Jessica: Welcome to episode number seven of the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching Podcast! I’m Jessica…
Amanda: And I’m Amanda. Jessica: On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about a topic that was requested on Twitter - online information literacy instruction and some related concepts as applied to that environment such as critical pedagogy. But before we get started with our conversation, how are you doing? Anything exciting happening this week? Amanda: Anything exciting happening? (Laughs) We’re recording this during the holiday break and my little one has been sick so I’ve been quarantined home so I've been spending a lot of time at home so nothing exciting going on. I'm actually looking forward to getting back to work next week and getting back into the routine. What about you? Jessica: Yea, pretty much the same thing here. I keep seeing all of these memes on the Internet about how nobody knows what day it is and that this is like the lost week where people are just eating all the food and losing track of time. Today is my sister in law’s birthday and I had to keep reminding myself to call her this week, not because I don’t remember it’s her birthday but because I just really don’t know what day it is. (Laughs( But also, I’m kind of looking forward to getting back into a routine and into the new year like you said. And just getting off to the right foot. We have wanted to do an episode about online information literacy Instruction for a while so we were happy to see this request on Twitter when we asked for suggestions on what you all wanted to hear about on this episode! Librarian, @melodylynn457, suggested an episode on online instruction and added a few specific concepts like critical digital pedagogy and open online pedagogy. But before we get started with those concepts and how we feel that they could be incorporated into the online environment, let’s start with our basic experiences with online instruction. So, do you want to go first? Amanda: Yea, I can definitely start. So I've been doing online teaching for about 10 plus years now since I basically started at Berkeley. I basically got thrown right into it. I’ve done a variety of things. I've just placed, you know, Powerpoints and videos into online LMS’s (Library Management Systems), I've supported discussion boards, some that were mine, others were that faculty had created the questions and I just kind of jumped in here and there. I’ve also created self-paced learning opportunities. You have done this with me before with our Honors Program where you have a stand-alone LibGuide for the Honors student where it's integrated into their curriculum but it's basically online activities. I've also done at the very basic level generic “Ask a Librarian” discussion board where students at any point in a semester can ask a librarian a question. Which in my experience I've never had a lot of success with but I’ve heard other librarians having some. I guess it just depends on the students and how engaged they want to be with their embedded librarian. What about you? Jessica: Yea, kind of similar. So you've done a little bit more activity related stuff but I’ve really only done one shot instruction online with the exception of one embedded type class where I had an English professor who wanted me to be embedded the whole semester. That was pretty much a one-time situation. Most of the instructors I work with just wanted it to be a one-week discussion board facilitation so I would create a PowerPoint or a video as the lecture part of the week. So yea I just went along with what the faculty wanted up until about the last year or two when I would still maybe do a Powerpoint but then I would do more of a workshop type LibWizard form to have them search for sources for their upcoming paper as opposed to just having them put that information in a discussion board. It seemed just a little bit better to do it in a LibWizard form. So right now since I’m still pretty new in my position, I’m still in the process of developing relationships with faculty so I’m hoping that 2020 will be the year that I get to incorporate some new stuff into my online instruction. To be honest, I wish I had had more knowledge on some of the concepts for today’s show because it really could have improved some of my previous work so I’m looking forward to talking about these. Amanda: I have to say that from talking to a lot of librarians about their type of online support to us it seems like, I know I get very frustrated with it but when I talk to my other colleagues at other institutions they're not even doing anything like that in some instances. So sometimes they don't even - they're not even supporting online classes and if they are they’re literally just emailing the professor the PowerPoint or the video and that's it and then the professor embeds it into the course. So I know we're very fortunate at Berkeley that we have that flexibility and status but I think after we finish having this conversation today I know that there are so many more opportunities that we could be taking in terms of supporting our students in online environment. Jessica: Right! So that’s interesting to know that there’s such a wide range of spectrum of opportunities taking place across higher ed libraries in terms of online instruction going from doing nothing to just the faculty taking off work and putting it in all the way up to this great stuff we’re seeing with critical digital pedagogy. Amanda: Yea, definitely. So why don’t we drive right into some of these concepts. Do you want to maybe give a little bit of a definition about critical digital pedagogy? Jessica: Sure so when I was doing some research on this concept because we already talked about critical pedagogy a little bit with Romel in episode 4 so I was looking for things about implementing this digitally. And I came across a website by Sean Michael Morris. He is the Director of the Digital Pedagogy Lab which is an experimental, exploratory professional development gathering for a global digital pedagogy community. So he’s got a blog on his site which has some great information. And he runs the Digital Pedagogy Lab as I said which helps educators implement these concepts. So I’d like to paraphrase some things from his writing that we felt captured these concepts. The first one is a quote: “Where critical pedagogy centers on social justice and liberation, critical digital pedagogy fronts with the complications of learning in digital environments, critical instructional design looks directly at applications” and it really does forces us to ask what are the first steps we should be taking to teach a concept, not just allowing assessment methods or library management systems to dictate that for us. He also says quote: “The critical instructional design approach prioritizes collaboration, participation, social justice, learner agency, emergence, narrative, and relationships of nurture between students, and between teachers and students. It acknowledges that all learning today is necessarily hybrid, and looks for opportunities to integrate learners’ digital lives into their digitally-enhanced or fully online learning experiences….it works against the standardization of so many educational technologies, and aims for the fullest inclusion possible.” So critical digital pedagogy asks the big why and how questions around technology in education. So around privacy surveillance, assessment, representation. So how do we communicate these issues to our students.Those are some of the things that are being asked in this concept. Some other questions we should be asking would be how can students participate in meaningful learning in meaningful ways in the online classroom? And make the online college environment as good as on-campus learning. And that's something that we'll talk about it a little bit later. Lastly, in an article that we’re link in the show notes Morris quotes Henry Guiroux who writes in his text on critical pedagogy that quote “critical pedagogy asserts that students can engage their own learning from a position of agency and in doing so actively participate in narrating the identity through a culture of questioning that opens up a space of translation between the private and the public while changing the forms of self and social recognition.” So as I was reading this all of this stuff I was just like wow that is not what my online pedagogy looks, right? Amanda: Yea, no, definitely not. Jessica: Yea but then that led well into the other requested concept which was open pedagogy. So you want to bring that up a bit? Amanda: Yea! Sure so when we were doing research for this episode there was this great website, it was called the Open Pedagogy Notebook - Openpedagogy.Org. which we’ll link to in the show notes. It defines “open pedagogy we engage with it, is a site of praxis, a place where theories about learning, teaching, technology, and social justice enter into a conversation with each other and inform the development of educational practices and structures.” The website goes on to say - “First, we want to recognize that Open Pedagogy shares common investments with many other historical and contemporary schools of pedagogy. For example, constructivist pedagogy, connected learning, and critical digital pedagogy are all recognizable pedagogical strands that overlap with Open Pedagogy.” This website has some really great examples of open work projects which I think really helps people get a little better understanding of what this concept really means and how to actually implement it. So with that being said now that we provided some context definitions, what do you think this looks like for online library instruction whether it be credit-bearing, one shot or embedded? Jessica: Honestly this took a lot of thinking outside the box. In reading up on this topic, I listened to two episodes of the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, which is awesome if you don’t already listen to that as well, and both guests I listened to discussed how online instruction is really so new compared to the teaching that we’ve done and studied over the past hundreds or thousands of years. So we’ll link the episodes in the show notes but the guests were Flower Darby who spoke about her book “Small Teaching Online” and Rajiv Jhangiani who is the co-director of the Open Pedagogy Notebook which we’ve also linked in the show notes. They both talked about the fact that what we’ve really done in online instruction is just let the online LMS models dictate what we can do - like stick the PowerPoint here, get students to respond there - but what we should be doing is critically thinking about the teaching and pedagogy and making the online environment work for that. And I’ll admit, I never really thought about it that way. I’ve been letting the LMS and the faculty lead the way whereas I know we’re capable of doing a lot more in this. When thinking about the one-shot model it does seem even harder to adapt critical digital pedagogy in online instruction because there’s can be such a limitations of one week of class which seems like it’s more than the one and a half hours we get for on-site teaching but it’s really not when you have to give students days and hours to to respond and participate. So there's the timing aspect and then there’s the limitations of technology, right? Amanda: Yea, I definitely agree. I think it's easy to fall into that cookie cutter trap of how an online class is set up and expectations of online learning. You know, online learning is marketed as “Complete the work anytime that's convenient for you! You have all this extra time to do work!” And you know I was recently, about three years ago, I just finished my master's degree in instructional design and it was completely online and let me tell you I almost wish I went to a physical classroom every day because the online work to me it was not always engaging and it seems like a lot of busy work. Most of our our engagement was through discussion boards but they were not engaging. I think there's a lot of frustration with discussion boards because there's a lot of mixed ideas of how much does a faculty member step in and participate in a discussion board. Do they respond to every student? Do they respond to every student that response to another student? Or do they just jump in periodically and check? So I think that's also adds a layer of interesting kind of weirdness to the online learning environment as well and though from a teaching point of view I think it’s easy to just go with the flow and get into that “okay this is how it's always done” kind of rut. Jessica: Right, exactly ! And discussion boards are hard in general, cause as you said as a student you’re dreading them and we dread reading them and grading them so obviously students don’t want to do them. So we have to do that thinking outside the box of what other options are. One of the resources for this episode, the Critical Digital Pedagogy Textbook is an open access book which has a chapter on Discussion boards that talks about how weekly discussion boards just take the spontaneity out of the true discussion that can happen in a classroom. So right now students are just posting to get the points and they’re responding to a classmate because they have to.So they recommend using some external tools or even places that students DO freely to talk such as Twitter, but that really might require some students to actually sign up for it. Not everyone has Twitter. So that might be something to think about. They’re might be some other tools that they recommended int that chapter. Amanda: You know what? In theory, I think that is great. As a student, we had to create a blog. And that blog, I mean I know I can delete it but even after deleting it that blog still exists in some places and anytime you Google my name that blog comes up. And I know it's a part of my learning journey and I shouldn't be embarrassed about it but like 10 years from now am I really going to want someone to find that blog out there about me talking about some instructional design concept. Jessica: That's a really interesting because as we mentioned in the definition of critical digital pedagogy, it was talking about you know privacy issues and bringing those to light. (Inaudible) It’s kind of their right to be forgotten and it’s (inaudible). Amanda: You think about other social media like Twitter - I feel like I remember at my institution reading somewhere that if a professor wanted to use Twitter that they had to get approval to make students create social media accounts for that class. Like it was like a waiver. So it does get complicated. When you want to use some of those like external third-party tools which I think just adds that whole layer of complexity to things when you're trying to be exciting and engaging in an online environment but these are things that you have to think about it. It's kind of - you get kind of divided between students right to privacy and preference and engagement levels. Jessica: Right, exactly. On the one hand, it could be a great discussion point to talk to the students about what you had to do to prepare and the relationships between information and the online and the digital world and things like that. So that's actually a great teachable moment. But like you said what if it doesn’t work out and you have to be prepared for that aspect, too. So that does throw a wrench in the works a little bit but it may at least be a way to explore and fail and try something different that will work eventually in the future. Like we have to have to have these growing pains in the process in order to get to the next (inaudible). I did think of some ways, some hopefully easy ways, that we can incorporate critical digital pedagogy. And as we discussed in our episode with Romel, one easy way to incorporate social justice is at the very least making the topics that you pick as examples be things that are timely and are bringing important issues to light for students. And if possible making it relatable to the class. For gen ed classes, like English, that opens it up to many different topics because there are so many students with different majors in the classroom but issues of representation, climate change, racial disparities, etc. So adding these examples to your PowerPoint or your discussion prompts, if you’re using those formats, can just bring these conversations to light and bring those aspects into your online teaching. Amanda: Yea, that’s a great example. I always try to refresh my tutorials or PowerPoint every semester. If it’s a Powerpoint, refreshing it every semester to make it relevant to something that's going on in the world presently. Jessica: One other thing would be something I saw in the Open Pedagogy Notebook was instead of a video and a LibWizard like I’ve done, was maybe contributing to an annotated bibliography as a class. It might take a few short videos to scaffold the process and maybe even two weeks instead of one, just thinking about the logistics of how to teach them exactly what to do and also leave time for them to do it and leave time for discussion. And it could culminate in a discussion board reflection of their process if that type of assessment was needed. And as I mentioned, there is an example of this on the Open Pedagogy Notebook of a collaborative annotated bibliography on immigration and refugees. So the students there are contributing to something that already exists out in the world and that opens up to a whole conversation around Scholarship as Conversation. It does take a little thinking outside of the box on how to actually make the assignment work piece by piece but it probably is really worth taking that time to actually figure it out. Amanda: Yeah definitely. I have to say again just time for drawing on my own experience - when I was in school a few years ago, the most engaging opportunities that I had was when I was able to talk about my experiences. When I had choices about an assignment to complete. So like sometimes you would get to you do your assignment in either a video format or a website format. It didn't necessarily have to be a paper so that was also very exciting to have that agency. You know, that's what we read about in the description of critical digital pedagogy about learner agency. So that was also really exciting to me. And then when I had real engagement with the faculty like that was really engaging to me. I really liked having a professor respond to me and not just saying “great job” or not just saying you know “fix your citation”. But like true engagement. And you know that does take time. I think and this is going to sound really strange but maybe not that strange but I think in order for us to get this type of level of engagement it has to be a not a standardized week. It needs to be a low stakes graded assignment that can just kind of happen on its own. As I think in online learning it’s very standardized. It's very like “This discussion board have to meet these three requirements” and these type of like super engaging out of the box activities it's hard to assess them and give them a lot of weight. People don't know how to wrap your head around that kind of grading. So I say if I were to want to, and I do, try something like big like this I would recommend it as a low stakes graded assignment and not a standard “give me one week” type of thing. I don't know what that would look like but a few examples - and then I was trying to think about like what could be done is - would be like maybe something small would be like an embedded Padlet where the students can just like all share a response to a question and they can see everyone's response. And if you're not familiar with Padlet, what’s great about that is that you can embed video links, website links, images, text. So it could be a whole class’s shared response to a question in a visual way. Jessica: I’ve never used Padlet. So they can share a video and and a link and all that stuff, too? Amanda: Yes, because it’s an open - it’s almost like a Google Doc. But it’s like you can do other - like you can link to other things and you make it open so that anyone that has access to it can add to it. Jessica: Oh, that’s cool! Amanda: So like you can embed back let's say on a LibGuide or into an LMS and they can just add to it right there. Jessica: That’s pretty cool. Amanda: Yeah but then it becomes how do you assess that? So that's why I'm thinking maybe not like a standardized assignment. And then like big huge pie in the sky activity is maybe for like a capstone or like a research methods class. I was thinking we help our criminal justice research methods class a lot. And I’m thinking because they have to do like a research study where they have to ask a question. They have to do a survey. They have to do an interview. I'm thinking maybe they do some type of multimedia mash-up and they put videos together of like interviewing people and images from what they're studying and then that all gets put on to like a class LibGuide and it's more of a visual representation rather than papers. Something different. So instead of maybe presenting it. Well for an online environment - we do a lot of sections in the online environment - so you know in its face to face you would present it to your class but in the online environment it would be a multimedia project. Jessica: Right, exactly. Amanda: But that’s also complex too because you have to make sure that students have the skills to record and edit, to use the tools that you're providing. You can’t just say, “Make me a video”. That’s also a challenge too, but I did, it feels like a thousand years ago but I read this article about how this one Professor, I think it was in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, I’ll see if I can find it, about how this Professor was engaging students in a math class by every student would have to answer three or four problems, right? They’d submit it and then if they got it right they would then have been have to teach their classmates how to do it and they would all take turns, one week one student would have to like do it. Like they have to record themselves as if they were in front of the classroom teaching them how to do it. So that's kind of engaging too where they're learning from each other and they're also learning about technology and they're learning about themselves and how they speak in presentations. And so it's a lot but you know it's probably nerve wracking for a professor to say to the student, “Hey, you have to do this” and give them all the tools to be able to do it. But it sounds super engaging! Jessica: Yea! It almost sounds like a big jigsaw activity where they’re all teaching the whole class. But we’ll talk about this later but if we create the right online culture and online environment that there won't be so much fear around if they feel supported. That they would be more open to doing that. So I think that’s a really cool idea. And I know that Melody Lynn had suggested this topic said she teaches a credit bearing class so I mean that would be awesome for definitely a credit bearing class over a whole semester. Maybe not a one-shot. Amanda: Yea, no probably not for a one-shot. I also think what’s exciting about doing something like a Padlet is that they’re contributing in a way to like answering a question and maybe in a sense they're doing something collectively but it doesn't feel like the traditional group work, you know? Because online group work can be very challenging especially when you're in different time zones. I mean when I was back in school three years ago, I had a group where we were all in different time zones so we were meeting at 10 p.m. my time because that was the earliest everyone else could meet. So that could be a challenge for groups to get together as well as for students to get together if you ever wanted to as a professor or a librarian have that synchronous opportunity. Jessica: Yeah that just adds a whole other wrench to things as well in working in groups. Amanda: Yea, so do you have any other points for that question? Jessica: There was also a lesson I saw in the ACRL Book called “Framing Information Literacy” - it was that set of books about the Framework that came out a few years ago. There was a chapter that talked about using Wikipedia and compared the background information you would find on Wikipedia to what you would find in the library’s resources. And that author did teach a credit-bearing course so they were able to build up to this lesson plan. So that would be a little different for a one-shot. So the lesson teaches the Information Has Value Frame and as I said it might be difficult to adapt in a one-shot but it could be possible. It got me thinking about doing a Wikipedia editing session with an online class because that really lends itself so well to all the frames and gives an opportunity for conversations and discussions. And if you have a good relationship with the faculty, perhaps you can ask for two weeks in a class to help with that facilitating. And as you said, maybe it’s not perfectly assessable with all the checkboxes that we’re used to doing in online but using assessments other than discussion boards in this case could be really engaging. Amanda: Yeah, that does sound like an exciting assignment to test out in the online environment. Jessica: And I guess my last thought on this is really that it’s a great opportunity for embedded librarianship that we kind of spoke about in the last episode. It could be great to have librarians working with faculty from the start of a class to really incorporate information literacy concepts in authentic ways. And actually incorporate critical digital pedagogy. And it goes back to the quote from Henry Giroux earlier, where students can “actively participate in narrating their identities through a culture of questioning”. So librarians being part of that throughout the process and planning would be really valuable. Amanda: Yea, definitely I think that actually kind of lends itself to my thoughts on the next question which is How do we create an online class culture? And I really do believe that while there are multiple ways, I think it starts with a librarian building a relationship with a faculty member as you were saying and getting them on board with you interacting with their students in multiple formats and multiple weeks. I don't think you can cultivate a culture in a week. I don't think he cultivated culture in just a discussion board. I think it needs to be several separate opportunities where they're interacting with a librarian. And I think you know we already kind of touched upon this being a challenge but I think online learning needs to break that mold of asynchronous is an advantage all the time. I think there needs to be some synchronous sessions. Whether you know, you commit to it. It’s kinda like that concept of blended learning. When you sign up for a course you commit that you're going to attend two of the five synchronous sessions. It gives that face to face connection because a lot of students don't feel connected to their professor. They don’t feel connected to their classmates in the online environment so if they're interacting with students for a whole semester and they're still not feeling it, they’re not going to feel connected to a librarian in one day. So we kinda dabbled with this a little bit at Berkeley and you and I've done it where we set up an optional session for an internship class where it was particularly challenging so students who wanted a face-to-face time with a librarian, they could “drop into” the Zoom meeting. And we didn’t get an insane number of students but we did get some who were interested in interacting with a librarian and it was helpful. And we actually have a librarian taking that concept a step further. She's like the Online Associate Director. She's doing that with drop in research hours where any student can drop in to talk about any topic so we'll see how that goes. I think that's how you create a culture. You give students different ways to learn, different opportunities to learn, and engage with you and their classmates. Jessica: And I remember those asynchronous sessions and the students that did attend said, “I’m so glad that I did this because I got to meet you guys and I got to ask my specific questions and I feel more confident in my assignment now”. So just having that as an endorsement for those sessions was really motivational to keep trying it. And I think you’re right, it wouldn’t be too much to ask to say that you have to attend one of these asynchronous sessions a semester and it wouldn’t really affect the marketing of online classes at all. And I think it’s true that the professor sets a lot of the tone for the class as librarians. It’s the same thing as on-site classes. If a faculty member has that negative or just not engaging rapport with the students, it gets passed on to us when we teach our one-shots. So the faculty member has to build that culture because as you said, we can’t build that culture in one week. We can make engaging activities but it’s only going to go as far as the culture and motivation allows. So that's tough. Amanda: I used to do this and I think I’m going to get back into it. I used to do a (indecipherable) 45-second whatever intro video where I would introduce myself and say who I am and what I’ll be doing for them and with them for the week. I don't even know how many of them watched it but I just felt like sometimes that made the difference. I felt like sometimes they knew a little bit about me, a little more comfortable and it's something simple and it doesn't have to be perfect. It could be messy. You can stumble, you can hesitate, you can say um. It’s more authentic. It's not as cookie cutter as some of these like intro to the course videos. So I would anyone interested in getting a little bit more connected with your students to create a 40-second video. Just put it there and don't try to make it perfect. Jessica: That’s funny that you said that, too. One of the episodes that I mentioned from the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, the one with Flower Darby, the about small teaching online episode. They talked about just that. Leaving the blips in and if your dog walks in when you’re recording your lecture video, let it happen, you know. Because showing you’re a real person helps to build that relationship with them. So I think that’s a great tip. So the next thing we were going to talk about was whether the one shot model really works for online library instruction at all and creating engaging content and learning objects. What do you think? I mean we kind of touched on it a little bit in what we’ve talked about. We really didn't come up with too many learning object ideas because it’s hard in a one-shot. Amanda: It is hard. I think I think the answer to that question is that you have to try, right? If you only have an opportunity to be in that class for one week, take that opportunity. But I would say just continue to work on it and try and work with the same Professor every semester and try to build upon what you've done any maybe tweak it here and tweak it there. Jessica: I think it also depends on what we mean by “does it work”. We could say technically what I’ve been doing worked because I do have, based on rubrics that I have, students are finding sources for their assignment so ok they have the basic information literacy skills, that’s great. But if we want to be doing things like critical digital pedagogy where we’re teaching them to really think, and grappling with these big questions, then according to that metric, then no, it’s not working. Because my stuff wasn’t working on that metric. So we need to do what we talked a little about before and break the mold of online learning and try all of these new things. But then there could be the potential to break a relationship with a faculty member by doing something they don’t like and so we’re tip-toeing a line a little bit with keeping relationships, teaching students the information literacy skills we need them to learn and getting them to think critically about these big questions around information. And all doing this while being tied up in the time frame of online and the technology. So it’s figuring out what does “work” mean for your goals and your institution and then trying to go from there. Amanda: At the end of the day I want the students to walk away with the skills that they need. Sometimes it's not super pretty and super engaging and you want learning to be exciting and fun all the time but I just don't think that's possible with larger factors. Like you said, maybe there’s a mold. Maybe the professor is not comfortable because it's outside of what they're doing or what they've ever seen a librarian do before. So yeah that can be that can be a huge challenge. And I have an example. I was supporting a public speaking class and I wanted to be engaging and actually one of my questions was - and this was not even required - it was an optional activity for students to record. Because what I was doing was I was going in there helping them to learn how to find sources for a persuasive speech. And what happened was is they were finding sources and then talking about the sources and I said in a question “If you want additional feedback on how to integrate this source into your speech, attach a 30-second clip of how you would talk about this source in your speech.” And the professor emailed me and said, “Can you take that question out? They’re already doing a lot of videos. I don't want to overwhelm them.” Jessica: Yea, because you’re trying to engage the students and the faculty member is putting up a barrier there. And I just tweeted this from our Twitter account. It was a blog post from librarian Kevin Seeber. He did this whole blog post about faculty/librarian relationships. And this just reminded me of that. I mean, we could probably do half an episode on his blog post. It was great. He talks about how within faculty, each discipline doesn’t tell the other one how to teach their concepts so why is it that we allow faculty to tell us as the experts in information, how to do our jobs? And I think this is something that has been talked about in libraries for a while but it was interesting to see it articulated in this way and it kind of goes to what you just said, why are they telling you how to do your engagement? Amanda: I think because we're being invited in. We’re invited guests so I think that that's why if they think they have the agency to do that to librarians. I definitely get a lot of librarians who, and like you said, I think this could be a whole episode, who are very like they tiptoe around faculty. And I’m not going to go beyond that. Whereas I kind of push it more in face to face. For example, the professor will say, “okay I'll give you 20 minutes” and say, “yea, yea, sure” and I'll be in there for 45 minutes. Or I’ll be honest with them and I’ll say to them, “Listen. I can’t do that in 20 minutes. I can do this in 20 minutes but not what you're asking me to do.” And they’re surprised to hear me say that. They think that, you know, this is what they are giving us and we're just going to be okay with it. But you know I think that it's even more challenging in the online space because I think if the faculty is very engaged in their online course the way they should be they are very on top of every little detail of all the activities that the students have to complete in a given week. Like this professor, she didn’t miss a beat. She saw my question and there are some professors that just don’t even pay attention and they’re just like, “Oh this is one week that I don’t have to participate in a discussion board. The librarian is just going to handle it.” Whereas this professor, she knew. She read all of my questions and made sure that I knew she read my questions. Jessica: Which, honestly, we would want anyway because it’s the equivalent of in person and having the faculty just not be there. But at the same time, you had a plan in mind of how you were going to get the students interested and that threw a wrench in it though. Yeah so that’s an interesting example. Amanda: Yea, that article was really interesting - blog post I think. It was really interesting. I read it as well and meant to tweet you. (Jessica laughs) Jessica: It would be good on an upcoming episode. You may hear about this again! (Laughing) Amanda: Yes! Absolutely. I think it's definitely - he definitely talked about a lot of important things that librarians need to be talking about for sure. Jessica: So we want to hear from you! “what does critical digital pedagogy or open pedagogy look like to you in the online environment?” Or if you have resources that you love about these concepts, we want you to shout them out! Send us an email or tweet us or hashtag LibrariansGuideToTeaching. Amanda: Ok! So we're switching things up a little bit this time around since we're on break. We don't have any triumphs or fails to share but we thought it would be a perfect time to talk about goals for the new year. So Jessica what are you thinking about some goals for the New Year? Jessica: I definitely first want to incorporate more of these concepts that we talked about today into my instruction and be more reflective in my teaching practices. In my new role, I’m lucky to have the ability to take that time to think about my teaching and evaluate it more so definitelyI plan to make the most of it. And this is a little bit deeper but I do plan to do less work for the sake of achievement. And as I get older, I’m just reflecting more on what I spend my time on and while I’m really incredibly proud of what I’ve accomplished in my career, I want to focus less on the “shiny” achievements and work on things that truly fulfill me. And if that resonates with you and you haven’t read the Meredith Farkas blog series called “Thoughts on Being a Mid-Career librarian”, definitely head over to her blog and check it out. I’ll also link it in the show notes. You don’t have to be a mid-career librarian to appreciate what she says but it definitely spoke to me as I approach 10 years in librarianship. And I think it’s definitely something I’m going to take into the new year with me. And lastly, in that vein, I want to build relationships with some of the students that I’ve met so far in classes although I’m not sure if it’s going to be harder in this much larger campus environment that I’m in. You know, I’m coming from almost 400 FTE to 6000 so (Laughing) And I did like 30 English classes this semester so it may be a little harder but it’s definitely a goal that I have to really get on a first name basis with some of my students. Amanda: I think those are great goals. I know it can be a little overwhelming going from 400 to 6,000 but I'm sure there are small ways that you can definitely make a difference and make your presence known to the students, for sure. Jessica: Yea, so what about you? Amanda: Okay, so I definitely want to step up my LibGuide game. I want to create some more interesting, dynamic, engaging LibGuides which I don't think LibGuide are boring but like I definitely want to create some more interactive opportunities on them. I want to make more connections with faculty. In my role, I’ve been in my new role of the director - this is my second year. I'm going into my third. I mean, being with the college for 10 years I definitely have relationships that there still a lot of faculty that just don't know who I am or know my name. So want to get myself out there a little more with faculty and look for some of those opportunities. I know there are opportunities throughout the semester that I maybe I don't go to because I don't know if it's like a fit for me or I don't see the value in it but I think I'm going to push myself a little bit to be a little more social and kind of work the room a little bit. Maybe I'll actually get my business cards made up. I haven't even got my business cards made. I know it’s ridiculous, I haven't done it. But bigger goals that I want to achieve but I'm not going to like kill myself if I don't is I'd like to publish something whether it be an article or book chapter on my own. Completely by myself. I have had great opportunities to publish book chapters with colleagues but I've never attempted to do anything by myself. So I would love to, you know, do that. Even if, even if I don't get accepted and I get rejected at least I can say I put myself out there and I put my ideas out there. Jessica: Yeah, that’s a good one! That’s a nice one. Amanda: Yea, 10 years later (Laughs) Jessica: And then we have our shared goal of presenting internationally. (Laughs) Amanda: Yes! You know, last year I didn't get the present last year and I chose not to. I had a baby andI was still trying to figure out the whole mom thing. And now that I’ve gotten a little better handle on it, I really want to get back into presenting at some of the conferences so I'm definitely going to look to apply to some of the upcoming things. And internationally is definitely on my list. Jessica: It’s on the bucket list! Amanda: Yea, right (Laughs) So here we come, 2020! Jessica: Yup! Exactly, we’re coming at ya! Amanda: Coming at ya! And with that, that is the end of episode 7. Jessica: You can find the podcast on Twitter @librarian_guide. You can find me, Jessica, @librarygeek611. You can find Amanda @historybuff820. And you can send us an email at [email protected]. Be sure to rate and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen and we'd love to hear from you in the reviews as well. We'd love to read your review on an upcoming episode.
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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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