First Orientation session resulted in success!

Today is the orientation! We have two sessions scheduled and the first session has just finished. The active learning activity seemed to go over very well from my perspective, although I did not do an assessment for this session. The group activity asked that they each take a database, explore it, and then teach it to the group. This is something I've traditionally been afraid of handing over to active learning exercises because I worry that not all the information will be covered, that students will not want to participate, that the class will find it dull...but in truth, this happens when I lecture anyway because it's less engaging. The handouts to guide what they were exploring in each database were key to giving each resulting presentation structure. During the group work time, I observed so many peer-to-peer teaching moments! Additionally, the types of questions I was getting from each group were targeted and motivated by the students' curiosity, not my instructor-imposed questions. One group showed advanced features and coupled it with why it's helpful to use from a student perspective. I am in awe. I know intellectually that active learning exercises based on a constructivist approach to learning that embraces different learning styles is effective but I've never had the courage to give up the power of the instructor. There were some problems. I had one group discuss logging on from off-campus and unfortunately, because the semester hasn't officially started, none of them could log on. Additionally, the instructor computer that the groups were using to present from was very slow. I feel an assessment component would reveal any other weaknesses from a student perspective. In the second session, I will do a soft assessment to gather feedback. I can say without a doubt that this session was light years of my usual lecture-based orientation. I feel like the students actually walked away with some sort of intellectual benefit, which I could never be sure of from my lecture-based style. I am a little worried about the second session, however. In the past, I've come up with activities that seemed to work very well in one session that simply flopped in another. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the second session goes as well as the first!

The problem with orientations, or, in which I try something new that may or may not work.

So, I have to confess: I am a lecturer. I love to lecture. I try to stop myself even as I see students' eyes glazing over and professors yawning...and yet...I just can't stop talking. In an information literacy instruction session (or bibliographic instruction session, if you prefer), I can get away with lecturing. I justify it to myself by saying that OF COURSE I must do tool instruction. Which means I basically have to lecture. But this is a lie. I know for a fact that I could transform a lot of my lecture into active learning sessions that would be more impactful to student learning. I also tend to rely on lecture for all orientation activities. To be honest, I'm still gaining my footing in orientation situations. I'm a person who needs meaning in my life and I just can't find the meaning I need in orientations to deliver a session that doesn't seem...well..rambling. I know people need to be 'introduced' to the library. But I actually hate that the library is so foreign in our daily information seeking that we require orientations to the library. Anyway, that's a bit besides the point. The point is, I struggle with making orientations relevant because I struggle with the relevancy of orientations. They are usually too short. Orientations all occur on the same day or in the same week, when the students are just overwhelmed with information. And it's not immediately obvious where the library fits in unless you are already looking at your syllabus and seeing all the research you'll be doing. And this week, I have 2 orientations to co-teach. For these particular orientations, the program requires a bit more than the usual orientation to services. These are graduate students who need to leave at least somewhat familiar with the business resources we have so that they can jump right into their courses. I'm determined to leave Ava the Lecturer at home. So, I've come up with a plan. First, before doing anything at all, I came up with some objectives for the orientation sessions that take into consideration the needs of the students, not my needs. I came up with 2 that, while still rusty, at least gave me a place to start. 1. Students will be able to explain how to use features of the databases we'll be using in order to find and use information quickly and effectively. 2. Students will create a research strategy in order to locate the information needed to complete assignments. I don't quite have the skill of writing teaching objections, clearly, but we'll see how these work. So, after writing these objectives, I came up with a 2 active learning exercises. To teach the database, my usual lecture bread-and-butter, I've decided to divide the class into 4 groups and assign each group a database to teach or a service to explore. After working together for a time, each group will present to the rest of the class. I've created handouts to guide them as they explore the databases so that when they present there will be some consistency in the presentations. There are 2 issues I'm anticipating: 1. Whether or not the handouts will be 'guide-y' enough and 2. Time. Time is always a factor. I think it will always be a factor but I still worry about it a lot. For the second activity, I have created a handout for the students to fill out as they are listening to the other presentations that will ask them why and how they would use the resource being discussed in their future assignments. My hope is that they can take this handout with them as a cheat-sheet for when they start writing papers. I've never really done anything like this before. As I confessed earlier, I'm a lecturer. I love to lecture because then I control every aspect of the class and I like control. From my perspective, active learning requires that you give up that power and give it instead to the students, a concept that is very scary to me. What if it doesn't work? What if the students don't see the value and just think the whole orientation is stupid? What if it's a total failure and the students learn nothing? Or what if it's successful and I have to do this again? I'll blog later this week regarding the results. They could be fantastic or they could be completely awful but whatever they are, I'll share them with you.

Welcome!

Hello, everyone! I'm an academic librarian in South Florida and I'm intending the blog to be a space where I can reflect on my teaching. I hope that my sharing of my forays into active learning and instructional design can be helpful to others. More than anything, I hope others will comment and help me expand my teaching horizons. Please feel free at any point to comment, criticize constructively, and share resources!