Presentation at ACRL New England Conference 2012 that talks about how Reference Librarians embedded information literacy lessons into a campus-wide Moodle training program for faculty.
Incoming and Outgoing Shipments in 1 STEP Using Odoo 17
Teaching Faculty to Embed Library Resources & Services into Online Classrooms
1. Teaching Faculty to Embed
Library Resources & Services
into Online Classrooms
Gary S. Atwood
Springfield College
ACRL New England Annual Conference | May 18, 2012
2. Q. Do you provide any kind of
support for faculty who use an
online classroom (BlackBoard,
Desire2Learn, Sakai, etc.)?
Thanks for the great introduction. Thank you all for coming to my little talk today. \nI’d also like to say “Hi” to everyone in the virtual conferences in VT and ME - in fact, let’s all say “Hi!”\nGreat.\n
I’d like to get started today, by asking a question:\nCouple of years ago, I would have said “No”\nHad instructions on web site for linking to online articles but that’s it - Changed in 2010 - SC made 2 decisions\n
One, switch from our old LMS to a new one called Moodle\n
ALL faculty members were going to be trained - regardless of whether or not they were going to use an online class.\nGreat in theory - in practice, caused a huge logistical problem\n
Only one Educational Technologist for 214 faculty members and dozens of adjuncts\n\n
Looking at the numbers, we could see that there was no way that one individual could reach all these people in the time frame we were looking at.\n\n\n
Created Training Team - Ed. Tech, Reference Librarians + other staff members\nTake formal Moodle training and then take what they learned and create in-house training program for faculty\nProbably asking yourself, “Why would Reference Librarians agreed to this?” - 3 main reasons:\n
First reason really doesn’t need much explanation - librarians are awesome, right?\n
2nd was experience - Run 2 college-wide information literacy programs for faculty.\nKnew a little bit about putting a program like this together - Wanted to help the college avoid some of the mistake we made.\n
Saw it as perfect opportunity to deliver under-the-radar information literacy education to our faculty.\nSC - IL is gen. ed. competency - supposed to be embedded in all courses - not there yet.\nFaculty not opposed to IL - gets crowded out, which is why we’re always look for opportunities to get the word out.\nKind of like an IL Trojan Horse\n
Don’t get me wrong - Big leap of faith on our part.\nNot sure how we were going to embed library into Moodle training or if it would work\nBig bust - no problem, we’d still get face time with faculty, which is always good.\n
That’s WHY we joined - Now I’d like to tell you about the training & how we worked the library into the training.\nTraining Team needed to be taught how to use Moodle - Enrolled in 1 month training course offered by Moodle Rooms\n500 - purpose is to get us familiar with navigating the system and how to use certain features\n501 - focused on creating specific learning objects, into to online pedagogy best practices\n
That’s WHY we joined - Now I’d like to tell you about the training & how we worked the library into the training.\nTraining Team needed to be taught how to use Moodle - Enrolled in 1 month training course offered by Moodle Rooms\n500 - purpose is to get us familiar with navigating the system and how to use certain features\n501 - focused on creating specific learning objects, into to online pedagogy best practices\n
Time to create our own training program - Focused on how to put content into Moodle courses.\n“What are the key resources that faculty need to know in order to get up and running?” - E.g. online discussion modules\nTopics not necessarily library-related, but we tried to work in as many resources and services as we could\n
Showed them how to link to resources outside Moodle - usually web sites\nWe showed them how to link to full text articles in library databases ... how to link to research guides - anything as long as it was library related\n
Another popular topic was embedding videos - usually done by using YouTube\nWe tweaked this to show them how to embed videos from Films on Demand\nSomeone always said they didn’t know these resources could be added to online classrooms\nSome would admit that they didn’t know about resource\nKnew we were on the right track - ex. usually led to larger IL discussions.\n
Some examples led to large IL discussions\nAdd pictures to Moodle - ask “Is this legal to do?”\nAlways generated great discussion about copyright - sometimes had to cut discussion off because people were so into it.\n
So that was section one\n
Section two - focused more on pedagogical best practices. Variety of methods but small groups best.\nBreak up into groups - facilitated by Training Team member - How do you adapt part of your class to online?\nEx. adapt research assignment so that it’s more collaborative, I used it to talk about research in general\nNot as many “Ah-Ha” moments\n
Official training ends, support phase. Making plans for next round of training.\n
Was it worth it? Was huge project - felt it was worth the time and effort to participate\n3 specific reasons:\n
Good job of reintroducing faculty to resources and services.\nGot sense of what they liked - hope to use this in our marketing efforts\n
Got to “audition”for faculty - Not sure if people think we’re terrible teachers, but our performance erased that idea.\nPeople commented us on the program and our delivery.\nFinally, strengthened connection w/faculty - has led to more in-depth discussions after Moodle training over\n\n
Jan - worked on her class - showed her Moodle bells and whistles, used as opportunity to educate her about library resources and services e.g. online databases - research classes - books for reserve.\nIdeally, she’d have gotten this info anyway - Made this connection because of Moodle classes\n
Nothing perfect, had it’s problems - best way to sum up is that it was huge demand on our time.\nRipple effect throughout library - Other staff workloads increased - other projects pushed to back burner.\nFeel like pluses outweighed the minuses.\n
Audience asks “Gary, this is great, but for most of us we’ll never have the chance to help train faculty on a new system the way you did. What can the rest of us do to increase the library’s presence in online classrooms at our institutions?”\n
So glad you asked!\nOur situation was unique - have few recommendations based on our experience and my research into embedded librarianship.\n
All systems have similar features - hopefully you can learn as INSTRUCTOR - If you understand how back end works, you’ll have better idea how to plug the library in. E.g. - HTML block could be used to add chat widget.\nMinimum - get trained as student - you can still learn about strengths and weaknesses.\nGOAL - learn enough about system to be able to suggest ways to add library to classes.\n
Level of communication b/t library and ITS - can be a little strained. Why? Don’t really speak same language - leads to lots of misunderstandings.\nWant to be involved with LMS? Need to overcome this problem - LMS administrator is always someone in IT. Worth the effort. \nWe work with Ed. Tech - he’s advocated on our behalf many times & big reason why we’re so involved.\n
LMS have basic template for all courses - includes specific info for everyone. Get link into template - if it’s there, then library is automatically in all courses.\nWe got actual VR button and link to home page. Ex. of benefit of working with Ed. Tech. - he suggested this.\n
My institution would never go for this.\nResults of survey say that 76% of courses have a library link.\n
Theory here simple: Faculty know about resources = put them into courses. \nFaculty put resources into classes = students use them - hopefully\nSeems obvious, literature suggests that % of faculty don’t know about or don’t know how to use resources.\n
Penn State U. - faculty asked to rate awareness of library resources. Top one is the best result.\nResults seem standard - based on other articles I’ve read. \nPretty depressing - why we need to continue outreach to faculty. - This was driving force behind our decision to join Moodle training.\n
Well, I’m almost at the end of my little talk, but I’d like to leave you with a couple of things to think about....\n\n
First, online classes aren’t a fad. They’re a big part of the future.\n\n
Enrollments have grown every year since 2002 - no sign of stopping.\n6.1 million students took online course in fall of 2010. Increase of 560,000 students from previous year.\nIncreasingly, this is where students are - we need to be in this space as well.\n\n
Not a given that faculty will direct students to library for research.\n\n
One study found that 60% of faculty supplied research info for students.\nDon’t over-generalize, but this is probably happening to some extent at many schools.\nNothing wrong with that, but I want to make sure my faculty are making informed decisions.\n
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Thank you for your time.\nThanks everyone at ACRL New England for putting on such a great conference.\n