Instruction Retreat: Digital Literacies

Last week was a busy one that included my presentation on learning outcomes assessment at a North Carolina Library Association workshop as well as our annual instruction retreat on digital literacies.  The retreat has generated a few blog posts already, but I'll add mine to the mix.

Ellysa Stern Cahoy came down from Happy Valley aka Penn State to be our keynote speaker.  Ellysa led a great workshop on digital literacies.  She asked participants to define "information literacy," "technology literacy," and "media literacy" and we're looking forward to seeing the Wordle word clouds from that exercise.  Later we were joined by five faculty members who talked about the new kinds of assignments they are giving -- everything from video field notes to photo essays to creating virtual environments.  It was clear from the faculty panel that students aren't as tech savvy as we imagine.  And it was terrific to hear from faculty that they want closer collaboration with librarians in order to help students identify, use, and document sources that they incorporate into multimedia presentations.

We ventured downstairs to our library instruction room to look at some tools for finding and using images.  Ellysa demonstrated Kaltura, which they're using at Penn State.   Jill Vermillion showed participants how to access digital collections at Duke, and Kevin Smith shared an encouraging message about transformative uses of copyrighted material (you can read Kevin's thoughts in this blog post).

The last part of the retreat featured a panel of folks from across Duke who support faculty and student acquisition of digital literacy skills.  It was a lively discussion that helped librarians understand what training and assistance was available on campus.  Out of that discussion came suggestions for information sharing and further collaboration.

Emily and I are grateful for the collaborative energies that contributed to a lively, thought-provoking and idea-generating instruction retreat.  Lots of ideas to follow up.  And what will next year's retreat topic be?

My Favorite Instruction Blog

There are many blogs in the world of library instruction, which enable us to keep up with current thinking about how best to teach students to do research using library resources.  My favorite of them all is info-mational, the blog of the amazing Char Booth.

Char is the E-learning librarian at UC-Berkeley, where she explores “ways to integrate education, technology, and design in library services.”  Those of us in library instruction are eagerly awaiting Char’s new book Reflective teaching, effective learning: Instructional literacy for library educators.  I’m particularly interested in the models and templates Char provides in the book that guide librarians through a process of intentional instructional design.

But back to Char’s blog, whose title comes from a comment she received from a student: “thanks. very info-mational.”  Char’s posts get to the heart of why we teach and how we teach.  I could quote endlessly from the blog, but I’ll just choose one example:

"Most practical library instruction seems to spend a necessarily disproportionate amount of time explaining  the range, breadth, and function of ultra-similar resources (use this for that and this for this other thing), which does more to reinforce the way students (mis)understanding of how the web works than to counter it."

And let me add, perhaps most importantly, that Char is one of the best and wittiest writers and presenters in librarianship today.  Not for nothing was she named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2008.  So, if you’re going to read anything about library instruction, read info-mational.  And enjoy.

Conferences and posters and showcases, oh my!

The past three or so weeks have left my head spinning (in a good way!), as they've been filled to the brim with learning from and networking with librarians and other information professionals from around the country! 

I started at Texas Library Association's Annual Conference in San Antonio, which was pretty impressive -- 8,000 librarians gathered to hear Keynote Speaker Scott Simon and explore ways of "Filtering Chaos: From Information to Knowledge."  I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to share what we're doing at Duke to integrate library resources into Blackboard -- the energy level after my presentation was high, and it sounds like more and more librarians are thinking about ways to embed their services and resources into their institutions' Learning Management Systems.

There were so many things going on TLA that it was difficult to choose which sessions to attend.  The highlights for me were Megan Oakleaf's presentation on outcomes-based assessment for library instruction and Keene Haywood's talk on The Horizon Report on Emerging Technologies.  I've followed the Horizon reports for the last few years, but it was fascinating to learn more about how Keene and his colleagues at New Media Consortium actually research and write these reports.

Next up in my month of professional development was a day-long training session on using Zotero, which Diane blogged about last week.  I'm impressed with Zotero's functionality and look forward to learning more about the tool and helping students put it to use.

Duke's Center for Instructional Technology's Showcase, "Learning beyond the classroom," followed last Friday and proved to be the best Showcase I've attended.  The final plenary of the day was especially enlightening -- as Joel Thierstein from Rice University and the Connexions Consortium and Michael Boezi of Flat World Knowledge shared their views of Open Educational Resources and the work that their organizations are doing to make textbooks and other learning resources more accessible, customizable and affordable for students and faculty. 

I spent yesterday afternoon at the LAUNC-Ch Research Forum, where I learned more about the work that NC State's Josh Boyer and consultant Abe Crystal of More Better Labs are doing with NCSU Libraries' new discovery tool Summon.  While the tool is undeniably powerful (it indexes hundreds of thousands of resources), Josh and Abe's usability studies reveal that actually using the results of a Summon search isn't as easy as it might be.  Field experience student Alice Whiteside and I presented a poster related to our usability studies of LibGuides and came back to Duke with ideas for enhancing our own LibGuides interface. 

And my whirlwind tour's not over yet -- the Instruction and Outreach Department will be hosting its annual retreat later this month.  We're looking forward to welcoming Penn State's Elyssa Stern Cahoy as nearly 40 librarians and info professionals explore digital literacies and the role librarians play in helping faculty teach and students master these "new" literacies.