recently, about three years ago, I just finished my master's degree in instructional design and it was completely online and let me tell you I almost wish I went to a physical classroom every day because the online work to me it was not always engaging and it seems like a lot of busy work. Most of our our engagement was through discussion boards but they were not engaging. I think there's a lot of frustration with discussion boards because there's a lot of mixed ideas of how much does a faculty member step in and participate in a discussion board. Do they respond to every student? Do they respond to every student that response to another student? Or do they just jump in periodically and check? So I think that's also adds a layer of interesting kind of weirdness to the online learning environment as well and though from a teaching point of view I think it’s easy to just go with the flow and get into that “okay this is how it's always done” kind of rut. Jessica: Right, exactly ! And discussion boards are hard in general, cause as you said as a student you’re dreading them and we dread reading them and grading them so obviously students don’t want to do them. So we have to do that thinking outside the box of what other options are. One of the resources for this episode, the Critical Digital Pedagogy Textbook is an open access book which has a chapter on Discussion boards that talks about how weekly discussion boards just take the spontaneity out of the true discussion that can happen in a classroom. So right now students are just posting to get the points and they’re responding to a classmate because they have to.So they recommend using some external tools or even places that students DO freely to talk such as Twitter, but that really might require some students to actually sign up for it. Not everyone has Twitter. So that might be something to think about. They’re might be some other tools that they recommended int that chapter. Amanda: You know what? In theory, I think that is great. As a student, we had to create a blog. And that blog, I mean I know I can delete it but even after deleting it that blog still exists in some places and anytime you Google my name that blog comes up. And I know it's a part of my learning journey and I shouldn't be embarrassed about it but like 10 years from now am I really going to want someone to find that blog out there about me talking about some instructional design concept. Jessica: That's a really interesting because as we mentioned in the definition of critical digital pedagogy, it was talking about you know privacy issues and bringing those to light. (Inaudible) It’s kind of their right to be forgotten and it’s (inaudible). Amanda: You think about other social media like Twitter - I feel like I remember at my institution reading somewhere that if a professor wanted to use Twitter that they had to get approval to make students create social media accounts for that class. Like it was like a waiver. So it does get complicated. When you want to use some of those like external third-party tools which I think just adds that whole layer of complexity to things when you're trying to be exciting and engaging in an online environment but these are things that you have to think about it. It's kind of - you get kind of divided between students right to privacy and preference and engagement levels. Jessica: Right, exactly. On the one hand, it could be a great discussion point to talk to the students about what you had to do to prepare and the relationships between information and the online and the digital world and things like that. So that's actually a great teachable moment. But like you said what if it doesn’t work out and you have to be prepared for that aspect, too. So that does throw a wrench in the works a little bit but it may at least be a way to explore and fail and try something different that will work eventually in the future. Like we have to have to have these growing pains in the process in order to get to the next (inaudible). I did think of some ways, some hopefully easy ways, that we can incorporate critical digital pedagogy. And as we discussed in our episode with Romel, one easy way to incorporate social justice is at the very least making the topics that you pick as examples be things that are timely and are bringing important issues to light for students. And if possible making it relatable to the class. For gen ed classes, like English, that opens it up to many different topics because there are so many students with different majors in the classroom but issues of representation, climate change, racial disparities, etc. So adding these examples to your PowerPoint or your discussion prompts, if you’re using those formats, can just bring these conversations to light and bring those aspects into your online teaching. Amanda: Yea, that’s a great example. I always try to refresh my tutorials or PowerPoint every semester. If it’s a Powerpoint, refreshing it every semester to make it relevant to something that's going on in the world presently. Jessica: One other thing would be something I saw in the Open Pedagogy Notebook was instead of a video and a LibWizard like I’ve done, was maybe contributing to an annotated bibliography as a class. It might take a few short videos to scaffold the process and maybe even two weeks instead of one, just thinking about the logistics of how to teach them exactly what to do and also leave time for them to do it and leave time for discussion. And it could culminate in a discussion board reflection of their process if that type of assessment was needed. And as I mentioned, there is an example of this on the Open Pedagogy Notebook of a collaborative annotated bibliography on immigration and refugees. So the students there are contributing to something that already exists out in the world and that opens up to a whole conversation around Scholarship as Conversation. It does take a little thinking outside of the box on how to actually make the assignment work piece by piece but it probably is really worth taking that time to actually figure it out. Amanda: Yeah definitely. I have to say again just time for drawing on my own experience - when I was in school a few years ago, the most engaging opportunities that I had was when I was able to talk about my experiences. When I had choices about an assignment to complete. So like sometimes you would get to you do your assignment in either a video format or a website format. It didn't necessarily have to be a paper so that was also very exciting to have that agency. You know, that's what we read about in the description of critical digital pedagogy about learner agency. So that was also really exciting to me. And then when I had real engagement with the faculty like that was really engaging to me. I really liked having a professor respond to me and not just saying “great job” or not just saying you know “fix your citation”. But like true engagement. And you know that does take time. I think and this is going to sound really strange but maybe not that strange but I think in order for us to get this type of level of engagement it has to be a not a standardized week. It needs to be a low stakes graded assignment that can just kind of happen on its own. As I think in online learning it’s very standardized. It's very like “This discussion board have to meet these three requirements” and these type of like super engaging out of the box activities it's hard to assess them and give them a lot of weight. People don't know how to wrap your head around that kind of grading. So I say if I were to want to, and I do, try something like big like this I would recommend it as a low stakes graded assignment and not a standard “give me one week” type of thing. I don't know what that would look like but a few examples - and then I was trying to think about like what could be done is - would be like maybe something small would be like an embedded Padlet where the students can just like all share a response to a question and they can see everyone's response. And if you're not familiar with Padlet, what’s great about that is that you can embed video links, website links, images, text. So it could be a whole class’s shared response to a question in a visual way. Jessica: I’ve never used Padlet. So they can share a video and and a link and all that stuff, too? Amanda: Yes, because it’s an open - it’s almost like a Google Doc. But it’s like you can do other - like you can link to other things and you make it open so that anyone that has access to it can add to it. Jessica: Oh, that’s cool! Amanda: So like you can embed back let's say on a LibGuide or into an LMS and they can just add to it right there. Jessica: That’s pretty cool. Amanda: Yeah but then it becomes how do you assess that? So that's why I'm thinking maybe not like a standardized assignment. And then like big huge pie in the sky activity is maybe for like a capstone or like a research methods class. I was thinking we help our criminal justice research methods class a lot. And I’m thinking because they have to do like a research study where they have to ask a question. They have to do a survey. They have to do an interview. I'm thinking maybe they do some type of multimedia mash-up and they put videos together of like interviewing people and images from what they're studying and then that all gets put on to like a class LibGuide and it's more of a visual representation rather than papers. Something different. So instead of maybe presenting it. Well for an online environment - we do a lot of sections in the online environment - so you know in its face to face you would present it to your class but in the online environment it would be a multimedia project. Jessica: Right, exactly. Amanda: But that’s also complex too because you have to make sure that students have the skills to record and edit, to use the tools that you're providing. You can’t just say, “Make me a video”. That’s also a challenge too, but I did, it feels like a thousand years ago but I read this article about how this one Professor, I think it was in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, I’ll see if I can find it, about how this Professor was engaging students in a math class by every student would have to answer three or four problems, right? They’d submit it and then if they got it right they would then have been have to teach their classmates how to do it and they would all take turns, one week one student would have to like do it. Like they have to record themselves as if they were in front of the classroom teaching them how to do it. So that's kind of engaging too where they're learning from each other and they're also learning about technology and they're learning about themselves and how they speak in presentations. And so it's a lot but you know it's probably nerve wracking for a professor to say to the student, “Hey, you have to do this” and give them all the tools to be able to do it. But it sounds super engaging! Jessica: Yea! It almost sounds like a big jigsaw activity where they’re all teaching the whole class. But we’ll talk about this later but if we create the right online culture and online environment that there won't be so much fear around if they feel supported. That they would be more open to doing that. So I think that’s a really cool idea. And I know that Melody Lynn had suggested this topic said she teaches a credit bearing class so I mean that would be awesome for definitely a credit bearing class over a whole semester. Maybe not a one-shot. Amanda: Yea, no probably not for a one-shot. I also think what’s exciting about doing something like a Padlet is that they’re contributing in a way to like answering a question and maybe in a sense they're doing something collectively but it doesn't feel like the traditional group work, you know? Because online group work can be very challenging especially when you're in different time zones. I mean when I was back in school three years ago, I had a group where we were all in different time zones so we were meeting at 10 p.m. my time because that was the earliest everyone else could meet. So that could be a challenge for groups to get together as well as for students to get together if you ever wanted to as a professor or a librarian have that synchronous opportunity. Jessica: Yeah that just adds a whole other wrench to things as well in working in groups. Amanda: Yea, so do you have any other points for that question? Jessica: There was also a lesson I saw in the ACRL Book called “Framing Information Literacy” - it was that set of books about the Framework that came out a few years ago. There was a chapter that talked about using Wikipedia and compared the background information you would find on Wikipedia to what you would find in the library’s resources. And that author did teach a credit-bearing course so they were able to build up to this lesson plan. So that would be a little different for a one-shot. So the lesson teaches the Information Has Value Frame and as I said it might be difficult to adapt in a one-shot but it could be possible. It got me thinking about doing a Wikipedia editing session with an online class because that really lends itself so well to all the frames and gives an opportunity for conversations and discussions. And if you have a good relationship with the faculty, perhaps you can ask for two weeks in a class to help with that facilitating. And as you said, maybe it’s not perfectly assessable with all the checkboxes that we’re used to doing in online but using assessments other than discussion boards in this case could be really engaging. Amanda: Yeah, that does sound like an exciting assignment to test out in the online environment. Jessica: And I guess my last thought on this is really that it’s a great opportunity for embedded librarianship that we kind of spoke about in the last episode. It could be great to have librarians working with faculty from the start of a class to really incorporate information literacy concepts in authentic ways. And actually incorporate critical digital pedagogy. And it goes back to the quote from Henry Giroux earlier, where students can “actively participate in narrating their identities through a culture of questioning”. So librarians being part of that throughout the process and planning would be really valuable. Amanda: Yea, definitely I think that actually kind of lends itself to my thoughts on the next question which is How do we create an online class culture? And I really do believe that while there are multiple ways, I think it starts with a librarian building a relationship with a faculty member as you were saying and getting them on board with you interacting with their students in multiple formats and multiple weeks. I don't think you can cultivate a culture in a week. I don't think he cultivated culture in just a discussion board. I think it needs to be several separate opportunities where they're interacting with a librarian. And I think you know we already kind of touched upon this being a challenge but I think online learning needs to break that mold of asynchronous is an advantage all the time. I think there needs to be some synchronous sessions. Whether you know, you commit to it. It’s kinda like that concept of blended learning. When you sign up for a course you commit that you're going to attend two of the five synchronous sessions. It gives that face to face connection because a lot of students don't feel connected to their professor. They don’t feel connected to their classmates in the online environment so if they're interacting with students for a whole semester and they're still not feeling it, they’re not going to feel connected to a librarian in one day. So we kinda dabbled with this a little bit at Berkeley and you and I've done it where we set up an optional session for an internship class where it was particularly challenging so students who wanted a face-to-face time with a librarian, they could “drop into” the Zoom meeting. And we didn’t get an insane number of students but we did get some who were interested in interacting with a librarian and it was helpful. And we actually have a librarian taking that concept a step further. She's like the Online Associate Director. She's doing that with drop in research hours where any student can drop in to talk about any topic so we'll see how that goes. I think that's how you create a culture. You give students different ways to learn, different opportunities to learn, and engage with you and their classmates. Jessica: And I remember those asynchronous sessions and the students that did attend said, “I’m so glad that I did this because I got to meet you guys and I got to ask my specific questions and I feel more confident in my assignment now”. So just having that as an endorsement for those sessions was really motivational to keep trying it. And I think you’re right, it wouldn’t be too much to ask to say that you have to attend one of these asynchronous sessions a semester and it wouldn’t really affect the marketing of online classes at all. And I think it’s true that the professor sets a lot of the tone for the class as librarians. It’s the same thing as on-site classes. If a faculty member has that negative or just not engaging rapport with the students, it gets passed on to us when we teach our one-shots. So the faculty member has to build that culture because as you said, we can’t build that culture in one week. We can make engaging activities but it’s only going to go as far as the culture and motivation allows. So that's tough. Amanda: I used to do this and I think I’m going to get back into it. I used to do a (indecipherable) 45-second whatever intro video where I would introduce myself and say who I am and what I’ll be doing for them and with them for the week. I don't even know how many of them watched it but I just felt like sometimes that made the difference. I felt like sometimes they knew a little bit about me, a little more comfortable and it's something simple and it doesn't have to be perfect. It could be messy. You can stumble, you can hesitate, you can say um. It’s more authentic. It's not as cookie cutter as some of these like intro to the course videos. So I would anyone interested in getting a little bit more connected with your students to create a 40-second video. Just put it there and don't try to make it perfect. Jessica: That’s funny that you said that, too. One of the episodes that I mentioned from the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, the one with Flower Darby, the about small teaching online episode. They talked about just that. Leaving the blips in and if your dog walks in when you’re recording your lecture video, let it happen, you know. Because showing you’re a real person helps to build that relationship with them. So I think that’s a great tip. So the next thing we were going to talk about was whether the one shot model really works for online library instruction at all and creating engaging content and learning objects. What do you think? I mean we kind of touched on it a little bit in what we’ve talked about. We really didn't come up with too many learning object ideas because it’s hard in a one-shot. Amanda: It is hard. I think I think the answer to that question is that you have to try, right? If you only have an opportunity to be in that class for one week, take that opportunity. But I would say just continue to work on it and try and work with the same Professor every semester and try to build upon what you've done any maybe tweak it here and tweak it there. Jessica: I think it also depends on what we mean by “does it work”. We could say technically what I’ve been doing worked because I do have, based on rubrics that I have, students are finding sources for their assignment so ok they have the basic information literacy skills, that’s great. But if we want to be doing things like critical digital pedagogy where we’re teaching them to really think, and grappling with these big questions, then according to that metric, then no, it’s not working. Because my stuff wasn’t working on that metric. So we need to do what we talked a little about before and break the mold of online learning and try all of these new things. But then there could be the potential to break a relationship with a faculty member by doing something they don’t like and so we’re tip-toeing a line a little bit with keeping relationships, teaching students the information literacy skills we need them to learn and getting them to think critically about these big questions around information. And all doing this while being tied up in the time frame of online and the technology. So it’s figuring out what does “work” mean for your goals and your institution and then trying to go from there. Amanda: At the end of the day I want the students to walk away with the skills that they need. Sometimes it's not super pretty and super engaging and you want learning to be exciting and fun all the time but I just don't think that's possible with larger factors. Like you said, maybe there’s a mold. Maybe the professor is not comfortable because it's outside of what they're doing or what they've ever seen a librarian do before. So yeah that can be that can be a huge challenge. And I have an example. I was supporting a public speaking class and I wanted to be engaging and actually one of my questions was - and this was not even required - it was an optional activity for students to record. Because what I was doing was I was going in there helping them to learn how to find sources for a persuasive speech. And what happened was is they were finding sources and then talking about the sources and I said in a question “If you want additional feedback on how to integrate this source into your speech, attach a 30-second clip of how you would talk about this source in your speech.” And the professor emailed me and said, “Can you take that question out? They’re already doing a lot of videos. I don't want to overwhelm them.” Jessica: Yea, because you’re trying to engage the students and the faculty member is putting up a barrier there. And I just tweeted this from our Twitter account. It was a blog post from librarian Kevin Seeber. He did this whole blog post about faculty/librarian relationships. And this just reminded me of that. I mean, we could probably do half an episode on his blog post. It was great. He talks about how within faculty, each discipline doesn’t tell the other one how to teach their concepts so why is it that we allow faculty to tell us as the experts in information, how to do our jobs? And I think this is something that has been talked about in libraries for a while but it was interesting to see it articulated in this way and it kind of goes to what you just said, why are they telling you how to do your engagement? Amanda: I think because we're being invited in. We’re invited guests so I think that that's why if they think they have the agency to do that to librarians. I definitely get a lot of librarians who, and like you said, I think this could be a whole episode, who are very like they tiptoe around faculty. And I’m not going to go beyond that. Whereas I kind of push it more in face to face. For example, the professor will say, “okay I'll give you 20 minutes” and say, “yea, yea, sure” and I'll be in there for 45 minutes. Or I’ll be honest with them and I’ll say to them, “Listen. I can’t do that in 20 minutes. I can do this in 20 minutes but not what you're asking me to do.” And they’re surprised to hear me say that. They think that, you know, this is what they are giving us and we're just going to be okay with it. But you know I think that it's even more challenging in the online space because I think if the faculty is very engaged in their online course the way they should be they are very on top of every little detail of all the activities that the students have to complete in a given week. Like this professor, she didn’t miss a beat. She saw my question and there are some professors that just don’t even pay attention and they’re just like, “Oh this is one week that I don’t have to participate in a discussion board. The librarian is just going to handle it.” Whereas this professor, she knew. She read all of my questions and made sure that I knew she read my questions. Jessica: Which, honestly, we would want anyway because it’s the equivalent of in person and having the faculty just not be there. But at the same time, you had a plan in mind of how you were going to get the students interested and that threw a wrench in it though. Yeah so that’s an interesting example. Amanda: Yea, that article was really interesting - blog post I think. It was really interesting. I read it as well and meant to tweet you. (Jessica laughs) Jessica: It would be good on an upcoming episode. You may hear about this again! (Laughing) Amanda: Yes! Absolutely. I think it's definitely - he definitely talked about a lot of important things that librarians need to be talking about for sure. Jessica: So we want to hear from you! “what does critical digital pedagogy or open pedagogy look like to you in the online environment?” Or if you have resources that you love about these concepts, we want you to shout them out! Send us an email or tweet us or hashtag LibrariansGuideToTeaching. Amanda: Ok! So we're switching things up a little bit this time around since we're on break. We don't have any triumphs or fails to share but we thought it would be a perfect time to talk about goals for the new year. So Jessica what are you thinking about some goals for the New Year? Jessica: I definitely first want to incorporate more of these concepts that we talked about today into my instruction and be more reflective in my teaching practices. In my new role, I’m lucky to have the ability to take that time to think about my teaching and evaluate it more so definitelyI plan to make the most of it. And this is a little bit deeper but I do plan to do less work for the sake of achievement. And as I get older, I’m just reflecting more on what I spend my time on and while I’m really incredibly proud of what I’ve accomplished in my career, I want to focus less on the “shiny” achievements and work on things that truly fulfill me. And if that resonates with you and you haven’t read the Meredith Farkas blog series called “Thoughts on Being a Mid-Career librarian”, definitely head over to her blog and check it out. I’ll also link it in the show notes. You don’t have to be a mid-career librarian to appreciate what she says but it definitely spoke to me as I approach 10 years in librarianship. And I think it’s definitely something I’m going to take into the new year with me. And lastly, in that vein, I want to build relationships with some of the students that I’ve met so far in classes although I’m not sure if it’s going to be harder in this much larger campus environment that I’m in. You know, I’m coming from almost 400 FTE to 6000 so (Laughing) And I did like 30 English classes this semester so it may be a little harder but it’s definitely a goal that I have to really get on a first name basis with some of my students. Amanda: I think those are great goals. I know it can be a little overwhelming going from 400 to 6,000 but I'm sure there are small ways that you can definitely make a difference and make your presence known to the students, for sure. Jessica: Yea, so what about you? Amanda: Okay, so I definitely want to step up my LibGuide game. I want to create some more interesting, dynamic, engaging LibGuides which I don't think LibGuide are boring but like I definitely want to create some more interactive opportunities on them. I want to make more connections with faculty. In my role, I’ve been in my new role of the director - this is my second year. I'm going into my third. I mean, being with the college for 10 years I definitely have relationships that there still a lot of faculty that just don't know who I am or know my name. So want to get myself out there a little more with faculty and look for some of those opportunities. I know there are opportunities throughout the semester that I maybe I don't go to because I don't know if it's like a fit for me or I don't see the value in it but I think I'm going to push myself a little bit to be a little more social and kind of work the room a little bit. Maybe I'll actually get my business cards made up. I haven't even got my business cards made. I know it’s ridiculous, I haven't done it. But bigger goals that I want to achieve but I'm not going to like kill myself if I don't is I'd like to publish something whether it be an article or book chapter on my own. Completely by myself. I have had great opportunities to publish book chapters with colleagues but I've never attempted to do anything by myself. So I would love to, you know, do that. Even if, even if I don't get accepted and I get rejected at least I can say I put myself out there and I put my ideas out there. Jessica: Yeah, that’s a good one! That’s a nice one. Amanda: Yea, 10 years later (Laughs) Jessica: And then we have our shared goal of presenting internationally. (Laughs) Amanda: Yes! You know, last year I didn't get the present last year and I chose not to. I had a baby andI was still trying to figure out the whole mom thing. And now that I’ve gotten a little better handle on it, I really want to get back into presenting at some of the conferences so I'm definitely going to look to apply to some of the upcoming things. And internationally is definitely on my list. Jessica: It’s on the bucket list! Amanda: Yea, right (Laughs) So here we come, 2020! Jessica: Yup! Exactly, we’re coming at ya! Amanda: Coming at ya! And with that, that is the end of episode 7. Jessica: You can find the podcast on Twitter @librarian_guide. You can find me, Jessica, @librarygeek611. You can find Amanda @historybuff820. And you can send us an email at [email protected]. Be sure to rate and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen and we'd love to hear from you in the reviews as well. We'd love to read your review on an upcoming episode. Jessica: Welcome to episode number 6 of the Librarian's Guide to Teaching Podcast. I'm Jessica...
Amanda: And I'm Amanda. Jessica: So on today's episode, we're going to talk about the future of information literacy instruction and ask some kind of big questions. But before we get started with our conversation, how are you doing? Anything exciting going on? Amanda: Oh, I'm doing good! You know, we're wrapping up our semester and I sent my email off to all of my people about end of semester tasks and I'm feeling like, you know, we had to at least take a look back at what we accomplished because sometimes you forget all the things you accomplished. So I actually took the time to go back and it ended up being like a 30 bullet point list of all the exciting new concrete things that we did the past year. So it was nice to see it all together because like I said you just forget the things that you do and it was just - we really did accomplish a lot. So I was super excited to see that and share that with people, too. Because I think they forget as well in our day to day stuff. What about you? What's going? Jessica: Yea, kind of similar over here. Wrapping up the semester. Stuff like that. But what I'm doing this week is kind of fun is that I've started taking an online mini course by Mike Caulfield. I follow him on Twitter and he's actually the Director of Blended and Network Learning at Washington State University in Vancouver. But he has this website called Check, Please! And it's really about this different method of evaluating sources online. And so the course is really directed at students who would be taking it to understand how to evaluate online info but taking it as a librarian is interesting too because it's challenging the methods that we're usually taught to evaluate information and showing me a really different way that I can show students how to evaluate information. So I'll put it in the show notes but it's been kind of fun to do this week. Amanda: That does sound exciting! Yea, I definitely want to check that out as well. Jessica: Yea, it definitely makes sense. It's a cool method. Amanda: Great! So let's dive right in. So the two big questions that we're going to be tackling today is "will librarians always teach information literacy?" and "will it ever become fully adopted into curriculum and only be taught by faculty?" So why don't we get started with the first question. What do you think? Will librarians always teach information literacy? Jessica: I mean, there's definitely probably some philosophical angles we could take to this question and really do some deep diving into that part of it but I think when I was thinking about it I was thinking it from a more practical perspective and I think maybe you'll cover a little bit of the philosophical end of things. I mean, first, there's so many institutional factors first of all. We have to get that out there. At certain institutions it might be easier to hand it off to someone else whereas other institutions it definitely wouldn't work. And there's also the situation of support in the library and faculty and what their relationship is. What's the relationship with the library and administration? So it can be different anywhere you work. However, there may be some situations where it might be easier for librarians to not teach information literacy. So there may be some situations where it's just as easy for a faculty member to do the information literacy instruction as it would be for a librarian. We know that maybe some English faculty are already probably doing this which is why they don't reach out to us to come in for one-shots. So even though it seems like faculty have a lot to cover, it may be just as easy for them to do these one-shots that we're doing, right? Amanda: True, yea. I personally think that librarians will always teach information literacy. I think again, you kind of mentioned this, it depends on the institution size. If you think about a teaching college where you have a lot of faculty who are experts in your field but not necessarily experts in teaching and have formal backgrounds in teaching adding that layer of teaching information literacy might be overwhelming to them. They might not know how to fit that in. I think librarians have really have this stronghold on information literacy instruction and I think we’ve built culture around it and I just couldn't imagine us not doing it. I read this article when we were doing research for this episode about information literacy and this article was by Barbara Fister from Inside Higher Ed and she was writing how we’re in - information literacy is in third wave. First information literacy was about bibliographic instruction to show and empower students how to use the library for research. And then the second wave was when the internet exploded and it was to show students how to use resources outside of the library. And then she said what this third wave is, that it's our response to the commercialization and portability of networked information. And how it’s still more important than ever that librarians are teaching information literacy so with that being said I don't see librarians just giving up information literacy as a job task. I just don't think that faculty will ever be comfortable teaching it on their own. Especially because I had so many conversations with people about how they try to talk to faculty about the Framework and they just grapple with it and they don't understand it and so how can we expect a faculty member to teach information literacy if they’re not even comprehending our framework and our standards of how we teach information literacy? Jessica: Right, right. I’m thinking devil’s advocate for the fun of the conversation but what if there were lesson plans created for faculty? Think about how Credo Reference does modules and they’re provided and purchased and sent off for people to use, right? What if someone decided to make that happen in the future so that they could take it off librarians’ plates. Again it would depend on the institution, it would depend on the motivations behind it. Why would anyone want to do that? I’m not sure. But could be something interesting to think about. Amanda: The problem with those is that faculty don’t need to do anything with those. Those are pre-packaged and kind of run themselves. I don’t think a faculty member would take the time to interact with the Framework and then develop a lesson or even use a lesson that a librarian created to then teach it to the students. I just don't think that's ever going to be a part of their expertise. Jessica: Right. Amanda: Not that I don't think they're capable. I think faculty are definitely capable. I just don't think they’re going to add that to what they do. I don’t see that happening Jessica: That’s true because like you said their focus is their discipline area and that's what they want to focus on, rightly so. So I think that it does make the most sense. Amanda: Right, right. I know a lot of people have said that information literacy should just be part of general education. And that it's a discipline in itself if you think about it that way. We are the subject matter experts when it comes to information literacy. So I agree with that but I don't necessarily agree that it just belongs in General Ed courses. I think it belongs in all disciplines. So I guess that kind of segways a little bit into our next question which is: will it ever become fully adopted into a curriculum and only be taught by faculty? Jessica: Right, I don't know about that one. Like you said, how exactly would it be implemented in every single discipline. I mean there could be a way that it would be may be taught as a gen ed full credit course which it is at some institutions, but then I'm not sure how it eventually gets integrated later on into the disciplines and the majors without having the librarian do it. As we already mentioned you know the faculty are working in those major areas and they’re teaching those areas they’re not necessarily going to start all of a sudden teaching information literacy outside of maybe just little snippets here and there within their lessons. Amanda: Yea, I have never been a fan of the full credit bearing course. I think it's just an easy “get out of jail free card” if you will that like “okay we checked his box. They took this information literacy course. Now they know everything they need to know about the information literate”. I think we know from our personal experiences that the students don't transfer their skills as much as they should into other classes and I think if you only front load it at the beginning of their educational career they're going to forget it. And they’re not going to apply it in the majors. I think that it needs to be integrated throughout all the discipline, all the majors. And I know that can be a challenge. I'm currently living that challenge. My personal experience right now is that we are working our way through the School of Professional Studies. And it’s a very slow process. We just finished integrating it into our Legal Studies program. Now next semester we're doing a syllabi review and then we're hoping to integrate into their curriculum but it’s gonna take time. And it depends on your workforce. But I don't - I think the only way for it to work is if it's not only adopted into the curriculum but acknowledge how it's actually going to get implemented. Jessica: Right, because the way that you're talking about it and the way that you guys are implementing it into the curriculum is the standardized instruction in maybe one course? Amanda: Right. Jessica: So if it’s Professional Studies and that major has to take 10 courses, you're still only having your standardized instruction in one course out of those 10, right? Amanda: So here's how it is. So we have relationships in some of the Gen Ed classes so like we're in the Freshman seminar so they're getting exposure there. We’re in the English 101 so they're getting exposure there. And then in the majors they have two other opportunities at the 2000 level and the 4000 level let’s say in our legal studies program. So they're getting 1, 2, 3, 4 standardized opportunities for information literacy and they do build upon each other because we planned it that way. Jessica: Right. Amanda: And then we always help them in the internship and a lot of time, the Research Method classes so they’re getting additional opportunities but at least we know we're hitting them on those four courses. So that's my goal. And like I said, it required a lot. I mean it took us a whole semester to plan out the learning object, you know, draft it, get the faculty feedback. And now we’re implementing it next semester so it's time consuming. And you have to have the manpower and skill set to do it. But I just - I don't see faculty doing it. And I’ve read articles about how librarians are doing boot camps and teaching faculty how to do information literacy or trying to empower them to teach information literacy on their own with guidance from a librarian and I just, I just don't think that that's going to happen. I just don't think that's going to be successful. I did come across this white paper and I thought this was a really interesting quote that I just want to read. It’s kind of long but I think it's important. It says: “Our efforts to teach students have undermined our ability to integrate information literacy throughout the curriculum by using up time and energy that would be better focused on institutional-wide initiatives that lead to shared educational goals and objectives around the campus. Furthermore faculty control the learning environment and are in a better position than library faculty to create situations which allow students to see information seeking as an essential part of problem solving in a discipline.” (“Philosophical Shift: Teach the Faculty to Teach Information Literacy”, White Paper written by Risë L. Smith and Karl E. Mundt Library) To me, I get it. So basically she's saying that the one-shot is not worth our time and that we're losing our sight And I agree. It has to come from the top. It has to come from the institution. The institution not only has to acknowledge that it's an important skill to have but also be prepared to do something about it in a methodical way. Not just check a box and say, “Yes, information literacy is important and here’s a research assignment so they're definitely getting information literacy skills here.” Jessica: Totally. Amanda: Just because there’s a research assignment doesn’t mean they’re being taught the research skills that they need to complete that assignment. Jessica: Right and just because it's listed as one of the core competencies of a program - is it being assessed appropriately? Or are they just doing a research paper and checking the box that it's done? That doesn't equate to information literacy. Amanda: Right. Definitely, not. Definitely not. That’s been my experience. And I saw this really interesting thing that SUNY Albany is doing where they made information literacy be integrated into their general education. But in a very specific way. And there’s a form. And I'll put that in the show notes. Where they had to really sit down and explain how information literacy was being taught in the class. And I think that would have warranted conversations with the library and librarians saying, “Well how can we collaborate to do this? Because I don’t know how to do this. Let’s do this together.” So I think it was a lot more harder than just saying that information literacy is happening in this program. Jessica: Right, exactly. I mean kind of what you're talking about a little bit is reminding me of some of the classes that colleges have tried to do like the Writing Across the Curriculum? Where the classes, even if it was a math class, they’d somehow have to implement writing. I mean I kind of think something like that could potentially work for information literacy if it was - but again it has to be a real partnership situation where librarians are in the department meetings, they’re are part of the curriculum development, they're part of creating the assignment which just in our experience - me not so much at my new institution because I’m not involved in those meetings as of yet - but just our experiences together you know that hasn’t really happened on a consistent basis. Amanda: No, no. And I think going back to Barbara Fister’s article about the three waves of information literacy, I think some faculty are still stuck in that first wave of “show them the library”. Librarians show students about library resources very like “how to” and not necessarily skill-based. And I think that's the problem and I think that's the mentality that's the barrier of them accepting and acknowledging that information literacy is more than just how to access a database. Jessica: Right, exactly. I mean I think there's even still now in this third wave that Barbara Fister was talking about is kind of confusion about information literacy vs. digital literacy. I mean I was talking to someone the other day and they were trying to say that information literacy was part of digital literacy and I was like no flip that around. The umbrella is information literacy and digital literacy is a part of something that lives underneath that. Information just exists online and you need to know how to look at it in that context. So if people are still thinking about information that way then we have a language problem. We have some definition problems and we kind of have to tackle those to even figure out what we're talking about and what are we trying to teach and that's a barrier. Amanda: I mean how do you even get faculty engaged in that conversation. That’s kind of been part of my challenge. I've tried to frame it where it elevates it and talks about like “We need to collaborate together. Let's do this together to make sure your students are information literate. These skills are important.” But then I’m in a meeting and the Dean is like, “Information literacy is important. Amanda’s here to talk to you about it and the librarians are also going to do this for you.” And like, it’s true we are but we also want their feedback and we want them to engage in what we're doing. We don't want them to just plug in what we did or you know what we think and not have any feedback or recommendation or ideas about whether or not that’s a right fit, you know? I think that's my biggest challenge that I think engaging faculty is tough to get them over that hump of what it is that we do and why it's important for them to kind of accept it... Jessica: And the possibilities of what we could do. Like the fact that we could sit with them and look at their syllabus and say, “Oh, for this topic we can fit in the ACRL frame and this is what the frame means and this is the potential for what we could be explaining to them and think about the conversations that that could open about your discipline area.” So but it's like you said getting in the door to even have that conversation. Amanda: Yea, and that’s why I don’t think librarians are going to be giving up information literacy anytime soon. Jessica: Yea, that’s true. Amanda: You know, sometimes I think we spin our wheels doing one-shots but at the same time, at least what I’m trying to do at my institution like I said is implement one program at a time where they're getting those standardized opportunities. And I go back and forth about standardized opportunities because, you know, is it too cookie cutter? Is it that engaging? But I think the fact of the matter is that at least we know and we can speak to it when we have to go to our accrediting bodies that our students are getting information literacy in these courses, these are the skills that they’re graduating with and here’s our assessment. Because I don’t think that’s happening as often as it should. I really don't. Jessica: Right, exactly. And another reason why librarians are probably not going to give up information literacy anytime soon as well is that we remain up-to-date on the technology of research and the evaluating sources online and how that changes with different technology and the bias and algorithms and all that stuff. Faculty are doing their own research on their own disciplinary is so you know it’s like you said we're the experts in this area so we can stay up-to-date not only on the pedagogy but also the technology behind research and how to do it and keeping up with the databases so that's something that I think is always going to be our expertise and we'll always have that to be there as support for faculty. Amanda: Yea, I definitely agree with that. I don't think faculty are going to be keeping up with these things. And I think, the how to’s and the theoretical stuff have a place in your instruction. I do both. I don't do one of the other and I don't think faculty will be able to successfully navigate through databases the way a librarian could teach a student how to do it. Jessica: Right, yea exactly. And either way I think we're going to be there for consultations. I mean just like The Writing Center is always there for students to drop in and have appointments we’re always going to be there for them for that as well. Faculty can’t be there to counsel students on writing and research and then teach full classes. It's going to be a team effort of all the support services so. And I find that to be one of the most rewarding things that I do anyway is I'll come to the class, I'll teach and then when they come to me two days later and go, “you know I tried all these things and my topic is still really hard. Can we sit down and talk about it? “ That's some of the most rewarding stuff that I do. Amanda: Yea, the one one one consultations are really great. I think they are great reinforcers and they are great ways to get students to be more comfortable with talking to librarians and asking for help because you know they are so nervous and I think they're also overconfident. I think having that opportunity to have them come to us I think is a great resource. And I don't know if we were no longer teaching those classes if they would be going to their professors like “how do I do this research?” I don't think that would happen. Jessica: That’s actually something a lot of faculty say to me is, they say, “you know I tell them this stuff all the time but hearing it from you is that more valuable because it's another voice”. And so even that is valuable to be able to be that other voice to say, “Hey you know I know you know evaluating sources is important but let's look at it a different way” or you know I'm a different person saying it to you and maybe it's going to stick what I said. Amanda: Yeah yeah. I think in the dream ideal situation a librarian and a faculty member would develop a course together and it would just be a co-taught course and it would be a combination of discipline and then also information literacy skills that work for that course. I really think that would be an ideal set up. Again I don't think that means the student should never have exposure to information literacy instruction but I think it would add value to how faculty perceive librarians and information literacy and I think it would add value to how students see the library and what librarians do on a day-to-day. Jessica: Yea, that was actually one of the most interesting experiences I had at Berkeley was there was an English faculty member who was super supportive of the library, we had a good relationship. And she asked me to experiment on an embedded course where you know I looked at her syllabus I said “I can put modules in you know week 3 week, week 7 and week 9 but also have a discussion board open the whole semester and these are the places and topics that I feel like it would be helpful for students to get some research help”. So it was really cool to be a part of the class the whole semester and getting to interact with students every couple of weeks and having them email me when they had questions so that kind of embedded library instruction was really cool. And I know some librarians at some institutions already do that but I don't think it's as widespread as it could or should be. It would probably be valuable for a lot more places. Amanda: I mean, I think it would almost be interesting to have that in maybe one major - one course for every major. Jessica: Yeah, right. Amanda: Interesting...that would be a nice way to expose students to - especially in courses that are like Introduction to Research in Marketing. We have a lot of those courses. We have like Intro to Marketing Research and then Advanced Marketing Research, you know? I think having a librarian co-teach a course for the faculty at the intro level kind of sets the student up for the skills that they will learn about and then also the one that they that they don't even know that they're going to need that moving forward and then at least they have a librarian as a resource during their time in the program because they interacted with the librarian in that way. Jessica: Yea, that’s true. Amanda: I think that would be a unique experience. Jessica: So we actually had put out a call on Twitter about this episode and kind of asked all of you this question and we did have a response from @librarybon. She had said, “I fear worse than librarians not teaching information literacy that it just won't be taught at all. So another reason to keep info lit on the forefront of the minds of administrators and state lawmakers continuously proving our value because if librarians aren't teaching it we fear it won't be taught.” And I mean that's kind of a good point, right? And we know Bonnie and she's advocating doing amazing work in New Jersey for elementary and middle school and high school librarians to get them into the schools where they're actually missing so I know that that's something of a passion for her. But she makes a point if we're not there and we're not seen as valuable then who's going to teach it? That would be bad. Amanda: Agreed yeah. I guess from the context that you're providing it definitely makes sense why she would say something like that. Yeah but in higher ed, I just can't imagine that librarians would not be teaching information literacy and that information literacy would just be out of the conversation completely. Jessica: That like all of a sudden all of the instruction Librarians would either be gone or be put on the reference desk, Amanda: Or just a consultation research only. I couldn't even imagine it. I’d be out of a job. Jessica: Yeah, right! Amanda: So I couldn’t even imagine it but I mean I see where she was coming from in that context. But yea I mean, I guess this is something that we will just always continue to struggle with and fight for you know that quote/unquote seat at the table when these conversations are happening about curriculum development and information literacy and I just wish that we were a part of the conversation from the jump. And that we didn’t have to go in after decisions were made because I think it just makes it so much harder. Jessica: But I think some of the conversations being had in a general public, not just the library world, about this third phase of information literacy - they're not calling it that but I think all of the problems that we're having with information and digital literacy are - they may change the conversation and really bring us out into the forefront a little bit. I mean I don't think the problems as a society information-wise are going to be solved by some one-shot sessions or or by information literacy instruction in general. But I think changes that we’ve talked about in this episode and changes within higher ed could make a difference. Amanda: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think this is just one of these things that it's just going to be many more people will talk about and write about and...I don't...like if we reflect back on this conversation about five years from now I think information literacy will still be in the same place. I think my librarians will still be teaching it and it will be mostly one-shots. Jessica: I hope you're wrong. Just for the record. (Laughs) Amanda: I hope so, too, but I don't think librarians are losing their position in terms of teaching information literacy any time soon. Jessica: So let's move into our weekly segment of our Work Triumphs and Fails. So Amanda, what's your triumph and fail this week? Amanda: I have a Triumph. As I’ve previously talked about on a podcast I have been working with other librarians to integrate information literacy into our Legal Studies program and it’s been a two semester-long project. Actually three semesters. We’ve been working on this for three semesters now and we’ve actually finished the modules, with the assessment and shared it with faculty. And the triumph is that it was widely adopted and accepted and they were thrilled. They were super excited about it. They actually completed the module and had questions. So they really engaged with the material and did just yes us to death which is super exciting. And we're going to pilot in the winter and the hope is to integrate into their syllabi as a standardized assignment in the spring. So I'm so excited. It was a long project. It really took forever to get together but it's happening so I'm super pumped about it. Jessica: Yeah that's rewarding! Amanda: Definitely rewarding. So what about you? Work triumph or work fail? Or both? Jessica: I’ve got both. So one comes off of a triumph. So one of my triumphs recently was our partnership with the Writing Center and their new director. And so we had scheduled citing workshops - one MLA and one APA. And we'd reached out to faculty and classes and stuff like that but of course the one citing workshop that I was going to do - the MLA one - was scheduled for the day after the snow storm. So we had nobody come. So while that could have been a total fail if everything was super context-based and it was only for that workshop that we had created something, it really would have been crappy, but what we created can really be adapted into classroom lessons and stuff like that. So not too bad. And people did show up to the APA one the day after which we weren’t surprised about because the snow was all gone and it was ok. So that's my fail. But for a Triumph my supervisor and I met with some colleagues from the Assessment Department and so we are re-energizing an assessment project of our standardized English instruction. So I'm excited to be a part of that and we're going to be doing a combination of like a Qualtrics survey module but also looking at student work and creating a rubric to actually analyze their finished products. So we're going to have a little bit of a qualitative and quantitative assessment so I'm really excited to dive into that project at at my new job. So that'll be cool. Amanda: Yea, definitely! That’s pretty awesome! And don’t be so hard on yourself for that fail. You can’t control the weather. Jessica: Yes, it's true, I know. And I mean we are going to schedule them again so it's not like I said it's not something that is just a one-and-done. We're going to try to do it every semester and what’s the worst that can happen when you schedule something? If people don't show up we just pick new times and that's something that I've always been used to trying at Berkeley, was trying different times and methods of outreach and seeing what sticks. Amanda: That's great, that's great. Well hopefully the second time’s the charm! Jessica: Yea, exactly! Amanda: Alright so that wraps up another episode of The Librarian's Guide to Teaching! So Jessica, you want to tell them where they can find us? Jessica: Sure! So the podcast is on Twitter @librarian_guide. I am on Twitter @librarygeek611. Amanda is @historybuff820 and you can always email us at [email protected]. Amanda: Be sure to rate and subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen! We love to hear from you and your reviews as well. Send us an email or a tweet to share your questions, ideas for potential discussions or your triumphs and fails in the classroom. Jessica: Welcome to episode number five of The Librarian’’s Guide to Teaching Podcast! I'm Jessica…
Amanda: And I’m Amanda. Jessica: So on today's episode we're going to be talking about classroom management and some of the different tips that we’ve used or that we might try in the future or recommend. But before we get started with our topic, how are you doing anything? Anything exciting going on? Amanda: I’m doing great! Yea, it’s week 11 in our 15 week semester so things are winding up and also winding down at the same time. I'm done with my in-class instruction for the semester but I'm doing a lot of behind-the-scenes things right now. So I previously talked about modules that are being created to be embedded into classes so all of those projects are starting to come to a close and they're really coming together. So I’m super excited about actually meeting with the faculty to share the final finished products. What about you? Jessica: Well you know, on a personal note, just prepping for Thanksgiving. It’s always crazy how that sneaks up on us. We’re not having too many people over, thank goodness. But still planning the menu and making sure...what’s everybody's bringing and stuff like that. And at the same time trying to also just simplify my evenings and weekends and you know, mindfulness is a big thing in libraries right now and I think I'm definitely trying to incorporate some of that this time of year. But the good thing is that work things are slowing down too so I think I did my last scheduled class for the semester today. So for the rest of the semester is going to be last minute classes or prepping for next semester's instruction. And we're going to be having a conversation about some of our standardized instruction and potentially updating that based on my experience as the newest instructional librarian. So that should be fun. Amanda: Absolutely! We're lucky. We're not hosting Thanksgiving this year. We're going to a family member's house. So I just have to show up and bring a dish so I'm excited for that. Jessica: Nice! What are you bringing? Amanda: I don’t even know yet. I’m not even sure. I think I'm definitely going to do a dessert and I think I might do like a green, green bean casserole. I made that a few years ago and people seemed to like it so… Jessica: Right. Amanda: That’s what we might do. Jessica: That’s a good one. Amanda: So let’s jump right into our topic today. Classroom management can be a struggle for librarians who don't have an education degree or previous experience teaching. And it can be difficult to manage at the same time as the content. It can also be a challenge since we typically don't get to develop a rhythm or rapport with the students since we most often provide one shots but we’ll mostly be talking about tips that can be used in either in person one shot or semester-long course. Because all of our experience comes from one shots there maybe addition strategies suited for full credit courses that we may not address. So now we're going to go back and forth with some common classroom management concerns and solutions. So one concern is getting and keeping them engaged. Right? We’ve all kind of struggled that before. Jessica: Yea, definitely. Amanda: So one tip or solution is telling stories. It would be much more interesting than a lecture. I love this idea. I think we sort of do it when we can think of the story but I think we should be doing it way more because we should be drawing and on our experiences from helping students when they come to the library. And I think student would appreciate that story. Jessica: Yeah I think I am good when I give examples of helping students with the same assignment and what may be topics they did but sometimes I struggle with doing it when it's about my research struggles. You know, not that I've never had research struggles but I either feel like I can't remember them in the moment and, or I feel like I feel disingenuous sometimes when I feel like it's not going to relate to them or they're not going to relate to what I'm saying. So I don't want it to fall flat. So I think I worry about trying it. So I think maybe I just need to see someone do it a couple of times and that would make me feel a little more confident at doing it. Amanda: Yea, when I was back in school when I was getting my second master's degree, I found myself talking a lot about my research experiences as a student. And I would draw from that a lot. And I was saying, “I’m a librarian. I do this for a living and I am super frustrated with the research process”. And I think that really engaged the students. And like you said, sometimes I just don't think of those examples in the moment. So I think it's such a great tool to use storytelling but I just I don't always remember it. Jessica: Yea, I think I need to do a little more reflection on, I mean, because I haven't been in school since like 2011 so I just think I need to do some reflection and tap into those experiences of what it was like or even doing the research that I have to do to prep for classes. You know, I don't have to tell them that that's what it was for. I could tell them it was for when I was in school to make it a little more relatable. So I think that's one of the next things on my to-do list is thinking about ways to be a little bit more of a storyteller. Amanda: So another solution is if it fits with your session, start your session with a pre-knowledge Kahoot. It creates an engaging atmosphere in the room that can make students open up later. Have you ever done that before? Jessica: I’ve done Poll Everywhere which I guess is kind of similar. Because one thing I struggled with when trying to a Kahoot! was it's a quiz so there has to be a kind of a correct answer. And sometimes with the theories and concepts that we're trying to teach, you know, I'm trying to be more framework based, they can be a little difficult to just be cut and dry with a correct answer. I'm trying to really get their pre-existing knowledge about how they research not necessarily about what the right and wrong answer is. But I think it could fit in certain situations. Amanda: Yea, I think it also helps you manage the room, besides the real engagement, it allows you to know what level to teach at. Depending on how you ask your questions. Jessica: Right. Amanda: Another solution would be to ask them to do the work in the demo. For example, you could say, “I have these search results. Now what do we do?” Jessica: Yea, I actually did that today. They weren't as responsive and I was hoping but you know, it's different with every group. The dynamic is different every time. But it has worked pretty well in the past. Some of them will say, “I’m going to read the title.” Some of them will say, you know, “I'm going to pick on the third one because it's the New York Times” and then we have a discussion about why they feel like that's the best one to pick. So sometimes asking them to do the work and walk me through everything is helpful. Amanda: Yeah yeah you are actually found this really great tweet about what one librarian is doing. Do you want to share that? Jessica: Yea, so her name is Laura Woods on Twitter and she was inspired to do a choose-your-own-adventure. So I don't think this would necessarily work in a class where you're teaching to an assignment but she was more just asked to come in and do a library demonstration. So she prepared give 15 minutes sets of content on topics like advanced searching, planning a literature review, evaluating your sources, etc. And she let the students pick two of those to go over and she provided them resources like tutorials or references on how to do the rest of them. And she said they were still engaged because they got to pick what they were learning and either way no matter what they picked it would be applicable to their work. So I thought that was kind of cool because you're giving them an option. And I kind of tried to do this the other day in a tiny way. Because I do a demo of two things in this one class. I do a demo of searching Google for news and then a demo of our library website. So together the whole demo is was probably like 15 minutes and then at the end they workshop it and do their own searching. But after the first Google session, I said, “So do you want to stop now and search Google or do you want me to continue and search both on your own?” And they said that they wanted me to go to the whole demo and then just do one big chunk of searching. So it was a little bit of giving them autonomy and so I think they just appreciated being able to pick. Amanda: Yea, that’s exciting. You know, many, many moons ago, I did a, like a true Choose-Your-Own PowerPoint adventure where I had the iclickers and everything. And I would to give them scenarios and I would say, “Eric is searching for such and such a topic. Where should he start?” And then all the students would vote. And then based on the most popular vote, we would go. So some of them would say Google. So then we would like, “Ok, Eric’s search results has a million results. What should he do now?” And then they would vote and then that's the direction we would go. Jessica: Oh my gosh! Amanda: And the PowerPoint was hyperlinked. So it was exciting. It was a lot of work to maintain the PowerPoint but it was fun because I think the students, you know, they were in control. Jessica: Right. Amanda: It was very scenario-based. They were in control. Now technology makes it a lot easier to do something like that. But it was like 2009. So it was advanced for its time and it was engaging. Jessica: No, that's cool. I might steal that idea [laughs] Amanda: I might even have the template, so have at it! So moving on to a few other examples. Building relationships. So in our previous episode, Romel Espinel had a suggestion to ask the students to share their names before they speak to personalize the exchange. That’s something I've never done in a class before. I mean, like sometimes I’ll ask for a name but I’ve never done it for everyone in the class. Jessica: I finally started doing that the past couple of weeks since our episode with him. Some students are just you know, they just answer the question as if I didn't ask and sometimes I get a smile and say, “Oh, my name is Jen!” And they seem to like it. I actually do like referring back to them when they answer again. Even today I did it and a girl responded a couple of times and when I referred back to what she said, I said, “okay, remember what Christina said” and it does feel so much more personal. It's really interesting how it changes the environment so I would encourage everybody to do that. It's a small change and it did take me a couple times to remember to ask them first when I pointed to them but it’s cool. I like it. Amanda: Yeah, I mean I've done it when a student has been very, very participatory in the class. I’ll say, “oh what was your name” Jessica: Right, right. Amanda: I’ll say, “Thank you for participating, I really appreciate it. Like that. I like the idea of the name thing . I’ll definitely have to try it next semester. Jessica: Yea, definitely. Amanda: And then the last one that we have here is you know, start out the session by saying “At the end of this session, you will come away with this skill and this information” so that they see the relevance of paying attention. Jessica: Right. Amanda: I’ve done this before. I get mixed things. You know sometimes you know once I say “This is going to help you with your assignment”, they pay attention. And then other times not so much. You know, they're just like “okay sure”, you know? Jessica: Yeah, maybe other times I feel like I have to say during the session which we'll get to later just like “okay this is THAT thing I was referring to” and then they'll pop their heads up from their laptops. Amanda: Yea, we’ll talk about that later. I have a thing I used to do. Jessica: Ok, cool. Alright, so our second set of tips is about getting them to participate. So hopefully you have them engaged at this point but that doesn't always mean that they're going to answer your questions that you have. So one thing that you can do is a think pair share activity or use an audience participation system like Poll Everywhere. So the Think Pair Shares are always helpful because you're getting them to sit and reflect. That can be really helpful for introverts who need a second to think and then if they share it with someone else they feel a little more confident in sharing with the rest of the class. I know you’ve done these a lot, right? Amanda: Yes, I did a lot of Think Pair Shares. I think when it's a large group it's a great way to get them engaged in smaller groups. Jessica: Right, exactly. And I know Poll Everywhere just recently created an extension that integrates with PowerPoint. And I started using it so you actually just, you have your own tab in PowerPoint now. You just click “insert a slide” and it creates its own PowerPoint slide with the activity right in it. It’s super helpful. Amanda: I have a weird thing about not using Poll Everywhere. I feel weird asking students to text you, know what I mean? Jessica: Mhmm. Amanda: I feel weird having them use their text messaging. I mean, I know a lot of people these days have unlimited but you know what? I don’t know. I don't want to make assumptions and I think that was my biggest thing that I didn't want to make an assumption that our students had unlimited text messaging. Jessica: Yea Amanda: That they could just text anything. So I think I've done it twice in the classroom and they’ve both been epic fails. Jessica: Really?? Well now they let students do it on the computer so they can go to a link and just do it instead of text. Amanda: Yea, that’s different. So that's a different thing but in the classroom, I rarely have the students use their phones. Jessica: Yea, that’s very true. You can just ask them for a show of hands as opposed to doing a full verbal response because it at least gets them to answer your question and you can make comparisons between who had their hands up for each answer. And it may warm them up to the idea of participating. Amanda: Do you find that you do that more or less in a nighttime class? Jessica: I don't think the time of day has mattered. I think it's more the yeah, the classroom dynamics of if they're just a non-participatory group. Amanda: I found that I’ve done that more in a night class. That I’ll do the hands thing. For example, I used to do an exercise with Boolean operators where I'd make everyone stand up. And I’d say, “oh if you're wearing jeans and you’re female remain standing” and I felt like when I did it in the night classes they didn't necessarily want to participate by standing. So I got more participation when they did raise your hands. Jessica: Right, that’s interesting. Maybe they'd already been too tired from the day and they're like “please don't make me stand.” Amanda: I think that’s exactly what it was so I saw that difference. Jessica: So our next one is just calling on a student by asking them a direct question. It can be scary but sometimes you could hit on a student who really has a good point or you could tell them if they’re not comfortable answering, they don't have to. So that's always an option though. It's just pick on someone that’s there. Ask for their name and ask what they think. Amanda: Yeah I do this a lot when I see student wants to participate but is just afraid to be like the first person to say something. I’ll say something like, “You look like you want to say something” Jessica: Right, right Amanda: And sometimes they’ll be like, yes, ok! And they’ll talk. Jessica: That’s true because then at least their peers see that they weren’t the one to volunteer but they get to say what they had to say. So the next one is to set expectations that a question is coming. And that it’s ok to take a second to think. So for example you can say “In a minute I'm going to ask a question so what I want you to do first is to think quietly about your answer and then I'll ask for a few volunteers to share their answer with the group” So it just sets them up to know the questions are coming and that it's okay for them to sit and think for a second. ‘Cause I think they do automatically think that they need to shoot their hand up and just know the answer. But just letting them know it’s ok to take a second. And the next one is also something we talked about with Romel was getting comfortable with silence. And I have been practicing this one a lot and gotten a lot better about it. Amanda: I'm not good at it and then I start to try to be funny about it and insert you know Ferris Bueller’s Day Off reference in there and none of them get it. And then I just move on because it’s so awkward. Jessica: Right (laughs) Alright so before we move on to the next tip, I have kind of a question/scenario and maybe we can talk about how we would handle it. So I've had this recently because I've been using Poll Everywhere. So let's say you have 18 students in the class. They’re working on an independent question that they have to answer and respond to the board. And you can count, you can see that only 10 of them are responding. Do you wait for more students respond and require everybody to answer or do you just move on? At what point do you move on? Amanda: I move on. I usually I've done this with iClickers and I usually give people to a minute to answer and then say “okay this is your last chance to participate. At the minute mark we’re moving on” and then we move on. Jessica: Yeah that's true. I like giving them the time frame. I hadn't been doing the time frame thing. I was just kind of seeing what the answers were turning out to be and if I felt like I got enough to make my argument I would kind of move on. But I kind of think giving them a countdown is good too because then at least say they might feel more encouraged if it feels competitive. I don't know. Amanda: Yea… Jessica: Alright, cool. Next section. Amanda: Yea, so I think this is something we can all relate to is engaging that distracted student. And keeping everyone on task and focused. So one thing is to read the room, right? Jessica: Mhmm. Amanda: I previously talked about a fail, where I knew that I lost my audience and I was reading that room and there were so many different conversations going on. So I think it’s important to just read the room and then try and recover. Jessica: Right. Amanda: So another solution, potential solution, is to walk around the room and have some spatial awareness. Jessica: Yeah I need to get a clicker thing for my PowerPoint slides because I don't have one yet in my new job. So I think that chains me a little bit to the podium. But when they're working on their own I'm definitely floating around a lot more but I need one of those clicker things. Amanda: Yea, that definitely gives you a lot of freedom, for sure. Another one that I’ve personally never done is make a sweeping statement to put phones away. Have you done that before? Jessica: No I haven't. And especially now, when I go in, it's like it's always a workshop based thing so they all had their laptops out and I feel like that does distract them a little bit. Like today I had a session like that and about 10-15 minutes into the session even though the beginning was very interactive with Poll Everywhere, you know, 5 minutes after the Poll Everywhere was over we're doing a Google search together and even though I’m asking them questions to participate, 75% of their eyes were on their screens. And it was just difficult to try to get them back and part of it was just a classroom dynamic and stuff like that but it can be difficult . Because you can’t just ask them to put their laptops away because they’re going to need them in 5 minutes or 2 minutes. So that’s tough. Amanda: Yea, definitely. So another thing is to collaborate with the faculty member in advance and ask them to assist with the classroom management. As you know it does impact on the room environment if they chime in and said “hey guys, let's pay attention” or something along the lines of “Oh, this is really important or interesting. I didn't even know this.” Things like that I think that makes the difference. And then another one, the last one, is to make the note that this is a key point you will need to know. Hopefully to snap people back to attention. Jessica: And sometimes it just doesn't work. Like I tried that today. Still didn’t work. I was trying to show them how to use the citation function in the database and you know, I was making jokes about citations and how annoying they are and this and that. And that just fell flat. And maybe we’ll talk about humor in the future as a potential thing that could fall flat. But I tried the joke and said “you really are going to want to know this” and still eyes were stuck on their screens. So it doesn't always work. Amanda: Yeah I used to do an activity where I used to say to them, “okay everybody take out a piece of paper and divide it into four quadrants.” And I would tell them what to label each box and it would be like “Databases”, “Websites”, Search strategies”, “Notes”. And I would have them write notes down for every section. I said “You need to fill these boxes as we’re going through the workshop because there's going to be a test at the end.” And then I would also use “You should write this down in this box” and that worked. I mean it didn’t always work but they all took out a piece of paper because they had no idea why I was asking them to take out a piece of paper. So they just did it. So it did help somewhat with their level of engagement Jessica: Yea that’s a good one. Amanda: Okay next section. Jessica: So the next one is one that, thankfully, I haven't had to deal with too much but sometimes we do have to deal with difficult situations with students. So for example if a student is openly disrespectful. We hope that the faculty would step in and that they're there but there are certain scenarios where maybe the faculty can't be there. We hope that they would be there most of the time. And I think I've only had this once before and I was really just firm and respectful that they can choose to not pay attention if they’d like but that I was there to provide this information to all of the students and that they shouldn't take away from the other students' experiences. Have you had to deal with that before? Amanda: Yes and no. So I’ve had chatty students before and I've learned that silence is the way to get them back without having to be super confrontational about it. Because I think they remember those types of experiences. Like, “That was that librarian that was rude to me in class. I’m never going to go to her for help again.” So I try not to do some of those “calling people out” things. I mean obviously I've never really had to but like I found that just stop - stop talking - and they get the message because they're doing this extra thing but they also realized something else is going on and once they realize that that other thing isn’t going on any more, they stop talking. Jessica: Right, and I guess it depends on what level of activity of disrespect are we talking about? Are they talking over you? Are they just on their laptop trying to show someone else something while you're trying to talk? Or did they raise their hand and say “This is useless”. Amanda: I've never had that before. (sounds shocked) Jessica: Yea, thank god, I haven't either but I guess that would be one end of a spectrum of disrespect would be openly saying something rude to you as the professor in the moment. So thank gosh we haven't had to deal with that but it is something that some librarians may have to deal with. Amanda: I think if I was ever in that situation, I would just flip it and say, “Alright, if this is completely useless, let’s do a sample search together.” And just call them out and say “Let’s do this. Show me what you know.” Jessica: Right, yea. That’s true. Get them engaged in it. Another one could be sleeping students. I’ve really changed my tune on this. I think in the beginning I saw it as, not a disrespect thing but just as a “this is your class time - why would you want to be asleep during it”.And I think I've become a lot more empathetic about it. I think I've also really done some reflection and kind of checked my own privilege a little bit and realized that you know what I went to school, I was always really self-motivated and loved being there and had a strong support system at home. I never went to school hungry. I didn't have to work through college. Like I wasn't tired but I know that now from getting to know when building relationships with our students that not everyone has that experience. And sometimes people just worked a full-time job and now they're coming to class and I just really need to let them be where they are in that moment. So yea, I’ve really changed my tune on that and I probably wouldn't say anything. And I've had it happen and I don't. I kind of just let student be and I try to engage who can be there in the moment. But make sure that the student has my information because I don't want to just leave them hanging. I do want to make sure that they get the help that they need, right? Amanda: Yea, absolutely. I kind of feel like I'm in the same boat as you. I've never addressed it. I've always just kind of let it lie. Originally, when I was younger my attitude was “Well if they want to pay attention they will. Clearly this isn’t important to them.” But as I’ve matured I've kind of taken that empathy perspective as well. I was that college student working two full-time jobs and taking 21 credits so I can't even say to you that I wasn't one of those students that had fallen asleep in a class once because I’m sure I had. I think it's like you have to pick your moments and for me a sleeping student is not the time I'm going to take a stand on making it sound like it's a disrespectful thing. Jessica: Right, exactly. Amanda: So another problem that a lot of librarians might face in the classroom is technical difficulties interruptions, such as you know, databases aren't working, or your PowerPoint slides are not properly in order or not progressing the way you want them to or flat out - the internet. So here are some potential solutions. Use humor! So don’t be too self-depecating but you could use humor to defuse a situation. Jessica: Yeah I had that happen a couple of weeks ago. We had a power outage and it came right back - the power came right back on but the wifi went down and that took 15 minutes to come back up. So it was just trying to laugh about it and be like, “Oh my god, can you believe this is happening?” and and all that. Amanda: Yea, I always say this when technology isn't working - “Technology is great when it works, right?” And that always gets a chuckle. I have a funny story about technology failing. It’s not even funny, it was awful. I had to go do an intro session one time in a computer lab and I never it never happened because the teacher computer was a Mac. Jessica: Oh, jeez! Amanda: I could not get it to work. The iClicker software would not work on a Mac. And I was trying and trying and trying and I couldn't. I couldn't even get my PowerPoint loaded because of, I don’t know. I've never used a Mac before - I have no idea. So I just felt so awkward and so embarrassed and it ended up not happening. I left the classroom without having to do the session and I've never worked with that professor again. Jessica: Oh my gosh! Amanda: I know. Total fail. Jessica: But again, out of your control when nobody let you know. Amanda: So yea another potential solution is getting students to talk during any down time. Jessica: Yea so I could have done that with my internet disruption problem but I feel like I - in the moment I couldn't think of anything fun to talk about. It was a night class, I was exhausted. So I need to have some like fun ice-breaker questions ready for that. Amanda: Yea, that would be an interesting idea. I’ve never done that myself unless it was tied to an activity. Yea that's something to think about. Jessica: And maybe also, you know, being prepared with paper things because if you're let's say your Poll Everywhere doesn't work and then you still want them to answer the questions, a paper handout that has the question on it could be a helpful backup. Amanda: I'm so anti-paper. Jessica: I know. I usually am, too. Amanda: But I think I agree with you. If it was really important for you to collect that data then, yea, paper is the way to go but I’m just so anti-paper. Jessica: I know. I’ve changed everything into forms. (Both laughing) Amanda: So those were our five categories. We hope you found some of those solutions helpful. We do have a few other ideas. Some that I haven't tried and I don't think you tried yet, is play music as we wait for the class to start. And making quizzes a competition with candy prizes. Have you ever used the music before? Jessica: No, I haven't but I think it could be fun just to give them - it kind of gives them an introduction to you as a person, you know, if you pick a fun song and then everybody's kind of like, “wow this is cool. I like how this is going to start.” It’s a good first impression. Amanda: Yea, I think that's interesting, too. I’ve never done that either. I’ve done the quiz as competition thing before. But I stopped and I don't know why. But I used to do a lot of game show like quizzes. I did a Jeopardy where the quiz was in the form of Jeopardy. I also created my own called “the hot seat challenge” where it was two groups divided and they each picked one person from their group to be in “the hot seat” and they would have to answer questions about the lesson. Then whoever could answer the question fast enough in the hot seat would win that point. I also used to do - I don't know if you remember that TV game show - 1 vs. 100? Jessica: No (sounds interested) Amanda: So it’s this game show where like they used to be up against a hundred people and their goal was to eliminate those people by answering pop culture questions. And so I did that with a quiz and what I would do is I would have one student volunteer and then the rest of the class would respond using the audio response system. And they would respond first and then the one person would respond. And then the people who got the answer wrong were eliminated and I kept track and we would reduce it and then like there's fun things where they could poll the audience. So like I said I kind of just stopped doing it after a while. I just kind of fell out of love with it but it was, it was fun. Jessica: Yea, that’s cool! Amanda: And then another one was using pop culture examples. Jessica: I can never pick the right one. I always feel like the ones I pick are like outdated or it doesn't really work properly. I don't know why. I don't know why that has never worked for me (laughs). But I see other people do it really well. Amanda: Yea, I use a lot of current news to talk about topics, not necessarily pop culture. I guess the one that I’ve used the most is when we talk about copyright infringement. I used to use Vanilla Ice but it’s so outdated. So now I use, oh what’s his name? Jessica: The Blurred Lines one? Amanda: Yea, I use the Blurred Lines song. Jessica: The only one I use for pop culture words was, I had kind of a hook question. We were talking about whether or not - how historians or music theorists in the future will look back on music of today. And so I used like Drake and Cardi B but it’s not like any of them were really super engaged just by the question but I'm guessing it might have caused some of them to pay a little more attention? But I only did that lesson like twice so...But I mean maybe I’m not as bad at it as I think. Amanda: Yea! Jessica: So, we had asked on Twitter if anybody had successful classroom management techniques what did we have as our responses? Amanda: We actually got a tweet from the host of The Overthrowing Education podcast. She said, “One issue I had was calming my students down at the beginning of the class so I read from a subject related novel or told a continuing story for 5 minutes at the beginning of each class.” She said, “they were calmer and more engaged the whole period”. So to me it sounds like it's probably middle school or high school as the students that she’s talking about but I think that goes back to what we were originally talking about which was that storytelling. And the importance of how a story can really engage someone rather than a demo. Jessica: Yea, exactly. Amanda: Alright! So we're going to move on to our Work Triumph/Work Fail segment. I’m going to start with a fail. I am the Honors librarian for one of our sections in White Plains and I feel like I failed them. They just submitted their annotated bibliographies and I feel like I don't know I feel like I failed them because none of them came to me for support. No one came to me and shared their rough drafts even though I emailed them every week and told them, “I'm going to be on your campus this day for the next 3 weeks. Please come see me.” And not a single one of them did. And I feel like I'm just failing as a personal librarian right now. Jessica: Awww! Amanda: Yea, obviously email is not their speed so I’ve got to try something. But it’s hard because it’s a night class so it’s not that easy for me to just pop into that class and show my face. Jessica: Do you have a work triumph to go with that one at least? Amanda: No, not particularly with the Honors but I would say a triumph from this week was that I had a professor follow up with me that I didn't think she was going to follow up with me. So a few weeks ago, I attended a school of professional studies department meeting and the one professor said, “oh I'm going to reach out to you. I really want to work at the library.” And I was excited but I didn’t write down her name so I couldn't follow up with her myself. But I was surprised that she followed up with me and said, “I’d still like to collaborate with you”. And on top of that I threw it out there at the last minute and said “Do you want an in-person module or online or blended?” And she agreed to blended! So we're going to be creating a blended information literacy opportunity that’s going to be standardized across multiple sections of a course. Jessica: Oh that's cool! Amanda: Yea so that’s kind of fun. What about you? Jessica: So yea, mine was actually multiple fails in a row that I finally resolved. But it was technology. So like I said, I’ve been using this Poll Everywhere extension for PowerPoint but because I teach in different classrooms and the extension needs to be installed on the computer for you to use it properly, I couldn't use my flash drives and when I was logging in remotely to my office computer it was zooming into the Poll Everywhere slides so I can only see the top left quadrant of the slide and the activate button is all the way on the right side so I couldn’t get it to work. It took me about three classes of trying it and having that problem until I started playing with it and figured out there was a button on the bottom of PowerPoint to optimize your experience. And that’s all it was. So that was a pain in the butt but now that it works it works fantastically so I'm glad I figured that out. But for my work triumph, we met with the writing center today. They have a new director and so we have two citing workshops that we're going to do with them in the next month and then we have a disinformation workshop planned for the spring which is still kind of up in the air about exactly what we're going to do but she's on board with all these different partnership ideas so I'm really jazzed about that. Amanda: That’s great! So that wraps up our fifth episode. Here’s where you can find us. You can find Jessica @LibraryGeek611. You can find me @HistoryBuff820 and you can also find this podcast @Librarian_Guide. We are also now available on iTunes so be sure to find us there and subscribe to our podcast. We’re also now available on a lot of other platforms like Spotify and Overcast. Google has their own so we’re also available on their Google platform as well. Jessica: Yea, and don’t forget to send us an email at InfoLitTeachingPodcast@Gmail.com or tweet us to share your questions, ideas for potential discussions, or even your triumphs and fails in the classroom and we can read them on an upcoming episode. We want your feedback, your questions and we encourage you to share your thoughts with us to be read on an upcoming episode! Amanda: Alright, thanks so much! We’ll talk to you soon. |
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
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