Jessica: Welcome to episode number four of the Librarian’s Guide to teaching podcast! I'm Jessica…
Amanda: And I’m Amanda. Jessica: And on today's episode we have librarian Romel Espinel as our guest and we're going to be talking about critical librarianship and social justice and how it can be used in our library instruction. So before we get started with our interview, how are you doing? Anything exciting going on this week? Amanda: Oh, I'm doing good! Yeah, things are moving along. So I am the co-chair of our Library Association’s regional conference that we have every year in January and things are progressing. We have our keynote. He did this really great documentary about scholarship. It’s called “The Paywall”? I’m trying to think of the rest of the name of it but I think it's shaping up to be a really great keynote. I think it's going to align with our theme this year and we have a really great set of breakout sessions, you know. And it's really nice ‘cause it's our colleagues in the local area so it's really nice to see everyone come together and share their knowledge in this small...I mean, it’s not that small. It’s about 300 people. But smaller, you know, conference. Jessica: Yea, it’s always great. I miss going to that conference from working in Jersey but New York has our stuff, too. Amanda: Yup, yup, so what’s going on with you? Jessica: Speaking of professional development, I actually have some fun stuff coming up this week so I'm excited for that. Tomorrow our Teaching and Learning Commons department is running an Innovative Assignment webinar so I'm going to attend that virtually. And then on Friday I'm going to an ACRL New York Discussion Group about making the best of the one shot session. So I'm really interested in that because that's mostly what I teach. So I'm hoping to get some interesting information and motivation in that discussion. So lots of cool professional development coming up. Amanda: Yeah, yeah for sure, for sure. All right so let's get into a quick bio of Romel. Romel Espinel is the web services librarian at the Samuel C. Williams Library at Stevens Institute of Technology where he primarily manages the library's digital assets and implements emerging technologies. In addition to this role, he teaches information literacy classes and workshops. His research interests and praxis are in the areas of critical pedagogy and thinking and user experience. In the fall of 2019, he became an adjunct professor in the College of Arts and Letters. Romel is also a dear friend of mine. We've been working together through our local library association for several years. And we also worked together at Berkeley College many many moons ago. He was actually the person who trained me on my first day. So without further ado, Romel Espinel! (Brief pause) Amanda: Welcome, Romel! Thank you for coming to talk to us! Romel: Thank you for having me, this is great. I listened to the last two episodes so I prepared myself. Amanda: Oh, awesome! Oh, thanks for being a listener, we appreciate it! Romel: Sure! You guys have a nice rapport, it’s really nice. Jessica: Yay! Amanda: Yea, we previously did this on an internal podcast so we kind of have a little experience of the back and forth banter. Romel: Nice, nice. Amanda: Yea...so let’s jump right into our questions and our interview today. Can you talk a little bit for our audience about how you interpret critical librarianship and how social justice is a part of all of that? Romel: Um, that’s the $60,000 question. Well critical librarianship for me is just an extension of critical pedagogy and kind of just like how I’ve approached teaching which is, which is how do you match up the content that you teach in your class to the real world. And, and so that and how do you teach critical thinking skills so that you don't - it doesn't become you know, isolated content that's not used in the real world. And to make it kind of a...the social justice part of that is so that it becomes very clear, kind of using those critical thinking skills to see the world in a much different light and hopefully be able to confront the inequities that exist in society from knowing that kind of, those realities that exist. Critical librarianship is interesting because you know, for the most part, all of us do these one-shots or smaller section classes so it becomes a challenge to you know, you know, challenge of what you can do over the long period. Because there is no long period. It’s just very short unless you have a semester long class. So you know what you have to figure out is, number one, you don't do one shots. Or number two,you know like maybe you can have multiple sessions. You could have, try to figure out what's the most important aspects of what you can teach in a class. And you know that's actually been really liberating for me because I think, you know, when when I started teaching librarian - information literacy - it was really about teaching all this stuff and being like, “Wow,we’re really throwing a lot of things at students and are they ever going to be able to retain this information”. And number two, another point is that we were just kind of banking in a very [inaudible] analysis, we were just taking what we knew and banking it to students, crossing our fingers and hoping that students would retain that information. And in reality, they’re really not going to do it unless they’re doing in a critical thinking way. And hopefully if you get them interested and I know, from a personal perspective, say as a person of color, thing that interested me had to do with the real world and what was going on in the real world. And you know if you can put it in those kind of contexts, I always find it more interesting for students and they can relate to a little bit better. Jessica: Yea, that’s a great definition. That's really, really interesting and I definitely like the idea of how you can kind of marry those two things together. How critical librarianship is critical thinking and social justice is using that critical thinking to see the world differently. That's a nice way to connect those together. So I guess taking that definition a step further, you already mentioned how one shots can be challenging and things like that. Do you have some examples of how you've implemented these two concepts into your teaching? Romel: Yeah, so I think you know at Stephen’s, at my current job, what it’s come down to is really just having an exercise and then say having someone search. I always hated the demonstrations that we had to do. Because that right there you know is actually something critical for me as librarian and doing critical librarianship and understanding the powers-that-be and control everything. I always felt really compromised that I was demonstrating thingsthat I wasn’t getting paid for. You know, I’m not getting paid by Elsevier or one of these, EBSCO, these databases to be up there kind of like a game show person like, “Hey! Look at this! Look at these great databases!” So and another aspect of that, as a person that does user experience and understands user experience in that people, libraries spend so much money say, whether it’s someone hired specifically to help to do your search experience, why are we showing people the library website? Or a website. They know how to use websites. Especially our young generation of students who have been using websites forever. And that’s a very important part of my teaching is that I want to learn from the students and what they know. And I think a lot of times librarians don't take the time out to understand what students know coming into the classroom. And so I think that's a big, something really important for say a critical pedagogy or librarian perspective. Is how do we incorporate students’ knowledge into the learning community? Which is a classroom, whether it’s a one-shot or a semester long. How do we incorporate their knowledge so everyone is learning at the same time. And so in my classes a lot of times I use, and I’m not going to say the product, it’s an audience response system, but I’m not getting paid by them. So I use audience response systems for kind of like basically a demo. I give them a subject, an author for them to search for and they fill out these responses. And I want to see you know if they can do the search. I never show them the library page. They just go to the library website. And you can see that like, they can find the things if they understand what the keywords are, what they subjects are. Say if they’re searching for an author and stuff. So I think that’s just key. I developed that like a year ago and I would just say, “you know what I'm going to do demonstrations anymore”. I’m going to try this out and and see what the students do. And the great thing about that is that, you have some great discoveries. You might misstate a question and then think about correcting it but then how you find out whether you messed up that question is that people start asking you, “what do you mean by that question?” Then I was going to go correct that one question and then I was just like, “Nah, you know what? I'm not going to fix it.” Because it could be a moment of scaffolding, you know, formative assessment because I’m sure everybody else is going to ask that question. And the question is like, second to last question, like “what are the differences between the two articles that you found?” So the students are always like, “What do you mean by formal differences?” So I just stop the class and say, “If you’re looking at both articles, what are the differences that you can see?” And so they break it down on their own. They’ve already done it on the audience response systems so I can always go back and see how they’re answering. But we have that discussion in class which is really great. So yeah that’s just like the critical thinking parts. I’m not sure if that answered your question. But I think that's how I know those are some of the ways that I tried getting people to think in class and stuff. Amanda: You know, it’s such a small thing that, you know, talking about not doing the demos and considering prior knowledge and engaging the students but I can hear other librarians now saying like, “But that's going to ruin my whole presentation!” or “That's going to throw my my my whole presentation off track! How do I prepare for that?” Romel: Sure, sure. Amanda: So I think a lot of librarians might feel nervous to kind of go off script. Romel: Well then, so then the basic question there is like what's the most important part of that class. Is it the discussion and the relationship that you’re building with students as a librarian or is it your content? I am of the firm belief, that especially in the first year experience, that’s mainly what we do at my school, the experience that they have with me as someone they can come to, as someone reliable is much more important than the content. Just because hopefully they’ll see me one day at the research desk and be able to come to me because there’s a lot of anxiety and intimidation to going up to someone and asking them how to search for something. Especially when they have Google in their pocket or you know some kind of search engine. The relationships are really what I’ve developed. Even to the extent that I want to know people’s names in one shots. I’ll have them write their name plates and you know like I may never retain that but at least if there’s silence in a class I can call on you know say, John or Susan by name and maybe later on I will remember their name like that. I think they would appreciate it more if we called them by their name instead of just pointing to them. Jessica: That’s true! Amanda: Yea nobody likes to be called out - even adults. Romel: No, no. Amanda: I think you bring up a really good point but I think again, just to play the devil's advocate and the push back because I agree with you 100% but I think a lot of librarians might say how do you strike a balance to meet the faculty needs, meet your learning outcomes and then also integrate this critical practices into your instruction. How can you get it all done in one session? Romel: Well the Jedi mind trick is to have it built into your learning outcomes. And the learning outcomes of the class itself. So like the thing that I was speaking about - the discovery and going to the website - first learning outcome: students will know or recognize the library's website. Well, how will they know and recognize library website? You either demonstrate it or you have them do it. So then I always think that the subtlest thing is that if you’re going to do a search for something or have them search for something, you could do it on something relevant. You know? Like whether it’s vaccines, the anti-vaxxers, or climate change. Climate change is huge! I mean, we’re at a point where we can say, there’s a lot of bad information out there on climate change. And you should be trying to be critical about any information that comes from any kind of information source. So I think it’s just built into the learning outcomes when you look at them, how can you develop ones that you can play with them, you’re kind of covering all the bases and stuff. And where I am, we work really closely with the faculty, the first year 101 class if you want to call it. Just to make sure that these are the things that they want to learn. Luckily for that first year writing course it's always something relevant to what's going on in the world right now. So like this year the topic is education so all the students will be writing about education and so the readings that they’re doing, I’m actually teaching one of those sections this year so I know what their readings are and stuff like that. [unintelligible] Where I am, it’s called CAT 103 but if you’re at FC101 or ENG 101, all those essays that they’re reading for those classes are topical so the classes are already political so you can already raise it or work with the professor to say, “You know, what are they researching?” and they’ll say, “This!” so you can point them in this direction. And be really critical about the where information comes from. Knowing that there's no mythical solution to researching information. It’s a process. And that’s the most important part. For some of my CAT classes, I write in big words: “Process”. Because it's all a process. Whether it's your researching. Whether it’s your writing. It’s a process and you can’t take it for granted that it just happens. That’s the myth of the Internet. That you can just go there and get information. And it’s not just there. You have to really dig in and figure out different tools that you can use. It’s all a process. Amanda: Just a follow up. How much of a conversation do you have with the faculty about this type of instruction you are going to provide before you go in? Do you have a full length conversation with them saying, “Well, this is how I'm going to run the class.” I would think that professors are very...they’re expecting that kind of demo instruction from librarians. Romel: Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting because there may be one or two professors who are just like, “You have to show them this. You have to show them that.” And we don’t have that much at Steven’s. We’ve been integrated into those 1st year classes that they’ve kind of like, we’re integrated into the class’s learning outcomes so our learning outcomes are like four things. We've had that discussion with the leadership of E101 and so then they kind of like, that class is standard. Everyone is doing it the same way. We’ve established pretty good relationships with a lot of the faculty because they’ve been there a while. They just understand that we coming there with a session. Jessica: Romel, could you just share two or three tips for some who really hasn’t been doing these types of critical thinking exercises or incorporating social justice into their instruction? Maybe they're stuck in that lecture/demo format and they want to try to embrace these things? What would be some practical tips to get started? Romel: You know what it’s actually really interesting because I think for a lot of librarians...And I don't know whether people are getting more instruction than I was when I left. And I was kind of lucky because when I was at Pratt we had a few people that were constructivist activists/active learning people. So I don't know how much practice they’re getting but I think they need to practice and just do exercises where you can just hear people learning and trust that, you know, that the exercises that you might be giving them might be working. They might fail. It’s ok to fail The lesson that I do now for my first-year students has been in development and it's kind of nice that I'm able to do the same thing for the same class and just experiment and be like, “What works?” I’m sure when I started teaching at Steven’s, I think I was going through like the regular mill of kind of like demonstration, showing slides. I think that I was probably at 21-22 slides. Right now I’m at four. Jessica: Whoa! Romel: Like four slides! And one’s an introduction and one’s a cover and the other one is just a links slide. So those other two slides are the activity and the other one just kind of like to remember, to sum up what we’re done. And that's only three points. So I think, I think the tendency for a lot of librarians to just, “oh my gosh, I have throw everything in there!” and believe me as a web services librarian, librarians are always like, “Let’s put this up there! We have to have this there.” And you have to make it as easy as possible. So I think simplifying your lesson so it’s kind of the basic, the most important aspects is really important. And I think it's especially if you’re in a one-shot. You’re not going to be able to teach everything where they're going to retain that information. It’s just not possible. And so what’s the most important thing? Well the most important this is to have an activity where you can have a conversation. And so if you can build it an activity that develops the conversation, that's probably one of the best things you can do. And who knows, sometimes it’s open ended and it might not finish but at least you had the discussion and they got to know you and you got to know them and stuff like that. Jessica: So I guess a follow up question to that is obviously you said experimenting is fine so you’ll probably get flops with this but how do you get quiet students talking? Because that’s kind of been my experience sometimes is I try to get them talk and they don't really want...and I don't know if it's sometimes they have library anxiety with me in the room and I’m not the normal Professor. So like you said it’s building the relationship in the moment at the same time as getting them talking about topics. So would it just be bringing in topics that you think they might connect with? You know? How, how was your experience with that been? Romel: I think so, too. I'm really interested with classroom silence. I’ve been thinking about writing something about that. Because is it just that they’re being quiet or do we have anxiety about that silence? Jessica: Mhmm Romel: Should we just wait for someone to respond? Because someone’s gotta blink? You know, I bet you the tendency is and I know for me, I blink all the time. Alright, no one’s going to answer, so this! But I think there’s gotta, like I said, one way is...so combat silence. One way to combat silence is to just wait longer. It might drive some people crazy but maybe somebody will respond in that time period. Maybe some people are processing. And that's the other thing I think developing - that's why I asked for people's names. I know people don’t like to be called out but I’ll just look at them and say, “What do you think?” You know? So, I just don’t want to throw out everyone’s name. So I think developing those relationships, the demeanor. It always goes back to how you approach and respect students and I think respecting students is really important. If they get a vibe that you’re patronizing them, they’re not going to talk to you. Jessica: Right. Romel: And establishing a learning community in your classroom even if it’s a one-shot is really important. Be like, “Hey, we’re all going to learn from each other today.” So like I said, the audience response system, I don’t just, I especially don’t just use it to collect data. But I use it to show people that their ideas are important and they have similar ideas to everybody else. So even if they don’t talk, I can show them their ideas because their ideas are there. They’re typed them out. And they haven't spoken but I'll be like, “This is a really good idea.” And maybe that’ll make people speak a little more. Jessica: I like that. I like using the technology to let them speak and bring their voices out and once you’ve commented on what they said they'll feel more comfortable. Romel: Yea exactly. I think that’s actually one of the ways I wanted to have their voices in the classroom. I was like, “okay well we have this data of how they’re answered the question. Let’s put it up on the board without their names”, because you can do that with some of these systems, without their names and just leave it as anonymous. And say, “Wow, that’s a really good idea. So that’s kind of like, it’s all a mixture of ways to kind of get people to speak. I think there's just sometimes classes that are going to be harder than others, you know? We’ve just gotta be, we can’t not take away that a lot of these students have gone through an education that might only teach them how to like stay quiet, learn the information, copy the information, take a quiz, take a standardized test on it and that’s all their required to do. Hopefully it’s not like that in a lot of places still but you can see that some people, a lot of students are trained to be that way. And a lot of teachers are, too. And librarians. Amanda: Yea, yea. Jessica: Right. Amanda, you want to ask that last question? Amanda: Sure! So we have one more question for you which is, what are you most curious about in this topic? What are you researching or tweeting about or reading about with regards to critical librarianship? Romel: You know what, I am really interested right now in learning outcomes. Developing like learning outcomes that places the student relationship with librarian as really important. From a place like of empathy, critical thinking and social justice and how can we kind of develop some kind of learning outcomes ecompasses that and just instead of just like just skill-based. So and I think a lot of times you know like our learning outcomes can be a little too much skill-based. I know that’s what they're expecting, too. But I know that some Professors would be like what do you mean by that? Say like, students will learn how to critically think about information and how to use that information to say change the world. That’s grandiose but I’m just speculating. But I’m just interested in seeing how we can develop more socially conscious outcomes. And if not for the class and what you put on paper, just for myself. And I think I think that's kind of like that you know a critical issue for me. So what do I want to develop for this class? What are the relationships I want to develop? Depending upon what the course is. know that this is the first year in a very long time I’m teaching a semester long class, so it’s just amazing how you’re able to do that on a, througout a 12-week period. But it’s not impossible to do in one-shots where you really get to know somebody. And you said, “Hey, just come by and talk about research.” It’s interesting because a lot of times I see librarians when let’s say, you’re tabling or if you go up to a research desk, librarians just start talking. Instead of talking, have them talk! Just ask a question. Like, “Hey, where are you from? How are you doing?” Just find out what their deal is before you throw them the pamphlet of services and resources that you have. Because it’s important to listen because building a relationship is more important. At least for me, the relationships are more important so that they can come to me later on for research ideas. Jessica: Yea, that’s an interesting idea, you know? Listen first! Romel: Yea, exactly. Listen first! Hey, how’s your day going? Jessica: [Laughs] Romel: That’s a novel idea! Amanda: I think that throws them off because I try. Whenever I have to work the desk, I try and ask them like, “Hey, how’s it going?” and some of them pause like, “are you talkin to me?” Like, “Yes! I’m talking to you!” Jessica: [Laughs] Romel: You know what, it’s pretty amazing. And it’s little things like that amaze me that sometimes. I don’t know if you listen to the WTF podcast with Marc Maron. So I listen to him all the time. You know that’s like “THE” podcast. Amanda: Yea, it is. Romel: So the great thing about him is the, he always ends, and he’s really into talking and building relationships in his interviews and the great thing at the end of every conversation he’s just like, “We good? I’m good. Are you good?” Jessica: [Laughs] Romel: So at the end of every class, I end my classes with, “Ok, so that’s all I’ve got. Are we good?” And everyone seems surprised that I ask that question all the time. Like I actually care about how they’re feeling or their welfare. And it’s kind of important. And they’re like, “Yea. We’re doing pretty good, thank you!” So I’m just kind of surprised that it was even that kind of reaction. Just like, “Yea!” This past week, I asked “Are we good?” And this one student was like, “SO good!” Amanda: Awwww! Romel: I was just like, “Awesome!” Jessica: That’s great! Romel: Yea he was just like, “So good” and I said, “Great! Come visit us.” Amanda: Well, great! Thank you so much for all of the great ideas and great tips. Jessica: I know, I feel super motivated! Amanda: I know, me too! I mean, I have some instruction coming up in the next few weeks so I'm going to try and try these out and see how it goes. I’ll hopefully share a Triumph in the upcoming episodes. So speaking of triumph or fails, we are going to move into our segment now where we share a work triumph and/ or a work fail. As our guest, Romel, would you like to start? Romel: Um, triumphs. I think, well, kind of what we talked about, most of the time the triumph is the class, you know, the lesson plan I have for that one class. Because I think it works really well right now. It’s such a learning experience for me everytime. You know, how to adapt and how to change it. Like this year, like I actually, oh, there was one thing. I had them search for the information and so they would find the article that they were supposed to find, they would find the article and ok, that’s the title. And so what I was doing before was then I would move on to the next question which was, “what’s the citation?” But this year, I’m going to the website and I think maybe I showed them where the database was but this year I’m just going to the library website and asking, “So where did you find it?” So the students start talking and they’re like, “Oh, I used the main search bar here.” or “I went the A to Z databases list.” And I’m just like, “Oh, that’s really good.” Someone out of the blue, like four classes down, someone out of the blue said, “Oh, I used the Journal Finder” cause it was new at the time. So I was just like, “Wow!” So like you start to discover the different ways that they learn to use the website. And they figured out a different path and I can just scaffold and say, “Well there are 5 different ways to get to the NY Times.” because that’s what the article was. So it’s just about trying. I’m learning everyday because of how the students interact. That’s pretty cool. Then a fail...oh you know what, I think a fail was from like last semester. I started teaching a workshop on data visualization which which was just kind of like an informational session about data visualization. It got packed! And I was just like, oh, it got really busy. And for workshops, usually 4 or 5 people show up or something like that. This one had like 20 people show up. So I was just like, “Wow this is great” But people were really wanting to learn how to do it and I was just like “ohhhh, you’re in the wrong class.” ‘Cause you have to remember these are data scientists, these are people who are actually data scraping and I'm just like, “I'm just showing you how to use Google Maps.” Everyone: [Laughs] Romel: I’m not going to be showing you like, J Query or J Labs, or J Library or stuff like that. That was kind of like, it was just a success in that wow, there was actually an interest in this subject but wow I really have to change what I’m teaching about this. Because, they're expecting something else. They were actually wanting to learn how to do it where all I wanted to show you was either the tools available to you or the resources at the library have so that you can learn how to do it. Amanda: Right Romel: So we took a little timeout from that. Amanda: Ah, well thanks for sharing! Jessica, you want to go? Jessica: Sure! So today I taught two classes for standardized instruction that I haven't taught yet since I've been at my new job. So, Romel, I don't know if you know I just started at Pace University in September so I've only been in this instruction position for 2 months and so this is the first in a set of standardized we do for an English class. So I was really pumped to try something new because I’ve kind of been doing the same stuff for the past few weeks. So I did the classes and they went well. The assessments came out great, the students were understanding and meeting the learning outcomes. So I count that as a triumph. But I think my fail is kind of along the lines of what we talked about with Romel today. I even felt watching the students that I had a little too much lecture and demo. That I was starting to lose them after a while. And you know it's the first time I've been doing the classes and we have the set learning outcomes and I can do what I want with it. And I just wasn't very adventurous in my lesson planning but I feel really motivated by this conversation to really flip it and make it more a discussion based and more focus on critical thinking than just you know, “Here’s how to find the research. Now you do it.” I think I’m going to flip it. You do it and then let’s talk about it. Amanda: So my work fail and my work triumph are connected. So my fail is that I went into an English like a 101 class and it was a workshop. I only go into a class if I can do a workshop with them. I don't do me stand up and talk the whole time. So the fail is that even with the workshop component I was losing the students. Like they were just very chatty with each other. Half the class was paying attention. The other half wasn’t. And I was just like I'm losing these students. And I just felt like I just lost control of the room. And so I tried to get them back. I tried to pull them in and it just, I just felt like it was a fail. Then I had one student who really threw me off and the topic was just, I hate to sound so mean here but the topic was terrible. Romel: Really? Amanda: I didn’t want tell the student that their topic was terrible but like, they had to, he wanted to write about Argentina and Brazil. And like this like competitiveness that they have with each other. Romel: Oh, yea yea. Amanda: He was so against using the library resources no matter what and like I couldn't flip him. And then like it just threw me all off and it was just a hot mess. And so I feel like I just spiraled from there. So I got through the session. I got through the workshop. Later that day< I was working the desk and I saw two students were passing and one student was in the class. She said to her other student, she wasn't even looking at me, didn’t even think I was paying attention, she said, “Have you ever had this librarian in your class before?” And he’s like, “No”. And she said, “She’s amazing! You have to take one of her classes. She did such a good workshop.” And I was like, “Yes!” So excited. That even though I might have not reached that one particular student there were students who still found value in the workshop. Jessica: I love that! ‘Cause sometimes I get the same thing when I read the post feedback evaluations that I have them do in a form and it's just like I think that I've lost them the whole time and then I read the feedback and it's like “She was excellent. I really felt like I was prepared for what I had to do and I was really engaged.” And I was like, you didn’t look engaged! But I’m glad to hear that! Romel: Well you know, it’s funny, I always tell people that a lot of time said that the quiet ones in the back are probably the most engaged ones. Because they’re probably really listening and for whatever reason of intimidation, you know, racism, sexism, or just the power structures of a classroom structures. You know like they just don’t feel like talking or their voices have never been validated. So yea, it’s always important that they are listening. It’s like when you have a kid. You’re trying to whisper over here and they’re like, “We can hear you!” Everyone: [Laughs] Romel: They’re listening, they’re listening. They’re trying to learn from you. Jessica: You’re right, that’s true. Amanda: So again, thank you so much being our guest for our third episode… Jessica: Fourth! Amanda: Fourth! Sorry! You know, we’re releasing our third episode tomorrow so I’m a little off. Romel: Oh, ok. Amanda: So I’m going to edit that out. Romel: No! It’s actually nice, it’s authentic. Amanda: That’s true, I try not to edit too much out. Just the gaps and silence. Romel: Thank you so much for having me. This has been fun. Amanda: Jessica, you want to share where can people can find us? Jessica: Sure! Everybody can find me on Twitter @LibraryGeek611 and you can find Amanda @HistoryBuff820. And you can send us an email at [email protected]. We are also now available on iTunes so make sure to find us on there and subscribe and rate the podcast. And also send us an email or a tweet to send us your questions or ideas for potential discussions or you triumphs and fails in the classroom. You can also hashtag your tweets with #LibrariansGuideToTeaching! Amanda: We want your feedback and questions and encourage you to share your triumphs and fails to be read on an upcoming episode.I also want to share that the podcast also now has its own Twitter page. You can find the podcast @Librarian_Guide. We hope to see you follow us on Twitter and continue the conversation there! Thanks!
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Jessica: Welcome to the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching podcast! I’m Jessica Kiebler.
Amanda: And I’m Amanda Piekart. Jessica: So on today’s episode, we are going to address a controversial article that has many librarians tweeting their responses. But before we get into our discussion let's just talk about how our week has been. How are you doing? Amanda: Oh, it’s been a busy week. Instruction has been somewhat winding down at least in the online classes that I’m supporting. But on-site is starting to ramp up. I was in two classes this week and I’m in at least one class every week for the next like three weeks. But it’s good! What’s going on with you? Jessica: Um, well, I'm sure everybody that’s listened to our two episodes so far knows that I'm obsessed with LibWizard. And excitingly I have actually built my first LibWizard tutorial this week. Which is very exciting. I haven't actually gotten to build a tutorial. So I've done the quizzes and the surveys and the forms but I've never done one of those. So I'm finally going to put one together for an English class that I've been having some issues with engagement in and I'm hoping that maybe walking them through the tutorial in the class with all the different activities might make it a little more interesting. Amanda: Oh, that’s exciting! I'm actually working on four LibWizard tutorials with the assessment built in. It’s in the works. But it’ll take us time. We’re hoping to finish by the end of the semester and launch them in the Winter. But, I don’t know. It’s a slow going process right now. Jessica: And those are going to be standardized instruction? Amanda: Yup, those will be standardized instruction that’ll be embedded in all the sections of a particular class. We’re doing two in two marketing classes, a management one and the two in legal studies classes. So we’re uh..it’s exciting but it’s also. you know, a little nerve-wracking. Jessica: Yea, exactly, it’s not just like a tutorial, it’s like going to be standardized. Yea that’s interesting...cool! Amanda: Have you completed them yet? The LibWizard tutorials? Jessica: No, I’m still in the build out stage. I finally got all the slides done this week so now I have to just go back and make sure it all makes sense, touch up any spelling grammar, test it actually and go through it once. So still in that part. Amanda: Ok, well I look forward to hearing about it. That’s exciting! Jessica: Yea I’ll definitely send it over to you! Amanda: Great! So why don’t we get into our topic for today. So the article that Jessica mentioned that is controversial and I actually first head about it on Twitter...and you did, too, right Jess? Jessica: Yea! Amanda: ...Is an article that was published earlier this month in the Atlantic called, “College Students Just Want Normal Libraries”. And I thought it would be a good episode for us to tackle because I think it touches on, obviously, it touches on instruction and in some ways that I don't think the author realizes. And you know, librarianship. And outsiders’ perspectives on librarianship. But I think it’s important to note that the woman that wrote the article is not a librarian. And that’s always interesting to me. I think it's exciting when people who are not librarians want to write about librarianship and libraries but then it’s also disappointing when they just don't properly represent us. Jessica: Right. And that was something that some people on Twitter were saying was that they were getting this article from their faculty members like “hey, look what she had to say.” And then it becomes work for us - as if we don't have enough work to do - to respond and mythbust and you know, that's not really necessary. If she had just interviewed a librarian maybe the article would have been different but we’ll get into that, too, in our discussion. Amanda: Absolutely. So she does touch on a variety of points so the way I thought we would talk about this is kind of responding to some of her points and just go back and forth. So I think I want to point out one of her earlier points that she made is that libraries are pouring resources into interior design updates and building renovations or into glitzy technology. I think that that's an unfair statement to make because it's not always the library doing this. I think sometimes there is pressure from an institution for libraries to become more than just a library and become a learning hub. I think from an institutional standpoint, I think they're trying to get the students all in one place and the library sometimes becomes that place where the students can meet with the, you know Academic Success Center, meet with the library and then have access to computer labs and glitzy technology all in one location. So it's not always the library. I think there is external pressures that she didn't consider. Jessica: Right, exactly. Like libraries aren't improving in a bubble. There's a lot of institutional context, there’s societal trends and climates that guide that decision a little bit. And you know, even if that’s misguided, maybe the administration is trying to attract new students because of low enrollment right? And they're trying to go for the shiny things. That is misguided but it also doesn't imply that students want “normal libraries”. And you know, she mentioned that there was a makerspace at Macalester College and she quotes...she says quote “that it resembles that of many tech companies”. So isn't that a valuable resource then? A job preparation resource for students? So that I thought was a little interesting to say that but then say it wasn't valuable. Amanda: Yeah yeah yeah. And I don't think that's very far pff. You said that I had a 3D printer, right? Jessica:Yes, right. Amanda: A lot of libraries have printers. 3D printers. Especially, a lot of public libraries and I think they, there has been a lot of great programming built around um, these types of technologies that I don’t think a lot of people dig into or think about. Jessica: And one thing that a lot of people had issues, with the most, with a lot of the things in the article, were the citations that she used to prove her points. Like the citation about the maker space one was an article written by a student in the student newspaper about what they see the library as. So that's one person. That's not really a good sample size. And the other citation was a Cengage study of 3000 students who were asked, What do you do when you're at your college library?” Which is great but “use a makerspace or digital technology lab” wasn't even an option to select so how do you gauge whether or not they want technology or not if you're not asking them that. So that again was a little bit of a problem. Amanda: Yea, I mean that's not a fair assessment. If it’s not even on the survey. Jessica: Right. It goes back to our episode last week about asking the right questions! Amanda: Absolutely! I totally agree with you. So moving on to another argument she makes is that students are, something along the lines of students want print. They want books. And I think it's a very short-sighted argument. I agree that e-texts, you know, it's not always the student’s preferred option but there are other factors again. One in external pressures for e-textbooks from both institutions and vendors. And now at the state level in New Jersey at least there is this initiative that all of the colleges and universities have to show how they are making textbooks open access. They have to have a plan. So that example that she uses, that a student drove to another campus to get access to that print book, yes, that’s a valid point. Because it’s still preferred but it's also external pressure that she - this woman - did not take into consideration. Jessica: Right, that’s true, exactly. And then there’s the textbook argument but also the print argument. Like at the beginning she was talking about that Charles Gosnell who felt like...And it was a historical example but she was talking about how this person Charles Gosnell felt like too many books were being weeded and too many important titles were being taken out and its students want to be in that environmental print books. That was one of her arguments and then the other was about um...What was her other argument? Oh, her other argument was about print versus e-book comprehension. So that students understand and take in information better when it’s in print. But if you read the article, the study author actually states that she's not suggesting that we moved back to print but that we should really improve student’s digital reading and comprehension skills moving forward. Which would really help everyone and I think that makes a little more sense. And I think that the study author also said that the differences weren’t really that big between the comprehension between print and ebook. That it wasn't a ginormous amount. So you know let's make ourselves more adaptable rather than shifting backwards. Amanda: Yeah, and then also just to touch on that point at students want to be around books. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to check out books. Jessica: Right! Amanda: So think that also goes to, you know, when libraries have an opportunity to redesign their space they look at their circulation. They look at what is getting checked out the most, how can we weed our collection so that it’s currents and fresh and also make space for things that we know students are going to use within a library. Jessica: Right. And how do we do that? We have to ask her students what they use. I think that was one huge issue that I had with the article, too, was that it talks about students in this way like they're one huge group and they're all the same. But we know that they're not. I mean based on institution. Based on race, gender, prior experiences, where we’re from. You know, all of that. Accessibility. All of that affects how we learn, how we study, what we want out of the library. So we can talk about students as a capital “S” students. There are so many differences and we have to be talking to all of our students in our populations. Amanda: Yeah...I also want to talk about the title of the article because...what does that even mean? A normal library? You know...like why label it that way? What is this…you know? What is normal? Even in general, what is normal? You know? To just say, “students want a normal library. I don't know. I honestly can’t believe that that got published. Jessica: Right, ‘cause to me, I could see thinking of back to historically what maybe libraries used to be before there were so many different types. But even then why choose normal? That's such a value word. There almost like a positive connotation that doesn't need to be there for normal. Even in psychology, psychologists don't believe that normal exists so why you trying to put that on libraries. Amanda: She could have said traditional. Jessica: Yes, right! Amanda: Traditional. That would have been more of a word people could relate to and understand but normal was just an odd choice for me. I think it automatically put me on the defense. Jessica: Right. Amanda: So if you don't offer only traditional services, your library is not normal. Jessica: And maybe that was why they put it there so that we would click on it. Amanda: It’s also very click-bait-y. Jessica: Darnit! Amanda: So the next point that I want to mention, really pushed my buttons and I think, you know, you’re going to talk a little bit about this, too, is that part in the article where she talks about the fancy instant messaging. Jessica: Yes, exactly (laughs) Amanda: I mean we do such a significant number of chats and instruction on our chat service! And you know if she had done her research she would have known that chat service is something that is pretty much standard across public and academic libraries. And that, you know, it extends our services. And if offers students who have library anxiety because, yes, library anxiety is a real thing, a way to use our services that they're comfortable with. I mean, I don't know how many times I’m chatting with a student that’s IN the library. But they chose to interact with the library in that way because that was their preferred comfort level. Jessica: Right. So why should we judge that? Amanda: Exactly. Jessica: Right. You know that that was my pet peeve with this article, too, because you know, I’ve studied and written about virtual chat reference which the more accurate name. Not fancy instant messaging. And it can be incredibly useful for students, including non-traditional students who can't make it to campus. Maybe students who are entirely online. She does reference a Duke survey where students were asked which of the following services is important to you, select all that apply. And so she, she kind of minimized how important chat reference was to the students. 30% of the students in the survey said that it was still important to them. And that's still a valuable amount and if that's how as you said those students prefer to interact or it's the only way that they can because of their job or their lifestyle, then serving 30% of students that way. That's really important. And even if it's only 30% important to Duke students, if we surveyed Berkeley students, I'm sure the number would be much higher because that's just again, going back to what's important for the population. So it's not a “fancy instant messaging system” it is a method of reference that works for a lot of people. Amanda: Agreed. Huge missed opportunity there for sure. One of thing that kind of struck me and I think someone might have tweeted about it is why can't we be both? Why can't we offer a traditional library services but also innovate and provide new programming and tech and other resources? I just don't understand why we can't be both. Jessica: Yea, I think there can be a balance and part of it comes down to understanding why the updates are happening. Are they just happening because? Are they happening to just, you know, get people to work more? Or show that we're working more? Are there negative reasons behind the updates or are they really to serve the students? And that again kind of goes back to a little bit of what we talked about before and surveying our students. I read an interesting article a couple of weeks ago in, in the Library with the Lead Pipe. It was called “Towards a Critical Assessment Practice” by Ebony Magnus, Maggie Faber and Jackie Belanger. And they really discuss how librarians can do institutional and educational research in a more nuanced way that really takes into consideration your students, the power structures within our institutions to make sure that we’re being inclusive with the questions that we ask, with the data that we use. Making sure that we're getting all of our students included. so I thought it was a really interesting read considering the citations that were used in this article and that they don't capture the full spectrum of students. So I’ll definitely link that in the show notes, too, ‘cause I think it can be helpful for understanding how this article could have been approached differently but also how we can prevent these unnecessary updates from happening at our libraries in the future. Amanda: Yea, that’s, I look forward to reading that article that you linked. It sounds really interesting. I know inclusion is such a big thing right now and I know it’s something we should all be focusing on, honestly. One other thing that I guess in a way related to this article in a, in a broad sense was that programming was always tough for me. So when I first read the headline and it you know, it made me think of when I was a reference/instruction librarian and I used to do all these programs and I’d get disappointed because the participation would be low or nonexistent. I mean, I used to do programs that were like 10 minute programs. I used to have this one program that I would do called 10 in 10, 10 things you need to know “insert your topic here” in 10 minutes. And I would get very low participation and I personally thought it was important to offer these programs and there were some points where I felt like maybe this wasn’t just the audience. Maybe my student population, they just need to traditional offerings and not “glitz”. Jessica: Mhmm Amanda: And so you know, it was deflating but I think it was also the practical part of me because when I was a college student, I didn’t have time to go to programs. I never went to any programs because I was you know, taking 23 credits, working 3 jobs and I just did not have time. So you know, I mean, that was the only thing that kind of touched on my personal experience but I don't think that’s where she was going with this but that’s how I related to it. But I think, like I said before, there’s room for both. There are students who do appreciate the glitz or the fun scavenger hunts and the programs. And then there’s students who just come in there for a quiet space or to check out, you know, materials. And I think that’s fine. I think we can be more, for other, I think we can be different things to different people. We don’t need to be one thing. Jessica: Exactly. It's striking that balance between what, what we want to provide and what our students needs are. Amanda: Yeah yeah. So those were my thoughts. Do you have any other thoughts that we didn’t touch on yet? Jessica: No, I think we covered a lot. My problems with the article really were with the data that she used to support the things that were claimed And kind of the lack of context to the broad issue. You really can't use the term quote/unquote college students and then expect to cover their needs in a two-page printed article without missing so much of the nuance. So I think the headline isn't really that students want normal libraries, the headline is really that libraries need to implement things that are relevant to their students and create authentic mechanisms for really finding out what that is. So like we said, getting to know your students. And that doesn’t mean only surveying your current users or only students in certain classes that you hand pick but a full spectrum of your student population and also taking into consideration your institutional factors. Like you said, there may be some times that it's out of the library's hands. And I actually saw that a bit on Twitter when I was looking around to see people's responses. Some people were kind of agreeing with what she was saying about the unneeded updates to libraries. That they had study room space or other spaces pushed on them and that’s entirely possible but that also wasn’t addressed in the article as a reason. And so that was a missed opportunity for that discussion. Amanda: Yeah yeah it made it sound like it was just the library’s decision to be glitzy. Jessica: Yes! Amanda: It was just like, like these things don’t get discussed in budget meetings. You know, like other people in the institution are not looking at these things, you know? But like you said I think there were just so many missed opportunities in this article. I would really love to know who her audience was. Who was she writing this article for? Did she not...You know, what did she hope to get out of it? People to get out of it, honestly? And I just think that librarians were probably not really happy about this article. I know I wasn’t. Jessica: Right. So I was trying to think what positive do we take out of it and maybe it's just that we realize a) how we’re seen by certain people so we can be prepared to refute those ideas as usual. But also do a little self-reflection too of like how can I prevent this from happening in my library? Is it happening at my library? Are there things that I can do to make sure that we're representing our students? And honestly I feel like so many libraries are doing that they’re probably rolling your eyes at me right now. But at the same time, if we’re not, if, if we can do better than let's do better right? Amanda: Right, exactly ! So now we're going to get into our weekly segment and the past two episodes we have done our work Triumph and Fail, but this week we wanted to try a new segment called Tweet of the Week. And we are going to read to tweets by Rachel Stein who @Proferachstein. And we just really liked that she kind of summed up our feelings about the Atlantic article pretty well. So she says quote, “Interesting that no teaching librarians seem to have been interviewed for this. Maybe if you're going to write a piece like this, ask librarian.” End quote. And then her other tweet was quote, “Let’s not shame our students by expressing shock that they've never looked for a physical book in the library and let's also not jump to facile conclusions about what college students want in ways that obscure what really goes on in libraries.” So that was definitely what I really liked, too, was what we talked about too, the fact that there's so much more going on than these minor conclusions that the article comes to. So that was, those were my favorite tweets of the week about this article. Amanda: Oh, those were really great tweets. Thanks for sharing those! I mean, it was hard because there were a lot of people that were tweeting about this particular article. Both tweeting at the author and tweeting, you know, retweeting the article. But these were really good ones. Jessica: Yea, I think they kind of summed it up. So that’s it for episode number 3! So you want to say where you find us? Amanda: Absolutely! So you can find Jessica @Librarygeek611 and you can find me @Historybuff820. You can email us your comments or questions or work triumphs and fails at [email protected]. We are also now available on iTunes so please be sure to find us there, subscribe, download and rate the podcast. Jessica: Definitely! We want your feedback, questions, and encourage you to share anything that you’d like about your library instruction with us. Thank you so much for listening! Amanda: Thanks! (Upbeat music) Jessica: Welcome to the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching! Welcome to our second episode. Today we have Cara Berg as our guest and we're going to talk about student learning assessment and outcomes and whether information literacy can truly be assessed. So that should be an interesting conversation. But before we get started with our interview how are you doing? Do you have anything interesting going on this week?
Amanda: Yea! So two things. Work thing, we are testing out this new drop-in research hours with Zoom [Meetings] where a student can come up to the library desk, click a button and they will be automatically connected in a video room with a librarian. So it's a new model that we're trying and we're still working out the kinks but I'm excited to see if students will actually use it. Personally, I just got a new cat about 2-3 weeks ago and she is finally (pause) working out well with our other cat that we already had. They’re playing well together. Jessica: Awww Amanda: No hissing. They’re actually chasing each other around. So I’m excited that that is going well. I was nervous. Jessica: That’s so cute! Amanda: Yea, so what about you? What’s going on? Jessica: So since as I mentioned in the last episode, I’ve been in this new position for about a month now and I’m diving into different assessments that I haven’t done before. So I’m really trying to assess my instruction in this new role. When I'm giving these surveys at the end of the session and students say, “This is what I think went well. This is what could have been improved.”, I'm trying to track that differently. And as I’m tracking their responses to the questions that are supposed to meet my objectives, instead of just looking at the data and moving on, I'm trying to think of a way to track it more in a long-term since I'm doing the same classes over and over again. There’s these English classes that we do for all these different sections over and over again, which I kind of did at Berkeley but not in the same way. Not as much. So that's what I'm kind of trying to do is Googling around about like a rubric for myself or a tracking model. Do I want to just use an Excel sheet? I don't know. I have all these ideas but trying to figure that out right now. And I'm also trying to up my Twitter game. Like we talked about last episode, it can be difficult to engage in those conversations especially with imposter syndrome. But I feel like I did really good this week with following people, and adding people and commenting on things and actually posting. That's something that you kind of have to do so I think I'm doing good! Amanda: I definitely noticed you upped your Twitter game! You were all up in my feed. Jessica: (Laughs) Yay! Amanda: Good for you! I need to take my own advice and up my Twitter game. Jessica: Yes! I’ll tag you in things. Amanda: Alright, before we dive in, we are going to share a brief bio of Cara. So Cara is the Coordinator of User Education and Reference Librarian at the David and Lorraine Cheng Library at William Paterson University. She has worked as an information literacy librarian for 8 years. Her research interests include active learning assessment and general information literacy. Her most recent publication “Updating Learning Outcomes and Engaging Library Faculty with the ACRL Framework” will be published in the Journal of Academic Librarianship. I also want to note that she is this year's ACRL [Association of College & Research Libraries] New Jersey NJLA [New Jersey Library Association] CUS [College University Section] President and a dear friend of mine. Cara and I have worked together through the library - New Jersey Library Association for many years now. We were once the co-chairs of the User Education Committee so I am super excited to welcome her to the podcast! Welcome Cara! Thank you for coming to talk to us today. Cara: Thank you so much for having me! Amanda: So let's dive right in and talk about assessment. We're going to take a few minutes to give some background on our experiences with assessment. I'll go first. So as the Director of Research and Instructional Services, my job is all about assessment these days. I have experience with classroom assessment but now I'm mainly focused on that bigger picture assessment. But to take it back a step, in the classroom I really try to find a balance between practical and engaging to confirm student learning. The bigger picture, my team and I collect data on a variety of touch points that allows us to have meaningful conversations with administrators about how to authentically integrate information literacy into curriculums. We mostly use Springshare’s LibInsights to gather our data. We also use Springshare’s LibWizard to collect classroom data. I have confidence that our data is creating opportunities for us to meet with Deans and Chairs but I do have concerns about our classroom assessment. Jessica, you want to share a little bit about your background and experience? Jessica: Sure! So as an instruction librarian I've mostly focused on in-class assessments and just ensuring that students meet the objectives that I've set forth for that lesson. And since so many of my lessons are one-shots, I rarely get...I rarely feel like I get to see my students develop real information literacy because I don't see them past that session. In isolated classes when I was at Berkeley, I would maybe see students in an Intro Sociology class then an English class and then maybe in a major level class but that really wasn't the norm. And you know, you [Amanda] were always great about keeping all the instruction librarians engaged in the more department-level assessment and showing our value. But there's so many moving parts and different institutional needs and barriers so I wasn't really as engaged in it as you were. I'm still learning and understanding more about how librarians can really prove that their students are information literate on a more campus-wide scale so I'm really excited to talk to Cara today and learn more! Amanda: So let's take a minute to talk about and provide some quick descriptions of different types of assessments. Interestingly enough, an article was just published this week, right, Jessica? Jessica: At least I found it on Twitter this week. I think the post date was October 4th. Yea! Amanda: So this article came out - “Asking the right questions bridging gaps between information literacy assessment approaches”. This article was written by Alison Head, Alaina Bull and Margy MacMillan and it has a really great description of the different types of assessment. So different levels of assessment. So I’m just going to briefly go over them so we’re all on the same page. So first you have your micro which is your short-term impact on in the classroom. So you teach a lesson and then you assess - “Did those students gain those information literacy skills?” Then you have your meso which is validating the need for information literacy instruction. So that's kind of a lot of what I do. I'm taking the data that we input into Springshare and I'm creating reports and presentations, showing Deans the gaps where we're providing instruction, where we're not providing instruction, missed opportunities, etcetera. Then there’s the macro and the mega. Those are both the benchmarking opportunities of kind of nationwide/national-wide where we can see how you we’re doing against multiple institutions or trends in information literacy. So I definitely encourage everyone to read that article. I’m going to talk a little bit about it later when we get into the questions but I think they have some really nice, easy descriptions for people to think about their assessment practices. Jessica: Yeah, I agree. And I liked some of the questioning things that they got into at the end like how to ask the right questions because the data that you get back is really what you're analyzing to show value and learning. So if you don't ask the right questions, you’re not going to get good information. So it’s a great article and we’ll put it in the show notes. Amanda: Absolutely. So just to touch on that point for a second. I always say to people, “what are we doing with that data?” You know? Are we asking the right questions to use this data effectively? If we're not using it, then why are we asking it? Why are we collecting it. Jessica: Exactly. So let's talk to Cara! So we know that you've worked with ACRL’s Project Outcome so could you describe using that as an assessment and any other related projects you’ve done with it? Cara: Sure! So we were actually one of the institutions that were part of the field test for Project Outcome, so when it first came out they were asking who wanted to be a part of this. I actually wasn't the person to volunteer - that was my colleague Nancy. So she signed up for us and what they did was, we set it up during the Fall 2018 semester, and they have several different surveys so we chose to use the undergrad instruction one. So if you actually look on their website they have a lot. I recommend everyone listening, you can go take a look at the information and the data gathered. For us, we implemented it at the end of all instructions sessions that weren't that basic first-year “Welcome to the library” type class. So we did it for the sophomores and then above. Everything else besides the welcome to library introductory classes. We actually had about 500+ responses and we only had the survey open September to October. So prior to the Project Outcome field test, I did all the general assessment survey that we sent out at the end of all classes so it's just a very quick, “how confident do you feel in the library's resources?” type survey. I wanted to keep it really general because I wanted to make sure all librarians maybe who aren't doing their own assessment could use it and feel comfortable just sending it out. So first I was kind of excited because the field test had very similar questions to what I have been asking so I was just like, “Ooh, that’s exciting to me!” But also we already had people kind of in the practice of sending out that survey so I think we were able to get these responses because people were already used to distributing the information. Um, so again, the surveys itself were general enough and I was really happy to see the field test to worked and ACRL now has this survey available as a whole part of the Project Outcome suite. So the questions asked in the information instruction survey was “I learned something new that will help me succeed in my classes.” “I feel more confident about completing my assignment”. “I intend to apply what I just learned”. Honestly, that question there I think is really, really essential because a lot of times when we do instruction, we worry, “well, are they actually going to use what we showed them?” So to me, that is a really key question and I’m really happy to see that there. “I am more aware of the library's resources and services”. I mean, we [unintelligible] want to hear yes after that. And we asked, I mean, they asked “What did you like most about the session?” And “what else could the could the library do to help you succeed in your classes?” So that survey shouldn’t take that long for the students to fill out so you don't have to eat too much into class time but you still get really, really, really, great data. Now similar to the surveys we did in year’s past, the responses were honestly, mostly positive. You know, students had the session and they really see the value in instruction. When we looked at our data, again, it was a lot of - they said they were going to use the resources again, they mentioned concrete things they liked about the session. One thing that's nice to see is someone saying not just, “I learned how to find a book” or “I learned how to find an article” but they mention specific resources or specific skills. I think that’s really important. And then if you see a lot of students mention the same thing, you know you either did really well with that or that might be something you need to go fix. But anyway, we did the Project Outcomes again Fall 2018. So when I relaunched my survey, I took some of those questions and incorporated them into my survey. So my survey is still my old questions plus some of the Project Outcome ones and I like it. I think it works. I think the librarians are still sending out the survey. I still have to remind people to send it out. But overall, think people are doing it and we’re getting this good assessment data. And that was more the Project Outcomes one. But we have done other assessment activities. Same colleague I mentioned before, also surveyed faculty every other year they brought classes in for instruction. And we did that every year for almost like 12 years and then a couple years ago I surveyed the faculty who didn't bring their classes in for instruction because you're trying to find out, “well, why haven't you?” especially if you have a research based assignment. And we found out such interesting information from that. Notably that 33% of the respondents didn’t even know that this was a service that the library provided. Which to me is mind boggling! But we were able to tailor our outreach to that population and knew that, Ok, people don’t know that we do this. So that’s the two really big things that I work a lot on. So I think, Amanda, that's more of a micro or the meso that you were talking about. I feel like that's where that is involved. We do LibQual surveys and I think that’s more on the national-wide data but I think we only do that every three or four years. Amanda: Interesting. Jessica: So have you used the Project Outcome data to benchmark in that way through Project Outcome? Cara: We just, honestly, we just gathered the data, we shared it with the librarians and everything and then it'll be in our assessment port, assessment report, for the end of the year. Jessica: Ok. Great. Amanda: Yeah, that is interesting. How often are you guys reviewing the data and who are you sharing the date with? Cara: Honestly, that’s a really good question. It’s um, with the Project Outcomes, we had that, we showed everybody at the faculty meeting. With the different faculty surveys we did we would share every one of these faculty meetings, too. The individual instructor surveys are a little harder. I have access to them and it’s up to me to kind of distribute it to faculty and it doesn't happen as... I need to get a little better at being more rapid with disseminating the results ‘cause sometimes I get it out and I'll be a while after the class and that's not as useful. So that’s a practice that I'm trying to get more in the habit of, sending him out right away when we get that survey. We use Google Forms for that so it’s a little tough to get in and then get the results out and we don’t have everybody who has the password. Amanda: Right, right. And then I guess one other follow up question is how many...how are you administering your Project Outcome surveys? Are you doing it electronically or paper-based and what's the completion rate like? Cara: So when we do...so right now the survey we do now isn't the Project Based Outcomes one. It’s just the general survey that we incorporated some of the questions. We send it out electronically at the end of the class. When I first developed the survey instrument before the Project Outcomes, sometimes we would email it out and the response rate for emailing students the survey was not good. You’d get maybe one or two students out of a class of 20 who would go back to their email and respond. In the class, it's a lot easier. Most the students will fill it out the, response rate’s pretty high per class. It depends also, if we’re in a lab. I mean, I know it sounds kind of obvious but in some cases we won't have our instruction in labs we might go to the professor’s classroom and depending if the students have their own devices depends if they fill it out. So the response rate is much higher when we have an actual software we can push it out to them but emailing students the survey after the class - the response rates very low. So what we say to do is try to get it out those last 5 minutes. Take the time to send it out. Tell the students. And is some instances we have software that can push the link out the individual computer so the students don't even have to type in a tinyURL. I really like tinyURL’s, I make them up a lot. I think they’re good and easy to use. But even so, if a student gets the survey on their computer they fill it out quicker than if they have to fill out a tinyURL. Jessica: Yeah that's definitely true...Yeah. Amanda: Yea...I looked into the Project Outcome. I was really excited about it but I think it's too...I think what we're doing is kind of beyond that at this point. So, but what I really, really liked about their website in general is the tools that they provide on... for people who are just starting out to do assessment and that explanation. Cause I think, and we’ll talk about this in a minute, I think the biggest challenge of assessment is librarians don't feel like they have the knowledge and confidence to create assessment tools and I think this is a nice stepping stone for librarians who are who are interested in doing assessment. Cara: No, I agree, I agree. I think...I think assessment is scary and I think... I don't think it's because people don't want to know how they’re doing ‘cause I think people want to know especially in instruction - you want to know if you're being helpful. I think it's just kind of intimidating when you’re working in a university setting and you have all these other departments doing this, you know, high tech, really intense assessment and you’re like, “what do I do? how do I do this?” And I like the Project Outcomes. I thought it made assessment a little more user-friendly and it wasn't just instruction too, they have other surveys. You could use it for programming which I thought was really helpful. Amanda: Yeah, yeah I think so too. All right, so let's get into our next question which is, what challenges have you faced the most when trying to show the library's value with assessment data? Cara, you want to start? Cara: Sure! So I think my biggest challenge is what Jessica was saying. So we have, we don't have the direct assessment a lot because we don't have the student papers. So we have a surveys for post-class and I still think that's a great measure but it's still, we're not getting that direct student work and that's really hard to get. And we lose touch with the students once they have the class so we don't know how they do. I still think it's a really valuable measure to do these surveys and I’ll talk about that in the next part of the podcast. But I think that is kind of challenging because when you're talking to people about information literacy and the skills and you’re saying “well the students all felt confident” and then people will say, “well how do you know?”. At some point, if you don't have to work, we have an idea but we’re not, we don't know for sure. But what also is interesting and kind of a little funny, when I show people or I talk about the data, I’m like, “All these students felt really comfortable about this”... I remember I had my results up, this was the first survey I did saying most of the students rated us a 4 or a 5. It was a scale for “how confident do you feel using the library’s resources.” And [unintelligable] a former faculty member looks at it and he’s like, “wow that’s really interesting to me.” Yea, of course, we’re really good at what we do! This makes sense! But I think people are kind of surprised that students felt so good after having an instruction session. So that was really interesting to me. Amanda: Yeah, yeah. I definitely understand where you're coming from. I would say I face a lot of challenges when it comes to assessment and using assessment data. I think, even just to take a step back, my biggest challenge is getting librarians on board to administer assessment and develop assessment tools. One of the issues is, like I said, they don't they don't have the confidence or are nervous that they're not creating a legitimate tool. And then time. I mean when you want to do meaningful assessment at the micro-level, a lot of it is reading papers, open-ended responses, and assessing that data takes a lot of time. And I don't think librarians necessarily have the time to do that and I think it's important but I think that librarians find it too time-consuming. And there's just no way around it. I mean when you want to prove...in the article that I had mentioned earlier about “Bridging the gaps” and asking the right questions, when you want to prove your impact on learning, you have to take the time to really thoroughly assess a paper or an annotated bibliography or a discussion board with a rubric and you know, it's not... it takes time. I guess from my point of view outside the classroom I think another challenge that I face is human error. So the way we have it set up with our instruction is every time a librarian conducts instruction they submit a form that we created but it's a lot of manual input. I tried to automated with pre-filled forms as much as possible but there's some things that librarians don't interpret correctly and it skews our data so I think that's one of my challenges. And obviously some of these things are correctable but over time it's hard to go back retroactively make those corrections. And if a librarian doesn't submit that form then to me that instruction didn't happen and I can't report on that data. So human error and you know getting people to participate in assessment is my biggest challenge. Jessica, you want to share your challenge. Jessica: Yeah, sure! So I definitely think as I mentioned most of my assessment is on that micro level in the classroom so it is just designing inclusive objective-based assessments for a one-shot session that really show student learning. Like LibWizard forms and tutorials are great and group activities and questions are great but it is a challenge in a one-shot session to come in, not knowing the prior knowledge of the students, have to present them new ideas, and then show that they're learning and keep them engaged at the same time. So it's all like a package deal. [Everyone laughs] And I do get bogged down sometimes with assessing certain things that the professors want them to know and teaching those narrow library skills that get them to complete the assignment as opposed to learning skills that might be more widely used across their classes. So that does happen sometimes too. And this is by no means a new problem for instruction librarians but for me it's been the biggest one. Do either of you have kind of go-to in-class assessments that are like a really holistic representation of student learning? Cara: I mean, we have so the survey we've been using, is pretty, it's just really general. So it's just “what did you learn”, “do you think you would be able to use these resources again.” Jessica: Right. Cara: But you know, like Amanda was saying, I’ve had librarians come up to me like, “Oh, I forgot to send out your survey” but I’m like, “It’s not my survey, it’s our survey.” And like, what I do is...we developed the questions based on the learning outcomes and again we have very generalized learning outcomes but you know I really agree with what you say with the skill set versus the “well, help them find an article”. And then if the professor has an assignment and they’re like, “well they need this from this source” and you miss the overall skills part of that. So I definitely get it. Jessica: Right, it becomes, "Here’s how to find an article for a literature review”, and not, “here's how to find articles”...you know, that you can also use these skills in your everyday life. So it gets to be a little narrow sometimes and the same thing that you were saying before, we can't always see their longer-term assessments, their papers, afterwards so we're not able to get that either. Some faculty are good about it but others are not and I understand we have to support, we have to support that but that's my challenge. That's my biggest assessing challenge lately. Amanda: Yea, lately I am all about the computer lab. Or checking out laptops and using them in the classroom. I want students to walk away with something. I want them to find it meaningful to them. So I only go in after they've been assigned topics and I'll only go in if I can do a full workshop where they're submitting and searching and then I can have something tangible to walk away with that's not a quiz. You know, “what is a database?” and then them pick from a multiple choice. That's not helping me. That’s some type of indication but that doesn't help them in the long run so I stay away from that. So my assessment is complex. It is I have to take the time to go over the results and confirm. So that’s my go-to. It’s not quick and dirty but it is useful and it’s authentic and it gives me something to go back to the professor and say “Your students struggled with finding that industry report. Only one student was able to find it. They need this skill for their research paper. Let me provide you with an additional resource.” The only way I'm able to do that is if I ask them in my worksheet, “find an industry report”. Jessica: Right. Cara: We have, um, this Professor who I work with in business statistics and he actually had me help him develop the rubric for the assignment. And that’s amazing because that doesn’t happen that often if at all but it was wonderful because I go in and teach the students what they need and he hasm you know, for them to get an “A”, they have to do a complex library thing. They have to do an interlibrary loan, they have to analyze a scholarly peer-reviewed journal article. And then there was one semester I was able to go in and see their final assignments with like, I sat during their presentations and I got to see it. And that was amazing because I saw what I did in action and I saw their final work and I saw them using it. But that’s not all the instructors. So I get it. That’s another thing. I wish we could do that for every class. I don't have time to physically go to every class and read every single final paper. I wish we did. Jessica: Right. Amanda: I think that's a great segue into our next question which is, on a large scale, can we ever prove that our students are information literate when they graduate? And you know, maybe think about this idea of are we going in circles when it comes to our assessment efforts? Are we ever able to prove information literate students? Cara? Cara: So I think the surveys that we do, so the micro and the meso, I think they're still essential and necessary. Even if it's not the direct assessment because if it wasn't working we would see, you know? The students saying, “I didn't understand this” or “no I'm not comfortable” and I think they're still necessary even if it's not that direct assessment. With that said, I think there's a lot of really interesting research projects that maybe can be done so maybe one thing would be to study a group of students long-term as they go through college and see how their information literacy skills improve. But the other thing is, and Jessica you brought this up, information literacy isn’t just, “I know how to research” it’s life-long learning. So I would love to see some sort of research study of student’s information seeking behavior after they leave college but not just like research-based. Like every day life. Are they still sharing bad articles on Facebook? Are they actually reading things before they send out that information? Are they processing their news well? I don't know how to actually do that but I think that might be really interesting because again, we’re talking information literacy as a skill they have for life, not just “okay I can write a research paper”. And you know, we know this, most of our students are never going to write a research paper after they leave college because they’re not going to go into the field that we’re in. And that’s ok! But we still want to make sure they know how to have these skills. So I know it's a very long answer to that but I don't know. I think, I think there's a way. I just I wish there was a way that we can look at them after they leave and see how their processing information. Amanda: Yeah, I agree. I think Rutgers was doing a study like that with their Masters, with their graduate students. I think - I could be wrong. But I think they were doing something where they were piloting where they agree to participate in a study and they were tracked along the way. Cara: Oh my gosh, that sounds so god. Amanda: I think so. I’m not 100%. I think I read something about that. So here's my take. I think the first thing that needs to be done and this is not easy. This is still my my goal, is to get information literacy integrated into curriculums. I think the only way to authentically assess information literacy is to have faculty talking about it and not just talking about it but recognizing that it needs to be integrated and systematic. Like one shots serve their purpose but it needs to be a part of a bigger piece of the puzzle. It needs to be a part of, “okay this is a class where we're going to assess if they know how to access information.” “This is the class two semesters later when they're going to show us that they know how to use information.” And it needs to be system-wide, all sections of that course so that we can benchmark the students. I also think that there needs to be a post-test exit survey of some sorts before they graduate where we can say “OK this, every student that is in the last semester of their time at this institution will take this information literacy whatever quiz, survey, questionnaire” and we can use that data to be confident that they are somewhat information literate. I think one way would be interesting if I don't know how valid it would be would be to track students through a program like you were kind of talking about. Maybe using your student ID so every time they participate in library instruction students have to provide their idea. I don’t know what the FERPA laws are against that. I think it's, I think it's something. I think it's something where you can say we tracked a cohort of students and we’ve seen their progression, or that nothing has changed. But that's that's, that's my hot take. Jessica? Jessica: I love that take! But I agree, I think the idea of it being more integrated and systematic is really where it needs to go in the end. And I mean, maybe this current information climate will help that happen cause there are all these calls of like, “we need our students to be more information literate!” And I think they're kind of talking on a elementary, middle school, high school level but I mean if we can get it integrated there then college is just as important, you know? And like we said, information literacy is such a lifelong process from when they're little kids that everybody's going to have different experiences every single year with information literacy and it's just going to be we're really getting them in the snapshot of their lives and they're all starting a different entry points so that also makes it a little difficult to measure with all these confounding factors of where everybody’s starting and “what do they know?” When their personal life experiences have such an impact on information literacy skills, too. So I mean at the very least, I hope to also just inspire curiosity in information with my students to at least there's a chance that they continue to learn those skills. Like if I can get them interested in disinformation and that becomes something that they become interested in. Like you said, Cara, like not sharing bad Facebook articles and stuff like that. So if I can find the right thing to hook individual students on learning about learning and learning about information then at least that’s one good thing we did. Amanda: Yeah, I could talk about assessment for hours. Jessica: Yea [laughs] Amanda: It’s such a complex topic and it’s so interesting. I think it’s...sometimes I get exhausted by it sometimes. I feel like we're over assessing. Sometimes I feel like we're not assessing enough. But I I still find value in what we're doing. I still think we are on the right path to proving students are information literate. I think it needs to come from the systemic change so...Thank you so much for sharing your your perspectives! This was a really interesting conversation! We're now going to move into our Work Triumphs/Work Fail segment? Jessica? You want to share your triumph or fail or triumph and fail? Jessica: Yea I have, well mine are kind of interconnected so that’s good. So for some of our standardized instruction and I am at a new institution so I'm doing all of these new lessons that I’ve never done before. They’re all English classes and the assessments are paper worksheets. But since I’m so used to LibWizard from my time at Berkeley, the first thing I did was convert the handouts into LibWizard forms and I started using them in the class. Which has been great! I love being able to run the Excel reports after the class and see everything all in one place. And when I had first started, my first week was already doing a LibWizard evaluation, just to ask them how I was doing. And so now I was able to combine the class assessment for their learning with the assessment of my session and so I get all of my data together. So that was awesome. So that was my triumph. Using technology to get all of my data. But my fail was that that students in the first two classes I used it with were really confused by the form. I guess that they haven’t been assessed or gathered data that way so they weren’t entering the data in the right places, and so when I checked the data after, they weren’t really putting in the articles they were getting. And I thought I’d explained it properly but it wasn’t working out. So I really had to, next class, go through the form from start to finish from like the first 5 minutes of class. Which, maybe someone else would have known to do that but I just figured I could show them as we started each section, “Work on this section...then work on that section.” Now I fixed my fail. I'm on the right track. But that was my 2 class fail of not getting good data because I didn't present the form correctly. Amanda: Better luck next time! Don’t be so hard on yourself. Cara? Jessica: You know me, that's what I do. Amanda: I know! Cara: So um, I'll do the fail first and then I’ll do the triumph. Because the triumph has to do with assessment - the fail doesn’t. So this actually happened this week. I had...it is a very introductory English class. The professor said the students are doing a research paper. This will probably be their first time in the library. I let them pick a topic - anything they wanted. I picked all of these introductory databases like Points of View. I figured they’re all going to do a social issue, something like that and they all came in with biographies. So I had to completely...and I didn't know that. So I had to complete think, I have to show biography resources - and I don't do that often! I’m a business librarian. That’s really more of what I’m dealing with. I had to kind of change my instruction on the fly. Which, I’ve been doing this for a while so it was ok. But I kind of wish I had better...I wish I knew what their topics were ahead of time ‘cause all of a sudden, they’re going around room and it’s all biographies and you can’t use Points of View for a biography. And you have to search the catalog differently for biographies and these students aren't used to what we have in an academic library, they’re used to public library type books but we don’t have that. It was challenging. But I wish I had known ahead of time so I could prepapre differently. That’s kind of my fail. Even though I think I worked through it okay. But my triumph...So I know this has been around for a while but I finally. I just tried a Kahoot for the the first time. Actually it has its own assessment data which is really exciting. So I used it in another first year English class where I explain the difference between scholarly and popular articles. And then after my 20 minute lecture I said we’re going to review the concepts with a Kahoot and first of all, the students were super excited because they all used it in high school. Like so much so where when their classroom professor was working on the volume control because she thought the music was too loud, they were like, “No, no we need the music! The music makes the Kahoot!” [Jessica laughs] It was all so great, because I saw the answers come in and I could say, “ok, half of you got this wrong. Let’s review this again.” And now I have that data. too. So I don’t know. I really made the class more interesting. The students were really, really engaged. It's just funny how this little game that they did in high school. They lit up when I did it. That made me feel really happy. I wish I had started using Kahoots sooner but better late than never. Jessica: Seriously. Those are the best! I love those. We've been doing these half hour, Intro to the University sessions and some students just think it's dry and so they zone out. But then when I turn that on, it’s like the room lights up! It's crazy. Cara: I have...I never...I honestly I did not expect the reaction I got because I’ve done Poll Everywhere and they’re like, “Yea, okay yay…” but the Kahoot. It was, I have no idea. It was awesome! Amanda: I'll have to try a Kahoot. I haven’t tried it. Cara: No?? Amanda: I always get nervous with like that kind of stuff in the classroom but I think I might explore it considering how you guys are praising it. So I'll definitely try it. My triumph and my fail are connected. My Triumph was I couldn't get into a class because of scheduling conflicts. And the professor wanted me to come back and she's like, “can you come back and work with them one-on-one and we'll do like a workshop where they have computers.” And you know I was so excited but then I couldn’t do it. So my triumph is that I created a little LibGuide, I put 3 videos together. I put a LibWizard embedded in the guide with a concrete assessment tool. And I said the professor, “Look, I can’t come in but you could still use you class time to let your students work on the project. Here’s an assessment tool that’s attached to the research guide. Or you could assessment as a homework assignment and I can give you the data to show you how your students are doing.” My fail is is that she never responded, the professor, or responded to my email and I feel weird about following up. I'm really bad at that following up part. Like...so I think that's my fail. My fail is that I created this really great resource and I had a good connection with a professor who was excited about working with the librarian and I couldn't meet her specific need to be in the classroom and now she's not responding to me. Jessica: Oh no! Amanda: Yeah so that was my fail… Jessica: That’s an awesome idea, though! Cara: Yea! Amanda: Yea, I mean I was just trying to be creative. I mean, we can only be in so many places at once. And I just, I couldn’t get there. I couldn’t shuffle it around I thought this was a good alternative. And I mean, but I guess everyone is just different. I’m just disappointed on several levels. One is that I created the resource for her class now it’s not getting used. Two is that I'm hoping she's not turned off by the fact that I couldn’t come. Or three, maybe she’s put off by the fact that I provided her with a suggestion of providing/giving students a homework assignment. I don't know. Maybe I’m completely overthinking it and she just didn’t read my email. Either way it’s a fail and it’s maybe a missed connection at this point. Thank you so much, Cara, for joining us tonight! Cara: Thank you both so much for having me! Library assessment is really interesting and really dynamic and you know, it's good that we're talking about it and who knows, maybe more and more people will start to do it and we can have full conversations. Yea, you never know! Thank you guys so much for having me! I'm so excited to be on this. Amanda: And that was our interview with Cara Berg! We hope you enjoyed our conversation about assessment. Jessica, do you want to tell everybody where they can find us? Jessica: Sure! So I am on Twitter @LibraryGeek611. Amanda is on Twitter @HistoryBuff820. And you can send us an email at [email protected]. So send us an email or a tweet to share your questions, ideas for potential discussions, and triumphs and fails, and you can also hashtag your Tweet with #LibrariansGuideToTeaching. Amanda: Great! I just wanted to quickly note that we are also now available on iTunes. Please be sure to find us there and subscribe to our podcast. We want your feedback, questions, and we encourage you to share your triumphs and fails to be read on an upcoming episode. So we look forward to sharing another episode with you and will talk to you soon, take care! (Upbeat music) Amanda: Welcome to the first episode of The Librarians Guide to Teaching! My name is Amanda Piekart.
Jessica: And I am Jessica Kiebler. Amanda: And welcome to our first episode! We're going to start this episode off by letting you know a little bit about ourselves. I am the Director of Research and Instructional Services at Berkeley College. I've been providing instruction workshops and training for about 10 years now in an academic setting. I provide on-site and online instruction. These days my interests include self-paced learning, assessment and demonstrating educational impact through IL instruction. I love to read historical fiction and look for inaccuracies. I’m a Pinterest junkie and since moving to Upstate New York I have slowly tried to perfect the art of composting and zero waste. Jessica: And my name is Jessica Kiebler. I am an instructional Services Librarian at Pace University in Westchester New York where I teach students about the library, information literacy, and how to use research skills for success. I'm currently fascinated with the climate of disinformation in society and how humans are adapting to interacting in digital spaces. I also have an unending love affair with coffee. I always enjoy a sci-fi or superhero movie and I am attempting unsuccessfully to chisel through my Goodreads book list. Amanda: So now we’re going to talk to you a little bit about what this podcast will cover, why we decided to start it and what we hope to achieve. So what will this podcast be about? We are interested in sharing our experiences in teaching information literacy, we plan to discuss current trends and we want to have meaningful conversations about librarianship. We decided to start this podcast because we both found that we have a passion for teaching and that there currently isn't a podcast that is thoroughly covering this topic the way we want to. We also previously had an internal work podcast that we loved creating so we wanted to continue working together. So what do we hope to achieve? We hope to build a community of librarians that share their teaching experiences so that we can all learn from each other. Jessica: And obviously discuss questions and concerns from our listeners about their information literacy teaching. Amanda: Yes! So that's actually one of the segments that we plan to have at the end of each episode. We are going to ask for you to share your thoughts on the episode, send us your questions about teaching, share a triumph or a fail and perhaps even recommend some topics for us to discuss for future episodes. Some of the other segments we are trying to include in this podcast would be our personal teaching triumphs or teaching fails, a tweet of the week, hot topics, recent articles, trends and definitely invited guests. (Upbeat Musical Interlude) Jessica: So for our first episode we're going to be talking about imposter syndrome. It's been in the news a lot recently and it's actually been around since about 1978 but it has become a bit more of a published about topic recently. And there's a few different reasons why we want to talk about it but I just want to start with getting us on the same page with a definition. So as I mentioned, the phrase was originally coined in 1978. According to Merriam-Webster, imposter syndrome is commonly understood as a false and sometimes crippling belief that one's successes are the product of luck or fraud rather than skill. And It was coined by American psychologists Pauline Clans and Suzanne Imes in their article “The Imposter phenomenon in high-achieving women”. And it was in the article of psychotherapy in the 1970s. So the initial study was focused on high achievers which kind of makes sense when you think about the syndrome and academia. As someone who lives with imposter syndrome, I've been reading about it a lot recently and was really interested by some of the motivation types I read in the book called The Imposter Cure by Jessamy Hibberdand we’ll include a link to the book in the show notes. But I just wanted to mention some of the types that she mentions as motivations or personality types that fuel impostor syndrome. The first one is a perfectionist. So those people have their primary focus on how things get done and if they're done in a way that they don't like they begin to feel like an impostor. Second is the natural genius. People that feel like they have to get things right on the first try. A soloist likes to be able to do things alone. If they have to ask for help they feel like a fraud. An expert is the knowledge version of the perfectionist so they feel like they need to know everything in order to be seen as successful. And the last one is a superman or superwoman. So they measure their competence in how many roles they can juggle and excel in. So that was definitely interesting to me and I saw myself in a few of those. (Laughs) Amanda: Yeah I'm trying to look at them now and decide which one I would be. Jessica: I think you’re a superwoman! Amanda: (Laughs) Well thank you! I also see myself as a perfectionist. Jessica: Right, right Amanda: Definitely interesting! So one of the reasons that we wanted to start with this topic as our first episode is because in our experience this is a theme that comes up fairly often when we're speaking with our colleagues and other librarians. We hope that by acknowledging this issue first, we’re setting the foundation for the need to the librarians to share our teaching experiences and ideas in order to move past this idea that we're imposters Jessica: And that's some of what I read about as well in a few other articles was that a lot of new librarians feel this because they're coming into a field where so many people know a lot and they have a lot of education and academia kind of makes us feel like we have to be experts like that experts type from the book so that was definitely something that was brought up a lot so maybe they're just needs to be more support for new librarians. I mean, there is a lot in certain ways but maybe we're just talking about this idea of supporting each other through the knowledge gap a little bit Amanda: Yeah yeah I agree. I guess just a question to start off would be, do you feel like an imposter and what aspect of instruction makes you feel like an imposter? Jessica: I do suffer from this. I feel like I have my entire life but it's definitely with me recently because I started a new job and it's a big change. I'm at a much larger institution doing double the instruction that I’ve done in the past. I'm having to get used to new standardized instruction. So when I think about it, it's not anything crazy or out of the box but it's new to me and so the anxiety and imposter syndrome are much more complicated than just telling my brain that this is new and I should be okay with it. It still appears whether or not I can talk myself out of it. I want to make sure that I fit in and I do well and and these types of job shifts can definitely exacerbate these feelings. It definitely applies in the classroom for me because I want to appear like I have the answer so I think there's that traditional view of a teacher as kind of having all the answers and while we know it's okay to say that we don't know the answer and that we’ll find out or just even not knowing the answer altogether is really okay, sometimes I fall into that trap of needing to be the expert and needing to know everything right away. I think that was definitely one of my types from the book was, um, I want to be the natural genius, right? I want to get things right on the first try and I want to be the expert. I want to know it all but that's not necessarily logical and it doesn't give myself a lot of grace. (Both laugh) Jessica: What about you? Amanda: So when I first started as an instruction librarian 10 years ago, tomorrow, I definitely had no idea what I was doing. I didn't have any teaching formal teaching experience or education. I literally watched my supervisor do one class and then I was thrown into the classroom. And it was...I definitely felt like an imposter and I also felt like an imposter because I looked very young. I mean I still look young and I felt like I needed to dress to the nines in a suit when I went into the classroom so that I can differentiate myself from the students because so many times I would get confused for student not only by faculty but also by the students. That definitely made me feel like an imposter. It was hard for me to get past that sometimes. I would constantly like be asked if I was a student worker so I definitely felt that way. Now as a director, I feel like an imposter when it comes to facilitating workshops sometimes. I feel like when I'm speaking to my peers that it might come off as that I'm acting like I know too much even though I don't. So I still 10 years later in some capacity feel like an imposter in front of my colleagues which is you know, nerve-wracking sometimes. Jessica: Right exactly you feel like you're helping on one level but at the same time you're you're not helping yourself because you're not feeling as confident as you feel like you should be. Amanda: Right, exactly. And then there's also like the other side of it where you know, we say this to our Honor students all the time when they're presenting at their research Symposium, “You're the expert on your topic”, you know? And it’s supposed to be kind of like a mantra to help them have more confidence and we should probably take her own advice when we're in front of the classroom and you know, realize that we’re the information literacy experts. But I don't always remember that so... Jessica: Right, exactly. Amanda: So what are some tips that you have for us that will help us overcome this imposter syndrome? Jessica: Well one thing that is helpful is really first to read about it and understand it so recognizing where it comes from for you because as we as we saw for certain personality types it comes from a certain place right? From a certain motivation. So reflecting on why you're feeling this particular way like you honed in on your own fact that you feel a certain way when you're presenting to your peers, right? So honing in on that feeling and understanding it can really be helpful in managing it and figuring out different thought patterns that could be more effective. Amanda: I think that's a great tip. And I think maybe this is something that you know people should really take the time to reflect on. I know it's easier said than done but I think it really would help people, or librarians, when they have to provide instruction because so many times, you know, like we talked about earlier this comes up constantly, “I'm not a teacher. I didn't get a formal education”. But I think you're right, you know, you have to first recognize where it comes from before we can move forward. Jessica: Right. And you know this is kind of a tangent from the tips but I was talking to someone the other day and he was saying that you know sometimes there's teachers who can write a really great lesson plan but they can't always perform it well. And then there's teachers who perform really well but they can't necessarily write a lesson plan. So we might always be struggling with one piece of the puzzle but that doesn't mean we're not good teachers. We just have individual things to work on and seeing our entire selves as impostors or frauds just because there's something we have to work on really isn't helping anybody. It doesn't help ourselves. It doesn’t help our students. But reflecting on our teaching...which is actually going into my second tip. I guess it’s really not too much of a tangent. Keeping a journal of your wins and fails and just realizing that it's all part of growth can be really helpful. The instruction journal for me has been super, super helpful in my growth because I can learn from my failures, see the growth on paper, and if I need support when I'm having a really having a bad day, I can just return to the wins and be like, “Hey, remember when you did that? That was great. You're okay.” Amanda: Yea, I mean, I wish I had the discipline to do that. I think it's a great idea. I'm all about reflection but I just, I can't remember to do it. It's just not my thing. I think I keep a mental running tab of how that went. At my institution we use LibInsights to track our instruction and we have a part of like comments so sometimes I'll put in the comments how I think it went whether it was a fail or not so I think that helps me reflect when I go and try and keep that class next semester. So I guess in a way that's my journal reflection but I don't have a traditional journal that I use. Jessica: Right, exactly. But I mean at least that's something. Amanda: Right Jessica: You know, if you really felt like you needed to look back you have a little bit of something. It might jog your memory. I know I have a terrible memory, so for me it's like I got to write it down in that moment or it’s not happening. (Laughs) So a third tip is to ask for feedback and build a network of supporters. You know I always know I can count on you for honest and constructive feedback and kind of give me a boost when I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. So building that network can be helpful. And then if there is ever negative feedback, hopefully it’s constructive at least, you can reflect on it, and just make a plan to move forward and improve. Amanda: Yeah I mean, I think feedback is so important. I think people are nervous about feedback. I think they're already nervous about what they're doing so they’re being super critical of themselves and I think adding that level of having someone else give you feedback is kind of nerve-wracking. But I really wish that people were less afraid to give feedback, honest and constructive feedback. Actually, at Berkeley we came up with this whole great structure of reflective practices in teaching and it had a self-reflection. It had a specific things like that you wanted feedback on and it used to be required and people felt super uncomfortable about it so then we made it optional and now nobody's doing it. And I think it's a shame because I think we should be able to learn from each other and get different perspectives from our colleagues if we really are committed to improving our instruction skills. I think this is such a great step in that direction. So I definitely encourage building a network of people who are willing to give you honest feedback, for sure. Jessica: And at least starting with someone that you feel comfortable receiving it from. I mean, you may not feel comfortable with all of your colleagues, that's completely normal. But if there's somebody that you feel would be gentle with you in the beginning then start with that person and build from there. Amanda: Right, that's a great idea. Even if you can just find one person that you guys can just give each other feedback on in an informal setting I think that's, that's very valuable. Jessica: Yeah or maybe just starting with a lesson plan and then moving into observation, even if that works. Amanda: Yea, we used to do that all the time. We would share stuff and say hey can you come and take a look at this...side note, people, Jessica and I used to work together! Jessica: Right! (Both laugh) Amanda: We would share stuff and say hey can you take a look at this and give me some feedback on it and I feel like I've always walked away with a way to improve something. And you know it gave me perspective on things that I didn't notice so... Jessica: Yes definitely. And the last tip kind of relates to that is just do your best. I mean, at the end of the day you were hired for your skills and some days we just need to get out there and do the best we can. I mean, sometimes we're not feeling well, sometimes the students aren't feeling well. That'll come up later in my fail of the week but sometimes it's just, you know, sometimes we have bad days and they'll be good days and bad days and we just have to live with that and not see it as a reflection on our skills or our character and just see it as the day that it is. Amanda: I agree with Jessica. Definitely, just do your best. I think practice makes perfect and I think that it's important to just keep at it and keep going. When we provide instruction training for our virtual chat services, which is a form of instruction, I always say to the new librarian, “Don't be afraid! Just jump right in and start providing support. It's the only way you're going to get comfortable doing this”. And I think the same goes for whether you are doing online instruction instruction or on site instruction. Just keep it and try to really do your best. Jessica: Exactly and there were some tips - those are my personal tips - but there were more tips that we found in an article called, “Jumping into the Deep: Imposter Syndrome, Defining Success, and the New Librarian” by Sanji Lacey and Melanie Parlette-Stewart from Canada. So again, we’ll link the article in the show notes but they also had some interesting tips. And again their article focused on new librarians but I think what they talked about was still really relevant. We kind of mentioned this before, like keeping a healthy perspective on academic culture and work. The fact that in academia we like to do a lot of work and we like to get a lot of credentials and publish a lot of papers and some people have to for tenure. So just keeping a perspective that you don't have to keep up with the “Jones” work-wise, right? Amanda: Yea, agreed. Jessica: Another one that I always follow is [to] engage in social media in small doses. So especially with Library Twitter, I mean, you can go on there and feel really, really uneducated with the amazing people that are posting and everybody sharing. It's like everything with social media, everybody is sharing their highlights reel. So it can really make you feel less than and like a fraud, especially as a new librarian just jumping into those waters. So I definitely try to get on Twitter when I can but I don't try to get bogged down in it. Amanda: Yea, I like this tip but I also think that for me at least I think I just need to get better at, when it comes to Twitter, I see all these people, right, posting all these amazing things about themselves and their work and, I just, I could be doing it too. I just don't because I feel silly about it. And I guess I feel like even when I have something like solid I feel like an imposter posting about it. Jessica: Right (laughs) Amanda: So then I end up not posting about it. Like, I can’t tell you how many tweets I’ll type out and then I’ll say, I’m not posting that, that’s just ridiculous and I’ll just delete it. I definitely think people like us better at promoting ourselves and putting ourselves out there because we are and we have done amazing thing that's like people just don't know Jessica: Right, so maybe engaging in a conversation might actually make you feel like less of an imposter. Amanda: Exactly, exactly! Jessica: Exactly. That’s interesting. Yea, that’s true. Take on opportunities to learn when you want to as opposed to trying to learn everything. You know pick the things that you really want to learn about Amanda: Yea, that’s a good tip. Jessica: Another one that I thought was really interesting that I haven't done but I might now is really reflecting upon what success looks like in your career trajectory. Because there's so many different paths that you can take but what is success really look like to you. And you know, you and I have had this conversation before now that we're moms. You know we had some wake up calls as Type A librarians, right? About what we can really get done now in our days. So I think I'm at that point where it's deciding what do I want to do and what does success look like to me while not looking like or feeling like an imposter. Amanda: Yea, you know, my daughter is almost a year and it's completely changed the way I work and like you said what I decide to take on and I think I need to still reflect now what success looks like for me. And then to even think about career trajectory, that like just throws a monkey wrench in it. Jessica: So yeah, let's start a new podcast, right? (Laughs) Amanda: Yea, there you go! (Laughs) Jessica: Talk about imposter syndrome! (Laughs) So the last tip is something cool. Find something physical that you find power in. So a power pose, heels. You said, right, a certain outfit in the classroom. Maybe a mantra. So I think I need to find my thing too when I'm up there in front of the classroom like what makes me feel like I'm in control. Amanda: Yeah it's definitely clothing for me. Like I said, I mean, I still feel that way but I mean I don't look like a student so much anymore. So I don’t have to worry about it too much anymore but I still feel definitely feel more legit when I’m dressed professionally and not just in slacks and shirt. So it definitely does make a difference. At least for me. I always call it my power suit. One particular suit that I love, that looks so professional, it’s my power suit. Jessica: That's awesome Amanda: Yeah Jessica: Well those are our tips for conquering imposter syndrome. Some of them, like I said, I've definitely tried and they're definitely working for me. I don't think that I will ever be cured of it but I think just like anxiety it's something that I work with on a daily basis and manage and live with so hopefully maybe some of these can work for you, too. Amanda: Yea, I hope so. (musical interlude) Amanda: Okay, so now we're going to move into our next segment which is a Work Triumph and a Work Fail. Jessica, you want to start? Jessica: Sure! So actually my work triumph this week is really about temporarily conquering imposter syndrome. So as I said I'm at a new institution so I'm doing new standardized teaching that I've never done before and of course I expect myself to just knock it out of the park on the first try. Which really, I should just be honest with myself at this point. So I did a one class today that went really well and so I felt great about myself. I told myself you know, even though you did well on this you know, what if you don't do well on the next one? Like I had negative thoughts creeping in. And so I really had to have a sit-down with myself and say, talk to the imposter, right, and say, “You're new here. You're trying to adapt. You did well today. Take that as a win. You know, focus on one day at a time.” So it was good and I feel better afterwards having that little chit chat with myself. So that was my work triumph. Amanda: And your fail? Jessica: So my fail was the other day, I was doing just an orientation class. We have these 30 minute sessions that go for like the first month of the semester so I do like three or four of these a week. So I had one the other day and the students just kind of weren’t into it. Usually when I ask a question about one of the plagiarism case studies we talk about, normally somebody raises their hand but nobody raised their hand. So I picked on this one student and he was just not about it. Like I picked on the wrong student that day. So he was just like rolling his eyes and like trying to argue with me, that self-plagiarism doesn’t exist. And like I said, it’s a 30 minute orientation sessions so I wasn’t going to get into a whole to-do about it. And it wasn't really a fight or anything but it just didn’t...My response wasn't...it wasn’t the witty response I was hoping it would be so I’m counting that as my fail for the week. Amanda: (laughs) Ah, okay. Jessica: What about you? Amanda: So my triumph is that as a director, I've been trying for the past two years to get all of our content organized in one place. So I finally created a LibGuide and it's so beautiful. It has everything laid out perfectly and it’s clear and it just, it really has made the difference in terms of people being self-sufficient to support a class that they've never supported before. So I'm super excited about that. It's going great so far. My fail for the week is that I overbooked myself with two new faculty so then I had to go back and email the professor and say, “Sorry, I can't come into your class that week. I’m teaching another class”. And then because of other already planned classes, I can't go in for like another two weeks after the requested date. So I just feel like, ugh, epic fail! So I hope she doesn’t think that I’m like I don’t pay attention or that I can't keep track of my dates. Like, so we’ll see how that works out but it was definitely a fail. Jessica: Exactly. So all things we’ll survive but they still feel like fails either way. Amanda: Yes exactly Amanda: So that was our first episode! We hope you enjoyed it and we just want to share where you can find us. Jessica, where can we find you? Jessica: I am on Twitter @LibraryGeek611 Amanda: I’m on Twitter as well @HistoryBuff820. Don't make fun of me! I joined Twitter really early where everyone had like whatever made up handle. We are also looking for your feedback so if you have any questions or you want to share your triumphs and fails to be read on upcoming episodes, please send them in. Jessica: So you can email us at [email protected] or you can actually hashtag your own tweets with #LlibrariansGuideToTeaching. Amanda: Great! So we hope to hear from you and we can't wait to share another episode in the upcoming weeks! Jessica: Yes, thanks for listening! Amanda: Alright, thanks! (Upbeat Music) |
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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