One Shot Workshops, Embedded Librarians, and Webinars

Well, there certainly is a lot of material to cover today. First, a recap of our one-shot workshops. Other than having seven workshops in our group which made everyone feel kind of rushed, it was a  great and informative evening. We covered some really interesting topics, including filtering, the value of Twitter, the process for pulling books and how to deal with it, and copyright. And of course, there were two others, and ours, but they escape me at the moment. It made me wish there were more time to have a full length workshop on the topics, because there was so much to learn.

On to this weeks readings. On the docket, we have:
"The Embedded Librarian Online or Face-to-Face: American University's Experiences" by Michael A. Matosa and Nobue Matsuoka-Motley and William Mayer

"Online Webinars! Interactive Learning Where Our Users Are: The Future of Embedded Librarianship" by Susan E. Montgomery

and chapter 7 from How People Learn.
The first two articles addressed the idea of embedded librarianship, both traditional and hybrid approaches. This is a practice found on college campuses and academic libraries, in which a librarian is deployed to a specific department. This can occur to different degrees. The librarian can be a liaison, based from the library but working with a particular school or department. By working in the the school, librarians are better able to understand user needs and breaks down the barriers between librarian and user, in this case faculty and students.

Montgomery also points out that embedded librarianship provides a unique chance to incorporate new technologies into education. She points out that the internet and internet tools are a must to attract this generation of students. Email, Facebook, Twitter, and other web tools are a part of the university educational experience, and librarians can harness these tools. More and more reference questions come in via email, chats are becoming a standard reference tool, and webinars provide an excellent way to conduct training for distance learners or other non-traditional learners. Webinars in particular are an excellent library instruction tool.

How People Learn Chapter 7 breathes new life into history, mathematics, and science. It analyzes the approaches of successful teachers in teaching these subjects. The big takeaway is that a teacher needs to have a deep knowledge of their subject and they need to be knowledgeable on teaching methods that help students to learn and ask questions.

So, my thoughts. First, I was delighted with the examples on teaching history. I think history is one of the most undervalued subjects, and in my view its a real shame. But How to Learn does an excellent job of demonstrating the difference teaching methods can make in bringing a subject to life and engaging interest. In terms of math, I had a roommate who taught third grade math, and she was actually using these concepts. Its very different from the way I learned math. Students not only learn how to do the problem, they learn to identify the why. In my day, you learned the formula and applied it, with the exception of an excellent calculus teacher. (Have I told this story before? Skip to the next paragraph if I have). We had all heard of the dreaded derivative and knew that someday we would be forced to do battle with it. One day in class, our teacher started out with a typical graph. Then he asked another question we knew the answer to, and continued to build on each step. Then, he announced, "That is a derivative." And I thought, "That's it? But that's easy!" That is the closest my math education ever came to the approach from chapter 7, but I have never forgotten that experience.

Chapter 7 does omit one particular benefit of its recommended approach. Back to my derivative example: because we were engaged in the learning process and it built on knowledge we already had, it stuck better. I feel that I needed less practice and reteaching because of that. We were also confident in our ability to explain it to other people, and when you can teach something, it helps you understand it better. I think this is another advantage of these strategies. By involving the students in learning, they have a chance to participate in the teaching, which means they are improving their learning.

I do wonder how these teachers have time to teach like this. It's amazing, and wonderful, and I have nothing but respect, but I still wonder how they do it.

And, webinars. I really did participate in a webinar this week. It wasn't one on the list, and I want to watch one of them too. But I had a webinar for training on a program we are using in another class. It was helpful. Overall it was really helpful. One thing I really liked was they had a demonstration where they showed what they talked about. Also, they paused frequently for questions. It was also nice because I was able to apply it directly to my project while the webinar was going on.

I'm really interested for class, to see how all the readings come together and connect to webinars. I'll see you there!