I have created a new tutorial as part of an online class on Evaluating Web Resources. I used Captivate to create it, and was inspired to include some scenario-based interactions where students get some real practice, and learn by doing.
The students are given a situation and are presented with a website – they must decide whether or not they would use the website. I also included some examples where they need to compare websites on similar topics and select the better resource. This is my first try at using branching in Captivate (very simple branching, but branching nonetheless).
New Student Orientation is in full swing at the University of Arizona, and I’m coordinating the library conference sessions that take place during lunch, across from a number of other sessions. We don’t always have the biggest crowds turn out, but it’s still worth it to reach those few students & parents.
To help draw them in, and give them something to watch while they’re waiting for the session to start, I play this video, “Did You Know?”:
It’s a great illustration of information overload. Once the video ends, I explain that it seems appropriate since libraries are all about information, and helping you navigate through the incredibly vast world of information…
Last week I attended the E-Learning Guild Annual Conference in Orlando, FL. It was something a colleague had run across a couple of months ago and thought would be appropriate to attend, as we are in the process of creating another online course.
It was absolutely enlightening! There is a whole world of E-Learning professionals out there that I didn’t even know existed. Primarily those that attended the conference were instructional designers (IDs) that either work for a corporation or non-profit or are consultants. They receive content from subject matter experts (SMEs) that they are then to make into an online learning object, and distributed across the country (or world) to the company’s employees. It’s for training purposes, mostly.
These E-Learning professionals have been doing this sort of thing for years, becoming experts in the fields of displaying online content, designing for online learners, and assessment through online mechanisms.
I can’t possibly share everything that I learned, but I will share some key points that are important to us as librarians.
Rapid e-learning tools are fantastic, and there are plenty of them out there. You don’t need to learn Flash or XML. At my library we already have Articulate, which is a big one, but I learned about other options such as Adobe Presenter, FlyPaper, Raptivity, and Lectora. There’ s also programs like CodeBaby where you can create animated characters who speak to each other. Very cool. They can be expensive, but these companies often offer academic discounts, and you can usually get a trial to test it out and see if it’s worth the money. Why is this a big deal? By taking advantage of these tools, librarians will no longer have to go to their software programmers or try to learn programming skills to create this stuff. These tools can usually be self-taught and require little technology-savviness. And they have great help forums.
Designing instruction for online learning is far different than designing it for face-to-face sessions. But fortunately, there is a lot of research and a ton of books out there on how to design effective online instruction. Check out Empowering Online Learning, Making Sense of Online Learning, the Online Learning Idea Book, and the E-Learning Handbook (which are all now on my Goodreads “to read” list). Here are some tips I picked up:
Don’t make them read. Construct your use of text very carefully. Use tables and graphics and images where appropriate. Always set a context for the learner. Always make the experience a conversation between teacher (or computer) and learner. Read Letting Go of the Words (the author, Ginny Redish, was a conference speaker on this topic and was fantastic).
Take a lesson or two from infomercials. Find ways to draw your student in by telling them what this will do for them, and why it’s worth their time. Keep it simple, but incorporate stories, and use testimonials and quotes from experts to further convince them that this instructional tutorial is worth their time.
Aesthetics matter, so remember a few simple rules. Use just one font type in one section, reserving any alternate font for important messages you want to get the students attention. Use different font sizes to distinguish headers from main points from supporting points. Don’t use decorative fonts, ever. And be consistent. Use good color schemes – Adobe Kuler is a great resource for selecting attractive color schemes.
I believe as instructional librarians are getting more pressure to produce online tutorials, classes, and other content – we should reach out to those that are experts in exactly that.
If you are involved in building online instruction or tutorials, I highly recommend attending a conference geared towards e-learning professionals. In addition to the E-Learning Guild conference, there is DevCon and DevLearn both happening this year. I have to say it’s possibly the most worthwhile and practical conference I’ve been to since becoming a librarian!
As a land grant institution, the UA Libraries also serves our local Tucson community. In these tough times it’s more important than ever that we remember our land grant mission. We provide our community users with access to computers, books, cultural events & exhibits, and electronic information resources that can not only enrich their lives, but can get them the information they need to be successful even in these tough economic times…
Yesterday I attended the second meeting of the new UA Outreach Collaborative, a group formed with the intention of bringing together outreach forces campus-wide to form partnerships, communicate our activities, share best practices, and avoid the all-too-common re-inventing of the wheel.
It’s exciting for me to meet faculty and staff from across campus that are involved in all different levels of outreach – from the Department of Education to the College of Science to the Lunar and Planetary Labratory to the Arizona State Museum to BIO5… all working on community outreach activities. Reaching out to K-12, teachers, families, and underrepresented populations. At first it was a little daunting – we all have such different missions, what do we all have in common? What can we achieve by communicating with each other?
After a “speed dating” networking session I came away with a few ideas of where this collaborative group might lead:
The Arizona State Museum has a number of educational programs going on throughout the year; part of their mission is to promote literacy. They partner with the Pima County Public Library but not with us. Could the campus library play a role here?
Junior Scientist’s Day, a family event coordinated by the Library and held at the Science-Engineering Library, is coming up this weekend. We have over a dozen tables and participants from the university and beyond. We could hold more educational events like this, and having contacts around campus could really facilitate the creation of such events.
At the library we have space for exhibits, both at Main and Science-Engineering, space that goes empty to often. We also have big meeting rooms and an electronic classroom perfect for workshops and trainings. Let’s take advantage of these, and invite others to use our resources for outreach purposes. When we bring together our assets we increase the possiblities of what we can do.
I’m hopeful that continuing to have these monthly meetings and bringing the outreach community together will open up doors and encourage creative new projects. As someone new to the “outreach” world of librarianship, this is an exciting concept…
So my library recently went through a restructuring, and on the Undergraduate Services Team where I work we’re gaining two former science-engineering librarians, and losing one of our outreach librarians as well as our graphic designer. I am one of two new permanent librarians on the team, just hired a month ago. To help facilitate the transition, we had two days of teambuilding where we broke down all the work our team does and organized it into categories – outreach, instruction, training, reference & information commons, and the website. We were each placed in one or more of these categories based on our experience; I was put in outreach, reference & information commons, and training. Surprisingly I wasn’t put in instruction even though my job description is very heavy on instruction (I actually was put in there then removed because we had too many people there as it was & I was in too many groups). Then we went off in our groups to discuss that work and come up with a plan for how it’s going to get done.
So now I find myself being pulled in all different directions. Officially, just because you’re in the planning group for a certain category of work doesn’t mean you’ll actually be doing that work. But it’s hard to avoid it. And outreach is huge. There are 3 of us in this group and it looks like the 3 of us will be doing a lot with outreach. (Not to mention the fact that we’re changing seating arrangements in the office based on our work and I’m in the “outreach” group). Which I don’t mind because I really enjoy it, and actually even asked in my interview about if I would get to participate in outreach and was told “probably not.” Ironic, since this appears to be turning into my primary function. And while I’m not in the instruction group, I am teaching two sections of the Skillful Researcher this fall and have heard rumors my name is being proposed for a number of instructional types of work that needs to get done. I’m definitely big on the educational technology and have worked a lot with this in the past 8 months which I’d like to continue to do; I also love being in a classroom. And I am also interested in taking on a new role of looking closely at learning spaces and ways we can improve them. Not to mention reference & information commons & training.
Pretty soon our team leader will be sending out what all the groups have come up with for their categories of work, and team members get to share which ones they are interested in. The ultimate decision for who is doing what is being coordinated by the team leader. I realize I need to focus my energies, especially as a new librarian. And I want to avoid getting overwhelmed and losing quality in my work. At first I thought outreach was what I would most enjoy. Then I got into instruction and really liked it, and applied for this position believing instruction is what I was going to do. Reference and training is a place where I have a lot of experience and the background to do pretty well, and I can see how these can be improved which is really exciting to me. So now it’s time to do some soul searching and figure out how I want to focus, and I need to do it fast… yikes!
This past Friday we held the 3rd annual Amazing Library Race: Desert Edition at the UA’s Main Library. We broke previous numbers and had 210 participants show up, including students, staff, faculty, and community members. To learn more about this event and how it all works, see my post from last year.
Amazing Library Race - Public Library Station
As an organizer this year, I spent all morning helping with setup and coordinating volunteers, then was a floater during the actual event, and helped with take down. By the time the Amazing Happy Hour started at 5:00 I was completely exhausted. But it was well worth it, and here’s why:
Participants really learned a lot about library resources and services. They also learned about how to navigate the 5 story building, which is often intimidating – not to mention confusing – for newbies.
It is the only event held in the library where we have this substantial number of participants who are our primary audience. Exhibits, lectures, and other events don’t even come close. The energy that’s present up and down the library stacks is something you really only get to see this one time a year.
Marketing a lot this year has made the event known to the campus community. Even those that didn’t make it to the event itself very likely heard about it. We had hundreds of table toppers in the student union that week, and posters around University Blvd. where students are constantly passing by. While we only reached a small percentage of our audience during the actual 2 hour event, we reached many more in other ways.
This event promotes an image that the library isn’t usually known for. Libraries and the people that work in libraries are fun. And approachable. And we want to help.
Those that work in the library get to all come together to make this event possible. I coordinated over 60 volunteers to staff the stations & help with set-up and take-down. It’s a great opportunity to work with people you don’t see every day and don’t otherwise get to work with.
Word of mouth is powerful. I think this event is extremely important, and hope those that joined us that day share some of what they learned with friends, classmates, and colleagues. The actual impact of this event is difficult to measure, but I truly think it has the potential to educate library users far and wide about the many services we offer.
Amazing Library Race - Presentation Practice Room
A few things were organized differently this year:
Rather than having a raffle at the end of the event where we later contacted prize winners, we gave away all of our prizes during the actual event (with the exception of the grand prize – an IPod). To win prizes, students completed an activity or played a game. 4 prize stations could be found along the trail, but they weren’t advertised to avoid those stations getting backed up. Those that were successful could pick from a list of prizes. As time went on, obviously, the list got smaller. All prizes were gone soon after 2:00. The prize activities were:
Media Station: Play “Scene It?“. This could be answering a question about a movie clip, placing films in the order in which they were released, or guessing what movie an image is from.
Middle Eastern Studies Collection Station: Capitals of the Middle East. Pick a slip from a hat, where there would be the name of a Middle Eastern country’s capital. Correctly state the country’s name and you win. (We had a map displayed of the Middle East to help out a bit).
Reference Desk Station: Knock Down a Librarian. My wonderful colleague Forrest let us borrow his librarian action figure which we set up on a table with a backdrop of reference materials. You stand behind the line, are given a ball, and get one shot to knock her down.
Amazing Library Race - Knock Down a Librarian Game
Express Check-Out: Find a Bookmark. You select a book from a cart of books about desert survival. If the book you pick has an Amazing Race bookmark in it, you win.
We also had some new stations this go around:
University College. This is located in the Integrated Learning Center (ILC) right off the courtyard where we have our final station of free pizza, soda, & eegees. Undecided students, which is much of our audience, are a part of this college and receive advising here. Keith Rocci – who is also our partner in crime for the Skillful Researcher course – staffed this station and had students answer riddles to win a ton of prizes that they had purchased.
Reference Desk. This was a station before but it was combined with the Presentation Practice Rooms; this time it stood alone so it could focus more on the reference services provided at this site.
Maps. We added this to the microforms station, which is in the same section on the first floor, so students could pick between answering a maps question (based on maps on display) or a microforms question (based on microforms on display where they had to use the machine to find a certain news story). We also displayed a number of globes, including globes of the moon and astronomical globes, which many library users don’t even know that we have.
Amazing Library Race - Maps Station
We invited students from SIRLS to volunteer for the event. Two did, and after helping handout flyers around campus they got to staff the stations, promote library services, interact with librarians, and have some fun participating a large scale orientation event.
And we’re working harder to get feedback, so we can prove to the library that this event is worth the time, effort, and money that goes into it. We took CatCard numbers at the opening station so we can gather details on who participated. We are also going to send out a Survey Monkey to gather better feedback from both participants and volunteers. This is all in addition to the feedback form all the participants were asked to fill out during the race. My hope is that once we collect this data, we will have a stronger argument for why this event is important, why it should continue to be supported in the future.
I have been offered a permanent position as an Undergraduate Services Librarian at the University of Arizona Libraries. This is actually – essentially – the position I have been filling on a temporary contract since January. It’s still an Assistant Librarian level, and it’s for the most part the same work I have been doing with instructional design and educational technology. There are a few differences, though:
I am permanent, so I don’t have to worry about where I will be come December. Wahoo!! This also means I can work on more long-term projects. Things like grant projects, event planning, and cross-functional groups where members serve a term of a year or often more.
I am continuing-eligible, which means in 5 years I submit paperwork to become an “Associate Librarian.” This requires scholarship and service – things like publishing, committee work, etc. Shouldn’t be too hard. I’m already on the ACRL Committee on Ethics and have two potential papers in the beginning phases. I’m actually excited to get to do this sort of thing and be encouraged to do it. A few years later (although often many years later) I can go up for the “Full Librarian” title, which requires you be nationally recognized as contributing substantially to the field.
I get paid less! Silly, right? It’s all about timing. Supposedly, in January the median pay grade was $300 more per year than it is now. So I’m going to get a little less per paycheck. Bummer.
Overall, how do I feel?
Excited. There are a lot of things I really enjoy about working in this library and especially in Undergraduate Services. Developing online learning objects and classes. Reconfiguring reference services. Teaching undergraduates. Developing curriculum. Creating outreach opportunities. Working collaboratively. Working independently. Being creative.
Surprised. Last December I was convinced that I would be moving somewhere outside of Tucson. This isn’t because I didn’t like the location or the library, but staying didn’t seem realistic. For one thing, it’s unusual to move from a classified staff position to a librarian position. Most new hires have some outside library experience, almost always professional librarian experience. Plus I was in a position where I could move – there are many more opportunities outside of Tucson, so I figured that is what would happen.
Reflective. Who would have thought? I started as a student shelving books in 2003, to see if libraries is where I wanted to end up. I held a number of student positions, then in 2005 became a part-time Library Specialist the same time I entered library school. I then went to full-time Library Information Associate then Library Information Analyst in access services. I moved to the temporary Librarian position this year and now landed a permanent Librarian gig. Pretty cool…
I’ve just finished revamping the second module of the new online info lit class, “The Skillful Researcher,” a collaboration between the library and University College. The module is on “Narrowing Your Topic.” The students are writing a hypothetical research paper; they are doing all the research and creating an annotating bibliography as their final project. The second module is very important, since it’s where they pick their topic for research, and create a few potential research questions.
The students have already selected one of 5 broad topics we give them – education, food, human rights, music, or sports. For the assignment and discussion posting, they have to come up with 2-3 research questions that are appropriate for writing a hypothetical 8-12 page research paper.
Here are the techniques we’re teaching them:
1) Brainstorming. We have them complete a worksheet where they can talk about what they already know about a topic, what interests them about it, and what they would like to know more about.
2) Concept Mapping. I found this really cool YouTube video demonstrating how to do this:
3) Reviewing What’s Out There. We have them select an article from a list on various aspects of their broad topics. All the articles are from CQ Researcher, which is great for topic overviews and includes nice bibliographies. I created a Camtasia video on how to use CQ Researcher, and directions are presented in an Articulate template.
4) Defining Certain Aspects. A tutorial created using Articulate demonstrates how they can narrow a broad topic by looking at thing such as certain time frames, geographical locations, types of people, and/or aspects (sociological, economical, legal, etc.).
Since it’s only a one-credit class, and this module only lasts one week, we can’t teach much more than this. Another technique that I would like to teach (possibly if we create a “Skillful Researcher 2”) is how to review what’s out there by looking in library catalogs and databases. This gets a little more complicated but is a great skill for students to learn.
If anyone has other methods they teach students, I’d be interested to hear what they are! I’m hoping these 4 will be a good foundation for them, but any feedback would be appreciated as well.
User Experience & Libraries 