Core Competencies for Librarians

My colleague Jeannie An and I are working to develop a set of core competencies for librarians. Jeannie has been actively researching this topic for some time as part of her ARL Leadership and Development Program (and I envy her, because it’s really interesting!), but it is relatively new to me. There are a loads of articles and web sites on the topic, but two that I have found particularly useful are Core Competencies and the Learning Organization by Giesecke and McNeil and Purdue’s Libraries Performance Management System. Both do a good job of clarifying the relationship between core competencies and the organization’s strategic plan, mission and values. Since the McMaster University Library is in the midst of a “Transformation” process, the concept of the “learning organization” (Geisecke & McNeil) as an organization that has enhanced capacities to adapt to change will certainly prove valuable. The Purdue document will be useful because it shows how we librarians will be able to map our tasks and responsibilities to the Library’s strategic plan. And, of course, as Teaching and Learning Librarian, I want to use the ACRL’s Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators.
Why are we doing this? Of course, core competencies need to be tied to a process of performance appraisal and eventually, they will be at Mac. (But probably not by me!) Right now, we simply want to start a discussion among librarians about what skills and attributes we need to be successful in our careers, and how we might develop these.

Awards

I would like us to institute awards for undergraduate and graduate research, as well as an award for integrating information literacy into the curriculum (for both professors and librarians), similar to what the Augustana Library at the University of Alberta has done. The awards could be presented as part of an annual forum hosted by the Library. Themes could include 21st century fluencies, the role of the Library on campus, campus partnerships, etc. I think it would be a great way to promote the Library and raise awareness about the role the Library can play in teaching and learning on campus.

Task Force on Teaching and Learning

I have been invited to be a member of the Provost’s Task Force on Teaching and Learning, chaired by the University Librarian, Jeff Trzeciak, and Dr. Carolyn Eyles. How cool is that? I’m sure there will be lots to say about the work of the Task Force in the months ahead (we have a broad mandate and an ambitious timeline) but suffice to say for the moment that I think it’s a very positive sign for our libraries that the University Librarian has been asked to be a co-chair. The members are incredibly enthusiastic and bring a wide variety of expertise to the table; we had a great brainstorming session at our first meeting. This is an amazing opportunity for us to highlight the role of the Library as a partner in teaching and learning on campus, and to bring attention to the need to integrate information literacy and other 21st c. fluencies into the curriculum.

Teaching Squares

McMaster University Library launched a library liaison program this Fall. Our Director of Library Liaison created guidelines for liaisons to help us achieve our key goals of

Building partnerships between liaison librarians and their assigned departments, schools or programs

Partnering to teach 21st century fluencies

Managing access to scholarly literature

Providing research consultations for faculty, graduate students and research assistants

In terms of teaching and learning, the guidelines encourage liaisons to engage in peer assessment of their teaching. I debated about implementing a peer coaching program, but in the end, we are going to experiment with Teaching Squares. I got the idea from Erika Kustra, one of our educational consultants at McMaster’s Centre for Leadership in Learning. Erika also put me in touch with two educational consultants from UVic and UBC Okanagan who have been extremely helpful in providing information about Teaching Squares and how to run the program. We have 8 librarians, including me, who will participate in the Squares. The purpose of this activity is for instructors to reflect on their own teaching and share these observations with their partners. I hope will also be an important teambuilding exercise that will help us to identify core competencies (more on this in another post) and common goals for librarians as teachers.

Problem-based learning

I attended a session on problem-based learning and information literacy as part of the Blended Librarians Online Community yesterday, and today we had a Teaching and Learning Roundtable on PBL given by one of our colleagues in the Health Sciences Library. Last week, I sat in on a session on authentic inquiry and information literacy last week offered by the Partnership’s Education Institute. It’s been an eventful week for innovative learning! PBL and inquiry-based learning are both examples of innovative learning at McMaster; it’s interesting to see how librarians are using them to approach information literacy.

Instructional Design

We held a workshop for liaison librarians today on instructional design. It was loosely based on a number of different workshops I have attended and presentations that I have given in the past, but with a few important changes, including the format and new activities related to developing instructional strategies. The workshop was organized by a team of librarians and a member of the campus Teaching and Learning Services unit and was designed to provide the librarians with a common framework to think about teaching and learning, and to use in working toward our goal of integrating information literacy into the curriculum. We looked at instructional design, talked about strategies for managing content, how to develop learning outcomes, and instructional strategies. (We *briefly* touched on assessment, but really only to say what it is and how it fits into the instructional design process.)

The workshop was a success (so far, all participants agree or strongly agree that the workshop was effective), although parts of it were a little rushed. I loved the active learning exercises we tried, including debates and collaborative learning. We all had a lot of fun and I think it was an important team-building exercise.

I think our next step will be to identify a number of skills students need and experiment with different strategies to teach these.

The Mystery Box

I attended a session at the Centre for Leadership in Learning today (CLL) on using WebCT and LearnLink (First Class) to manage large classes. One of the professors mentioned how she and her colleagues were using a “mystery box” to encourage student engagement and class participation.

The mystery box is a cardboard box, decorated in a rather ungainly fashion. The professor and the instructional assistant place mystery items inside the box and bring it to class. If a student offers a response to a question that requires higher order thinking, the professor may decide that the answer is worthy of a chance at the mystery box. She announces that the answer was “mystery box worthy” and brings out the box. The student has the option of choosing the contents of the box (sometimes good, sometimes bad–she said one time it contained only empty wrappers after she and the IA ate all the Hallowe’en candy the box had once contained!) or getting a perfect mark on an upcoming quiz. Interestingly, students often opt for the box, creating lots of anticipation in class. Apparently, one student wrote on the discussion board to say he had missed the class and to ask if anything noteworthy had happened. Another student wrote back telling him he had missed the mystery box, and he that he should never miss class in future because ‘you never know when the mystery box might appear’! I love this idea.

Another interesting suggestion for getting students’ attention at the beginning of class is to divide them into teams with geeky names and have them answer multiple choice questions.

This marked the conclusion of CLL’s four part series on teaching large classes. It was really interesting and well put together.

Peer professsional learning

As a follow up to my earlier post on roundtables, our professional development program is starting to take shape, although not necessarily in any structured way. Instead, topics have been chosen as need and opportunity arise. In terms of opportunities, we have discovered we have loads of “experts” among our peers and colleagues and I think we are doing a pretty good job of sharing in order to improve our common institutional knowledgebase. So far, we have roundtables scheduled on SAILS, problem-based learning, and creative commons licensing and its applications in T&L. We have also started using our (almost) weekly liaison meetings in part to learn about teaching and learning spaces and technologies of interest to liaisons, such as the newly designed Inquiry and Health Sciences Library classrooms, Articulate Presenter, SMART Boards, presentation and conferencing software such as Elluminate (we currently have a campus-wide site license as a trial) and PowerPoint. The last four sessions have been or will be given by our partners in campus A/V, the Learning Technologies Resource Centre (LTRC), and an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences who is responsible for faculty development (among other things). I met a lot of these people at a brown bag lunch series organized by LTRC for various groups on campus who are interested in teaching and learning technologies, so there is a whole lot of sharing going on! Another session of interest was a presentation to the liaisons and the Learning Commons Steering Group by Dr. Phil Wood, the Associate Vice-President, Student Affairs, and Dean of Students, who spoke to liaisons about NSSE and student engagement at McMaster.

All of these sessions have provided us with an opportunity to meet campus partners, and to demonstrate our interest in supporting, and participating in, teaching and learning at McMaster. Oh, and I should mention that the library will be presenting at the Centre for Leadership in Learning’s Learning Technology Symposium, coming up December 7th. Tom Haffie, the “clicker guy” from Western, will be presenting on classroom response systems. How timely!

Instruction à la carte

I attended at TLT webinar (hate that word!) the other day. One thing that some libraries mentioned they are doing that I thought was very cool was to list a “menu” of instruction items on the web site, and the minimum amount of time required to effectively teach each. It allows profs and others to see what the library can offer (and to suggest things that aren’t listed), and to work with the librarian to create a “customized” class to meet learning outcomes and to select appropriate instructional strategies. It also helps them to understand that it is not possible to “cover” how to find books, articles, Web searching, evaluating information, citing information, etc., etc. etc., in 50 minutes and, as a result, encourages them to integrate IL throughout the curriculum. I wondered if it would also be helpful in identifying prerequisite skills and knowledge.

Roundtables

A colleague and I have been asked to continue Mac’s tradition of holding teaching and learning roundtables for librarians. My colleague Patrick Labelle from Concordia shared some great ideas for similar activities they have done in the past. We’re going to gather ideas from our colleagues, but here are some of mine: effective questioning, pre- and post-testing (this one is stolen from Patrick), alternatives to PowerPoint in library instruction, advocacy, inquiry, problem-based learning, effective and engaging presentation skills (voice, posture etc.), Wikipedia as a teaching tool, what does “hands-on” mean (this was also done at Concordia but I had it as one of my ideas also!), assessment, teaching and learning as a concept, SAILS, diversity in the classroom, PBL, new teaching and learning technologies appropriate to libraries…

can’t wait for the sessions!