Librarians as Teachers (afternoon session)

This is the second part of my writeup of the Librarians as Teachers event I attended this week. If you haven’t already read it you might want to catch up with what happened in the morning session which I covered in my first post.

Kicking off the afternoon which was promised to be more active in order to keep us awake after lunch was Geoff Walton from Staffordshire University. He started by telling us that we could learn lessons about information literacy by reading Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science. I’ve not read it but we’ve got a copy so I think I’ll take a look. Next we were asked to think about what we considered to be the essential ingredients of teaching. Here is the list the group came up with:

• Passion
• Assessment
• Communication
• Charisma
• Understanding the level of the learner
• Motivation of teacher and learner
• Enthusiasm
• Subject knowledge
• Learning outcomes
• Confidence
• Flexibility

One that we didn’t hit on but that was top of Geoff’s list was risk taking. Of all the sessions from the event I felt that Geoff’s provided me with the most practical advice for teaching. One idea that I’m not sure I’m brave enough to try yet is to let the students dictate the content of an induction session simply by asking what they need or want to know. Another, which came from a group work exercise on the library and information masters course at Loughborough was the idea of information literacy snakes and ladders.

One soundbite that I will take from Geoff’s presentation and try to remember when I am planning any session is this:

“Students don’t like generic information literacy sessions; they want them specific and relevant to their subject.”

The penultimate session of the day was led by Emma King from the Learning and Development Centre at Warwick. This was a practical session focused on teaching spaces and how they affect the design of teaching sessions. For this the Teaching Grid had been split into 5 areas each set up as a different type of teaching space. There was

• a formal/lecture style room
• an empty space
• informal seating
• a board room
• cabaret/cafe style seating
• a computer lab (external from the Teaching Grid)

We were split into groups and were given the chance to evaluate two of the spaces. The group I was in got the informal seating and board room. We found the informal seating was a good, relaxed space for group work. We thought it would be useful for any type of teaching where each member of the group was asked to give feedback as there was a sense that the relaxed nature of the space gave a feeling that everyone in the group was equal. In contrast the board room was much more of a formal, rigid space and we felt as a group that we were looking for someone to lead us. Again we thought that the space would be useful for group work and the addition of a table meant that it could be something where lots of materials were used. We discussed where as a teacher you might position yourself in this space – at the head of the table, on a corner, or even on the outside moving around the room.

What I took from this session was a deeper understanding of how the space you have can either restrict or provide opportunities for the development of learning. When I have planned sessions in the past I have known that the room I’m using has a fixed layout, usually either a lecture theatre or a computer lab. This really limits the kind of thing you can do with the group. The benefit of somewhere like the Teaching Grid is that you can decide what methods you want to use in the session and then design the space around that instead of the other way round.

The final session of the day was a panel discussion chaired by one of the event organisers, Ross Connell. The panel included all of the speakers plus Jo Alcock in her capacity as a member of the CILIP West Midlands branch committee. All of the questions posed generated real discussion and to round off this post here is a brief summary of them all.

Q. On whose standards do we judge librarians as teachers?
A. There were many different views on the panel ranging from an institution specific peer assessment to the HEA professional standards. Debbi Boden suggested that qualifications like the P.G Cert. are not subject specific so completion of a learning programme like SirLearnaLot might be more useful for librarians.

Q. Why aren’t there any teaching modules on LIS courses?
A. The panel knew of some courses which had teaching elements to them – Loughborough, Sheffield and London MET. Jo Webb thought that the reason teaching wasn’t a core element was because it wasn’t relevant to all sectors but Debbi Boden disagreed saying that information literacy was important for everyone in the profession giving the example of public librarians teaching digital citizenship.

Q. Can you give any practical tips for how to find enough teaching hours for the P.G. Cert.?
A. Geoff Walton suggested that keeping a reflective teaching diary could help with this. Sally Patalong encouraged us to think beyond what we would call teaching; hours can be built up through one to one sessions, assessment or peer observation.

Q. Where does the responsibility lie for defining the librarians teaching role?
A. Debbi Boden says that initially it should come from the individual but that as the two are bound CILIP should play a part. The feeling in the room was that librarians are in a unique position to experiment with teaching styles as we do not have the constraints of traditional teaching techniques.

Having put all my notes from the event into these posts I’ve realised that I have got a lot to think about and explore. I feel really encouraged me to be more confident and experimental with the sessions I design.

Update: Slides and handouts from all of the day’s presentations are now available on the Librarians as Teachers page of the University of Warwick Library website.