All posts by Anne Behler

Badges Pave the way for more Advanced Instruction

The Library Learning Services Digital Badges Team has used the Instruction Reboot time to critically examine our information literacy badges program, its role in foundational library instruction, and the efficacy of badges as a mode of teaching our students. We are not the only Penn State librarians working with digital badges, though. Colleagues in our subject libraries and at Penn State campuses around the state have implemented them in a variety of ways. Carmen Cole, Information Sciences and Business Librarian, shares here the ways digital badges have enriched her instruction for both resident and online IST students:

“In the 2018/2019 academic year, I piloted the use of our digital badges in IST 110: Information, People and Technology. My collaborator in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) was Dr. Christopher Gamrat (Chris), an expert in digital badging systems. Chris’s dissertation, completed at Penn State in 2017 through the Learning, Design, and Technology program, is entitled Digital Badging Systems as a Set of Cultural Tools for Personalized Professional Development. As an Instructional Designer in the College of IST, Chris also teaches for credit, both residentially and through World Campus.

To best suit the introductory-level curriculum of the IST 110 course, we chose the following badges for students to complete: Academic Integrity, Lionsearch: Getting Started, and APA Style Citations. In Fall 2018, for Chris’s residential IST 110S course, students completed the badges before attending the Libraries’ Open House. The intent was to expose students to the physical and virtual library during what was, for most enrolled in the fall seminar section, their first semester at Penn State. Integrated into the IST 110S curriculum is a series of talks given by visitors, including the liaison librarian. I am tasked with speaking about “academic integrity and library resources.” Although I have a set lesson plan for these sessions, assigning the badges prior to my visit allowed me to conduct more advanced instruction. The students were much better prepared to discuss academic integrity when presented with a series of scenarios tailored to IST. Also, Chris and I were able to create a paraphrase and citation activity based upon the skills students learned from the badges.

The students enrolled in Chris’s Spring 2019 World Campus IST 110 course were also required to complete the badges. I did not have the opportunity to perform instruction after assessing the Spring 2019 badges, but reading and commenting upon their open-ended responses was a good way for me to get to know World Campus students and make them more aware of my role in IST. In particular, there was a large military presence in the World Campus section, including students currently on active duty. Some of their responses to the open-ended questions, especially in the Academic Integrity badge, were strongly related to their service, something that helped me learn more about their unique circumstances and needs.

To gather general impressions of the badges and their effectiveness from the students, Chris and I modified an informal survey instrument provided to us by Dr. Victoria Raish (Torrie). Overwhelmingly, students in both sections considered the APA Style Citations badge to be the most useful and the Academic Integrity badge to be the least useful. The majority of students agreed that the badges influenced their work in IST 110 and other classes, and supported the use of the badges in future IST 110 classes. Assessing the badges allowed me to “know what I didn’t know” and engage more fully with each student when responding to their open-ended responses, something I never would have had time to do during a 50-minute, one-shot session. Also, it was interesting that many students, without being prompted to do so in the badges, connected their answers to the course content. I am fortunate to have an enthusiastic collaborator in the College of IST, and, with the support of Library Learning Services, aim to integrate the badges into additional IST 110 courses in the future.”

Many thanks to Carmen for sharing her experiences! 

What does success look like?

As Rebecca Miller Waltz noted in last week’s post, the Instruction Reboot has become a process of infusing the Library Learning Services teaching program with strategy, intention, and meaning.  These are bold words, brave words, and words that carry many possible meanings depending on the lens through which one looks. The terms are, in a word, squishy, particularly in the an academic environment often driven by metrics. So it is natural to ask next: What does success look like in the scenario driven by such squishiness?

Our answer to this question took shape during 2018, over the many months spent planning for the Instruction Reboot.  When contemplating the makings of a successful library teaching and learning program, we developed the following list:

  • Articulated shared values and priorities
  • Targeted learners (we know who we want to work with, why, and how
  • Achievable/measureable learning outcomes
  • Effective communications – within our unit, across the library, and with our targeted learning partners
  • Adaptability and Flexibility
  • A portfolio of teaching strategies and learning activities (which lend to the adaptability and flexibility point)
  • Commitment to our own continued learning
  • Administrative support and resources
  • Understanding of our role within the bigger picture – within the curricula we work with and within the University Libraries
  • Commitment to iterative design of our program

As I see our work progressing forward, I see each of these elements beginning to take shape, and it is exciting! In the coming weeks, you’ll hear more from our working teams about how these components are coming to life within their work.

The Reboot Backstory

In 2014, I attended the LOEX conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was a short trip – I went long enough to present and take in a few sessions. Little did I know that one of the sessions I attended would form the basis for one of the biggest projects our instructional team would undertake…
The room was packed for “Inquiry-Based Learning Online: Designing and Delivering a Blended and Embedded Information Literacy Program,” by Alan Carbery and Janet Cottrell from Champlain College. They told the story of the steps their information literacy program took to adapt when Champlain changed its entire gen. ed. program, a program the librarians had previously been fully integrated into. Alan and Janet talked about how the scope of their group’s work changed overnight, necessitating a drastic change in approach. They needed to take steps (quickly) to figure out the new situation at the university and then decide how they were going to (re)structure the library teaching program in order to deliver effective, in-time, teaching. It was a situation none of us envied but many of us could identify with; the room was glued to the speakers, excited to learn how this program had faced such a stressful situation and come out with an even better program one the other side.
And then Alan put up a slide that said, “DO NOTHING.” This was the portion of the presentation that caused my jaw to drop, and that I filed away in my brain as an incredibly valuable approach when applied in a timely and mindful manner. What he meant by “do nothing,” was not that the librarians shrug their shoulders and move on with things despite the changes. What he meant was that they should take one semester (for them it was a summer) to take a “teaching hiatus,” and focus on nothing but how to situate Information Literacy within the university’s new general education curriculum. So that is what the librarians at Champlain did. They put their teaching on hold, so that they could focus on their teaching. And they came back in the Fall with a new way forward that enabled them to reach their goals within the new curriculum model at the university.
So…I filed that idea away. It was incredible and inspiring…and I didn’t have any way to use it at that moment. Here at Penn State, things were growing and changing too, though. Library Learning Services, which had begun as a unit of two instruction librarians and two staff members, had reached a staff of twelve by 2018. The expertise of the group expanded as well – to areas such as open education, student engagement, learning design, and online learning. We had expanded our modes of instruction from just face-to-face teaching to include a growing digital badges program, engagement with the undergraduate research program, and many other modes and venues for inserting information literacy into the curriculum and experience for Penn State students. The curriculum landscape at Penn State University was changing as well, with general education having fully entered the scene in 2017.  By early 2018, there was much to consider, and Alan’s advice to start by doing “nothing,” came back to me.
I spoke with my boss and our fearless leader, Rebecca Miller Waltz, who encouraged me to do more digging. I called Alan Carbery, who was kind enough to spend time on the phone with me even though he was about to leave Champlain for a post in Ireland. I assembled my own list of the programs, topics, and practices we might consider during our own “hiatus” from teaching; I pitched the idea to my colleagues in Library Learning Services. They, too, were fearless in their consideration.
In May of 2018, we began planning what we now call the Instruction Reboot, so that when the time came in Spring of 2019 to initiate things, we would be ready.
I will talk in more detail soon about some of our considerations for the Reboot, and I’ll discuss the path we took to determining our areas of focus. Suffice it to say that we held many thoughtful conversations, made many lists, compiled several brainstorms, and started pushing ourselves to think big about what is important to our program, and to our students. And let me also say that this isn’t just a story about Rebooting our library instruction program; it’s a story about how one idea- no matter when it’s gained -can spark inspiration in another place and time. I’m grateful to our colleagues at Champlain for trailblazing with disruptive program design and for sharing their story back in 2014. Penn State 2019 thanks you!

Go Time!

Happy New Year!

At this time when many are busy setting New Year’s resolutions and intentions – whether personal or professional – we in Library Learning Services are excitedly moving forward on the 2019 resolutions we set for ourselves with the Library Instruction Reboot! For us, it is Go Time!

So what’s happening? Just prior to the holiday break, our team gathered for one final pre-reboot meeting, and solidified our plans. We will be working in three strategic areas:

  • Assessing opportunities for working with distinctive populations.
  • Establishing what library support for foundational learners will look like through 2019 and beyond.
  • Creating a framework for the Penn State Information Literacy Badges Program.

Each strategic area will be tackled by a team of LLS colleagues, who will work to assess the landscape within their assigned area. The teams will work to identify opportunities and key partners, determine strengths and weaknesses of past practice in each area, and – most importantly – lay the framework for what our future work will be.

During the first two weeks of the Spring Semester, each group is holding a kick-off meeting, further developing their charges, and establishing the steps they need to take to move forward with their work. As they dig into the work, you’ll hear from each group at least once about their charge and where their work is taking us.

The Reboot journey is beginning!  Stay tuned here for weekly updates!

Time for a Reboot!

Library Learning Services (LLS) is very excited to announce that the Spring 2019 semester will be dedicated to a Library Instruction Reboot for the department. In the spirit of the Penn State Strategic Plan, Transforming Education, the Reboot is an opportunity for the LLS team to align the teaching that we do with the university’s goals. Specifically, we are well-positioned to “advance the frontiers of knowledge,” “foster a curriculum that integrates multiple modes of delivery,” and “prepare our students for success in their careers and in life.” (see http://strategicplan.psu.edu/thematic-priorities/transforming-education/) During the Reboot, LLS will take stock of our full complement of employees, resources,  and target populations.

The University Libraries Strategic Plan calls us to “expand our role as a partner in online and resident education, increasing our capacity to develop and support engaged, critical, and informed learners through multiple forms of instruction.” The Reboot will enable us to respond directly to this call. 

Goals 

We are as excited to reach the new level of teaching excellence our Reboot will enable. Our goals are to emerge from the experience with: 

  • an articulated teaching program  
  • a defined scope for our curriculum 
  • new teaching activities for in-person, online, and hybrid scenarios 
  • identified curricular partners and goals/strategies for engaging with them 
  • plans for effective assessment of our teaching integrations 

 Plan  

In order to make the time and space for this to happen, LLS librarians will pare back face-to-face teaching during the re-boot. Learning Services will draw upon its robust portfolio of teaching options to meet their collaborators’ needs. The CAS 100 and ENGL 15 classes at University Park will have the opportunity to experience new modes of information literacy instruction:  

  • We have coordinated with ENGL 15 and CAS 100 departments to provide alternative instructional engagement for Spring 2019;  
  • Amy White, liaison to ENGL 15, will equip the course instructors to teach students about beginning library research, as well as providing them with DIY source evaluation activities for their students to complete  
  • We will provide our same level of support for research consultation services.  

Select English 15 classes may also serve as experimentation grounds for testing out new instruction techniques and learning activities, including a trial of our highly successful digital badge program. Gregg Rogers, Associate Director for the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, is enthusiastic about the opportunities afforded by the Reboot.  “The Library Instruction Reboot proves a promising opportunity to assess how the library’s instruction programs have evolved over the last several years and serves as an important moment to consider how our wonderful librarians might best aid English instructors in the constantly evolving state of secondary education,” noted Rogers. CAS 100 classes will have the same opportunities.   

Why reduce face-to-face teaching for a semester?  

Currently English 15 and CAS 100 classes account for 75% of the LLS teaching load and over 150 hours of preparatory and instructional time each semester. The hours gained during the Reboot will be used to assess our program, identify opportunities related to the populations we serve and the way that we teach, evaluate effectiveness and implementation of our many teaching modes (including our nationally noted digital badge program, Credo modules, faculty/instructor collaborations, and learning activities), and develop a holistic teaching and assessment strategy for the foundational informational literacy teaching that is at the heart of Library Learning Services’ mission and portfolio.   

Student learning and research needs will drive this work, and will remain the number one value that shapes ALL of the work that LLS does, during and after the Reboot. Even as we work to reshape our program, we will be available to provide student and instructor support through consultation, Ask-a-Librarian, and the many outreach programs that the LLS team takes leadership on. LLS will continue to teach face-to-face for ESL and ENGL/CAS 137H. All current digital badge programs will also continue. 

Communication 

We in Library Learning Services are committed to accountability and transparency throughout the Reboot process. We acknowledge that LLS is a good testing ground for teaching innovations. Many of these innovations will also be applicable to our colleagues teaching in other areas of the Penn State University Libraries. We will keep you all (and the rest of libraryland) posted on our blog at https://sites.psu.edu/libraryinstructionreboot/ We are excited to share our process with you.  

We are excited to embark on this adventure, and we welcome your support and questions. If you have questions about this project, please don’t hesitate to reach out to any of the LLS team. We are happy to chat with you!   

The Library Learning Services Team 

Dawn Amsberry • Anne Behler • Amanda Clossen • Hailley Fargo • Megan Gilpin •Amanda Larson • Glenn Masuchika • Rebecca Miller • Rebecca Peterson • Torrie Raish • Emily Rimland • Amy White