January 22, 2015 (Thursday)

Time: 9am-11am; 12:30pm-2pm; 7pm-8:15pm (4.75)
Hours completed (IST): 9.75/135
Hours completed (Kara Robinson): 4/15
Accumulated on-site hours:13.75/150

Today I attended three bibliographic sessions conducted by three different librarians. Each session was provided for different types of users: Tammy did an outreach session for a high school; Vanessa did a session for education majors studying to teach social studies; and Michael's session was for lower-division undergraduates in the School of Communications.  Witnessing the different styles fo teaching for this diversity of groups was highly elucidating.

For example, the outreach session for the high school students was essentially the same lecture that we would provide for first-year students; however, Tammy seemed noticeably conscious of slowing her speech and spending a little more time than I had witnessed of her in other sessions. Of course, this is something she would probably do with college students if she had the same amount of time with them: she had two hours to lecture and then assist students with their searches compared to the more usual 50 minutes.

During my session with Vanessa I noticed that she like to regularly ask questions of the students or have them participate in small projects. This is known as formative assessment and I understand why so many instructors use it. The students did seem more engaged and Vanessa explained later that this helps her to modify parts of her lesson on-the-fly. If they seem to get how to conduct a search quickly but most do poorly on her citation exercise, then she knows to readjust her lesson plan to fit the students' needs.

Michael has a very rapid-fire delivery which makes his use of a more summative assessment a great choice for him. Because he is very prepared for his lesson he seems to have development mental section breaks where he will stop and ask for any questions, or if people have understood thus far, or just to make a quick joke to give everybody a breather.  It works as a tool to say, "Okay. We're done with this and moving on to something new."

The one thing that made each of these BIs so successful was that each had a good relationship with the instructor for each class. It seems that having an instruction session that most benefits the students requires a good working relationship between the faculty member and the librarian. Additionally, it was helpful to see different styles of assessment in action and how both can be very useful tools for instruction.