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I am the Reference & Instruction Librarian at Antioch University Los Angeles. This is my first Library Day in the Life blog post and the 7th round of the project.

7-8am: I woke up and got ready for work. I usually eat breakfast around this time, so I was very hungry on my way.

8-8:40am: I thought I was going to be late for my meeting. There’s nothing as unpredictable as Los Angeles traffic.

8:40-8:45am: I arrived at the library to find a huge spread: fresh fruit salad, croissants of chocolate and almond, bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, Starbucks coffee all laid out for a breakfast meeting of the library staff. I unpacked my bag, grabbed my notebook, and took a seat.

8:45-10:30am: My first library all-staff meeting was surprisingly productive. (Mac 10.7 aka Lion wanted to correct “surprisingly” to “surpassingly.” How apropos! It did surpass my expectations!) We discussed many things including revamping our library policy, starting a library newsletter, and updating our Writing Center scheduling system (from paper to electronic).

10:30-12:00pm: I transcribed my notes into a TaskPaper document and added the things that I will need to do to my current to-do list. (The thing is a monster, but it helps keep track of everything I do each month.) I checked my email, confirmed a workshop for Saturday on Research Strategies for our English for Academic and Professional Purposes program, reserved a projector for the class I’m teaching tomorrow, and answered some reference questions.

12:00-12:30pm: I heated up my not so wonderful lunch of slow cooker veggie chili and ate it with my amazingly delicious piece of cornbread at the front desk with our wonderful student workers. While I ate, I helped one of them to brainstorm her hypothesis for a class.

12:30-12:35pm: A student wandered into the library asking how to log in to the computer to get a syllabus for his class. (Students don’t log in to the computers in the computer lab.) I told him to show me what he was doing so that I could help him better and followed him into the computer lab. It turned out he wanted to log in to the learning management system, Sakai, and wanted lesson plans, not the syllabus. We found what he needed and I showed him how to print.

12:35-1:30pm: I began working on a Keynote presentation for the class I’ll be teaching tomorrow, Style & Argument. After Wednesday’s amazing results, I want to include as much active learning as I can in my teaching. It’s hard!

1:30-1:45pm: The English for Academic and Professional Purposes Coordinator dropped by and we discussed the workshop for Saturday.

1:45-2:15pm: I went back to working on my lesson plan for tomorrow.

2:15-2:25pm: A student walked in the library complaining of not being able to log into the databases when she’s off-campus. I asked what she did from off campus and learned that she was a new student who hadn’t joined me for the library orientation for her program. I gave her a couple handouts, explained the process, and told her to schedule an appointment with me to learn more. She was very appreciative and told me that she’d tell the other students in the class about making an appointment with me. Yay!

2:25-2:45pm: I finished up what I was working on and wrote down some thoughts for later.

2:45-3:15pm: I drove home in record time.

3:15-5:00pm: I went with my fiancé to grab a coffee and get dog food in Hollywood.

5:00-6:00pm: We drove from Hollywood back Downtown and picked up the dog from daycare. (I know, I know. That’s so LA!)

6:00-7:00pm: I finalized my presentation and practiced on my fiancé. I think it will go well.

7:00-7:30pm: I ate dinner. Another slow cooker meal. The one thing that was nice about it was to not have to make dinner when I got home.

7:30-8:00pm: I finalized handouts for the class, including a learning assessment handout. I’m looking forward to tomorrow!

In an earlier blog post, I explain that I’ve figured out my teaching style. In this one, I prove that I didn’t and don’t really know much about teaching yet. (That’s the first step in learning, isn’t it?) I’m only just recently starting to use active learning techniques. This is an explanation of my first and very successful attempt at it.

Earlier this week I taught a class of new undergraduate students about the research tools that are available to them. It was one of my best teaching experiences to date, and it was totally different than my usual teaching style.

A little background about this class: they are required to learn about the research tools available to them, but they usually have no research assignments in the quarter they take this class. As a result, the instruction can’t be applied to anything they are currently working on—so they tend to, understandably, zone out.

I knew what I had to teach, but I had reservations about doing it the usual way. In the past I would give them an overview of the websites they would (hopefully) be using and demonstrate how to use them. This time I wanted to do something different.

I decided to break the students into teams. I made signs for each website I wanted to go over: RefWorks, OhioLINK, Academic Search Complete, Google Scholar, and WorldCat. I taped each sign to a monitor in each group of computers. When the students arrived, I asked them to choose a website and a seat. Once we were ready to begin, I had each row work together to fill out a handout that asked what the website was for and how it should be used. When their handouts looked filled in and their conversations were starting to go off topic (about 10 minutes later), I asked them to present their findings. Each group presented about their website, and I added any useful information they missed.

If a presentation covered topics that were too vague to imagine, I performed a brief demonstration. The Academic Search Complete group went before the OhioLINK group, so when OhioLINK came around I was able to draw the connection between them. OhioLINK is the website through which we access Academic Search Complete, but students often misunderstand OhioLINK as the database itself. After all the presentations were completed, I provided a handout that included how to log in from off campus and all the URLs to the websites we discussed. Then we took a break.

After the break, I asked the students to write down what kinds of people get tattoos. I had the students to talk with the others in their row to come up with one answer. After a couple minutes, I asked for their ideas and drew a mindmap with “people who have tattoos” in the center and their examples stemming from that. I explained that they had just brainstormed more specific examples of an idea, something they will want to do when they search for information for their research. They loved that!

I then explained linking words (Boolean operators without the scary name) and had them to try it out on Academic Search Complete using another handout as a prompt. We went over the handout and I asked them why they had more results for OR than for AND. It really seemed to help them understand.

When the class was over, I requested that they write down one thing they learned and one thing that still confused them. (I used to provide questions like, “How likely are you to use this information?” and “How much did you know previously?”—more evaluation of me than assessment of their learning.) I got some great information from that.

The whole thing was a combination of other people’s ideas. The part before the break was inspired by Erin Dorney. It was based on my understanding of her library instruction style. She splits her students into groups, asks them to explore a website, and has them report back to their class about it. The part after the break was from Michael Lorenzen on LibraryInstruction.com and worked like a charm. The assessment at the end was inspired by Catherine Pellegrino‘s ACRL webcast on July 19, “Classroom Assessment for Information Literacy Instruction.”

I’m trying to use more active learning techniques in my instruction. In this class, I used think-pair-share, recasting, minute papers/freewriting, and scanning. It worked fabulously for this level class, and I think it will work well for higher levels too… Now I’m trying to figure out how to do that.

Do you use active learning techniques in your instruction sessions? If so, what activities do you plan?

I’m on my way back from Philadelphia (literally: my plane has wifi!), where the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference 2011 was held. I was only there for a short time, but I got a lot out of it. My strategy for making the most of my time was to pick sessions that sounded interesting. A pattern emerged in what I chose: nearly every session was on instruction and/or outreach.

In Instruction Deconstruction: Perspectives on Critical Information Literacy with Dustan McNutt, Carrie Donovan, and Anthony Pash, the presenters highlighted the idea of critical social theory: the idea that education doesn’t occur in a vacuum, that “the language and culture of school is the language and culture of the elite.” Carrie Donovan went on to explain that since librarians are not all trained in pedagogy, we think more about the WHAT of what we teach than the HOW and the WHY of what we teach.

Char Booth’s presentation on her invited paper The Librarian as Situated Educator: Instructional Literacy and Participation in Communities of Practice was about four main ideas: communities of practice, situated learning, instructional literacy, and good enough. She defined communities of practice as a group of people who coalesce around an idea (e.g. librarians). Situated learning is what communities of practice do. The communities are drawn closer by sharing experience with those more and less experienced. Instructional literacy is the series of skills that library educators can bring, learning to teach as we go since most of us didn’t learn to teach in graduate school. Char tied this idea to Carrie Donovan’s presentation on thinking about the HOW and the WHY of what we teach, in addition to the WHAT. We should always be reflective after each instruction session, asking ourselves what went right, what went wrong, what can I do better next time, and was this the right way to present to this group. Good enough is the idea that we have to learn to be comfortable being confident educators. All of us are drawn to this profession because we believe in it, so we should believe in ourselves.

She explained, reiterating Carrie Donovan’s ideas, that the better we understand the community of students we teach, the better we will teach. This presentation was so refreshing. I can’t wait to go back into the classroom. My notes are not enough; if this sounds even remotely interesting to you, you must seek out her presentation and watch it yourself. Char Booth was absolutely amazing; it was the best librarian presentation I have ever seen in my life. Go, watch her presentation on ACRL, read her paper, view her slides, read her blog, buy her book. You won’t be sorry.

What I learned:

• Think about the HOW and the WHY of what I teach
• Good enough is good enough in teaching (don’t be a perfectionist)
• Reflect after every session (self-feedback)
• Illustrate to students why the info matters on the larger scale (libraries=freedom)

I learned something about my teaching style this week. I taught library instruction for two sections of the same course (Style & Argument).

The first instructor asked me not to prepare. His idea was that showing the research process in action would teach the students that research takes time — it’s not easy, even for an expert. Demonstrating without any notes went well this time, but I would prefer at least an outline if I do it again. As someone new to instruction, I still need notes!

The other instructor wanted me to emphasize specific topics: the concept of scholarly research, objectivity vs subjectivity, and how to evaluate information. With those goals in mind, I designed a presentation for her class. Luckily I had recently done one presentation on the research process and another on evaluating information, so I mashed them up. The result was this presentation:

I think this presentation on The Basics of Research was just what the students in this class needed. They seemed to understand the whole idea of research much better as we went through, especially during the part on evaluating sources. After we went through the slides, we brainstormed thesis questions, turned those into keywords, and I demonstrated how I would search some databases with those words.

I am definitely more comfortable with presenting, though I appreciate the value of live demonstrations. It’s much easier for me to stay on topic with slides — during demonstrations I sometimes lose my place.

What strategy for library instruction works for you? Do you demonstrate, present, or both?

My handouts from this presentation are available on SlideShare:

• The Research Process
• Scholarly vs Popular Periodicals

I’ve been working at my new job as Reference & Instruction Librarian at a small liberal arts college for a little over 3 months so far. It’s hard to believe. So far I’ve been busy designing and presenting instructional sessions, writing a white paper, meeting with students for reference interviews, meeting with faculty to discuss their needs, creating LibGuides and tutorials, and prototyping a new website.

On top of the diversity of projects and responsibilities I have, I feel so lucky to be working with such awesome people. The library is very small and staffed with a handful of delightful federal work study students, another part-time librarian, and a radically militant (and just plain rad) library director.

Thus far, my biggest challenge has been designing instructional sessions for nontraditional students. When I took a workshop on instructional design through Simmons Continuing Education last summer, I learned that one of the first things an instructor should do is consider their students and how their students learn best. It sounds so obvious, but it’s easy to ignore. At the small liberal arts college where I work, our average student is 38 years old. Depending on the class, I could have students that use computers all the time mixed with students who are unfamiliar with the use of a mouse. I’m struggling to understand how to reach the lowest common denominator without losing the attention of the more advanced students.

Got any tips or tricks for library instructional design? What’s your biggest challenge?