Library Instruction West 2018

Incorporating critical librarianship into daily practice may initially seem daunting due to varying demands and constraints. Given these challenges, how can we help first-year students develop more complex understandings of social issues that they may be researching and writing about in their composition courses? How do we reach first-year students who may have overlapping identities find resources and support during their time at the university? Join two academic librarians who will introduce the efforts they have made to incorporate intersectional themes into instruction and educational programming on their respective campuses. Librarians attending this roundtable discussion will brainstorm and share ideas for engaging in first-year instruction and outreach efforts that promote intersectionality.

How can we design digital tools to support adult learning? In 2017, work began on the Reading List for Life, a web application that builds on the Open Syllabus Project (OSP) database and lets adults users create advisory lists through any topic, and connect those lists to local library and other resources. This project is a collaborative effort between scholarly researchers, librarians, interaction designers, and programmers from Project Information Literacy (PIL), the metaLAB (at) Harvard, Columbia University, and “Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO). We are developing and testing a next-generation prototype of a learning app that distills teaching strategies of hundreds of thousands of university faculty into a library service. Please join Alaina Bull, PIL Research Associate and the First Year Experience Librarian at the University of Washington Tacoma, for a roundtable conversation about designing online learning tools, online pedagogy, and user-centered designs for adult learners. You will be asked to share your expertise, experiences, and successes and failures with designing digital tools for adult learners. Questions are welcomed, too. Our conversation will focus on pedagogy and iterative design, rather than the technical framework of a Learning Management System. 

Transfer students are an important population across campus, yet they can easily be overlooked by campus stakeholders, including the library. Academic libraries can empower transfer students to become lifelong learners, build community within the library, and reduce library anxiety. There are opportunities for both two-year and four-year libraries to develop services and outreach efforts for transfer students. Community college libraries can focus outreach efforts to ensure future transfer students have a sufficient information literacy foundation and information about the transfer process. Four year institutions can offer support for students joining the campus and navigating the academic library at their new institution, which may be substantially larger or different than their previous institution. This roundtable highlights opportunities for supporting transfer students within your library, through partnerships within your institution, and partnerships across institutions within your state or region. We’ll engage in a lively discussion with attendees about the transfer student experience, particularly the needs of transfer students and how their libraries are meeting those needs. The facilitators will contribute findings from their recent research on transfer students and share outreach examples from their institution.

Open educational resources (OER), textbook affordability, and open pedagogy are growing in popularity on campuses of all sizes and types. Librarians are playing a key role in shaping this movement. As open educators, we have the potential to impact things like equity, financial justice, teaching practices, social justice, technology, eBook licensing, scholarly publishing, and more. As we collaborate with others on our campuses to open up educational resources and practices, there are benefits and challenges. What's happening on your campus? How is your library embracing or ignoring OER and open pedagogy? Do you teach using OER? Do you have assignments that would be considered open pedagogy? Does your library have a textbook affordability program or policy? What benefits and challenges have you faced? What's your biggest open dream? Let's gather to discuss librarian as open educator.