Comments on Increasing the Library Role?

• Course design with IT and Library Support
• Posted by Steve , Professor of Economics at University of Mary Washington on April 8, 2010 at 7:30am EDT

• Five or so years ago, we developed a really good first year seminar program. I was in the planning group which included representatives from academic departments, instructional technology support, library as well as our Dean. Over the better part of a year we developed the program and it was the best committee experience I’ve ever had—everyone seemed to be interested in getting it right and was willing to defer to the will of the group. Out of that dynamic I created a seminar which was co-designed by a reference librarian, and an IT support person. (Actually, I had several consultations with the IT support group where I basically said “Tell me how you would design this course,” and they did. As the course played out, we had visits from the librarian and the IT person who “taught” the course several days and attended several others. Part of my interest in this was blurring the students’ views of who ‘the teacher’ was. Having those outside experts help design the course improved it in many ways, in part because they brought different perspectives as well as their particular skills which went far beyond my own. They were able to help me see things I wouldn’t have seen on my own. In subsequent offerings they continued to participate in tweeking the design, but they were less able to help teach. That’s okay, as I realized that part was unlikely to continue.

• Posted by Laurabrarian on April 8, 2010 at 8:45am EDT

• The future is here -- we're already doing this (and have been for years!), but we might not be using the same language as you to describe it. Just walk down the hall!

  Maybe the issue is that faculty are working with librarians and learning technologists separately, so we're not aware of each others' collaborations. How do we close that gap?

• That's Sort of the Goal of the Blended Librarian
• Posted by stevenb , aul at temple on April 8, 2010 at 9:45am EDT

• I agree with LauraLibrarian that librarians are already participating in course design to an extent, although I think it has been limited mostly to the research assignment segment of the course. Josh, you are familiar with the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community, and the philosophy and practice that we espouse is one in which the blended librarian is well integrated into the teaching and learning process - and that can include the design stages - we in fact hope it will be the case. You are correct that the traditional LIS education offers very little to students in the way of pedagogy or design for learning. The idea behind BL was to offer librarians a better opportunity to develop those skills - or at least share how they are being acquired and applied.

  I think you make an excellent point though about involving librarians in the design of the course and embedding them in other ways in the course. Our traditional approach to being involved in a course is to present an instruction session of 50 to 90 minutes at some point in the course - mostly a one-shot deal which is quickly forgotten by most students (I suspect as much). But when we are involved in the design of the course our contributions can be more profound and have a great and more lasting impact on the students by way of having the faculty member immerse the students in research and the culture of scholarship. We can perhaps be much more effective as blended librarians on the side (or in the background) than a forgettable guest presenter somewhere in the middle of the course - where we have no other involvement.

  At my institution we are using a program - modeled on an idea tried elsewhere - where we create teams involving a librarian, an instructional technologist, a colleague from the TLC, and a student - and all of them work together with the faculty member to design elements into the course that leverage learning technology and library research resources. The goal is to achieve outcomes that give students authentic practice with research and writing and technology - so that they are well connected to the learning process of the course and are not just awkward appendages to the true design of the course. So far we are getting good results, but it's not easy to scale.

• Posted by Olivia on April 8, 2010 at 11:15am EDT

• Librarian here!

  Distance learning has been on my mind for the past several years, but at times it can be difficult to find faculty who are both teaching online and excited about collaborating with a librarian (when there is no uniform requirement to do so). I work closely with the distance ed. department, but that relationship is not traditional and I had to seek it out & add it to my job description. I've taught them quite a lot about the library, which is surprising in light of how much technology overlap there is.

  I envision/hope that libraries will have more and more of a presence in online courses. When I was a graduate student taking online courses, I was really surprised that the library wasn't better integrated.

• Ersatz designers?
• Posted by Mark Notess , Development Manager/Digital Library Program at Indiana University on April 8, 2010 at 5:45pm EDT

• I suppose librarians have as good a chance of being good instructional designers as professors do. I'm a bit wary anytime someone proposes repurposing professionals from one discipline to another. For instance, I once worked for a big technology company that thought it could wave a wand and turn all its technical writers into usability specialists, with mixed results.

  I agree there is a big need for more instructional designers in higher ed: I think Diana Laurillard made this point well many years ago. I think you could repurpose some librarians and some faculty for this role, but I'd caution against thinking that good instructional design can be achieved just by taking a breathing person with a masters degree (or higher) and giving them a methodology to follow. That's not how good designers are formed. Think more along the lines of apprenticeship, studios, exemplars, and critiques -- as you would find in a design or architecture program. And it's been my experience that some people simply aren't cut out to do design--they just don't think that way.

• This is one of our responsibilities!
• Posted by Andrea Stanfield , Instruction Librarian at University of West Georgia on April 8, 2010 at 8:15pm EDT

• This is the sort of thing many librarians WANT to do! And it's part of what our jobs require that we do.

• Repurposed?
• Posted by Melissa Adams , Reference/Instruction Librarian at Green River Community College on April 10, 2010 at 7:45pm EDT

• Mark, for the most part, librarians are not being 're-purposed' for instructional collaborations - it is what we are doing, and what we (academic librarians) are expecting to do when hired into a reference/instructional position. Now, grabbing your cataloger and chucking him into an online learning environment may well fall into ineffective re-purposing, but I don't see institutions doing that. They are hiring librarians with a track record of teaching/instructional designing and/or embedding, so, while I understand the notion of that concern, it really isn't happening in real life. Pheww!