Thursday, June 10, 11am EDT
Charissa Powell, Amber Sewell, and Leah Valletta (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
This presentation will bring a unique lens of presenting how our in-person workshop model failed in a pre-COVID world, but how we have been able to find a silver lining in that virtual workshops have been much more successful during this time of remote learning. This presentation will share how we responded to the initial failure, and how a virtual environment has been more successful for our workshop model. The presenters will be very up front about our challenges trying to connect with students without an LMS presence, as well as how the creation process reflects the presenters’ investment in student-centered and compassionate learning design.
Presenters will reflect on their student-focused instructional design process, and how their desire to ensure students had control over their learning journey – especially during a period of information overload, Zoom burnout, and other stressors – shaped the format of this workshop series.This desire, paired with their intention to offer instruction empathetic to students’ needs, led to exploring a workshop model rather than conducting virtual one-shots. Presenters are coming from a department that has a long-standing history of doing one-shots as the main form of instruction. They saw online instruction as an opportunity to explore a new format of instruction, workshops. For the program at their university, one-shots don’t reach all students and are not sustainable from a human resource perspective.
For library faculty and staff, a workshop model would allow for more nuanced discussion of information literacy concepts and skills, as well as creating a more sustainable teaching program that respected Zoom burnout on the instructor’s end. Because the schedule was aligned with a programmatic curriculum, it offered students access to information at point of need; the consistent delivery format gave students less information to keep track of, while the recordings ensured everyone would have access.
The workshop model allowed us to discuss more nuanced information literacy topics with our students. We were able to include sessions about social justice and EDI topics, such as information privilege and algorithmic bias; these more conceptual discussions can’t always be covered in a one-shot instruction session. This model also allowed for collaboration between departments during a period of relative departmental isolation due to the pandemic. This approach helped to get more people in the library involved with directly supporting students.
This presentation will discuss the types of technological hurdles the presenters overcame to pilot the virtual workshop series, including student privacy concerns, registration, how to provide instructors with proof of attendance, assessment strategies, and how best to provide access to the videos after the live sessions.
Presenters will engage attendees several different ways in this virtual environment. Some examples will be polling audience members (using Menti Meter, reflective questions, and engaging over chat. All of these engagement tools are ones the presenters have honed while leading workshops.
Library Instruction Together 