Search

This study investigates instruction librarians’ perceptions of their relationships with teaching faculty. Respondents to a survey of U.S. instruction librarians indicated that they tended to agree that their teaching was valued and they had autonomy in what they taught. However, the often one-time nature of library instruction limited their effectiveness as teachers, and respondents felt that faculty did not view librarians’ teaching as equivalent to their own. Respondents also reported a disconnect between their professional identities and others’ viewpoints, describing having their teaching role minimized or misunderstood by others, especially faculty. Additionally, a relationship was found between some aspects of librarians’ perceptions of the faculty–librarian relationship and three separate factors: formal, non-library teaching experience; length of time as an instruction librarian; and librarians’ amount of teaching. This research sheds light on the complexities of this important relationship and helps instruction librarians understand how others’ views impact their professional identities. Published version

In this virtual lightning talk, teaching librarians will discuss lessons learned from an ongoing, collaborative online learning partnership between the library, first-year writing program, and campus online teaching specialists. When the project was proposed in spring 2020, the team planned to meet in person over the summer. However, with the shift to remote work due to COVID-19, all project meetings were moved to Zoom. The focus of the project also shifted from a planned series of five modules that would serve as a replacement for in-person instruction to the creation of three to four modules that could be used to supplement or reinforce concepts integral to composition courses: peer review, rhetorical analysis, multimodal literacies, and academic research. These modules were completed by the end of summer 2020 and used by several instructors in the first-year writing program during the 2020-2021 academic year. In summer 2021, the team again worked together remotely to create additional video content and modules for the first-year writing program, focusing on rhetorical analysis, writing portfolios, controversy mapping, and academic research basics. Working remotely on these projects led to challenges but also lessons learned about effective collaboration and content creation with limited resources. After summer 2020, the team took those lessons and applied them to the project the following summer, including communicating about progress more effectively, not separating into smaller groups, incorporating more working meetings, moving into scripting and production more quickly, and creating high-quality audio and video with basic equipment. The project went more smoothly the second year, and the team was able to create content more efficiently. This virtual lightning talk will focus on these lessons learned from working remotely on a cross-campus collaborative project and how those lessons could be applied to other collaborative instructional design projects, whether in-person, hybrid, or remote.

The rapid switch to remote learning in March 2020 turned us into online learning practitioners overnight. As we begin to look beyond the pandemic, it’s clear that online teaching and learning are likely to play a larger role in education than they did pre-pandemic. This talk will reflect on online teaching and learning during COVID-19 and offer practical tips for building on the online teaching and learning experiences of the last two years.

This paper will examine the findings of a survey on the job roles and responsibilities of Education librarians (academic librarians with liaison responsibilities for the field of Education). Existing literature on Education librarianship has focused on particular facets of the job role, including the unique instructional needs of Education students and specific instruction and outreach initiatives. However, the literature lacks a comprehensive picture of the full spectrum of contemporary Education librarianship. This article provides a snapshot of the diverse educational backgrounds and varied responsibilities of Education librarians related to instruction and instructional design, reference, embedded librarianship, outreach, collaboration, and collection development. Published version

In this session, we (the Composition Program, the University Libraries, and TLOS) will outline our goals in creating a series of educational modules through our Pathways grant-funded project, discuss how the project shifted to address unique challenges presented by COVID-19, share lessons learned and feedback that we received from users, and look toward the future possibilities for this collaboration. Throughout this session, we will create space for attendees to brainstorm and share how they could apply our experience in their own collaborations and ask them to consider the impacts and benefits of fostering these kinds of collaborations on their campuses.

The diverse needs of graduate students can be difficult to gauge, and even when their needs are known, it can be difficult to develop programming that meets the needs of graduate students across disciplines and program levels. In spring 2018, a needs assessment survey was conducted by the graduate librarian at a large, comprehensive public university with graduate students at multiple campus locations. Based on respondents’ articulated needs for additional help in data management, research skills, scholarly publishing, and citation management, a workshop series, Research Tools for Graduate Students, was launched in fall 2019. The series sought to provide graduate students with a foundation in disciplinary research skills, data management, citation management, scholarly publishing, open educational resources, and copyright and fair use. In addition to teaching workshops based upon her areas of expertise, the graduate librarian recruited others from across her library to teach sessions. The workshops were offered both in-person and simultaneously online via web conferencing software during the first two months of the semester. While attendance at the workshops was low compared to the number of graduate students at the institution, virtual attendance often surpassed in-person attendance and student feedback was generally positive. This presentation will explore the development of the workshop series, including how it built on and integrated with other outreach and instruction efforts for graduate students and sought to reach both on-campus and distance students at the same time. The presenter will share lessons learned, logistical considerations, and unexpected benefits of the series’ development. Conference was cancelled due to COVID-19 but presentation was submitted to conference organizers for archiving on the internet.

Join us to learn about OER affordances, tools, support and applications! This session will include brief lightning talks to provide an overview of these open education topics as well as hands-on time for attendees to ask questions about some current and recent open education projects at Virginia Tech, the pedagogical implications of open educational resources, and support that is available for instructors and learners who would like to share or create open educational resources. Topics include: open publishing, Creative Commons licensing, open source virtual reality, Omeka, the Open Textbook Library, and more.

These slides are from a workshop about usability testing for learning objects given at LOEX 2019. Additional documents can be found at http://bit.ly/UsabilityVT.

Faculty, instructional designers, graduate students, and librarians from six institutions of higher education will briefly present an overview of peer-reviewed posters on diverse topics including: Creating open educational resources, linking open education and the career center, a cMOOC for exploring open education, class book projects, introduction to an open learning object repository, open software for graphic, and campus responses to the use of open educational resources. Presentations Writing and Publishing OER for an Upper-Level Genetics Course (Christine H. Terry, University of Lynchburg) The Career Center and Open Education (Garnett Kinniburgh, William & Mary) Open Learning '19: a cMOOC for Exploring Open Education (Sue Erickson, Virginia Wesleyan University) Class Book Projects and Collaborative Technologies (Robert Browder, Virginia Tech) Integrating an open science project as an open educational resource (Matthew DeCarlo, Radford University) Open, Accessible, Reusable: Creating a Open Learning Object Repository for Learners and Educators (Lisa Becksford & Kayla B. McNabb, Virginia Tech) No graphing calculators, no license fees: free software for the mathematics classroom and beyond (Jason Lachniet, Wytheville Community College) A Discussion on the Use of Open Educational Resources on Campus (Britton Hipple, Darren Maczka, Sarah Donnelly & Leanna Ireland, Virginia Tech) This event is part of the Open Education Symposium at Virginia Tech. Further details: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/oer/oeweek

In this session, faculty from Virginia Tech’s University Libraries talked about the lessons they’ve learned as they establish and grow the Learning Design Studio, an instructional design space to support university and library faculty. Whether you are making instructional content for yourself or creating it for others, this session will focus on advice and strategies that you may find useful for your future projects. The presenters will share practical suggestions and frameworks that have proven useful during the building of the studio and working with some of its first clients, including management details related to aspects like the service model and partnership agreements, as well as technical details such as the tools they use and how the instructional content is stored in the newly-launched Odyssey Learning Project repository.

As higher education shifts to meet the needs of modern students and employers, libraries have become much more than spaces to hold a collection of books. Both the media and the functions of the spaces have changed, and studio or lab spaces are one way that libraries are better able to support work with digital media from both student (Mandel, 2008) and faculty (Bailey, Blunt, & Magner, 2011) perspectives. In this session, attendees will consider why creating studio or lab spaces to support pedagogically-driven learning is important for all institutions and how one might take steps to begin designing or encouraging the creation of this kind of space. Additionally, attendees will explore strategies for finding and partnering with the labs/studios that may already be available on their campuses. We assert that, through these partnerships, both the studios and faculty can grow and better support engaging, active learning throughout the campus community.

This lightning talk described an approach to teaching APA citations for large classes.

This presentation described the use of design thinking in three different areas of academic libraries.

Online and distance learning across one research university’s main and extended campuses has been decentralized and complex. To add to this complexity, the University Libraries’ programs and services have also spanned various parts of the state, including regional campuses and extension agencies. In an effort to create equal access to all library programs and services, regardless of location, the University Libraries conducted a mixed methods research study to gain insight into users’ needs, attitudes, and satisfaction in regards to the libraries’ services and support for online and distance learning across the campuses.

We describe the design, development, and deployment of a library tour application utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy devices know as iBeacons. The tour application will serve as library orientation for incoming students. The students visit stations in the library with mobile equipment running a special tour app. When the app detects a beacon nearby, it automatically plays a video that describes the current location. After the tour, students are assessed according to the defined learning objectives. Special attention is given to issues encountered during development, deployment, content creation, and testing of this application that depend on functioning hardware, and the necessity of appointing a project manager to limit scope, define priorities, and create an actionable plan for the experiment.

Virginia Tech’s motto is “Invent the Future.” Building on this culture, the University has undergone a massive transformation in the way that it imagines its role on campus. Until recently, the Libraries’ approach to online learning was more ad hoc than strategic, with no dedicated online learning staff and no clear strategy for program development. Recognizing the increasing need for a strategic approach to online learning, the Teaching & Learning Engagement unit recognized the need for new tools for thinking outside of traditional methods for online program development. The team took a start-up approach to program development using a Design Thinking framework to create a new online learning team, with a mix of traditional and non-traditional library faculty, including a web developer and an instructional designer. As part of this process, the team engaged in a universitywide needs assessment for identifying themes for program development and developing a clear mission and niche for the online learning team. Through rapid prototyping and brainstorming sessions, the team developed a learning design studio; a technology training program for librarians, staff, and teaching faculty; and a new learning objects repository for creating, remixing, and sharing online tutorials and modules.

This presentation will help participants imagine the next generation of libraries by showing them how to apply Design Thinking to their own libraries’ program development.