Back to reflecting!

It's been a long time since I've posted but I'm making an effort this year to spend more time reflecting after teaching.  Yesterday was my first class at my new place of work and, while I'm still processing the experience, there are a number of observations that I can make right away.

First, the learners are different.  My experience with teaching as been in large, public universities.  I'm now teaching in a small, private university.  One of the main differences I saw was in how the students work together.  In my large, public university, I would start explaining the group teaching project I have my students do in class and they were already thinking as a group as I was pulling the groups together and handing out instructions.  In my small, private university, I noticed students were a bit more reluctant to do group work, much as I was in my own small private education.  In my mind, I was almost always against doing group work because I had an easier time processing on my own.  My own educational experience emphasized individual work and that's where I felt my strengths were.  I believe my students in my small, private university feel the same way.  Many of them are strong, high performers who have learned to do so through individual work.  As a result, my group project fell rather flat here.

Second, the environment is different.  I'm used to a large number of similar classes.  While I would ideally spend time planning for each class, once the 'season' hit, I would churn out session after session, knowing that each class was pretty much expected to complete the same or similar writing assignments.  Here, it seems that there is more individuation between classes, making for more prep and a variety of instruction.  I had to prepare a specialized instruction session for how to find a specific resource and that also fell flat.  I didn't build the scaffolding for learning correctly and as a result, I felt the students were confused.  It's hard to teach something specialized without a strong frame of context, otherwise it seems a little pointless from the students' point of view to perform such a specialized task.  It seems obvious now but during my prep time, I couldn't see the problem.  It was only as I was teaching that I realized my mistake. 

This isn't to say that one university is better than another.  Public and private universities both have their benefits and deficits, just like anything else.  What intrigues me the most is how much the differences in environment and learner characteristics can change how well instruction performs.  I've learned that I need to explore activities that are engaging but solitary and I need to take the time to build a logical and obvious learning scaffolding, if I want to avoid confusion.  I have two more sessions this week, so I'll tweak my exercises and instruction and see how it works.

What are some of your favorite prep activities to avoid the mistakes I've made?

How assessment is like trying to cut a square of fabric without using a ruler

Right after I wrote up my class objectives in the previous blog post, I realized that they are probably not easily measured. As I was preparing the materials for class, I wondered how I would conduct an effective assessment of whether or not the activities were a success. My first thought was to assess my orientation activities and see how I should change my objectives to be more testable. And it reminded me of the time I was trying to cut a square of fabric without using a ruler. I can't remember why I didn't just get a ruler but I do remember the outcome: failure. I just kept making a diamond, no matter how hard I tried. I need a ruler for my class objectives so that I can actually cut a square once rather than cutting slightly smaller diamonds for hours. So I went back to the drawing board. What is a learning objective, anyway? Using my trusty old Farmer, I went back to the idea of objectives as resulting in changed behavior. I also went back to basics regarding assessment. When I thought of 'assessment,' I realize that I had been actually thinking 'summative assessment,' which is actually a bit reductive. I have many assessment options before me. I could do a pre-test to determine where my learners are prior to instruction and a post-test to determine where they are when they leave the classroom. I could do a formative assessment during class in order to determine how they are developing. And dozens more. I remembered something that struck me during Immersion earlier this month: the concept of assessment as revealing a picture of learning, which can change based on how assessment is used. I could assess myself as an instructor by including how many instruction sessions I lead in a semester. Or I could draw up strategically important objectives and assess to see how I am meeting these objectives, if at all.

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!