Selling Public Speaking

Our library instruction program has a relationship with several first-year and general education courses.  Two of these courses are required in the first year (and are also required to schedule a library instruction session), and the other two are taken in either the first or second year, and may or may not visit the Library.  One of the latter of these courses is Public Speaking, a class that for one reason or another I have had difficulty connecting with.  For one thing, the course is often taught by adjunct professors whom I may not have had an opportunity to meet in person.  But if I'm honest with myself, a lot of my inability to connect in the past has occurred once I actually succeeded in getting the class into the Library.  Since for some students this is the third time they will have seen me in a year, it becomes difficult to convince them that no, this is not the same thing you learned last week and last semester, when maybe, just a little bit, it is.

Yes, mon petit choux: I want to teach you how to figure out what you need to know, how to find sources in a database, how to evaluate the sources you find, and how to use and cite them.  But I swear!  These are different databases, with different cool features, and I know you're still only using Google, and...

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What it came down to was this: I needed to sell my students on these resources.  But this is Public Speaking—they're supposed to be learning the art of persuasion, right?  They should be selling these resources to me!  For this, I needed some ties.

Vintage, school spirit, and classic black, Goodwill Industries didn't let me down.  Armed with this new-to-me arsenal of clip-on polyester persuasion, I set out to reframe a tired lesson plan.  Instead of running through the typical motions of asking students to write out a research question from which we would generate keywords and synonyms, I decided to turn this into a public speaking opportunity.  I asked for a volunteer who 1) Knew their topic, and 2) Would be okay with speaking in front of the class.  I invited this eager volunteer to come stand behind the podium and (if she wished) wear a tie.  [Back-up no-volunteer plan B: I would volunteer.]  I explained that the volunteer was holding a press conference, and would be fielding questions from the press corps (the rest of the class) about her topic: ________.

On each of the students' handouts was a list of questions to get them started, but for the most part, they asked good questions that got at the heart of the topic, asking follow-up questions to help clarify, and tough questions the volunteer had not thought about.  As the class fired off their inquiries and the volunteer answered what she knew about the topic, I wrote keywords I picked up from their conversation on the whiteboard at the front of the room.  At the end of this session, I explained to the class that this was a way of helping the volunteer to figure out what she already knew, and to focus in on what she needed to know about her topic.  The keywords on the board were simply the most important descriptor words they had mentioned.  I then asked all of the students to pair up and repeat the process with each other, with the questioner writing down keywords on the handout.  NOTE: Be sure to tell students to switch handouts before this activity, so that the keywords are written on the correct piece of paper!

For my second act, I tried a variation on a usually-successful activity.  In the past, we had split students up into small groups and asked them to peer-teach the rest of the class how to use one of four new databases (one database per group).  For this class, I added a subtle twist and stuck to three databases instead of four to avoid presentation fatigue.  Each group was now a marketing group and was charged with the task of pitching the database to the rest of the class (their focus group).  The group presenting needed to show and tell us:

1. How to find an article/resource using this database (student 1)
2. What kind of information this database is good for finding (all)
3. Cool features of the database (one per each of the remaining students)

 And they needed to keep it interesting!  Remember, I told them, you're trying to sell this to us!  I encouraged them to put on the ties to make it legit, and at the end of their pitch, I showed my approval by saying, I would totally use that database!  Perhaps the most encouraging part of this revision was the conversations I overheard as the 'marketing groups' prepared their pitches: This is SO cool!  I had no idea this existed!  This is so helpful!  Discovering the features on their own, with a goal and a time limit, the students found the features that they thought were most relevant to their needs (I almost always learn something new about a database in these classes).  And best of all, we weren't all falling asleep by the end of the last group's presentation.

Essentially, it's new clothes on an old horse, but it worked: I didn't get a single accusation of self-plagiarism.

How to Read a Scholarly Article

I recently received a request from a faculty member: We're finding that some of our students are having a hard time figuring out how to read a journal article. Do you have a resource you could share?

While at the time I didn't have anything on hand, I had been mulling over this topic for a while.  Reading scholarly articles is not a skill that comes naturally.  In fact, very little of a traditional high school education prepares a college freshman for the piecemeal way a skilled reader tackles a scientific paper.  But as I tell my students (tip o' the hat, Becky Canovan!), research articles are not romance novels—you don't read them beginning to end.

How, then, to teach students the proper way to wade into the world of literature reviews and methodologies and discussions?  North Carolina State University has a pretty nifty online tutorial called "Anatomy of a Scholarly Article," which I used as inspiration.  I liked the way they broke the article down into its component parts, and discussed the visual and contextual clues to use when deciding what's what in the maze of headings, statistics, and citations.  I also really appreciated that they found a good way to move the focus from the content of the article to the structure of the article.  It would be nearly impossible (or at least straining) to read "A Cognitive Model for the Representation and Acquisition of Verb Selectional Preferences," simply because the font is so small.  However, I was going to be working with these upper-level research methods students for fifty minutes, and it was hard to envision an interactive class session using only this online tool.  So, I did what I usually do: I went analog.

As you'll see below, I made a fake journal article, with fake publication information, fake authors, a fake abstract, and a fake publisher (the Library!).  And with a little help from my friend, the Lorem Ipsum generator, I was able to create fake content that wouldn't distract from the structure of the article. 

I then added headings (methodology, discussion, conclusion), parenthetical citations in the literature review section, a table and a figure, and a bibliography.  Finally, I labeled each part I wanted students to be able to recognize with a number 1-13.

In class, I broke students into small groups and handed each group two real article print-outs with the corresponding database citation/abstract stapled on top (since this is often what students see first when searching).  I asked the groups to decide which articles they could use for their research (assuming they were researching that topic), and which articles were probably not scholarly enough, and had them explain their decision to the rest of the class based on what they saw.  This got them tuned into the physical cues of an article and prepared them for the next step.

I then passed out the fake scholarly article I had made, and asked them as small groups to tell me which 3-4 of the numbered features were most important when deciding whether the article was scholarly.  The groups' responses varied slightly, but mostly focused on the authors, the authors' credentials, the bibliography, and the publication information.  Then I asked the small groups to decide which of the numbered features were most important in understanding the article.  Again, responses varied slightly, but most focused on the abstract, the introduction, the methodology, and the discussion/conclusion.  I also made sure to ask students what the literature review section was (it was numbered but not labeled), and how it could be useful to them.  Finally, we chatted about the best strategies for reading a scholarly article for understanding (I made sure to include the professor in this conversation), noting the benefits of different approaches.

What I observed was that these students gained a much more nuanced and context-based understanding of the structure of a research article, and I suspect they ultimately understood the concept much better than they would have had I merely pointed out the different features and sections on the screen.  Their small-group conversations were rich, and the process of reaching a consensus pushed them to reason with each other in choosing which sections of the article to focus on.  Granted, I've only tried this activity once and with a stellar group of students, but I will definitely be pulling this trick out of my hat again.

Labels, Assigning

We keep an electric stapler and an electric pencil sharpener on our checkout desk. Because of some confusion in the past, we labeled the stapler. STAPLER, it says. Even so, we often have to point it out to people and give them directions on how to use it.

One day while my back was turned, I heard someone fumbling at the stapler. “Just put it straight in,” I offered.

“What?” a girl asked, sounding very confused.

I turned and realized that she was trying to sharpen her pencil. In the stapler. The stapler labeled STAPLER.

I showed her where the pencil sharpener was, which was approximately 3 inches to her right. After she left I made a label for it, too.

Reposted from I work at a public library.

Real-time feedback

Using in-class polls, quizzes, and questions to shape instruction

I admit it: I have assessment on the brain lately.  While much of what has been rattling around in my head has had to do with summative assessment—in the form of rubrics, artifacts, and standardized tests such as SAILS and TRAILS (and automobiles?)—what I'm especially interested in investigating this semester is strategies for formative assessment.  At the library I work for, most of our instruction is limited to one-shot 50- or 80-minute class sessions, which means that taking time for assessment within class, to say nothing of ongoing assessment, can be challenging.  That's not to say that we're not pursuing other models of library instruction, but for right now, it's what we've got to work with.

Perhaps it is because we frequently only have this one-shot opportunity to connect with students and may not have the ability to follow up, that formative assessment—assessment that happens during the learning process—makes the most sense in terms of providing feedback on our teaching and guiding our instruction during that class period.  So, what if we were able to get quick and timely feedback that could shape our instruction in a more dynamic way?

Last spring, at the 2012 IPAL conference at Wartburg College, I attended a presentation by Carrie Dunham-LaGree from Drake University, in which she described how she had used Google Forms to assess her students' prior information literacy knowledge (see images below) at the beginning of library instruction sessions.  (Note: these forms have since been moved to Qualtrics.)

Asking students short, applied questions about using, finding, and evaluating sources, she was able to ascertain through the use of this form a baseline level of information literacy, which she then used to inform her instruction.

What was most interesting to me, was the way in which she then shared the results with students to create buy-in for what she was going to teach during that class session.  She used the results as a guide to shift the amount of time and emphasis she devoted to different portions of the lesson.  For example, results such as those below might mean she would spend more time showing students how to read citations, or move this section of the class to the beginning.

The combination of a flexible, modular lesson and real-time feedback was, in my opinion, brilliant! Carrie's presentation got me thinking about means and tools for informal and real-time assessment that we could use at my own library, and what role technology might play in all of this.

Especially as more and more students are using smartphones, I think the time is right to harness their use for quick and meaningful feedback during class.  This may be old news for some of my fellow instruction librarians (if so, please share your ideas below!), but it's something I'm just beginning to explore.  Tools that I have been experimenting with include Google Forms, Poll Everywhere, and interactive polls in LibGuides.  Whenever possible, I usually advocate for 'technology' that doesn't distract from learning objectives (think: whiteboards over SMART Boards), but I'm really intrigued by the possibilities that apps and interactive polls might afford.

These ideas are still developing in my own head, so I would be curious to hear what others have done with regard to informal assessment and customized instruction based on in-class feedback.  How do you incorporate informal, formative assessment into library instruction?  Are there any tools (digital or analog) you would recommend?  Have you experienced any fabulous successes (or failures)?