Becoming a good/ better instructor

Some quotes of other instructors:

There are many dimensions to being a great library instructor. Teaching regularly can certainly help to keep those skills sharp, and it affords the needed opportunity to experiment with learners, to try new things, and to stretch one’s capabilities in the classroom.

(taken from ARCLog:"Maintaining your instruction Mojo")

It’s all about adding value to the learning process. He is spot on when he says that students can now go anywhere to simply hear a lecture by a talking head that is attached to a series of slides. That describes a good deal of online learning and open education resource experience. You go to a web site or a course delivery system and just tune in to a lecture/presentation. But where’s the added value that comes from the dialogue between the teacher and the student? I believe what Bowen is really afraid of losing at his school is what makes the learning experience truly unique – the engagement between the instructor and the learner.

Academic librarians need to be mindful of the same challenge. We know that while we offer high quality information resources, our students and faculty can obtain information from a wide variety of resources. And there are times when they are accessing our subscription content through free search engines and are not aware that the content is delivered by the library. Those are well known issues. If the boundaries between information sources are becoming increasingly blurry to the end user, what is it that distinguishes what the academic library does for them? Finding the answer to that question is part of the challenge we face, just as our faculty colleagues will need to make clear to future students the value that they add to the learning process. Otherwise why bother with the huge investment in a traditional college education.

(taken from ARCLog: "We have to add the Value")

There are (at least) 5 key characterists an instructor has to follow:

1. Relevance – The big challenge is to connect course content to the current culture – learning has to be relevant to them.

2. Rationale – Today’s students were raised in a non-authoritarian manner. They won’t comply because the instructor is in charge, but will be more likely to do so when given a good rationale.

3. Relaxed – They thrive in a less formal environment in which they can interact informally with the instructor and each other.

4. Rapport – More than previous generations they are used to having adults in their lives and show interest in them. They appreciate it when instructors show interest as well or when we connect on a personal level.

5. Research-based methods – Millennials have grown up constantly engaged so they can tend to bore easily, so be prepared with active learning methods

(taken from "Why don't my students think I'm groovy")

"where on earth..." - Finding database tutorials

During the last 2 weeks I was searching for database tutorials. The Online Tutorial LOTSE should bekome more interactive. Therefore we are looking for already existing tutorials to avoid doing the same thing twice. The goal is to cooperate with other institutions.
It was not that easy to collect these database tutorials because in Germany there is no portal that serves as a gateway to them. The only collection (mostly Bavarian institutions involved) I found was a collection of tutorials (already created and planned!) that offer a connection to Citavi.
For english tutorials there exists a gateway/ platform: The Animated Tutorial Sharing Project (ANTS) is a collaborative project presently involving librarians in Canada and the United States, but open to librarians elsewhere. It would be good if libraries of other countries would join, too. This platform is a good start. I really appreciate that there is an instruction how to create tutorials and how to put it online! The tutorials itself can be found at DSpace. Each tutorial is presented with its metadata (e.g. Issue date, institution, keywords ...). In some cases you also find information about which software (Camtasia, Captivate etc.) was used to create the tutorial. This is important to know if you would like to change it.

Thrilling information tasks?

Just a few minutes ago I read the interesting article "Long lost information".

In the current-day liturgy of teaching, it seems that motivating students is key. Once you have students motivated, supposedly, they will easily absorb what may otherwise seem dry or mundane. So a teacher’s plan should not be to transmit the material, but to motivate the students to learn the material for themselves while acting as a guiding frame. For librarians who teach, then, the challenge is to motivate students to be interested in searching for and critically thinking about information.

The author raises the question how to manage in particular to get the students motivated. As I am after this problem for the optimization of LOTSE I am interested in a fruitful discussion about it. So hurry up, guys! ;)

art as an important learning factor

How to reach sustainability regarding taught things? How do we as librarians manage that the stuff we showed and the things we taught are used in future?
We know from neuroscience that we keep things in mind that touched us in a sense. Art is an important factor to reach this.

Thomas Glatt underlines that art is neutral. Hence it allows stresses and disturbings which create emotions. - It`s not only about a surprise effect but it`s about a change in perspectives. To reach that people get to know a new perspective it is necessary to create a disruption. With this method we are able to tap the full potential regarding learning.

We have to ask ourselves if teaching is too less playful. In Glatt`s opinion there are good ideas to combine learning and art but it has to be further tested. In eLearning, for instance, visualization and sound is used but the chances are not exhausted until now.

One reason for less linkages between art and learning can be that art is not be seen as target-oriented. And if one takes part in a further training there should be a success in the end: this one should reach another level regarding his/ her skills. Another problem is that art is used by many organizations in a commercial way.
An efficient method to get new ideas can be a so-called flow-performance. This method is used at the conference LEARNTEC



(a comprised and translated (German to English) interview with Thomas Glatt, an eLearning-expert)