#ccourses: Modeling student engagement and community

Image via makeuseof

I've had a chance to get to the rest of the #ccourses readings for Unit 1 and am thinking about "disruption," community, and real engagement of students. Although I do agree with Laura that disruption is a not-so-great term, I'm understanding that as used in this week's #ccourses readings, it's in the sense of describing the use of high-impact practices for education rather than traditional seat time. There is a huge initiative on my campus speaking to this, and I am very excited about it.

(Also see this discussion on A Beschdel test for higher ed disruption.)

Although I started off thinking about the WHY of my library instruction for UA students, I am changing gears in this post to reflect on a 4-week ecourse I am teaching with Erica DeFrain: ALA Instructional Design Essentials, for librarians. 

On one hand, we have some constraints: the course is only 4 weeks long, just about everyone in the class is a busy, working professional trying to squeeze in this professional development on top of their work week, and additionally, we are required to use a LMS, Moodle. On the other hand: we have a lot of freedom, we can design the course however we'd like using just about any model we'd like (and we have taken advantage of this!). 

With 69 students in the course and only two of us, we are incorporating a great deal of peer connection and assessment. It's definitely not only because it's a high ratio of students to instructors, but also because we believe this model will be most beneficial to students. Our students have varying levels of expertise, from some who are within 6 months of their first ever library job, to those who have well over 5 years of instruction experience and want to get a fresh perspective. With that, allowing students to share their expertise and form their own personal learning network is important. We want to give them as much ownership over the course as we can, while also keeping it organized enough for a busy, working professional to be able to just swoop in, get the gist, and make a little progress, if that's all they are able to do.

As Randy Bass describes, features of participatory culture communities include:

• "low barriers to entry
• strong support for sharing one's contributions
• informal mentorship, from experienced to novice
• a sense of connection to each other
• a sense of ownership in what's being created
• a strong collaborative sense that something is at stake"

We are integrating these features in our course through relying heavily on a peer network. We encourage student ownership of discussion boards, Twitter engagement, and commenting on blog posts. We also have peers endorse the posts they find most useful to them in their learning for the week. Although I am using and researching digital badges in other ways and am including them in this course, they are not the focus, but briefly, they help visualize the peer process.

#ideala ecourse badges that participants can earn

We feel the badges provide a sense of ownership over what is being created (along with the course Zotero group we created so students have access to readings after they no longer have access to Moodle, and it is here that they are encouraged to add resources that they find important to save and share with peers). This can provide mentorship as well, between who is endorsing as the mentor, and for the endorser to feel mentored by the peer(s) they select.

I love how Cathy Davidson talks about How a class becomes a community, and we are mirroring her discussion of teacher as facilitator and guide-on-the-side. Three of her principles for her course especially stood out to me: "Educators must develop methods of assessment that fit our digital age and prioritize lifelong learning; A model classroom environment draws on every participant's unique expertise for the greater good of collective goals; and There's a difference between high standards and standardization, and it's our goal to discover the digital possibilities to support the former and transform the latter."

We are going to see how this plays out more as the course continues (we are only in week 2 right now), but so far it seems successful. I'm excited to continue with #ccourses content and see how to implement these concepts and praxis into our course, as well as have a lengthier reflection on assessment.

Starting with the WHY: #ccourses Unit 1

The first activity for #ccourses is looking at the why of why we teach. As Mike Wesch says on the #ccourses site:

We usually start by addressing the “What” question first. We have a course title or subject area and we begin populating our syllabus with the “whats” to be learned. Or, we peruse textbooks looking for the text that we think best covers the field. If we have time, we address the “How” question by considering how we can best teach the material. We sharpen our teaching technique, seek out better examples for the more difficult concepts, compile photos and videos to improve our presentations, and seek other ways to get the students engaged with the material. We may jump to incorporate the latest tools and techniques, whether it is social or interactive media or a new technique like a flipped classroom.  Our syllabus, teaching materials, and educational technology in order, we rush into the semester, rarely asking, “Why?”

As a librarian teaching library research skills / information literacy (IL), my first inclination would be to say that I'm motivated to teach students because IL prepares individuals to become active members in a participatory democracy, questioning the status quo, and knowing how to find and use quality information.

This grounding also prepares students to become creators and critics of knowledge, rather than just consumers. I think this latter point especially resonates with me. IL can pair with any discipline to help students find their voice within their chosen area of interest. I also find this near and dear personally from growing up reading, making, and distributing zines, DIY music, and cultural/community events. I felt my personal interests brought me into Freire's notion of "critical consciousness," and once I discovered the library on my own as an undergrad, I finally started to become interested in my courses because I could see how my learning was applying to my life.

Prior to that awakening, I was a disconnected and uninterested student through most of high school and most of college as an undergrad. I dropped out for awhile at one point, planning to never go back. When I did go back to school, I was just going through the motions until about my last year when I started to become energized about learning. I think this strongly affects my perspective on teaching and learning as an educator now.

In my current position, I am the faculty librarian liaison to retention* efforts across campus, so I am always reflecting back on my experiences and how that might apply to current students considering dropping out. Though, as a fairly privileged white, middle class, cisgender and hetero lady, my experiences definitely do not translate to many on campus. However, I feel like I at least have more awareness of issues surrounding retention. So in my work with these groups, my why especially leads me to think about helping students feel connected on campus, on feeling like they can get access to knowledge and information in the library that affects their lives on a personal level and that they can tie that into their studies.

Really excited about what's to come with #ccourses, taking this approach to instruction is so important.

*And of course retention does not mean only students who don't want to be in school. Students who are affected by circumstances out of their control make staying in college difficult, as well as students who might be high achievers who feel disconnected or disappointed and would want to transfer. "Retention" can apply to all types of students with varying circumstances and needs.

Instruction bootcamp training: Faculty collaboration!

The last few months have been a whirlwind! We officially started our reorganization at the UA Libraries over the summer and have been getting situated in our new roles since. Before, our teams were functional, so we had an instruction team, a collections and research services team, etc. Now our departments are based on cross-functional areas that require more collaboration. My department is a combining of what was previously the instruction team and the collections + research team since we are following a subject liaison model for campus. With this merging, those in our department with expertise are training others. I helped organize an instruction bootcamp training for back in August where I covered the new ACRL Information Literacy Framework, some basic instruction concepts, and the process of curriculum mapping since we will be working toward mapping all programs (or as many as we are able to).

I was so happy that @susanarcham was willing to let me take a look at her curriculum mapping training materials that they used at Loyola Marymount in LA, and I found a lot of great stuff that I was able to adapt for my colleagues. One of the most useful activities that I wanted to share my adaptation of was helping librarians think about faculty collaboration from our new roles as liaisons. I added in some fun characters and scenarios and thought this activity might be useful for others doing instruction and heavy campus outreach. This is following the theme of "Mission Impossible" that Susan created. My department really liked this one.

Here is a snippet of one of the faculty profiles below. I divided everyone into subject-based groups to brainstorm and role play (sciences, business, social sciences, arts and architecture, humanities), and then we all discussed as a full group.

Find the full activity with all characters and discussion questions here.

I hope to share the rest of our training materials from the bootcamp if I have more time to blog about this. Otherwise, the next month is going to be focused on the Connected Courses class I'm taking, as well as the ALA Instructional Design Essentials ecourse that I'm teaching with Erica DeFrain.