YouTube For Library Instruction?

Here's an interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the use of YouTube for educational purposes. Has your library considered YouTube for library instruction?

Free Online Instruction/Presentation Tools

Last Friday, District III of the NCCCLRA held it's winter meeting at Rockingham Community College. I did a presentation on the use of free instruction/presentation software to support library instruction and for publicity purposes. Some of the tools require a download to your computer, and others are completely web-based. Here's an expanded list of the software grouped into categories; all are free, and most allow you to include audio along with the presentation:

Screenshots, Screen Recorders: Webinaria, ZDsoft Screen Recorder, Jing

Power Point-Style Presentations: Thumbstacks , AuthorPoint Lite

Public Platforms for Power Point-Style Presentations: AuthorStream , SlideShare

Short Publicity Videos, Slideshows with Music: Animoto, SlideStory, RockYou

Co-Browsing Tools: Spreed, Share-It-Now, Vyew

Peer Review Resources

Have you considered peer review as a means to improve instruction? This method is already being used by 40% of the colleges and universities in the United States. The University of Minnesota Center for Teaching and Learning has a great page of resources on the subject that could be used to develop a peer review standards initiative at your library. Scott Walter (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) has compiled a great list of conference papers and models for instructional improvement in academic libraries that include peer review discussions.

Summary of ILI-L Listserv Discussion on Mini Instruction Sessions

There has been a pretty good discussion going on at the ILI-L listserv for a week or so about mini instruction sessions, which we have also referred to as "one-shot" presentations on this blog. Mary Murray, Instruction Librarian at Juniata College, was nice enough to post a summary of the discussion with lots of great ideas as an easily accessible MSWord document.

One-Shot Workshops: New Reference

Several comments on this blog have mentioned the need for ideas and resources to create short, one-shot library instruction presentations. If your library has a subscription to Marketing Library Services, you might want to read the full review of Jerilyn Veldof's Creating The One-Shot Library Workshop: A Step-By-Step Guide in the September-October issue. As of today, Alamance CC, Craven CC, Pitt CC, South Piedmont CC, and Wake CC all have copies on their shelves.

Best Practices without Technology

Many librarians conduct information literacy classes with little or no access to technology. What are the best practices for instruction when access to technology is limited or nonexistent?

Jason Setzer

Reference Librarian

Davidson County Community College

Instant Instruction Feedback Forms

Get instant feedback from your information literacy classes. Instant Instruction Feedback Forms are located here.

--Jason Setzer
Reference Librarian
Davidson County Community College

Handout Exchange

You may find some useful instruction/orientation materials in the CCLA Handout Exchange. CCLA (College Center For Library Automation) supports Community College libraries in Florida.

The Tipping Point on Power Point?

Research from the University of New South Wales explains why those power point slides may not be getting the job done. How often do you rely on Power Point for your instructional classes or presentations?

Classroom Management Software

If you use computer classrooms or labs for bibliographic instruction, you may already be considering classroom management software. A recent discussion on the ili-l listserv recieved over 30 replies with the following responses:

Most Recommended:

• GenevaLogic's Vision
• NetSupport School 8.5
• Smart Technologies SynchronEyes

Also Recommended:

• LanSchool v6.5
• CrossTec's SchoolVue

ALA has a page comparing Classroom Management Software.

Assessment Resources for Library Instruction

The following pages and articles discuss student assessment of library instruction, and administrative assessment of instruction by librarians and program administrators:

The "S" word: Assessment. Statistics, Support, Success
Kathy Labadorf, University of Connecticut, and Laurie Sabol, Tufts University
New England Library Instruction Group Spring meeting, 2005

Library Instruction Services Assessment and Evaluation
Odum Library, Valdosta State University

Library Instruction Program: Assessment
Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University

Assessment: Library Instruction Classes & Programs
University of Maryland Libraries

Instruction: Assessment Surveys
University of Iowa Libraries

Instructional Improvement in Academic Libraries
Scott Walter, Associate University Librarian for Services
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Assessing Library Instruction Assessment Activities
Jim Kapoun, Library Philosophy and Practice Vol. 7, No. 1 (Fall 2004)

More Resources for "One Shot " Instruction

Here are some other resources for improving "one-shot" instruction classes. You may have to register as a member first before searching listserv archives:

• Search the LIBREF-L Listserv Archive
• Search the ILI-L Listserv Archive
• Search the FYE-LIB Listserv Archive
• take a look at PRIMO (Peer-reviewed instructional materials online, from ACRL)

Improving the "One-Shot" BI Class

• Make sure the teacher attends the class if possible; this stresses the importance of the class to students.
• Try some type of pre-test (paper or online) to get a sense of student's research skills and what to stress in your presentation.
• Tie any book/database searches to current events. This is really effective when you are researching a breaking news story somewhere in the world.
• If your class is in a computer classroom, include one or two searching exercises as part of the presentation. Students can email article citiations or catalog bib records to their instructor complete the exercise for credit
  
• Introduce a seemingly reputable web page at the beginning of class (you probably already have some of your favorites bookmarked like this and this) ... then use some evaluative criteria or compare to web pages on the same topic to show that the page is a fake, or at least dubious ... good segueway into evaluation of web pages and the use of subject directories like LII.
• Evaluation and feedback from students and the instructor can be useful in refining your presentation and deciding what should be stressed in a 50 minute class. We use an online form at RCC.

NCCCLRA Conference

Don Forbes and Michael Crumpton were nice enough to give up some time at last week's NCCCLRA Conference opening session to let me speak about the blog and generate a little publicity. Later that afternoon, I chaired a meeting in the Wake Tech library for librarians and directors interested in the blog. Among those attending: Pat Leamon (Alamance CC); Jason Setzer (Davidson CC); Allen Mosteller (Cleveland CC); Denise Bosselman (Sandhills CC); Santosh Shonek (Durham Tech); Julie Humphrey (Durham Tech); Bob Schenk (College of the Albemarle); Don Forbes (Guilford Tech), and Jenny Hock (Surry CC).
We had a good discussion on the scope of this blog and what we hope to achieve. We realize that not all NCCCLRA members are able to attend the annual conference. We also realize that most of the professional literature dealing with bibliographic instruction and reference addresses the needs of public or university research libraries. We will try to address topics of interest to the CC Librarian in the blog, and hope you will feel comfortable commenting on postings. Please don't be shy; we'll have a better "conversation" if we have plenty of members commenting on the blog. We discussed several ideas for topics, but feel free to email if you have a topic to recommend. If you do not have a Blogger account or are confused about commenting on a post, please see the July 13 post for directions. Let's get the conversation started!

Welcome to Reference & Instruction Exchange Roundtable

This is a cooperative effort to start a dialogue about Reference and Instruction in NC Community Colleges. What are you doing now, what are your instructional and reference success stories, and what are your ideas on improving instruction and reference services with the CC student population? Comments are enabled on this blog, but please stay close to the topics listed in the mission statement at the top of the screen.

We would also like to start a conversation about peer evaluation; you may also see references to this concept under "peer coaching" in the professional literature. We are interested in this concept with the emphasis on "peer", with librarian's working to improve each other as professionals, not as a part of an employee's evaluation.