Webinar: virtual internship and international libraries

On Wednesday November 28, 2012,  I hosted a webinar  about a recent virtual internship project and international libraries. As the UNCG Distance Education Librarian,  I am hosting my second international virtual intern through the DILL (Digital Libraries Learning, an international elite masters program of Erasmus Mundus)  My student last year was in Uzbekistan (view webinar/read about experience) but this year I am hosting a student in Germany. We met when I visited as a guest lecturer in Parma, Italy in September 2012 for the DILL program.  For the webinar, Annabelle Koester presented information on her DILL program experience and her virtual internship with me, as well as a brief overview of university and libraries in Germany.

Listen to the webinar presentation!   and view her slides:

DILL Virtual Internship at UNCG from UNCG University Libraries

Assessment Conferences

Posted for Kathy Crowe...

Kathy Bradshaw and I attended the ARL Libraries Assessment Conference October 29-31, 2012 in beautiful Charlottesville, VA.  We and several other UNCG librarians (Jenny Dale, Amy Harris Houk, Christine Fischer, Terry Brandsma) also attended the NCLA Mini-workshop on assessment, jointly sponsored by the College and Universities Section and the Community and Junior College Section, at Davidson Community College November 2, 2012.  It was the week of assessment!

Some takeaways from these conferences:

•    Provide evidence to show their value and communicate it to stakeholders

•    “Own the change” (John Lombardi, President of the LSU system)

•    Publicize our mission

•    Federal government is dominating accountability in higher education rather than higher ed itself

•    Many faculty retirements and hiring of new faculty.  Libraries need to support these new faculty.

•    We should continue to work on copyright

•    Library assessment had become more external; we didn’t use to have to justify our existence

•    Traditional measures of “goodness” (e.g. counting things) don’t provide an adequate picture

•    Online education will have a huge impact  on higher education

•    Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate!

These were gleaned from the keynotes at both conferences.  There were many great papers with good practical advice.  The ARL conference will post the presentations soon.

Several of us also presented at these conferences.  At the NCLA workshop, Jenny presented on libraries and retention and Amy on library and the QEP.  Kathy and I presented on the mystery shopper project at both conference.  Assessment at the UNCG Libraries rock!

DILL Program in Parma, Italy!

The last two weeks of September 2012, I had the honor to visit Parma, Italy as a guest lecturer for the Digital Libraries Learning Program (DILL) of Erasmus Mundus of the European Commission. DILL is a two-year, English speaking, international masters for information professionals to provide them with the skills in the area of digital libraries. It is offered in cooperation between Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (Norway), Tallinn University (Estonia), and the University of Parma (Italy) and students spend at approximately one semester at each institution, and then complete an internship and thesis.   

View of Italian Alps from Parma

Quaint pedestrian friendly town  

February of 2012, I first learned of the DILL program as I volunteered to host a virtual student, who lived in Uzbekistan as had completed the study Parma the previous fall. [See webinar video: http://library.uncg.edu/info/distance_education/flvfiles/virtualinternship.html]   The success of our collaboration  led DILL Parma coordinator not only ask me to host another virtual student this fall, but also inviting me to travel to Parma to meet and lecture to the DILL students face to face.  I was also asked to meet and lecture to local are library professionals while in Parma.

Visiting Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, Italy

In Parma, I lectured to the students on Creating the Digital User Experience at UNCG Libraries, showcasing   we do collaboratively as a library to virtually support our students such as reference virtual help, our digital library collections, our hosting services, apps, and tool creations, our online teaching, etc. The DILL students asked many questions about our technologies and services, and by the end of my half day talk, I had many DILL students asking if they could work at our library!  My other lecture day covered Designing eLearningDigital Objects where I discussed basic e-learning concepts, instructional design process, and technologies used to create tutorials and online learning at UNCG Libraries.  

While in Parma, I also connected with UNCG Library and Information Studies Department, primarily the Digital Libraries course and professor. Together we formed a secret Facebook group connecting students at both UNCG and DILL to discuss digital libraries. We pulled off a synchronous virtual session using Blackboard Collaborate to join both groups virtually, with video and audio. DILL students introduced themselves, shared their country (they came from 17 different countries across the world!) of origin, and what they were doing in libraries. Though the session was short and mainly involved introductions and sharing – not discussion - the goal was to show the possibility for synchronous, global connecting of librarians and students and its potential for collaboration.

An added benefit was meeting other visiting professors for the DILL program from all over the global including Australia, France, UK, USA and Sri Lanka.  We had some amazing discussions about digital libraries with truly international perspectives.  Visiting the area professional librarians for a morning was also positive experience. I showed them the Digital User Experience slides, answered many questions about how we do things, and  we all discussed libraries and our practices.  They were also impressed by what UNCG Libraries does for their students and said we had the “ideal academic library.” 

"Irma"  and I visiting Parma professional librarians

   

I have remained connected with the students and professional librarians I met while in Parma and hope to build more collaborative endeavors. I am currently hosting a DILL student from Germany as a virtual intern for the rest of the fall semester, planning a synchronous webinar with her in early December as I did with my student last February. I am currently wrapping up a collaborate article on the experience last year with my first virtual intern and the last years’ student intern supervisor in Parma. The Parma DILL coordinator asked me to write on my recent experiences in Parma with the program and she will translate for the Italian audience. She also requested I return next year thrilled with my contributions to the Parma DILL program.   The DILL program coordinator and our library Dean supported this international endeavor with hopes of building a more dynamic partnership with DILL and UNCG,  to create better global perspectives for both parties.   This collaboration has benefited all parties and promoted UNCG, especially the Libraries, on an international scale.
 
Special  thanks the UNCG University Libraries and Koehler Fund for their travel grant to help make this travel experience possible!


PS I had also enjoyed visiting Bologna and Venice for the weekend ... and eating lots of great foods and good wines!

Visited Sala Borsa in Bologna ... 

... in library, ancient roman ruins can be seen below! 

Streets of Venice... 

...and all the canals! 

IASSIST and ALA 2012

I attended two conferences in June. IASSIST is the International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology, a data professionals organization, and you can read about some sessions. I also attended ALA Annual Conference and read a summary if you wish.

Metrolina Information Literacy Conference 2012

A few of us from Reference attended the 7th Annual Metrolina Information Literacy Conference on Thursday. I've posted my notes for the sessions I attended. I also posted the PowerPoint from the presentation Jenny D and I gave. Would love to see more notes if you went!

Duke's Center for Instructional Technology Showcase

On Friday April 27, 2012 I attend the Duke Center for Instructional Technology Showcase  - a free one-day conference which "celebrates creativity and innovation in using technology in education at Duke with presentations and demonstrations by Duke faculty and staff"  

• PDF schedule is here
• Here is their storify summary.

Session 1: Exploring Games for Learning
Presenters from Elon, UNC-CH, U of Chicago Medicine showcased various types of gaming.  Alternative reality games (ARGs) were discusses the most.

•  U of Chicago folks created a game called Stork. A large team with variety of skills collaborated on the creation - and the trailer for it was, well, amazing!  Its like scavenger hunt but digital with audio, video, mobile, etc. for health oriented learning. ARGs are a great way to engage with youth because THEY get to create it! 
• Elon's  Intro Astronomy Class profssor created  a "reacting to the past" games - no technology involved - but engages students in a SNL,  Daily Show, Cobert Report like situations. Examples are: reading Galileo's texts and role playing as a character at the time and place or engaging in the is Pluto a planet debate.  Setting is key: they physically went to other places like a chapel or bar depending on the screen to give students the feel of time and place.  to debate and role play.
• UNC-CH discussed their ShBANGE collaborative research project another ARG, which involved collaborative between their LIS dept and the librayr. It involved two-weeks of puzzle-solving beginning with a staged marriage proposal in the Pit on the UNC-CH, and then offering clues, leading to puzzles, to more puzzles, etc using Info Lit and Research skills to build and solve the game. (Read more about it)
   

Session 2:  Learning from the Humanities Labs
This session included librarians and students - promoting how libraries should be involved in Humanities Labs and how one student work on her thesis through the lab with help from many people on campus.  

• Student Emma started out the session using Prezi for her presentation which really worked well, showing a layout in  a gallery, that you zoom in to see the digital maps from their special collection embedded in the virtual gallery.  She praised the library and said the library resources were key for her work and got lots of help from librarians on visualization too. She worked heavily in the BorderWorks Lab at Duke: reading travelogues  of visits to Tahiti by past explorers, analyzed scanned maps, created a timeline of events, and created a google earth map showing the explorers movements with various layers to be toggled on and off . Her goal was to determine if there a correlation between eye witness recorded events at island and those documented in England as she wanted to create a vision of Tahiti for 18th century readers.  She also mapped correspondences on a google maps and see the scale of geographic area of letters spread around. Read more about her work here!
• The second project was a Slave Nations Project  - to determine the ethnic origins in Africa of slaves in colonial Haiti - using data and visualization. This was a project from Duke's Haiti Lab, which is the first humanities laboratory at the Franklin Humanities Institute. This project involved collaborate between numerous students and researchers, using a database of of slaves who escaped, database of ads looking for missing slaves and trying  to correlate the data, using share google spreadsheet (until it got too large) and map overlaps on Google Earth to geolocate actual origins of slaves.  These folks strongly comment that they would like to see the library  help host data and databases as they need that core infrastructure to create database driven research projects, saved and shared or privatized if needed.

Session 3: What are your students doing with social media?
First student discussed what social media they are using in general: Tumblr, Twitter, Storify, Facebook, Delicious, Four square, Youtube, Google +

For courses they discussed what faculty are using in their courses:
For Theater class and English classes, posted all materials in Wordpress blog, all digital all in one place,  posts by students to engage w/ each other and document the process. Online interaction among students discussing topic is key. A Biology course used lots youtube videos which student liked.  For a  French classes students had to tweet to each other in French w correct grammar to each other! A Nutrition class used blogs to keep a food journal including  images and notes and quotes from readings for class. A freshman started a duke notes for sciences where people post their large lecture notes to share with each other, and take notes together through shared google docs -  now other classes have created their own with  professors adding content in there too (which can help prof assess if students got concepts or not!)  and is accessible to all in the class!

Lastly they gave advice:

•  Don't be afraid to use social media 'we use it more than email for sure'
• Use Facebook privacy settings so you an connect with students but not share all (you can have private life too) or just subscribe to a student postings.  This makes profs more human to students.
• PLEASE use  google docs for shared notes in your courses
• Try the tweeting in language classes again.
• Love videos

Conclusion of CIT....

Its worth attending not just to see some cool new methods of integrating tech  to support student learning and engagement, but great food and amazing networking. And of course had to take a walk through the gorgeous Duke gardens!

Grant Wiggin's Understanding by Design Seminar

Katthy Crowe, Jenny Dale and Beth FilarWilliams attended an excellent session by Grant Wiggins who was brought to campus by DCL on February 23, 2012. Wiggins co-wrote Understanding by Design which provides a planning framework to reach goals. We have this book in print and ebook. Check out his Power Point for more info.

Here are some of Wiggins main points:

· Focus on outcomes not inputs and students’ use and grasp of content rather than content coverage.

· Keep long-term goals in view with short term instruction & assessment. Aim for units over lessons for better long term results. It will better engage learners. 21^st Century students have higher expectation for multi media

· Programs have mission statement. How are courses designed to achieve program goals? eg critical and creative thinking. Mission statements are often not helpful

· We do need robust honest mission statements. Many talk about what we're providing instead. We need outcomes based on students’ performance. Need to be achievement focused

· Need to know how people learn. How People Learn (available online on www.nap.edu) chapter 3 is about transfer of learning

· Courses should not be a march through content but be Schooling by Design

· There’s often mismatch between goals and assessment

Understanding by Design’s (UBD) 3 big idea:

1. Point of education is effective understanding - not recall of content.

Asked us to complete this sentence:

By the end of the course/program, learners should be better able, on their own, to effectively use all the content learned, by…..

Content is a tool that makes you more competent, effective and efficient.

2. Understanding = using content effectively for transfer & meaning

(discussed Bloom who discouraged the word “understanding” but Wiggins thinks it's ok. But what do we mean by understanding?)

Asked us to complete:

If you know a lot but don't really understand you can only.....

If you understand you can Figure Out (connect, analyze, say why, interpret) and you can Apply (create, teach, adapt, not just plug in). Make meaning and transfer.

3. Backward design: determine what you want students to understand first. Using formative assessment, you can design/redesign, students misunderstandings.

s1 Goal is understanding

s2 If that’s the goal, then what evidence is needed for assessment?

s3 If that’s the goal and evidence needed, what follows for appropriate learning activities (the design)?

Other points:

· Need engaging work and competent understanding , not coverage

(medical education follows this)

· Seek a genuine, authentic performance

· Make students' thinking transparent.

· Design must change if students not learning. Must adjust.

· Can’t over rely on multiple choice

· Less lecturing. Some colleges like Harvard and MIT are giving lessons/lectures online and then using class time to engage with better transfer of real understanding

· Students need opportunities to practice, get feedback

· understanding is about acquiring (short term), making meaning and then transferring (long term)

· student make connections and generalizations, using the facts and skills

· adapt knowledge to solutions, real world contexts

· what do you want them to be able to do w/ content on their own

· what kind of thinking do you want them to do?

Additional Resources:

• Washington post article on MIT, Johns Hopkins, Harvard: Feb 16, 2012
• Eric Mazur video

(summary by Kathy Crowe, with input from Beth)

SUMMARY: ALCTS Virtual Midwinter Symposium Launching Your Star Potential: Leadership for Today’s Libraries

January 9–13, 2012, I attend the virtual ALCTS Virtual Midwinter Symposium Launching Your Star Potential: Leadership for Today’s Libraries, along with some other library folks thanks to the Libraries for paying for this wonderful symposium. here are my long notes from the sessions. If you also attend feel free to tweak or add to it, or comment.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Day one: I'm Your Leader: the Fundamentals of Effective Leadership (Adam Goodman)

Effective leaders:

· ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS. Not about just providing an answer, but how to ask questions to dive deeper, under the surface to the real issue.

· PLAY UP THEIR STRENGTHS. They rely on others to close the gaps. Cant stamp out a model leader or train someone on their weaknesses – a good leader will balance themselves with others who have the content and strengths in their weak areas, and build trust in those relationships.

· DON’T AVOID CONFLICT: Holding environment concept– in order to avoid conflict, people in groups go along with an idea. Leaders need to bring out the conflict to the table even if its uncomfortable - or problems/issues will just reoccur again and again.

· THINK – SAY – DO: alignment of all 3 of these is critical for a leader. People believe your ACTIONS not your WORDS. Decision must be clear to all. Work and resources = results. Time and money are transparent. *REMEMBER* people will write their own story in absence of information!

Challenges usually fall into:

· 43% technical (can usually be tweaked or fixed)

· 37% Adaptive (problems that have no real right answer and might involve conflict)

· 10% Critical (may need to be leaders decision; might not be time for group consensus)

Five Types of Power by leaders/which are you? Even if you aren’t in a leadership position.

· Expert - believe that the leader has “expert” knowledge. Don’t have to be in leadership position.

· Legitimate - leader has right to instruct them/usually a title that means they are in charge.

· Referent - people believe leader has desirable qualities/go to you by choice, even if you aren’t in leadership position.

· Reward - people believe leader will reward them/positive reinforcement. don’t overuse or use for normal task and duties.

· Coercive - people believe leader will punish them/negative reinforcement.

LEADERS ASK: What are the biggest problems facing our organization today? You will get various answers though the same ingredients. Need to align everyone, understanding we all have same basic ideas. Analogy to baking – same ingredients produce very different results. First what is the vision and what action should we take? Start with getting on same page as to “where we are now.” Then leaders need to bring forth and clarify underlying values with all followers (are we clear with issues? How can we all connect on some level?) *IMPT: Indifference not disagreement causes failure! *

Day 2: Leadership by Disruption (Pamela Sandlian Smith)

Suggested Reads:

· The Corner Office book by Adam Bryant

· Adam Bryant’s “Distilling the Lessons of CEOs” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/business/17excerpt.html?pagewanted=all

· also column the Corner Office in NYT http://projects.nytimes.com/corner-office

Key Traits:

· Passionate Curiosity – learn from everyone, listen to everyone, be open minded to ideas, let others speak before the leader

· Battled Hardened Confidence – overcome adversity, own your mistakes, persevere, try it! “you can break a rule if it’s in favor of your customer”

· Team Smarts – understand how teams work, discuss team strengths and weaknesses, TRUST, support each other, collaborate, manage teams like team sports analogy (you have to have various skills that balance each other). Make library more human – ex : experience zone – place for customers to experience and create.

· A Simple Mind Set – break down complex to simple, concise, gathering ideas and connecting dots so all people understand.

· Fearless – courage to take risks, ok with discomfort. Ambiguity? Live there! And don’t jump in too early with solution, spend way more time coming up with ideas from everyone first. Great Examples: 2 groups - group 1 has a map and micro managing style directions & details but doesn’t know destination – no one got there! Group 2 has a map and only knows the destination and told “find the quickest way there” – everyone got there even if each took different routes. So form a Road Map with your team for collaboration and be ok with trying something new!

Day 3: Leadership: What It Means for the Library Middle Managers (Mary Page)

Managers – TELL. direct, organize, run, manage

Leader – ASK. doesn’t always have to master content but inspirers and empowers. They understand other depts., across organization and develop strong peer relationships, build trust.

· Anyone can become a “Resident Expert” in one area in your library and be a leader!

· Be consistent on principals but flexible in practice.

· Leaders must: Listen – trust- respect (but don’t be intimidated by it)

· Challenging people: Inspire – empower – model

· Say often and early “What do you think?” and “Thank you!”

· *Remember:* when things go right, it’s your staff who gets credit; when things goes wrong, own it, it’s yours to own as the leader.

· Problems: don’t AVOID and adapt to it – WIMPY – there is always a solution or compromise.

· Leader traits: Authenticity –self-knowledge – commitment- communication

Day 4: Leadership: From Proto-Star to Supernova (Erica Findley and Maureen Sullivan)

· Leaders vs Managers – difference btw enabling vs dictation

· Leaders: purpose, direction, meaning, trust, optimism, action and results

· Kouzes & Posner “The Leadership Challenge” http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/WileyCDA/

o Challenge the process

o Inspire a shared vision

o Enable others to act

o Model the way

o Encourage the heart

· 10 truths about leaders

o YOU make the difference

o CREDABILITY is foundation

o VALUES drive commitment

o Focus on the FUTURE

o You cant do it alone – COOPERATE

o TRUST rules

o CHALLENGE is crucial for greatness and the hardest things are the best

o Lead by example/MODEL

o The best leaders are LEAERNER

o Leadership comes from HEARTH

· Ask yourself:

o What are your strengths as a leader?

o Who are your role models?

o Where are opportunities to lead?

o In what areas do you want to strengthen your leadership capacity

o What will you go to get started?

o Do a 360 review - Feedback by subordinates, peers, and supervisors.

Day 5: Leading Change (James Hilton)

Forces at work in libraries that might be leading to change:

· Cloud

· Unbundling

· Publishing life Cycles

Leadership Principals:

· Leading in the face of constant, emergent change

· Recognizing the primacy of relationships – most impt is creating relationships

· Areas of strategic collaboration – learn how and with whom- to share a strategic vision or goal; might be a temporary thing or long term.

· Leadership is distributed across organizations

· Remain brave at heart