Summer Quarterly Instruction Roundtable summary

Thanks to everyone who joined us for our summer Quarterly Instruction Roundtable last week. Below is a summary of some of the great ideas everyone brought to share. And if you weren't able to make it, please feel free to add you own in the comments section!

Ideas for classroom instruction

• Theresa is planning a class in which she’ll ask students to find the ‘best’ article on a given topic, then have them post their findings in LibGuides using the User Link Submission feature so that everyone can see all results. They’ll have a class discussion about which are best, why they think so, with Theresa suggesting other strategies, sources, and concepts to consider. Lauren has done a similar classroom exercise in which she gave them a specific citation and asked them to locate the full-text, knowing that many would try Google and come up dry. This fostered a discussion about library-restricted sources that they didn’t know about.

• Amanda has had students watch one of our online video tutorials before the class where she visits and has them complete a worksheet to turn in. This gets some of the basics out of the way before her classroom visit.

Ideas for orientations

• Nancy has pared down her graduate orientations to 3 key things she wants them to know, rather than telling them everything she thinks they need to know. Dani modifies approach by providing a worksheet to help them focus in on those key pieces of information. Amanda focuses on things that will be most helpful as students get up and running, such as setting up RSS feeds, search alerts, RefWorks, ILL, etc. Jessica, who has long orientation sessions with her students, inserts intermittent quiz questions, with prizes, to keep their attention and keep the energy high. Questions are fun facts related to their department, or things she has shared during her session.

• Terry shared a video by the Director of the Cornell Medical Library, who imparts important facts to incoming students, but keeps it light and engaging using a lot of images in his presentation.

• Emily is planning to use a modified Pecha Kucha format for her 15-minute orientation for a large group of graduate students: 20 slides (mostly images), 20 seconds per slide. Nancy mentioned that she has enjoyed this format at conferences because they tend to be concise and engaging. Lauren suggested that the presentation could be based on what Emily has seen when working with students from this program in the past, using actual quotes from students about what they wish they had known.

Tools and technologies

• Ann is using a freely available online polling tool, Poll Everywhere, to foster engagement in orientations. Terry, Head, Information & Education Services, Health Sciences Libraries, uses clickers to learn about her students at the beginning of her orientation session, such as whether they’re new to the university, then tailors her instruction based on what they do and don’t already know.

• Theresa is trying out Prezi to create a tutorial about how to use Lexis Nexis to find polling information; Amanda, Undergraduate Instruction Coordinator, is going to use Prezi for her upcoming graduate student orientations.

New initiatives

• Gabe from WWU is preparing to teach a credit-bearing course on research mentoring. The target audience is juniors and seniors who will serve as mentors to their lower-division colleagues, based on a service learning model, to leverage peer knowledge.

• In our new Research Commons, a collaborative research space, subject librarians could use their staffing time on the service desk as their own office hours so that students know when and where they can find their subject librarian.

Other ideas and plans

• Deb, after a successful experience last year, will have another series of ‘speed consultations’ with students in one of her department’s Spanish classes. Students sign up for a 20-minute one-on-one consultation during their regular class time, and she meets with them all throughout that time period.

• Theresa has offered ‘coupons’ to students for coffee with their librarian, an informal meeting in which they can chat about their research and learn how she can support them. On another topic, she has also created an annual report that she shared with faculty, informing them what classes she has taught for them, changes to the collection, impact of the budget, and information about what they can do to maintain the collection and support students.

Who are we? What do we do?

As librarians, we find ourselves pondering what our role is and will be in the academy. We want to be embedded into classrooms, included in campus meetings of faculty, and seen as the heart of campus. Reading Char Booth's "Librarians as __________: Shapeshifting at the periphery" entry on the "In the library with a lead pipe" blog, I was struck by her statement that "Existing on the edge of the academy – a widely acknowledged and consistent complaint of the research librarian – is actually one of our most valuable strengths." She goes on to explain that by being on the periphery, "Like psychologists, consultants, or social workers, librarians have the value structure and information resources that position us to provide informed counsel to a host of information scenarios, no matter our specialization, without imposing a particular bent." And I find myself totally agreeing with her statement that "When I am at my most successful in consultations and classes I am in part librarian as research therapist, someone to whom students, colleagues, and even faculty can let down their guard in order to expose the vulnerabilities in technology, methodology, or knowledge that can be addressed without judgment." As we reconsider and redefine our roles as subject liaisons and instructors, we should remember that we are librarians - "Under shifting shapes, librarians remain the singularly knowledgeable, radically neutral, and openly accessible mavens of the information world." Hear hear!

Megan Oakleaf at UW Libraries

UW Librarians will have the opportunity to attend sessions with Megan Oakleaf during the week of April 19. Sessions include Faculty Collaboration and Outreach Strategies, Teaching through
Reference Services, Measuring Our Impact: Assessing Teaching and Learning, Creating Your Strategic Teaching & Learning Plan, Promoting Active Learning through Effective Lesson Plan
Design and Match your Teaching & Learning Approach with Student Learning Needs.

The complete workshop schedule and information is online at http://bit.ly/oakleaftraining

Winter Quarterly Instruction Roundtable: notes on primary sources

Thanks for a great discussion, everyone! A few notes and links from our discussion...please add your favorite websites, resources, and ideas in the comment section.

Favorite resources, websites:

Mindwalk Activity (Library of Congress)
An introduction to primary sources - what they are and how they can be analyzed.

History Matters (George Mason U.)
Gateway to web resources for teaching U.S. history. Helpful materials on how historians make sense of evidence.

History Link
Source for Washington State History resources, including materials for students and teachers on using primary sources.

Electronic Enlightenment (UW restricted)
Great source for primary sources, all disciplines, from the 18th century.

Digital Docs in a Box
Digital documentary kits in a few topic areas.

Burke Boxes
From the Burke Museum at UW, collections of artifacts, including curricula, that can be checked out by educators for use in the classroom.

Teaching ideas:

• Jill shared another institution's program for incoming freshman in which they are introduced to 'stations' of primary sources, showing how those artifacts can help answer questions about a range of issues and how objects are connected. A good introduction to how historians use artifacts as evidence.
  

• Students have a hard time digging into primary sources when they don't have enough historical/topical context to interpret the sources they're seeing. Theresa has used secondary and reference sources to help students identify relevant concepts, events, key terms, etc., then asks them to them track down primary sources on that subject. She has them send them to her, which she compiles, showing them the wide range of sources that can be gathered on a given subject.

• We discussed using online modules/tutorials/lectures to convey primary source basics, which may help free up more classroom time for conceptual discussions and exercises. It may also be effective to create guides on finding/accessing/using primary sources directed towards instructors, to get past some of the hurdles that students have when instruction on primary sources isn't provided in the classroom or as part of the assignment.

• It's helpful to have objects/documents that students can touch and use. Facsimiles of original sources enables this to some extent (though this approach still misses some of the features that the 'real' object doesn't have).

• Evaluating and analyzing primary sources is important, recognizing the bias and audience for a work. Can be helpful to dissect the creator of the primary source to recognize the position of the author and their particular perspective, which is necessarily incomplete.

Using audio/video/images:

• We discussed the importance of promoting primary sources in all formats, including artifacts, ephemera, photos, audio/video, film, etc. as a way to engage students in the historical period under study. For example, Theresa shows old films as students are filing in, something from the period they're about to study, such as showing 'hygeine' movies for a women's history class.
  

• Students and faculty are increasingly using images in their teaching, research, and presentations, and we can play a role in supporting them as they search and integrate sources. We can also help them with the challenges of citing sources and following copyright laws.
  

Other ideas/issues:

• It can be challenging to help faculty understand that primary sources are available in all formats, often reprinted in secondary or tertiary sources, and/or online. It may be useful to create guides aimed at instructors to guide them to useful resources. Often, instruction with primary sources is more effective when instructors are guiding students to particular sources, rather than just telling them to go out there and find something.

• UW Libraries Special Collections is glad to work with faculty and librarians to meet their primary source needs for teaching and learning. From consultations with librarians about available collections, to collaboration with the Burke, Henry, and Botanical Gardens. Microforms and newspapers has some materials like this that can be taken to classes.

[Image: Assistant Librarian Hilary St. George Saunders standing in the library of the Houses of Parliament, 1943. Hans Wild, photographer.]

Information Literacy Librarian: 10 Easy Ways to Engage Students

Information Literacy Librarian: 10 Easy Ways to Engage Students

Great reminders and tips!

YouTube/FoxNews evaluation exercise

I just came across this neat classroom activity using one of those tv news 'let's argue about stuff and pretend it's informative news coverage' segments. The librarian shows the clip to students, which launches a class discussion about evaluating information beyond knowing the difference between popular and scholarly sources. She includes discussion of what constitutes an 'expert', evaluating claims using studies and statistical sources, and the importance of evaluating information in daily life, not just academic life.