No Librarian Is an Island

     As an English major in my undergrad, I didn’t have the opportunity to work collaboratively often, or ever in my classes; I think I had one collaborative essay assignment in my Freshman English class. Despite enjoying working as part of a team in the corporate world, I was not excited by the idea of having group work in my MLIS courses, especially because of the virtual environment. I do admit, when choosing courses and teachers, part of my requirements was to have limited or no group work. Nonetheless, I have certainly had my fair share of group assignments, and they’ve actually all turned out well. Workload wasn’t always distributed evenly, and there were times I felt like group work was less efficient than individual work, but the ending products were all sufficient to earn acceptable grades. And that’s the thing, when I do group work in school, I’m concerned with learning (of course), but I’m also concerned about the grade. I know school group work is supposed to prepare us for the real world, but I think that school group work operates differently than real world group work because of the grade element.

     Nonetheless, as a learner, collaborative work has been valuable because it has brought me into contact with other individuals who have different backgrounds, different strengths, and different ideas. This has enriched my school experience. However, I actually think that the most important things I’ve learned from doing collaborative group work in school are not related to the subject matter of the assignments or courses, but rather the general skills required to successfully work with others—virtually or in person. And I think this is the most important part of school group work because it is highly transferable to the actual work place.

     There are many opportunities to collaborate as a librarian, either with other librarians, staff, faculty members, administrators, IT departments, or other interested parties. I’d argue it’s likely impossible to be a librarian and not be engaged in some level of collaborative work. No librarian is an island. To do our job, we need to work together with many other people. In terms of instruction design, an ideal scenario is that librarians can work together with faculty members to incorporate information literacy lessons and assignments within the course curriculum. It’s also very valuable to collaborate with other librarians regarding lesson design. My experiences with the Lesson Review and Online Module assignments have confirmed this. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development also supports the idea that a more capable peer and/or a group can encourage student—and teacher/librarian—development.

     Stigler and Hiebert state the following:

Another important benefit of the collaborative nature of lesson study is that it provides a benchmarking process that teachers can use to gauge their own skills…. At the same time, the collaborative nature of lesson study balances the self-critiquing…with the idea that improved teaching is a joint process…. Problems that emerge are generally attributed to the lesson as designed by the group…. It thus becomes possible for teachers to be critical. (as cited by Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, pp. 317-318)

It can be difficult to be self critical, and it can also be difficult to be directly critical of someone else. The beauty of truly collaborative lesson design is, as stated in the quote, that the problems in the lesson are not directly attributed to any one individual; therefore, the goal is that teachers, or in our case librarians, are freer to be critical, with the purpose of making improvements.

     So, we wouldn’t necessarily be lesson planning together, but if any of you are finished with your final project and want to take this collaboration/socializing from the virtual world to the physical world, I’m planning on going to the California Conference on Library Instruction in Santa Cruz, California, May 13th. Appropriately, the workshop is titled, “No Librarian Is an Island: Exploring in-person and virtual instruction, as we work towards innovative, collaborative, and engaging teaching techniques”—I swear I decided on the title for this post before I actually looked this up!

[LIBR250 Prompt: What is the role of collaboration in understanding?]

References

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Go go Gadget anything!

Please approach quietly and do not tap on the glass--this can be a rather jumpy species. Here we see an online instructor. Notice the many fancy tools and gadgets this specimen has at his disposal. In some instances these tools help the instructor to present new information and motivate his students to great learning; at other times, the tools seem to turn on the instructor and the end is most unfortunate.

Image courtesy of Blogs.English4Today.com

     Obviously our Inspector Gadget “online teacher” doesn’t actually have legitimate elearning tools in his overstuffed coat, but nonetheless, I do think that one of the main differences between online learning and face-to-face learning, not surprisingly, are the types of technologies used. Technology is becoming ever more common even in the traditional classroom; however, the distance learning environment is obviously more reliant on technology to present and share information/content, to communicate teacher-student and student-student, to work collaboratively, to create a sense of community, to give feedback, etc.

     This abundant use of technology can be a blessing and a curse to the online teacher and the distance learner. On the one hand, students who are less likely to speak up in class, or who prefer nontraditional methods of expression (audio, video, visual, etc.), may be more active in participating in distance education classes where there is more flexibility in terms of class participation. Similarly, classes that do not have synchronous components to them attract students who have other obligations, such as family or work (Sorensen & Baylen, 2009, pp. 72-73).

     However, students and teachers can also feel isolated in a distance learning environment. As a result, students often seek frequent and immediate feedback (Sorensen & Baylen, 2009, p. 78). With distance learning, students and teachers are also required to learn the application used to present the course content, which is known as the learning management system (LMS). The LMS may be seen as a barrier to learning if the teacher struggles to use it to set up the course site, and/or if students have a difficult time navigating within it and interacting with the course content. Also, some teachers may get so caught up in using the latest technology that they forget to remain focused on the learner. As McLaren states, “E-learning lessons that are jam-packed with all of the latest bells and whistles, but lack sound instructional design principles, will not maximize the effective[ness] of information processing or learning” (2009, p. 232). Online courses, just like any course, should be learner-centered, not content-centered.

     Though somewhat outdated, Moore (1998) determined that students’ level of satisfaction is not influenced as much by distance learning technologies, as by “the attention they receive from the teachers and from the system they work in to meet their needs” (as cited by Simonson & Schlosser, 2009, p. 10). I think this is really important to remember. I think there’s a common misconception that teaching a course online is “easier” for teachers because they don’t have to be so “present” in the classroom. Sure, some teachers may check out and do little to maintain communication with students, but just because they do it doesn’t mean it works. There are poor teachers online just like there are in traditional classrooms. We can’t compare the best teachers from one environment to the worst teachers in another environment.

     In my own experience as a distance learner, the classes that were most effective had consistent and quality input from the instructor. The instructor maintained a “presence” throughout the semester, even in courses where we never met synchronously or did audio lectures. I do strongly believe that distance learning can be as effective and productive as face-to-face learning; however, I also certainly recognize that the success of any course relies on many factors including but not limited to teacher personality and preferences, student personality and preferences, subject, course content, course format and materials, etc.

     Finally, I believe online learning offers great potential for flexibility in providing learning activities that are appropriate to a variety of learners, as well as encouraging the transfer of skills and knowledge learned within a course to a real-world application. I have not had the experience of taking an online course that was designed in such a way that I, as the student, could choose and control to some extent the type of course activities I completed. I have read about such customizable courses (Boyer, 2009), but have not experienced it myself. I wonder, from a teacher perspective, if these are much more labor and/or time intensive. As for the second point of transferring knowledge gained in a course to the real-world, this is one of the things I have enjoyed most about distance learning. Not only do I feel that the instructors make more effort to design assignments that get me to work with actual libraries on relevant problems, but I have also learned a lot by simply interacting with fellow students who, because of the flexibility of online learning, are often already working in libraries and can share their experiences with the class.

 [LIBR250 Prompt: In what qualitative ways is online education different than face to face learning?]

References

Boyer, N. R. (2009). The learning contract process: Scaffolds for building social, self-directed learning. In A. Orellana, T. Hudgins & M. Simonson (Eds.), The perfect online course: Best practices for designing and teaching, (pp. 401-422). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

McLaren, A. C. (2009). Designing effective e-learning: Guidelines for practitioners. In Orellana, A., Hudgins, T. L., & Simonson, M. (Eds.), The perfect online course: Best practices for designing and teaching (pp. 229-243). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Simonson, M. & Schlosser, C. (2009). We need a plan: An instructional design approach for distance education courses. In Orellana, A., Hudgins, T. L., & Simonson, M. (Eds.), The perfect online course: Best practices for designing and teaching (pp. 3-21). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Sorensen, C. K. & Baylen, D. M. (2009). Learning online: Adapting the seven principles of good practice to a Web-based instructional environment. In Orellana, A., Hudgins, T. L., & Simonson, M. (Eds.), The perfect online course: Best practices for designing and teaching (pp. 69-86). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.