Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Using lesson plans to design effective classes

March 15, 2008

This was our latest workshop for liaison librarians. Thanks to Donna, one of our liaisons, and Erika, from McMaster’s Centre for Leadership in Learning, for helping to put it together and facilitate it.

We looked at learning styles (based on Kolb’s Learning Styles Inventory) and how they impact teaching, determining “essential” content, active learning and lesson plans as a pedagogical and organizational tool. Overall, the workshop went well, although we misjudged our time more than a little (the teaching librarian’s Achilles’ heel!) ;)

We are going to continue to investigate active learning (both the theory behind it and potential methods), and some participants suggested they would like to see different ways to address the different sections of the class such as “motivation” and “pre-assessment”, which I think would be a nice tie-in between workshops.

I am hoping we can archive and share our lesson plans, and then have some kind of discussion/activity to share best practices, successes, and lessons learned.

McMaster University Library Wins ACRL Award

February 1, 2008

McMaster University Library has been given the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Excellence in Academic Libraries Award. This is the first time a Canadian library has won this prestigious award. Congratulations to my colleagues for their hard work and dedication (I certainly can’t take much credit since I have only been at Mac 6 months or so)! I still think we have a lot to do; at least, as far as teaching and learning is concerned, I have loads of plans and ideas for the future, but this is a clear sign that we are on the right track! Way to go, guys!

My new boss and ideas from others’ conference presentations

July 6, 2007

OK, so I told my new boss I wasn’t the blogging type but it seems the easiest way to keep track of ideas about T&L and libraries. The first ones are these: we need to focus on how to find answers to questions, not how to find books and articles; how can we use mashups in instruction; we should investigate Penn Tags; and what about a debate on the future of the catalogue, or specific topics in instructional design?