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.
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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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