Sarah Walkowiak from Brandeis discussed disruptive change and some of the changes they Library has made to change with the times.
She highlighted that at Brandeis, the learning goals have been put into an official visual and they are on a banner in front of the library, instead of hidden on a web page, putting the goals in front of everyone on campus…
She outlined where instruction fits in the library and on campus. She’s part of the Research and Instruction group, which encompasses E-Scholarship, Instructional Technology, the Instruction Program, and Archives and Special Collections. This is separate from their Public and Integrated Services Group.
Next, she described their new instruction paradigm. Instruction programs should be:
- Systematic – including the First Year Experience program, which they are in the process of assessing
- Progressive – to meet students where they are on their journey as students
- Assessed – Assessment is needed, and they’re working on this.
- Research Based – Including sharing their research and their readings.
- Sustainable – Efficiency is necessary so that they can have time to do other things…
- Comprehensive – Want students to understand the whole research process.
To this end, they have been examining various programs they offer.
First Year Library Instruction Program
They recently redesigned their First Year Library Instruction Program, and learned that, at that point, the students don’t really retain information and the research process is fuzzy. First year students also don’t get the big picture of research, and the librarians learned that their video tutorials weren’t as effective as they’d hoped.
When they looked at the program in relation to the paradigm, the discovered that while the first year program was systematic and comprehensive, they still needed work on the sustainability of the program.
Frontiers of Digital Learning and Research Series
Another program they started was the Frontiers of Digital Learning and Research Series pilot program to explore current trends. This discussed more advanced topics. Again, while it was progressive and comprehensive, since it was a pilot project, the jury is still out on whether it’s sustainable.
Co-curricular ‘lab’ model
She described another model they’re exploring, the “Co-curricular ‘lab’ model,” which is in conjunction with another course students would be taking. The courses include journalism, film studies, electronic music, and literature. The library participates several times over the course of the semester. For this model, whether the lab met the criteria varied as the topics and coverage varied. The payoff for being embedded has ultimately outweighed the amount of effort required to run the program, which leaves its sustainability still undetermined.
Workshops & One-time instruction
For some time, they have had a Citation Management Workshop Series, and the sessions had been taught by only one person. They did get more staff involved and now present more and on more tools.
Their one-time instruction sessions are also under redesign. They’re considering how to assess the sessions as well, especially because they do vary. One of their goals is to create sessions that can be re-used, so that it’s easier to develop and deliver sessions.
The Future
Potential future projects include perhaps an ethnographic study of faculty research practices, working with the LMS, and others. Through planning sessions, they also discovered that they need to delve into digital literacies, and have created a “Digital Literacies Studio” as well as a weekly workshop series and move to co-learning in the program. This is starting, so, it’s to be continued…
Q&A
How do you determine the topics for your workshops and how well attended are they? They’re based on research topics that are going on, and they’re not well attended. They are still working on a workshop models. (They do other workshops on faculty request.)
What evidence told you that the video tutorials were not that effective? They looked at the links and based on the follow-up assessment and verbal feedback, they came to that conclusion. She noted that it might be the librarian-directed content, and maybe having a student help design the tutorials would help. She said that one student said that he did not want the conceptual tutorials when he was trying to write a paper.
One attendee mentioned an excellent text on digital literacy, Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies, and Practices as a starting point for those interested.