We want to send a HUGE thank you to listener, Megan Ondricek, for volunteering to help us catch up and create transcripts for our past episodes (starting with episode 9 below) and provide this important resource to our community! Jessica: Welcome to episode number 13 of the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching podcast! I'm Jessica,
Amanda: and I’m Amanda, Jessica: And on today's episode we're going to be talking about using storytelling in your instruction. But before we get started with our conversation, how are you doing? Anything going on this week? Amanda: Week two of working from home! The added layer of also watching my child alone, so that's been interesting. A lot of Zoom you know, bombing, you know, I know there's like this article going around about other “real” Zoom bombing, but like, she loves to come into the camera now so whenever my laptop is on, she actually waves at it and says “Hi!” you know, expecting someone to be there. Jessica: [chuckling] Oh my gosh. Amanda: So um, but other than that I think it's been going good. Um, we actually started this new initiative where we're doing drop-in research hours through Zoom with students who are used to face-to-face, you know, reference support. We just started promoting it, so we haven't had any students come in yet, but I'm hoping you know we'll get some more students, we're going to do another email blast to our students next week. And hopefully we'll have some students drop in for some one-on-one support. What about you, what's going on? Jessica: Same here. Week two, pretty much two and a half, working from home with a three year old, and same thing - he loves when he sees me talking to the computer, he comes over and pops his head up and everybody's like, “Oh my God, he's so cute!” So, you know, it's fun, and everybody understands that he's home so I don’t have to hide him or anything. So, it is definitely a lot, and I'm definitely just trying to balance the productivity and screen time and being with him, and just accepting all the emotions going on with everything. It is a lot to handle, but it hasn't been too bad. This is week one for us, actually, of our spring semester so last week was spring break and it was super quiet. This week it's ramping up a little bit but obviously chat and emails from faculty are much quieter than they normally would be week one because it's an adjustment for everybody coming back to specifically online classes so we're hoping that next week we at least get a little more interaction with students. Chat has been busy, but not as busy as we were expecting, I think we were expecting to be a little more slammed. So, we'll see. One day at a time. That's all I can do. I can't do any more than that. Amanda: Are you guys doing all asynchronous, or are you allowed to do, like, live Zoom things with the students? Jessica: It's a little bit of both, depending on what the faculty's requesting. I know, before there were all these calls for avoiding the synchronous. Some faculty had already scheduled stuff with some of our teaching librarians to do synchronous stuff. So some of the librarians have done those timed classes and they went well, but I think going forward a lot of the faculty are probably going to avoid that and start just having us put in tutorials, make LibGuides, do email reference and support with students. I've emailed two professors so far about April sessions that I had scheduled in as on-sites and I haven't heard back yet to see how they want me to handle that. So we're doing a little bit of both. Amanda: Oh okay. Interesting, yeah I think we're going to be doing all asynchronous, which is something we're used to. So, I'm not concerned that we don't know how to manage it, it's definitely, like, you kind of talked about last semester, last episode, it's kind of disheartening that you know your, your instruction is going to get a little less dynamic. So, I'm trying to balance it, like a part of me wants to be like, “Okay guys let's strategize and we can make all these interactive tutorials and we've got, you know, four weeks til the semester is over.” When another part of me is like everyone is just trying to maintain like, stop trying to like, you know, go crazy, I guess. I don't know but - Jessica: Yeah but well I was watching one of the ACRL webinars about, you know, transitioning your instruction online in this pandemic and you know one thing that the first presenter mentioned was just, you know, thinking about how, if we're trying to adapt with our personal lives, students are doing the same thing so they're, they may be caring for a child or a sick loved one, or they may not have strong Wi-Fi, or a good laptop and so we just have to remember that they may have access issues to these great things and I think what she said, actually I wrote it down, she said, “Don't create materials that are master works of instruction, because they may not even get used,” and I thought that was a really good way to put it. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, it's definitely hard because you want to be dynamic, but then you have a little bit more of a, you know, realistic expectation. Jessica: Yeah, exactly. So, I think that was part of what they talked about was just balancing it out, you know, making it something that students will get the point. So really identifying the most important learning objectives and just making something that you know everybody can see, everybody can read, everybody can understand, making it accessible for everybody, and going from there and cutting ourselves some slack. Amanda: Yeah, I was absolutely...it's interesting because I feel like this is such a big conversation now about learning, and you know, for people who are non-academics, and I was watching a TV program yesterday, and they were on talking about how all these college students are gonna want to do online instruction now because of what they've experienced and I'm just like, I don’t know, you know? I don't think I agree and then like, they're like, oh, and you know it's gonna be cheaper, and people are gonna, you know, not want to go to on-site classes but like we kind of talked about in the last episode, online learning doesn't necessarily equal cheaper learning or less expensive learning, you know? Jessica: Right. Yeah, right. Amanda: It's great that people are talking about higher education and the costs and, you know, what it takes, but like, I don't think they get the whole picture of what it means to have effective online learning. Jessica: Yeah, right, it's not going to be...this is not going to be what real online learning would be. So I don't think that everybody's going to be swarming to online learning from this. Amanda: No, I don't think so either. Yeah. So on to our topic for today: so as Jessica mentioned, we're going to be talking about storytelling and your instruction, and just a little bit of intro about the topic. There was a Harvard Business Review article that said, “Visual learners appreciate the mental pictures storytelling evokes. Auditory learners focus on the words and the storyteller’s voice. Kinesthetic learners remember the emotional connections and feelings from the story.” So storytelling can be informational, it can be memorable, and it is a great way to reach novice learners. So just to get things started, what is your experience, Jessica, with storytelling in your instruction? Jessica: There hasn't been as much as I'd like, but one thing I do remember doing was just asking students at the beginning of the class to reflect on a time that they struggled to find information for something, and I didn't get any responses, most likely because it was my first time in that class and it was a one-shot. So I had no rapport with them yet, so starting the class with that I think made it difficult at first, before I realized that I think it kind of turned me away from doing it a little bit, but I would definitely try it again in a class, either maybe a class that I'm seeing multiple times a semester because I can try it one of the second or third times I'm seeing them because I can develop a rapport at least a little bit, or maybe at a different time in the class, maybe later on in the session when we've at least gotten to do something else first, or giving my own examples, instead of asking them for examples. But I’d definitely like to try it, and preparing for this episode was really helpful in giving me ideas that I want to try to use in the future, because I think information literacy is really ripe for storytelling, it's very relatable we all use information there's so many different stories that we can pull from. What about you? Amanda: Um, so I have a little bit of experience in the classroom itself. I mostly have done like a scenario base that's kind of creative, or I create very very brief stories to set up an activity. We do this thing in our English 101 class where we talk about why information literacy is important and I always use real life personal examples. And it's funny because my examples change as I get older, so I know I've talked about this before, I've been, you know at my institution for almost 11 years now so I've gone through a lot of major life events. And when I was looking to buy a new car, I would use that as a story to tell about using information seeking skills. When I was looking for a house I used that example. When I had my daughter I used her as an example. So, as I grow my, my stories also changed as well but I think they're relatable, I think the way I tell them because it's so authentic they become relatable to some of our students, you know, whoever are in those stages of their life. Jessica: So how do you actually use the examples like from buying a house? You'll talk to them about how to pick a mortgage company or how do you talk to them about it as a story? Amanda: So, um, what I've done in the past is I've said like, you know you need these information seeking skills to make important life decisions. And I'll say for example, when we were looking to buy a house there are a lot of things that we needed to think about and, you know, some of them might not be at that point, but like they can kind of make the connection so I say to them: what do you think one thing would be that we would want to look for in the area? And some of them would say crime rates and some of them would say, school districts and then I would say yeah you're absolutely correct. It was important to me that, you know, we picked a good school district because I believe in public education and I went to public school and so like, I kind of asked them and then also weave in my, you know, real opinions on these things. And they, they get it, you know, they kind of get the connection and then I think one of the things that I think most of them can relate to, because when I'm speaking to a younger student population, is the buying of a car. And they always say, Oh, you know, you have to look at the Carfax or you have to see if it’s been in any accidents or the gas mileage and so I always kind of tell them the story of when my car got stuck in the parking lot at work, and I was forced to buy a new car, right, that night. Jessica: What?! Amanda: Yeah! Oh yeah, so my car would only drive in reverse. And I was leaving from work, I was gonna go home and I - it's funny because I had just moved out so I had no choice. I literally that night I went to the dealership and I bought a new car and I was freaking out because not only did I buy a new car, but it was the first brand new car I ever bought! So, I like to tell that story, and like, I get really into it because it’s so unbelievable. And I talk to them like, how like I’m at the dealership and I'm googling things and I'm trying to make sure that I'm getting the best deal possible and I'm looking at the car and the safety reports and, you know, and they just, they pay attention. Jessica: Right, yeah because you're acting dynamic, you're really into it so they're into it, and it's a funny story so it's like who wouldn't be into it, it's crazy! Amanda: Totally crazy story but it's a true story so, I've used those kinds of examples, but the one time where I was able to give a really like, a long storytelling project was for our library orientation. We have an online library orientation, where we have two characters: one who's used the library, and one that hasn't. And each module in the orientation follows the students as they learn about library services. And it was so exciting because we named the characters and we gave them personalities and we gave them funny lines and we're like, Oh, I don't think Carlos would say something like that, you know, he doesn't know a lot about the library. So like we really took the time, I mean we did this for eight months, this was an eight month long project. So this was like the most dynamic type of storytelling, and it was intense. It was a lot of work, I mean we must have met like 30 times over the course of, like eight months to get this done, but I think it's still one of the most rewarding and dynamic things I've ever done as a librarian. Jessica: Yeah, I do like that, that orientation was great. [14:15] Amanda: Yeah. So those are some of our experiences, so why don't we jump into some examples that we have not tried? When I was doing some research for this, one thing that I found was interesting, and that I'm kind of interested in doing more with, is using infographics and telling a story with data. So, you know, I've always been fascinated with visuals, even when I do PowerPoint presentations, I'm very visual, but I liked the idea of using an infographic. So in the past we dabbled with using infographics to promote some of our services but I think it would be great to do it to explain how students can get started with their research. You know you can almost see this as a bite-sized instruction resource you know? Like, you could put it in your LibGuide. So I was reading this really great book called “Infographics: The Power Of Visual Storytelling.” And it just really dives into why people like visuals, and why we gravitate towards this version of storytelling and I just think that that might be something interesting, I mean, it's, like I said earlier, it's bite-sized. It would be something small, like if you were a student how to brainstorm keyword terms and then it would be like, you know, different graphics to kind of chunk the information together, and that's one way it could be a visual. Also maybe it could be, we could be using our data to tell a story about how we previously supported students. I did this once where I put together an infographic of how librarians supported students in the previous semester and it was like different data points, we had this many chat, we had this many one-on-one instructions, we were in this many discussion boards, so it's all in a way, a story. We're telling a story of our support. Jessica: Right, yeah, exactly. I love infographics, I mean, I've always been into marketing in libraries and I'm always into using them, either within the marketing or afterwards to show what we've done through our marketing, to show our value to our stakeholders, and stuff like that and I'm just a visual person in general. Thinking about infographics and storytelling it reminded me of this book that just got published this past year. It's by Michelle Rial, it's called “Am I Overthinking This?” She has a great Instagram page where she does like cute little, they're more, I guess, they're kind of sometimes infographics, sometimes just cute visuals where she'll use a Venn diagram and what she does is she uses the graphics to tell cute little jokes and things about everyday life. And so they're super relatable. And so I could see using something like she does with maybe using humor, and the infographic and information literacy and kind of combining it all together. I'll link it in the show notes because people may be inspired and they'll do something fun before I do it, but I think it could definitely be interesting and it also teaches data literacy at the same time that we're teaching information literacy because we can show them how to read the graph and how to show them if there's problems with it so it could be a lot there to do with. Amanda: Absolutely, absolutely. I think it's just, it's a gravitational pull, you know what I mean? They get sucked into the image and they're engaged and it's memorable and it's, you know it's, in the book that I just mentioned about infographics and the power of visual storytelling, it was talking about how it's memorable in a sense that they will store that information differently than they will if someone just gave it to them. Jessica: Exactly. Amanda: So um yeah, that was one way that - I am not using it consistently - but I think I'd like to, I mean especially in my LibGuides. I'd love to kind of make my LibGuides more visual. It's always something that I strive to do. I was actually just in a meeting yesterday, we were revising our SWOT LibGuide. We have this like, really great text explaining the different aspects of SWOT, but it's so text heavy and I'm like, we have to visualize this somehow, we have to tell it in a better way. So, visual is always important to me. Jessica: Yeah we're going to be going through our LibGuides this year and making them more teaching focused, like actually making them teaching tools instead of just a guide, we were going to start that project right before everything happened with the virus so it's like now it's getting pushed back again but I'm super excited about it because we are probably going to make it more visual. And I hate to make generalizations but I'd like to see some research on whether or not it's true that the past generation and current generation are more visual creatures anyway. I'm wondering if that's, I think that's a generalization that goes around these days, but I'd like to see some research to see if that's true, and it would [inaudible] using infographics in the classroom for a lot of reasons. Amanda: Yeah, you know what the interesting thing is, I love visuals, but I also like written instructions. So like, in our last episode or maybe the one before that we were talking about YouTube tutorials, and I like to do both. I like to watch the tutorial, but then also look at the printed instructions. So I like to do both. Now I don't know, like, if that makes a difference in the storytelling process but like, to me, I just like both. [20:16] Jessica: And now that you are saying that about the written instructions too it also brings in the accessibility component of if someone can't see the infographic there needs to be alt text and does the alt text do enough to explain what's going on in the infographic? So there is that aspect of it too, of making sure there's some type of written record that a screen reader can read of that graphic to make sure that people would be able to understand it, too. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Another idea that I had was to have the students be the storyteller. So, I think, as a former student and as you know, in my experience providing instruction, I think students like to tell their own experiences, and I think this could be easily done by just asking students to reflect on an experience. I think that's a big part of the learning process. When you give a student an opportunity to reflect on their prior knowledge and build upon that knowledge, and I think we forget, but that is a part of the storytelling process. So anytime you say to a student, “Oh, think back to a time where you had a challenging research project” or “think back to a time where you needed information and you couldn't find what you were looking for.” Whatever they're thinking about or whatever you have them write down, that's their story, so they are using storytelling techniques to reflect and learn and improve in some capacity. So I think, you know, I, again, I don't do that enough. I think that would be an easy thing to explore. It's just a matter of remembering to incorporate it into my instruction process. Jessica: Yeah, and even though I, when I tried it, I didn't have a positive experience of all these students wanting to express their ideas, I mean, I'm just even thinking of transitioning from asking an open question and asking them to respond to making it a think-pair-share. That's an easy pivot that could just make them a little more open to talking to the person next to them about it and then sharing together as a pair, might open them up to it a little bit more. Amanda: I think in my experience, they're a little more forthcoming in a discussion board. Back in my instructional design program, a lot of us were professionals who were already working in the field, and we would reflect on what we were currently doing at our jobs and that's how we told our story and that's how we reflected. And that's how we learned from each other. So I think it also depends on the types of experiences and your audience so I think that’s another thing to think about is your audience, you know what type of experiences do you think your audience will have at that time. So sometimes you can be really specific and other times you might have to be, you know, a little more simplistic in your quest for getting the students to quote-unquote “tell a story.” Jessica: Yeah, you know, that's funny that you say that. I'm thinking back to a lot of the discussion boards I've facilitated and I feel like they are so much more open about giving personal details and things like that about their research and about how they're doing in their lives when they're doing it in print. Which is just funny I don't, I'm not psychoanalyzing it right now but I just find that interesting. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, so you kind of already talked about a little bit of what your barriers might be with storytelling in the classroom. Are there any other barriers? Jessica: Yeah, I think my big one is kind of knowing what to tell. I know we talked about, in a couple episodes, is kind of talking about our own struggles of researching in school and things that we've gone through, you know, even if I'm researching for creating the class. I feel like I never have a good example of, because either I can't remember it or I feel like it's not going to be relatable, at least my own examples. So I think I probably would shy away from those because they just don't feel natural to me. But I think I could definitely get better at when I come across something from real life or you know my real life or social events that are going on in the world, I just need to get better at finding a place to log them like, this would be a good example for class as a story. And so that I could have some type of record of them that I could pull from. Yeah because I think using history, current events, stories from even student disciplines, because I mean, nurses are going to have so many stories to tell from everything going on right now. Even marketers might have it or business students or history students, environmental students, they may have great stories from their disciplines that I could pull from. And like we talked about before, you know, student stories. So I think I'm just gonna have to overcome my memory barrier by shifting to other types of storytelling. [25:21] Amanda: Yeah, I definitely agree with that, I think my stories are great when I could think of them. And I think that's my problem - I don't think it's a problem, but I think I don't gravitate to storytelling that often because I want it to be authentic. I don't want it to be rehearsed. I don't necessarily say okay and this is the point of my instruction where I'm going to talk about this story, you know? Like a lot of the times, it'll just come up naturally in the conversation, like there's only one or two times like I kind of talked about earlier, in that English class where we introduce information literacy, where my stories are kind of canned. You know they're my tried and true stories, but like I said they change as my life moves forward, but I use them like, I'll be in like five or six instruction sessions for that class in a semester so I'll stick with the same story. But you know for my other classes I want it to be more authentic, so it's not consistent. It's just when the occasion arises. Jessica: Right and that's definitely something that I struggle with, and that I've always loved about your teaching, is that you can just like pivot on a dime and that's just not a strength of mine. Like I don't read from a script, but I do need to have all my examples labelled out, I need to have all my points labeled, and I'm not very good at just coming up with something on the fly. So that's something that I work on, and I think it's why I really liked that podcast episode I brought up in our online teaching episode with Flower Darby, she's an educator who talks about being an introvert in the classroom. And I think it's just part of who I am and I have always put myself down about it, that like, I'm never going to be a great teacher because I can't, I can't be like an actor and an authentic person like that in the classroom. But hearing her speak about being an introvert in the classroom as a professor, it's just my personality, and that doesn't make me a bad teacher, it's just not a strength that I have. I have other strengths and that's totally okay. So, I think maybe I won't be that person who comes up with examples on the fly but there's other ways that I can incorporate storytelling to still seem authentic, just in a different way. Does that make sense? Amanda: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, so, um, let's move on and talk about some pie in the sky storytelling techniques that you might want to try in the future. Jessica: So, a pie in the sky idea that I have that totally isn't fleshed out in any way, but for a credit bearing class or if a professor wanted to think pie in the sky and work with me on it, would be like a podcast episode for a semester project where students had to maybe do research on how to storytell in a podcast and it would have to be about their discipline or about a topic that they really wanted to talk about. I think a lot of what I've been reading about storytelling and information literacy, a lot of stuff comes up about digital storytelling. And I think that counts as kind of a digital storytelling format so I think that could be a cool way for them to be the storytellers, about the information that they're researching and learning about, so that could be fun. Amanda: Oh my god, that would be so amazing. I could just see it like where you're, it's almost like instead of a student doing like a boring PowerPoint on a topic, they could make it more dynamic, with a podcast where they could, you know, they could use video or choose not to use video, have interviews or not have interviews, and they could tell a story in some sort of way. So I think that would be so fun. And I think you know what, at this point, students are using Zoom. So, they have the technology to do it, and I'm not saying all students, but I'm saying with what we're going through right now, I think we're stretching all of our capabilities in terms of what technologies we have or have not used. So, I think it would be an interesting project especially if it was like a semester-long project where you train the students to use the technology. You know you could even like start small, where you could say okay, get on Zoom, record yourself and tell me a two minute story about yourself, you know? Almost like an online version of like a public speaking class, you know? And then, like, they just grow and grow and grow, and it becomes like a full length podcast episode of some sorts. Jessica: Yeah, that would be really cool doing all that kind of scaffolding up to the full episode. Amanda: That would be really cool yeah for sure. Jessica: So another idea for a credit bearing class which is kind of simple, and I guess could be done in a one-shot, maybe, if you had them continue to do it after you leave, is to ask students to keep a research log for the entire semester. And they could be given prompts to reflect on their process, and then at the end of the end of the semester kind of look back on their log and come to one final story about how their research process went. I saw something like that in one of the articles that we’ll link to in the show notes. It was about using a research log in a psychology class like for graduate students, and they had to reflect on their own research process but then connect it to their discipline. But it could be used for any level by just getting students to think about their research story, and how they're writing this, this paper. [30:59] Amanda: That is interesting. I did something kind of like this in a way, I was really interested in focusing on growth mindset questions, and I was in a discussion board where they did three sets of questions. The first question was, they had to pick from a list of research things that they struggled with, and they had to say why they struggled with it. And then the second part of the discussion board is where they applied what they learned from the lecture. And then the third part was they go back and they say whether or not they think they grew, and that they, if they learned something new from, you know, the part one of the discussion board so it was like a full-circle reflection. So that would be, you know, that was one of my experiences and the students really liked it, they really liked that, um, the reflection part. Jessica: Yeah, they're like writing their own research story. Amanda: Right, right. Jessica: The other article that I liked was one that you found about a library orientation that someone created that used stories to explain why information literacy skills are important. So, they had the opportunity to kind of start from scratch with this library orientation from a program and so they picked out historical examples of where information literacy should have been used more effectively. I think one was about a presidential campaign that was called too early. And so it was something about reading data and making assumptions about information. So they took the historical event, and then pulled out what those people should have done for information literacy wise, and they said at the end students were really engaged and interested in information literacy because they were seeing it through this lens of story, and I thought it was super interesting because I could definitely bring that idea to my department, as we redesign our University 101, hopefully for the fall. And we don't know what's going on. But I thought that was a really cool idea. Amanda: That is such a cool idea! I love stuff like that, I think it's engaging, I think, like I said, you know, earlier, it's those real life examples that students really connect to. And even if it's a historical example I think it's, you know, it's fun to reflect back on something that happened, and really kind of just be like well how did it go, you know? Jessica: Right, right. And the last one that I saw was on, actually recently, in the keeping up with digital storytelling from ACRL, they sent around an email newsletter about it, which was interesting timing because we had already scheduled to record this, but there were some great examples of digital storytelling assignments, and this would especially be interesting in higher level classes where students are getting really engaged in their discipline area. But I watched this whole video because it was so interesting, the story that they were telling. It was about, I guess they were kind of marketing this archive that they have, and they told the story about an author who got in touch with their department in the library, because he was researching for a book about Italy and World War II. And this author had traveled to Italy, to this town, and found a man's name on the wall, and the soldier turned out to be someone who was there who wrote his name there on the town wall that he was there in World War II. And this archive happened to have an interview with that soldier, telling about his time in Italy in World War II. So the story that they were telling in the video was about how they helped this author find this real life interview. So, it was super cool and it was created by students and it was marketing the library's archive and so I could totally see that being something that they could, that the students could do. It's kind of like the podcast thing but using a video. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, that does sound like a lot of fun. I'm just listening to you tell it reminded me that one of the things that I loved when I was reflecting back on my experience of being a student, like, four years ago, was every week we were required to watch a video, and most of the times the video started off with someone telling a story. And then once that story was told to introduce the topic then they got into like the nitty gritty definitions. So I think that's definitely dynamic for sure and I think it's an easy way to get people interested in certain topics. Jessica: Yeah, right. [35:48] Amanda: So I have a few ideas. One, it would be some type of LibGuide where, I guess it goes along the sense of library orientation that I talked about earlier, but maybe less labor intensive. Each page or each video, a student, you know, you'll follow a student completing a research project, but like the same student will be with you along the whole way of the research process, and that way you're like following a student. So I think it's doable, but it definitely like takes a lot of coordination to get it done but that would be something interesting to do. Jessica: Yeah, definitely. I like using LibGuides because it’s a platform that we know how to use, it's easy to teach students how to use. There's a lot of different components that you could incorporate in that, a lot of different types of technology you can use. That would be interesting. Amanda: Yeah, and then another one that I thought would be interesting is, like, if you have like a standardized learning experience that you know happens every semester, or you have like a cohort learning, perhaps get some testimonials or interviews of students as they're going through a particular experience, and then have those students share their experience. So for example, I know I previously talked about, I support our Honors Program, and every year it's a different cohort. So like one example could be an interview, like a brief 30-second or minute long interview with a student and say, I'm saying to them, “What's one piece of advice that you would want to give this cohort on working on your annotated bibliography?” What did you learn, what should they focus on, etc. It’s just this idea of students learning from previous students, you know, in a storytelling way. Now that would be a lot to coordinate. I think if you have those particular learning cohorts where they're used to being tapped for, you know, events, or promotional stuff, or they want to pay it forward. I think with our Honors Program, it's very much a pay it forward kind of thing. We do have a lot of our previous cohorts, they'll come in as guest speakers or in a sense they’re doing that but I was thinking almost like a virtual version of that. That might be an interesting way for the current cohort to learn from the previous. Jessica: That's true, it's kind of like student ambassadors when you start a new program or you go to a new college or whatever, there's the students that have been there for a while and they tell their story to get students comfortable and it's less of a teaching thing more of a psychological support thing, but I think it could definitely work as a teaching thing too. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, I think because also they relate to each other a little more. And they might have some insights on the process that we might not have. So, I think it would definitely be a worthy thing. Like I said it'd be a lot to coordinate, very pie in the sky but I would love to explore that idea. So, do you think storytelling is an effective instruction technique for one-shots? Jessica: I mean, as I mentioned I had trouble asking the students to openly share their experiences because understandably they didn't know me yet. Perhaps they didn't feel comfortable sharing their experiences, you know, the rapport that the faculty set in the class too, before I even get there makes a huge difference. If the faculty member hasn't created an environment where they feel open with one another then I'm just walking into that and they're never going to open up. So I think that makes a big difference for one-shots, but I think there are ways to do it kind of how we talked about maybe doing think-pair-share first or just having them write it down whereas even if they're not sharing it with the class they're at least reflecting on it themselves and thinking about it and incorporating it into what they're thinking, or using the, building the scenarios or historical examples into, into the lesson itself would probably be the best way to do it. Amanda: Agreed, I think, to kind of piggyback on your comment about that you've had trouble with students getting to tell their story and experiences, as being from a librarian perspective if, again, we can remember to incorporate it into our instruction, a student might remember us and be comfortable with us if we share our stories. I can't tell you how many students I've had come to me and say, that car story is unbelievable. And then start a conversation with me and come back to me for other class support, because I shared that one story with them. So I think it also breaks the ice with, you know, humanizing us as librarians. So I think it can be effective. I think if we remember to use it, if we feel comfortable using it, and I don't have all the answers of how to get myself more comfortable being a good, effective storyteller, but I definitely think it's something that I would like to work on. Even if it is a little planned out, I think it's still a worthy, worthy cause. I think I could see myself focusing more on the digital storytelling aspect of it, because I think I can control it a little more, and make sure that I’m like, you know, being dynamic by storytelling. Jessica: Mm-hmm. Right. Amanda: We have a few suggestions of small ways you can incorporate storytelling into your instruction. One example is to share your searching experience and we've talked about this a few times. You know, provide an example of a specific time where you as a student or librarian struggled with a research problem and how you overcame it, or maybe a situation in real life where you needed to use information to, you know, like debunking misinformation that your aunt posted on Facebook. I know I've tried to do that before where I'm like, I don't think that sounds right, I'm gonna go and find and prove them wrong. So I've definitely shared those examples before in my instruction. Share a time that you've helped a student, you know, we talked about this too, we help our students so often but like I think, because we're so like, on to the next thing we don't necessarily always think back and remember every single interaction we have. Another example is to share a short story that introduces a topic, like I mentioned already with my buying a house or a car, etc. Create a case study activity: so this is a little more involved, but I think it's something to consider. Role playing activity: where the students kind of take on certain narratives. Have the students be storytellers: we talked a lot about this, I think they like reflecting, and I think it's one way to break the ice. Jessica: Right. [43:35] Amanda: Yeah so those are just a few examples and this isn't an exhaustive list, this isn't, you know, exhaustive examples or ideas but we definitely have a lot of great links in the show notes to more in-depth resources. I think I actually linked to a book that is explicitly teaching information literacy through stories so that's like super on point, super targeted, so I would definitely recommend people checking it out. I haven't had a chance to get my hands on a copy of it, but I was able to kind of skim through some of the chapter headers and stuff like that and it looks really interesting. Jessica: Yeah, I think I want to check that one out. That sounds really interesting. Although I haven't finished reading all the articles that I had planned yet for quarantine time so once I get through those first, then I will move on to some of the new stuff. Amanda: I feel so jealous, like everyone's going through their reading pile and I don’t feel like I’m doing any of those things! Jessica: I haven't gotten there yet, I'm trying to weed through it little by little, but you know, working at home with a kid is like, plus I want to read my own stuff, I want to get through my Goodreads challenge and of course I picked like the longest book on Earth to try to get through first which wasn't smart. Amanda: I haven't picked up a book, and I think my problem is that my Kindle is by my bed, and like I read it, I get through like four pages and then I pass out. And so I think that’s my problem. But um I haven't been, I feel like I haven't been taking advantage of any of the free anythings. Like I'm not bingeing any shows, I'm not using any of the free resources that are out there, like I'm just maintaining like, that's it. Jessica: Right. Well, nothing has really changed other than like, I don't have a commute anymore, so I don't listen to audiobooks, so that's out the window. Otherwise I'm still working eight to four, I, my husband still comes home at five o'clock because he's still working, and it's our same evening as if nothing has changed so it's like, you know, I don't feel like I have any extra time like, maybe some other people do. But at the same time, maybe those people are not employed, and I'm praying for them, because I'm blessed to, you know, still be employed, honestly. Amanda: For sure, for sure, yeah, but I'm definitely not, you know, I don't have a stockpile of articles I think I'm going to get to. Jessica: Right. They’re there, but you're not going to get through them. [chuckles] Amanda: Maybe I need to ease up on myself and like actually take the time because like we've talked about this too like that professional development guilt that I have about reading or watching a webinar during work hours. So, maybe I should ease myself, you know, take it easy and actually take some time to do that. So, we'll see. You know what's interesting, the one thing that I have been doing while I've been home that I haven't been doing since about a year now is taking a lunch break. I have not, like since I went back to work after I had my daughter, I would not take a lunch break and I would just leave early. Now that I'm home with her, I need that lunch break. So I'm taking it and it’s so weird, it’s so weird! But, I like it, I like the lunch break. Jessica: Yeah, that's true. I mean I never took a lunch break for years and then at this current job, I finally really started doing it because it was something everybody did and I'm definitely doing it now that I'm home because by noon, little boy needs a walk outside, so it's like noon to one is still my lunch break and we go outside for a walk, because we have to. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Jessica: Well that was a tangent. Amanda: Tangent but moral of the story is, if you have the time to read these extra articles or books that we're linking to please check out the show notes because they are exhaustive, you know, heavy reading material but they are, they really dive deep deep deep into the art of storytelling and teaching. (End tangent.) Jessica: [chuckling] Right. Amanda: All right, so we're moving into our weekly segment of triumph or fail, or both. Jessica, you want to start? Jessica: Yeah, so the triumphs and fails are a little, they're a little different this time obviously because things are different but my triumph this week was making a LibGuide! I have not made a LibGuide in what feels like such a long time but I happened to get lucky and get this professor on chat who asked if we had any resources about historiography, which I did not even know about. It's apparently writing about historical perspectives about an event, you're not writing about the event you're writing about what people have written about it. Which is super interesting and he sent me a LibGuide from another college, and he said, Do we have anything like this? and we didn't have a LibGuide. So I put together something that was just our Pace resources with some resources he gave me, and it was just fun to make a LibGuide after a while. Especially since I guess it's not really a fail because it's not my fault, but my fail is that I'm feeling kind of out of sorts not teaching, because I have no teaching to do right now, so it was nice to have a LibGuide to make and feel like I'm still teaching in a little bit of a way. So, yeah, I'm kind of, I kind of wish I was doing some of these synchronous classes because everybody's like planning things and making PowerPoints and I'm like, oh just over here. I'm planning lessons for like standardized instruction for the future, but I'm not going to get to use it until I don't even know when. It’s sad. [49: 24] Amanda: Yeah interesting times for sure. I think I have a triumph. My triumph is that I think being in this situation has forced my group to completely think again about our outreach messages to faculty and students, and even departments. We even had a conversation about how can we get our message out there to departments about what the library does and our services. So I, I guess the triumph is that I feel re-energized to, you know, come up with new ideas on how to provide outreach, whereas in the past if we weren't going through this current situation I would just be like, alright we have projects to get through, let's go. I feel like we have a little bit more time and space to kind of think about some of these other, other things. My fail is that my team now we've met, this the second week we met, and I feel like I'm still trying to get back to “normal” with our meetings, and like, kind of talk about projects that we were working on before we all went remote, and I think it's failing because we're still in this, “Alright, how do we support students remotely?” And I think I'm forcing it too hard, um, because I had a lot of pushback. But I think I kind of like, I found a balance. So the first meeting, like I said, which was, which was a triumph was, we only got to, “Hey how's it going?” And then, this week's meeting, we talked half, like coronavirus update, and then the other half was instruction, like project related. So I think next week, we'll be in a little better place to talk more about some of our instructions. Yeah, we'll get through it. So I feel like we're still moving our services and our programs forward. Jessica: Yeah, I don't think you're alone in that. I think that's probably going to be what everybody's trajectory is going to be. It's like week one is like, what is happening? Week two is okay this is feeling normal and then the later weeks will be a lot more, I hate the word “normal,” like, at least functional, let's call it functional. Let's stop calling it normal. Amanda: I like that idea, it’s functional, right? We're functioning in this new forced work setting, right? You know I think it's a fail because I'm so concerned that it'll turn into a bigger fail that these projects won’t get completed. Because like we have deadlines, and I feel like these deadlines are out the window. And I'm flexible but I don't want them to not ever get completed. So, I'm trying to prevent the fail from snowmobiling into another fail. Jessica: Right yeah and I'm super nervous about that too, like, when I first started working from home I made a list of the projects that I couldn't work on anymore, because they were either tied to an event that was canceled or something like that. Like I'm really sad that our Qualtrics assessment of all our English classes is kind of up in the air right now because we had finally gotten the ball rolling on that right before everything went online and I feel like we're gonna have to start again. And we have half of good data, and that we may not be able to do anything with. So it is kind of sad that certain things are just kind of like poof, they may never materialize. Amanda: I know! Just before this happened, I was having really great conversations and making meetings with chairs to talk about information literacy in their programs, and then this happened. So I just emailed a professor, I felt like enough time had passed where things had calmed down and I emailed him and I said, hey listen, are you comfortable with picking up this thread and meeting for Zoom because I don't want to drop our progress. But if your workload has changed or you want to wait to be back on site that's fine, but I'm game to do it via Zoom. So we'll see if he responds, I don't know, but those are the kinds of things I'm kind of worried about like dropping like threads on the progress that we were making beforehand. Jessica: Yep, exactly. So I guess we are just kind of up in the air for a while. Amanda: Yeah, yeah. All right, so that wraps up another episode of the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching. Here's where you can find us. You can find the podcast at @Librarian_Guide, you can find Jessica at @LibraryGeek611, you can find me, Amanda, at @HistoryBuff820, and you can email us at [email protected]. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to our podcasts wherever you listen, we love to hear from you in the reviews as well. Summary keywords: students | storytelling | visual | instruction | infographics | story | dynamic | information literacy | learning | reflect | discussion board
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We want to send a HUGE thank you to listener, Megan Ondricek, for volunteering to help us catch up and create transcripts for our past episodes (starting with episode 9 below) and provide this important resource to our community! Jessica: Welcome to episode number 12 of the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching Podcast! I'm Jessica, Amanda: and I'm Amanda, Jessica: And on today's episode we're going to be talking about our thoughts on the newly released Horizon Report. But before we get started with our conversation, how are you doing? Anything exciting going on? Amanda: It’s hard not to talk about it but you know this is like, week one of completely remote work. It's definitely had some challenges, new challenges now with the fact that my daughter's daycare closed, so that's like a whole other layer of challenge but um yeah so it's been an interesting week of trying to find a way to return to quote-unquote, “business as usual” in terms of, you know, making sure that our students are still supported and that, you know, we're, we're still following through with some of the instruction or appointments that we had previously made. Trying to make sure those things didn't fall through the cracks so that's been interesting. But I'm looking forward to trying to find a new routine as we hunker down in this current situation. What about you? Jessica: Yeah, pretty much the same, this is week one of remote working from home. I'm definitely a little sad that we're working from home now, in one respect because you know all my on-site instruction is about to get a whole lot less dynamic, but you know I think it is, it's going to be interesting and I, it's going to be new and different and so I’m kind of trying to find the positives in it of you know the fact that I'm going to get to read a lot of the articles that I've had stashed away and and do some positive thinking about new projects for when we get back and, and stuff like that and spending a lot more time with my son, which, you know, has positives and negatives, when you're trying to work from home, but these are exceptional circumstances. So I'm also trying to learn how to balance my social media intake and just try not to get too overwhelmed with everything so it's definitely an exercise in balance, which is something that I think I need right now. So, trying to make the best of it. Amanda: Yeah, I feel like I've definitely been refreshing my Twitter feed, a lot more than I typically do. I think just because I'm so fascinated and interested and you know it's a lot of great conversation going on right now and banding together and our community sharing the resources, and I think it's so great, but it's definitely a little distracting I'm definitely, you know, finding myself stopping what I'm doing, to like, go and look. And I guess it's okay every once in a while but, like, I know I'm doing it a lot more. Jessica: Yeah and I'm starting to get a little bit of outrage fatigue with just like, and I understand the outrage, it's totally in the right place, and it makes sense, but it just between the library situations going around between public and academic libraries and everything political and all the fear based stuff with the virus itself, it's just, there's a lot of negative emotions and outrage that I'm, I just have to take a step back a little bit sometimes with my, my history of anxiety and stuff like that I need to know when to protect myself and so I'm doing that a little bit too of like okay I'm feeling overwhelmed, I gotta step back, and I'll dive back in, when I've recharged a little bit so like I said, taking time to practice that balance which will be a great practice to have when we get back to normal, so. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, I think I like what you said about the outrage fatigue. Last week when I tweeted out and published our last episode I paused, I felt a little hesitant about it. I felt like, Oh no, what if people don't, you know think it's inappropriate that we're still publishing content in light of what's happening. But then another part of me feels like this is good, like people need to step away from you know all of that outrage and they're going to need new content to binge and listen to so hopefully this is a good distraction, and a good way for some people to maintain some type of normalcy when it comes to their consumption of podcasts, so we'll see. Jessica: Yeah, that's true and I'm loving watching how so many different artists and performers are doing these new virtual performances, and stuff like that that's going around, I think it's really cool. You know that's the fun side and then there's a lot of professional development for librarians that’s going online, so it is cool to see how all these different communities are coming together and shifting things online, so it is kind of a communal international banding together which is fun to see in the midst of all the terrible news and craziness, so. Amanda: Yeah, definitely. I think one thing that you know, if we are going to be doing this in the foreseeable future, I was listening to a podcast, Life Kit, and they were talking about how to manage working remotely and one of the things that they recommended was to think about having like virtual coffee breaks or virtual meet-ups with people that you don't necessarily get a chance to talk to. So I want to try to make the best of the situation and I might try and coordinate something like that next week or so or in the next two weeks with my colleagues, I think it'll be good for morale and I think it'll be you know, give us an opportunity that we don't necessarily get to take so I don't know like just, I'm gonna try that. Because I think it's important that we still have social connection outside of our social media so I'm definitely gonna try and take advantage of Zoom in that capacity. Jessica: Yeah my director’s going to do the same thing. Because, like she said, we don't know when we're going to see each other again. And we're doing department meetings individually like, I'm in the instruction department so the six of us get together and meet once a week but, but that means I don't get to see my friends in reference or technical services so she's going to set up an optional informal Zoom just to chat, you know, we can bring our cats and dogs and kids and just kind of say hi and I think that's a good idea. I think all libraries and all companies should do that to just, you know. I miss my lunch buddies, you know? So let’s all get together and say hi. We gotta get through this together. [6:41] Amanda: Yeah, definitely. So, let's talk about today's topic which is the Horizon Report, so a little bit of introduction about the Horizon Report, it's been published since 2002, with the goal of providing educators with information on upcoming trends, so that they can learn what's going on and be part of innovation happening in the field. Jessica, you had some interesting thoughts about how the report has changed. You want to share some of those? Jessica: Yeah, I really liked their introduction to this report because they talked about the way that they reframed their methodology on predictions, because in the past, they had just selected different trends and said, which ones are going to be trends immediately, which ones are coming a little bit later, or which ones are hotter trends than other ones, and they realized that they had kind of a low accuracy rate with those predictions in the way that they were doing it, and that it may not have been that helpful to anyone. So, this was a quote from the introduction it said, “Why would EDUCAUSE bother to continue this publication if its level of accuracy is so low? In assuming ownership of the Horizon Report, EDUCAUSE recognized the challenges of anticipating the future.” And: “The Horizon Report was never meant to be a fun, “cool” list of hyped technologies for the field to debate and debunk.” Which I think was kind of what was happening to it. So, quote, “It is meant to inform decision makers and help learners, instructors, and leaders think more deeply about the educational technology choices they are making and their reasons for doing so.” end quote. So I think framing it this way in the beginning was helpful so that you could understand why they changed the way that they did it. Now they're really just listing out what the different technologies are, explaining them, and grouping them differently as opposed to just like, this is a hot trend, you should expect this trend in three to five years, because that doesn't necessarily help anyone, so I thought it was great that they started out that way and really framed the whole report that way. Amanda: Yeah, you know, I think they had to. I think it was a real big departure from the way that they organized the report in previous years, so I’m glad they did take the time to explain those changes, and I think it's really great that they actually acknowledge the accuracy level. It's not something that you find, you know, I think they even say something like future prediction is very tricky and, you know, few people like to do it, because, you know, once you do it it's published, it's in writing and people can go back to it and say oh you've been wrong x number of times, why should we trust you and blah blah blah. So, I think it was really great that they did that. My initial impressions with it was, it was a little overwhelming. The way that it was set up, it was very more than two or three sittings to read through it and then you know once I kind of get my thoughts around it I really kind of went back to those specific sections that I wanted to highlight so it's not an easy read, maybe it's not meant to be an easy read. But I think it's an important read for sure that I don't know, in libraries at least, I don't know how many librarians are actually going to sit down and read the whole thing so hopefully our colleagues will find this useful, but I definitely encourage people to read it. You have the time now, why not? Jessica: Yeah, right, exactly. I liked that they included little, there were a lot of links in it, to link out to more explanations so that, I guess that shortened the report so that they didn't have to include all these explanations of these technological concepts but you could click on some maybe more easy to digest things on some of the trends that I understood less, for example, that was cool. Amanda: Right, right. So, what do you think were two pieces of information in this report that you believe were the most important? [11:04] Jessica: So the two I picked out were: the trending AI predictive technology and student data privacy, and also the mental health needs of students. They really dove less into the mental health needs of students, they really just put that in as a social trend, but I think it's important for us to talk about as librarians because it does impact the way we engage with students. I mean the report references the statistics that are out there about the increasing number of students suffering from anxiety and depression, and it impacts the way they approach their schoolwork, the way they reach out for help. So librarians need to consider how they're going to approach both reference, but also as instruction librarians, reaching out to students in new ways. I mean we can go into the classroom for our one-shot but if they don't feel comfortable reaching out to us, we have to think of new ways to reach out to them. Many of them still suffer from library anxiety and that's been discussed in the library literature for a bit now but I think we need to continue to address it perhaps more now than we have in the past. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree there and I think, um, you know, the conversation is, I think, increasing about the mental health needs of our students so I think it's great that we're having more of these conversations. And I think a report like this definitely elevates that you know, the importance of it, so I think that's great that that was included. I'm actually, just today, we were talking, we had a meeting, and a colleague said how has chat been, has anyone on chat had any, shown any signs of concerns or stress or anything, so you know it's on our minds, you know, we definitely had our fair share of students come into the library and express concerns about, you know, grades or this or that or depression or whatever. So, you know, we're in a whole new world now with just supporting our students mostly virtually now so I think our senses are even more heightened with this topic. Jessica: Right. Yeah, and it should be. So the other one that I picked out like I said was the AI predictive technology, and after our episode with Barbara Fister I'm thinking a lot more about it, about our data, the privacy, our relationships to sharing our information. And so this is a quote from the student data trends section, they said quote “Institutions will need to be more proactive in protecting student and employee data, and must make careful decisions around partnerships and data exchanges with organizations, vendors, and governments and institutional relationships with technologies such as Facebook and Google should reflect larger cultural preferences and tolerances for privacy” end quote. So yeah, I think we're going to have to evaluate our tolerances for privacy, as we talked about in the episode with Barbara. We talked about the algorithm report that she co-wrote, and they talked about the fact that so many students don't know how their data is being used in LMS’s, and that's going to have to change going forward. I mean, do a lot of students understand how their data is being used in the predictive technologies? And I understand why those things are valuable, they aggregate all that student data, but I'm still wary of it and the fact that it comes to these conclusions about student success and their potential, and the way advisors are using it. So I just think it's, it's one of those trends that, if it goes unchecked, it could really lead to some unintended consequences, especially when we think about the way algorithms have just kind of taken off, and we haven't really considered the ways that they don't belong in certain fields in certain areas, and we really need to learn from that and look more critically at this predictive technology and student data in the same way we're starting to look at algorithms. We really need to all keep that in mind. Amanda: I totally agree, I'm a data nerd, so I love the idea of using data to create positive change, and I think it's great that institutions are trying to do that. I'm not a big fan of the ethical part of it, but I love the idea that they put in there that the University of Iowa is actually making it student facing and letting the students see it. I think that is crazy awesome because maybe it'll motivate them, maybe it'll get them to think about their success in a way that they're not thinking about their success because you know what, I personally have never had an opportunity to see all of the details, you know, I've never gotten around to play with the data. So I don't know all the data points that's being collected, but like, I think it would be so great for a student to see that because they didn't do X Y Z this is why they're predicted to not succeed or if they did this, they would do better. Like, it just, I think it might motivate students. I think yes, at first, they'll think it's a little creepy, but I think they might start to use it to their own advantage, and really, like, take it seriously, that they are in control of their success if they do X, Y, and Z. Jessica: Right. You know, that's an interesting take. I wonder if...I'd actually like to read more about that Iowa project and see if there's information out there about how students are feeling about it so far, because I think in the report, it's kind of just a blip, right, about what they're doing? Amanda: Very tiny little blip, yeah. Jessica: Yeah, so that might be interesting to read a little bit more, it's definitely an interesting project that they're doing. I wonder how it's gonna have, how it will pan out. Amanda: Yeah, I wonder if it will end up with students like demanding to opt out of these analytics or anything like that. I think that'll be interesting, too, honestly, I think it really is interesting that it's kind of like the wild wild west right now, you know, data collection in these LMS’s and the predictive analytics and that kind of thing like, I'm surprised it's not more regulated, honestly. Jessica: Yeah, right. I think that kind of goes back to what Barbara said about it has to be used in an empowering way not a disempowering way, and I think that what I was doing is a little empowering so let's hope it continues that way. Amanda: Definitely, yeah. Jessica: Alright so what were yours? [17:47] Amanda: So mine were the demographic changes, and the tech trends of the next generation digital learning environment. So with regards to the demographic changes, I think it's so true. I think we need to be having more of these conversations about how our student populations are changing, and that, you know, it's not necessarily that first-time, full-time that's going to be our population, our majority of our population. I think we need to have more conversations about financial aid systems and the way we measure graduation rates, and the way we score these - our institutions - because of this idea, you know, that the traditional student is changing. I think we need to change with the times and I don't think we're having enough of these conversations about that. Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Amanda: Yeah, I mean, I hear from the students all the time like I have to take a full load of classes because I won't get my financial aid but if they can't do it because they're working a full time job and supporting their family, we're setting them up for failure, you know like, we need to be thinking about, I mean not “we” librarians but like higher education like needs to be thinking about like, maybe this full-time load isn't going help the students succeed. Jessica: Right and I think that was one interesting thing that I found in the report in general, that, that so many of the trends were very interconnected, you know, the demographic changes of students plus the lack of funding for higher education the alternative pathways to different types of education, the changes in the types of pedagogy that we're working with, like all of them are related to each other, and if you change something in one it can impact something in one of the other ones. So I liked that they were all interconnected and it's going to be an interesting couple of years to see how these changes and what policy, governmental policies, might change things, how different funding changes or teaching changes might change all of them all together, it's very puzzle-like. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And just to reiterate the other piece of information that I thought was important was also the tech trend of the next generation digital learning environments. You know I think we really need to embrace this idea, and work towards reimagining what learning and learning environments look like, you know we all have experience with online learning and some of those, you know, restricted molds and ideas, you know, of the credit hour. I know that was a big push at my institution for a few years that the students had to have like, had to explicitly outline how each credit hour was being accounted for. And you know, also like what measurements of success look like and how to provide practical grading and what tools we should be using. You know, I really think we need to push the limits here and try to create a more flexible learning experience. I know some people are trying to get away from the LMS. Now, personally, I don't think that will ever happen 100%. I think there needs to be like a hub, but I think the LMS needs to be more flexible, it needs to interconnect with third party tools in different ways. I think our technologies need to talk to each other better. I know we, we move over to Canvas two years ago, three years ago, and it's a little better but our institution is very like strict about, what, what tools we use, and it's like, what's the point of having all this great technology, if they're not taught one, they can't talk to each other, and two, we're very strict about what's on the approved list of technology, you know? I think we need to enhance the learning experience but not restrict it with all these like strict policies. A few weeks ago before the whole Coronavirus thing happened and exploded on Twitter, there was a really interesting conversation about grades, and how there shouldn't be grades or it should be pass/fail and, you know, I'm, I have mixed feelings about it. I need to see what it looks like a little more but like, I think that's just one of those other ideas of how we measure success, and how we need to think about how we measure success changes, but within reason to be able to still measure success and not just, yeah, this student got what I said or whatever you know like there needs to be a balance but I think we need to change for sure. [23:08] Jessica: Yeah, actually, I've been really interested in the past couple of months because our English department, some of them are piloting labor based grading in some of their classes and so it's been really interesting to read through how they've rewritten some of their assignments, and the contracts that the students in those classes have to sign about what work goes into their classes and how their grading will be different from what they're used to. So it's been really interesting to be a part of that because with the English classes the librarians have standardized lessons that we offer, we don't have to go into all the classes. But they shared it with us so that we could be aware of what those particular faculty are doing if we go into their classes so it's been really interesting to learn more about labor based grading in real time, not just reading a paper about it but seeing how it's being implemented by professors. It's still kind of, like I said in the pilot stage, so I'm still learning the basics but maybe I'll report back on it as it becomes more official. It's really interesting. Amanda: Yeah, that is really interesting. Um, I definitely would love to learn more, for sure. Jessica: Yeah. Amanda: Yeah. So moving on, was there anything in the report that surprised or concerned you? Jessica: Well, the first one for me, I guess, more disappointing and concerning than surprising, but they broke down certain trends based on whether there's going to be growth in education or collapse or constraint or transformation. And in the collapse section they talked about how higher education as we know it is really really collapsing almost, due to costs and funding and things like that. And it's being, quote, “replaced by a system of education that prioritizes the needs of the job market and the acquisition of discrete skills over programs and departments unable to provide a return on investment” end quote. Which you know they're referring to liberal arts and humanities and stuff like that and I really just hope that, in that shift, we don't lose the fact that, in the humanities and liberal arts you learned so much about communication, about critical thinking, about writing, and that there's so much value to those classes and to learning those things. I mean I know that there needs to be updates to a lot of the canon in a lot of those classes. It is very white and male. I 110% agree with that and I wish I had learned a lot of different voices you know, when I was in college, many years ago. But it's still so valuable, and I don't want us to move forward as a society ignoring literature, and English and communication and philosophy. Those are still, and history, those are still so important. And if our students in K-12 are teaching to the test, then they're not getting it there either, so that was just a little concerning and I hope that we find a way to adapt those into the curriculum in another way, so that it's not lost because it's still important. Amanda: Yeah that's something that I always think about because I got my bachelor degrees in the liberal arts, I got a history degree, and you know, I obviously, first I thought I was going to be a teacher, then I was like no, I think I’m going to be a librarian. So I was very fortunate that there was a job for me and I'm very fortunate that I got a job right out after I graduated. There are a lot of people that I know that never use their library degree because, you know, we were told there was going be this big need for librarians because massive amounts of people were going to be retiring and these people never retired and so the job market was scarce for library science. Like for me, I would love, in the future to see colleges take more responsibility about how many people they let in per major, I think, that’s more responsible than saying forget liberal arts and forget the humanities, because, you know, it's such a big conversation. I mean my brother is you know, his second semester in college and he's paying for it out of pocket he refuses to take out loans, his generation, they're very conscious about student debt, they're learning from our generation. And if that's the case then I think our institutions need to be more responsible in that sense of, you know that the market is flooded with, I don't know, criminal justice majors right now but there's not enough jobs out there, be responsible, and not just take everybody and anybody into that major, because it's popular, you know, be responsible to the job market and to these students. So I hope that's the direction that this goes in and it's not just about let's just slash the arts, but we'll see. Jessica: Yeah, that's where it all gets interconnected too because, you know, they're trying to accept these students because of their lack of funding. So, if, one changes and hopefully there can be positive changes in the other area. So my other one was similarly concerning but very relevant was this section about, they had a section about the campuses being impacted by climate change. And while that's not necessarily what we're dealing with right now, we are dealing with this pandemic situation which had similar parallel points. They were talking about the fact that if campuses have to shutter or move due to climate change due to major weather problems or there's no food in the area or something like that, you know, they talked about online programs, and the fact that they can save higher ed money because they don't have to move a physical campus anywhere they don't have to, you know, have people coming to a physical location. Well yes, that makes sense. The report cautions the fact that equity of learning has to be considered between on-campus and online, and that we need to make sure that students and faculty have the same infrastructure of technology and internet, the fact that we need to provide the same level of support for different learning modalities. I mean, and that's where the other part of the report about enhanced curriculum design and learning engineering could help, but it's still a lot that we're learning right now in this whole pandemic situation that maybe we’ll unfortunately have to take in the future, and libraries would have to be a part of that too because we'd have to do different outreach to students who would be adapting to receive in-library services online, which, again, we're also doing right now. So we may have a lot of insights now, if God forbid, that becomes an issue in the future but it is something that the report brought up which is concerning. But that we know may be part of our future. [30:03] Amanda: Yeah, you know, it's sort of related but maybe not 100% related - I've just finished listening to this podcast called TOPcast, which is called the Teaching Online Podcast, and they recently interviewed, I forget what her title was or where she was, but she was like a part of this growth of an online program at this university. And they, they talked about how they needed all this extra funding to make these things happen, and they did that through the technology fee. And this technology fee allowed them to hire people, it allowed them to pay their faculty to review the courses to make sure that there's high quality, it allowed them to invest in technology, and then eventually I forget who exactly, but like they were told they could not charge that technology fee forever. And because of that things had to change you know, so luckily people didn't lose their job, they were just shifted, but they couldn't offer stipends for peer review like, things changed. So online isn't necessarily a savings. There's still a lot like you said, there's still a lot of work: curriculum design and quality that goes into online learning so I'll link to that episode in the show notes, but I thought it just kind of...what you were saying kind of made me think of that. Jessica: Right, yeah exactly it's, we're not just going to automatically be able to as we're learning, just throw learning online and expect it to, to all work I mean, just like we talked about in our episode about online teaching. It doesn't - it's not a one for one match. You don't just stick the puzzle pieces in and all of a sudden learning is fantastic online. There's a lot more work and thought and pedagogy that has to go into it that's so different from on-site. Amanda: Yeah, agreed. So, two things that surprised and concerned me was the fact that there was only one librarian on the expert panel. You know I might be slightly defensive because you know, I think there could have been better representation but, you know, our librarians, many librarians, interact with students every single day, and we play such a major role in the teaching and learning process, especially outside of the classroom that, you know, I think there should have been better library representation here in terms of talking about trends in higher education. You know, librarians were only mentioned twice in this report: once when they talked about the AI chat box, and then the other time was when we talked about instructional design which I'll talk about a little bit later. But, you know, librarians focus really hard on teaching and learning. You know, we obviously, we’re engaged in that I mean this is the whole point of our podcast, you know, teaching and learning. So, I think, to not have a better representation was, you know, kind of disappointing to me. Jessica: Yeah, and there's a ton of rock star research librarians out there who are doing amazing things, searching the way that they teach in the classroom and all the different, even library teaching trends, and things like that so there definitely could have been some more representation. Amanda: Yeah. And the other thing that surprised me was, we're still talking about online learning as a trend. You know, I mean, we're still struggling to figure it out all these years later! I mean, how many years has online learning been happening - at least 20? I know, back in what - 2000, 2004, maybe, I was taking an online class and it wasn't like, “new new” so it was happening before my time so we're still trying to figure it out, like to me that was kind of like disheartening that it’s still a struggle. Jessica: Yeah, and honestly I mean now that you mention that online class you took in 2004 I mean, I'm thinking back to my grad school for my MLS and honestly I don't know how much it has changed, like, when I look at Blackboard classes at any of the colleges I've worked at since getting my master's degree, which was 10 years ago at this point, I don't think things have really shifted that much. I mean we're still in Blackboard in Canvas, and we're still posting lectures and it's still discussion board based and there's definitely people out there doing innovative things but when we're thinking about the broad spectrum of what students are probably experiencing it hasn't shifted that much or gone outside the box that much in the last 10 years so it'll be interesting to see what the next 10 years hold and hopefully there will be this big paradigm shift, but so far, not yet. Amanda: No, no, definitely not, I mean I got my master's degree in instructional design in 2016 and still very much the same, like okay, read this article, watch this video, respond to the discussion board, it's still in that mode. So that was kind of sad. Yeah. So moving forward, what are some recommendations on how librarians can use this information to create change, or to impact or change or improve on their teaching? [35:42] Jessica: Yeah I think so overall, would be to just be aware of these trends and start to be involved in it, especially if you know there was one librarian represented on the panel, we may not be involved as much in the conversations unless we are prepared to be in the conversation. One of the ones - one section that I really didn't know that much about was the adaptive learning section. And from reading one of the articles that was linked, it seems like it could really create some contention in the future. It seems like it talks a lot about personalized learning, where the systems, really AI is using the student’s answer to give them the next question based on the difficulty level of what they just answered. So we're definitely putting a lot of the teaching in the hands of a computer and doing the pre design and then hoping that that does the teaching for us in a way, and some people, from the article that I read, someone called it the promise of a robot tutor in the sky, which sounds a little scary. So I want to learn a lot more about it, and it seems like librarians should really be on the forefront of understanding that so that when we're asked to be at the table, or have an opportunity to be at the table we can really be there to be part of this innovation. Like I said, I haven't heard a lot about it outside of the K-8 context with like math help software and some of those things but I hadn't heard much about it in higher ed, so it's something that I'm going to start looking into just to at least have a surface understanding. Amanda: Yeah I'm so fascinated by this idea of adaptive learning, I think, I think it's something that would be, it's extremely expensive to produce. I think you can't do it for every single program for every single class, but I think it's what people are looking for in some instances, they're looking for that individual learning experience, they're looking to demonstrate and prove that they have advanced knowledge in certain things, and that is able to move forward and not be stuck in this like mold of learning things that they might have already learned or that they've already picked up super quickly. So I think I'm fascinated by it and I would love to do stuff like this with my library, I don't think we're there yet. I could see us doing like dabbling in it slightly like, kind of like, a test your knowledge where like, you know, if you answer these three questions right you can move on to XYZ activity and skip the you know, whatever like so, like, in the sense of like prior knowledge it gives them the ability to move forward. I can see us adapting something like that, and, you know, using SpringShare products, you know LibWizard and LibGuides. So I would definitely love to do something like this but, you know, pie in the sky kind of thing. Jessica: Yeah. Right, exactly. So my other one was what you touched on a little bit already was the demographic changes. I know some colleges and libraries are really already on the forefront of this and they already support non-traditional students well. But I think traditional colleges are going to be the ones that are really going to need to get on this now, and librarians are going to have to consider the ways that we teach information literacy, both in the classroom, and in one-on-ones to adult students, first generation students, international students, all types of non-traditional students and really consider more culturally responsive teaching, whether that's including different texts, different examples in our one shots which we've talked about in past episodes, using more of our students’ prior experiences to teach them in the classroom so that goes back to what we've talked about before of you know, less demo, more talking to your students. And that can be hard for some people who have traditional modes of teaching, it's hard for me to, to shift out of those patterns but I think it'll be important as these demographic changes become more prevalent in higher ed. So it linked again, as we talked about linking all of these different trends together, it linked to the equity and fair practice social trend that they mentioned. They discussed that changing certain pedagogical practices is going to happen on a broader higher ed level. So librarians are going to need to be prepared for those potential changes to change their teaching, just like that labor based grading is happening in my English department, it's already impacting us, little by little. We've really had to reflect on updating our assignments that we come in and do with the students, do we have to change it for this new way that the class is functioning. So, personally I'm already trying new things in my instruction wherever I can, and adapting to the different variety of students that I'm encountering so I'm trying to take all these different ideas from culturally responsive teaching, critical librarianship, open educational resources, and just practicing bringing it together now and I think that's what's important about these reports is that it reminds us that these changes are happening around us and don't wait till the last minute to just start adapting them; learn about them now so that you're really ready. [41:03] Amanda: Yeah that's definitely a great recommendation for librarians to consider and I think, you know, we've talked about this too in previous episodes, start small, no one's saying you have to change everything all at once, just make a small change into one class, see if it works, see if it has an impact, and then do it again for another class. Jessica: Yeah! Exactly, you can take incremental changes. So what were your recommendations for librarians? Amanda: So I think librarians really will have an opportunity to play a major role in this idea of the elevation of instructional design and learning engineering. I think it's an avenue where we can really shine. Now in the section of the report it mentions that, you know, different educational stakeholders need to be seen as collaborators and not service/support. I completely agree with this idea. You know, I think we need to shift the mindset of how we are perceived from different stakeholders. So I have an example for you: at my library we have what we call the “request a librarian” form and this is where faculty can request a librarian to come into their class, collection development recommendations, collaboration for developing a course with materials from the library. And it's very service-oriented so you're requesting a librarian and I would love to change that form to “collaborate with a librarian” where, you know, it just changes that mindset that yes, we do provide services but we would like to collaborate with you on these services - we want to we want to do this together. It's a small change, that obviously I'd have to talk to my people about, but I think it does shift that mindset, like, oh, we'll just take care of it for you. Jessica: Right, right, right, exactly. That's very true. I definitely would love to do more collaborating, and I think like you said it has to be a shift in mindset for everybody. It can't just be, you know one person, collaborating with one person, it's got to be a whole, whole shift so I really hope that one happens too. Amanda: Yeah. And just another thing that I think is that, you know, when I’m responding to faculty I always make it an effort to use that type of language, you know, I'm so excited to be collaborating with you this week or this session, I look forward to collaborating with you on future projects, you know I really try to stress the emphasis of us doing it together. And you know I think there are other opportunities for us to kind of elevate our role in this, you know, learning engineering. We could be presenting more professional development opportunities for faculty. We could make recommendations to our teaching and learning centers, about information literacy or anything like that. I think our librarians, like I said earlier, we take on a lot of professional development in the teaching and learning space and I think it's just really an opportunity for us to shine. Jessica: Yeah, that's definitely true. Amanda: Yeah. My other takeaway that I think librarians need to push back on is this idea that chat bots are the solution for supporting students, or that in the future students will have what did they call it, AI research assistants? I think we need to have a strong presence in this conversation, and truly press upon administrators that librarians are knowledge workers and professionals and humans and should be valued for the services that we provide. We can't just be replaced with a chatbot that scans our FAQs. I think we need to continue, you know, to fight the good fight and push for information literacy to be more integrated into curriculum. This idea that in the future students will have a research assistant to help them, an AI research assistant to help them, you know, with their projects - it's just sending the message that students don't need to have the lifelong information literacy skills. I don't think that's the direction we need to be going in and I think we need to press upon even more, the different ways that students need to be prepared to find and use information outside of being a student. [46:00] Jessica: Right. Yeah, exactly. You know I think I've seen, this was a couple years ago so things might have changed but there was a library that was, they developed the chatbot themselves to take over for when they weren't able to staff the reference desk like after hours, and at one point I could kind of see how that makes sense, like, if they can't have the staff available during that time. But at the same time I agree with you too, that it's like just shooting an FAQ at them as opposed to empowering them to know where to go to find it themselves might actually be the better solution to that than having a piece of technology do it for them. But then at the same time and I'm just like, I'm just shooting out ideas at this point but, you know, does that free up their time to learn more detailed contextual information-finding that is more important? Playing devil's advocate there and I hate that term but I haven't found a new one to replace it yet. Amanda: I think you do bring up an interesting point, but I think, I don't know, I think there's the art of teaching yourself how to find something or learn how to do something. I think there's still something to be said for saying okay, I'm gonna learn how to use this - whatever - I'm going to go online and look at a tutorial and just pause step by step, and learn how to do it. I mean I do it for a lot of things like, work-related, not work-related I mean, just yesterday I was trying to teach myself how to crochet a star. And I was on YouTube, paused it, did the two steps, you know, watched it, did it again. I mean there's just something for teaching yourself, and I get it like, time, blah blah blah. But that's something that I taught myself and I feel really proud that I was able to find that, what I was looking for, and then I was able to move forward and build upon that and I just, I don't know, I'm just not into the whole chatbot thing. I think, you know it's funny because I use it in my spiel when I'm talking to students in the classroom, I say to them, you know, we have a chat service, you know it's real librarians it's not robots or anyone from like, you know, Idaho, it's real Berkeley librarians. So, I don't know if I really subscribe to the whole chatbot thing. Jessica: Yeah, and it's interesting that you, you say that too because I do think from what I've read that, you know people in the younger generations do use YouTube a lot to teach themselves things, so they already are doing that. So I guess there's just maybe a resistance to do it if it's not something that they see the value in, so maybe that needs to be part of the conversation of, you know, it's important to teach yourself these research skills. So maybe that message is still being lost a little bit, and if we could hook them somehow in getting them self motivated to do it, they would just apply the skills that they already have like you did of teaching yourself to just find a YouTube tutorial and it's not like we're not creating tutorials, I mean, librarians are freaking awesome at making tutorials and they're there, so it's just a matter of - and the FAQs are there. So it's just a matter of giving them the motivation to go out there and get it as opposed to having a chatbot bring it to them. Amanda: Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So definitely, you know, take those to consideration I think those are a few great takeaways of things that librarians can take from this report because I think these reports are great but I think it's important for us to take a minute to say well how can I apply this, what can I personally do with this, you know? Some of our listeners might not be administrators, they might not be sitting at the table of these big conversations but there were, like we shared, ideas that you can implement or think about, to implement in the near future. Jessica: Yeah, and now with all of us, many of us, working remotely we may have some time to dive into this report a little bit so hopefully this episode is well timed for people. Amanda: Yeah, were there any other thoughts or comments that you had about the report that maybe didn't fit into the questions that we talked about? Jessica: No, I think that was good. What about you? Amanda: Yeah, so it was hard for me to get through those future scenarios, like I know that they were based upon opinions but you know the way that ideas were presented, they were presented in a way that just made it feel - and sound - like so unreal. And I know it's just a matter of reframing it, but I think I would have read them a little more easily, if it was just someone or several people saying, “This is my future prediction.” Rather than talking as if these things had already happened, it's such a little thing but I don't know it was just, it was a real struggle. I think I read those sections like the most, like over again, kinda like, to you know, process. Jessica: I was a little scared of them so I stopped reading them. I think one of them was like, and there's a recession in the year 2022 to 23 and I was like what? No, I don't want that to happen! Of course, now they're talking about a recession like this year so maybe it's coming early but, no I found them a little bit doom and gloom, so I kind of stopped reading them, but I agree with, with what you're saying maybe they would have felt less doom and gloom if it was just so-and-so from the university saying, I think this is what's gonna happen but the way that they were worded was a little bit scary. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so it's a lot to process, but we hope we provided you with some interesting nuggets on the report, and if you, you know have any comments about it please tweet at us, we, you know, we'll be online. So let's move into some triumphs or fails. What do you have this week, a triumph, a fail? Jessica: I have a little bit of both. So I mean, working from home with a toddler is a triumph and a fail every single day. Because getting anything done is a triumph, and I always wish I was doing more. I'm tracking what I'm doing, because that's just my personality and it makes me feel accomplished to say like I did these things today and I'll get this done tomorrow. This week is spring break, which is great because it's giving me a chance, like I said to kind of get into the swing of a rhythm with him. So I'm really ready for next week when more students are going to need our support and I'm hoping that next week, a triumph is going to be a successful Zoom citation workshop that I'm running with a colleague. We had scheduled them already, and then all of this happened so we just transitioned them online, we made Zoom bitly links and promoted them on social media, promoted them to professors, you know, we're not anticipating hundreds of students because we know students are still trying to digest everything that's going on in their personal lives, everything that's going on transitioning to online learning, but if you know even a couple of students really feel like they need the help we just want to at least be there for them as a resource. So hopefully that'll be a triumph that we at least get it to work, we'll see. What about you? Amanda: I think I have, I guess, a little bit of both, but they're kind of not amazing, like they're not traditional triumphs or fails. So my fail is like that I feel like I'm beating myself up about not being on campus with my colleagues. So our institution is still open. You know, our classes have moved online, but my colleagues are still going in, using rotating shifts, and because I'm pregnant I am not. So I feel terrible about it, but I know I shouldn't be beating myself up about it so it's like a bit of a fail, I think on my part for feeling so bad. But my triumph is that today we had our first meeting, all of us together, talking about like what's going on and how is it going and I had this whole agenda planned and we didn't get through half of it but that's okay because I think we needed to have this conversation first before we can move forward and talk about, you know, being productive and finishing the semester on a high note and preparing for the spring. So, you know, even though we just got past “Hey how's it going?” I think that's okay so I consider that a triumph, I think, you know, my colleagues just needed to talk and we did it. We didn't, we didn't feel guilty about it, you know, we didn't, you know feel like oh my God we got through nothing, it still felt like we accomplished something. Jessica: Yeah, exactly, my Zoom department meetings this week have been a little bit of experimenting together with Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate and then part of it has just been like, like I said, Hey, here's my cat isn’t he cute?, like, like how are you guys handling all of this? And I really, I really believe that as the days go on, everyone will get more productive. I think right now it's just shellshock. Because it's not just like we're working from home because it's a snow day, like, there's an international problem happening, and it is scary and I think it's okay that we all are a little mindful about it and just, you know, take a breather for a minute to adjust to everything that's happening and we'll settle into the new temporary normal and everything is going to be fine eventually. That's how I'm looking at it, I'm having those positive ideas around it and so I think it's all okay, we're gonna get through it. Amanda: Yeah, for sure. I agree. All right, that wraps up another episode of the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching. Here's where you can find us, you can find the podcast at @Librarian_Guide, you can find Jessica at @LibraryGeek611. You can find me, Amanda, at @HistoryBuff820. You can also email us at [email protected]. Be sure to rate and subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen, and we love to hear from you in the reviews as well. |
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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