(Un)Written Tips for New LIS Students (Or, What I Learned In Grad School)

It’s mid-April and so many things are wrapping up. Most of my class projects have been turned in. I’m calculating the last hours I owe at each graduate assistantship. I just landed my first professional position! And—maybe most excitingly—one of my largest projects, the 2015 Symposium on LIS Education just happened last weekend. I’m finding myself with more free time (thank you, Lord) but also more anxiety about the future of my career.

Why not take a minute to look in the rear view mirror and reflect on the past instead of getting caught up on the “what ifs” of the future? I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. Because I am the only graduate student voice on ACRLog right now, I feel an obligation to speak to graduate students’ needs and concerns. Thus, I thought I would write a short reflection on what I have learned in graduate school—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Fair warning: my experience in no way represents all LIS students’ experiences. My hope is that this reflection will give those just starting an LIS program or thinking about starting one some information about what it was like and what I might do differently if I had the chance. Hindsight is 20/20 so why shouldn’t we give others the space to learn from our misunderstandings and mistakes?

It’s important to give some context first. I have had what some might call an abnormal LIS graduate student experience. I attended the University of Illinois’ Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) where I focused on instruction and scholarly communication. I finished the program in two years. During the course of my forty credit hours, I took only four online courses. Throughout my time at GSLIS, I held 1-2 graduate assistantships, either in our reference or instruction department. This means that all of my classes were supplemented with practical, tangible experience, including fielding reference questions, performing assessments, instructing workshops, providing internal education, and even attending committee meetings. I was extremely blessed to have these experiences. I was extremely blessed to have the mentorship that these experiences inherently provide. I am a white female in the LIS field and I undoubtedly have privileges others do not. I had support and freedom to uproot my life and move to Illinois and many others do not. It’s important to acknowledge these differences and work to change the structural issues in our current LIS education system to include more diversity, in terms of prior experiences, race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic/ first generation status, and library training.

Below are my tips, in a nutshell. I have to admit that these were influenced by the recent Symposium on LIS Education Keynote (recording forthcoming) by Micah Vandegrift, Brianna Marshall, and Annie Pho entitled “Go Forth- OR- Community is Easy, Change is Difficult”. I’d like to thank them for giving me the courage to share both my successes and my failures.

Don’t underestimate your peers

I can’t overemphasize this enough. I came to GSLIS thinking that I would only really learn from my instructors and my supervisors. While I did end up learning a lot from these people, I learned just as much (if not more) from my peers. These peers—everyone from my colleagues at the information desk to the committee I worked with to plan the symposium—pushed me to think more critically about librarianship as a profession. They challenged me to think in new and complicated ways, through Twitter or weekly coffee breaks. They learned right alongside me, often sharing their newfound knowledge and developing projects with me so that I had some level of fluency in digital humanities or critical pedagogy or some other area I might have never been exposed to. By not only sparking my interest in these topics but also challenging my long-held conceptions about librarianship, they made me a better student, graduate assistant, job candidate, and (I hope) librarian.

Don’t get me wrong. I would advise you to ask your supervisor about their first job. Ask your instructor more about their experience with that topic. But don’t underestimate your peers—near or far. They know what you’re going through. They are trying to digest and grasp all of these new experiences too. Lean on each other. Mentor each other. Complain to each other! But make sure you develop relationships with the students around you. They are the future of this profession and your connection with them will be invaluable.

In short, I think my friend Kyle says it best:

tweet  

Push yourself

When I moved to Illinois, I didn’t know a single person in the entire state. I left Ohio for professional and personal reasons and I thought moving two states away would fix most everything. All of that sounds great on paper. But when you arrive, you realize that it’s overwhelming and isolating. The first few months were lonely and, frankly, depressing. But I pushed myself. I pushed myself to meet people. I pushed myself to attend community events and get familiar with GSLIS.

After awhile, I found my footing. Eventually, I was able to push myself in new and exciting ways. I took classes that were outside of my comfort zone. I led more workshops and instructional sessions. I took on a more challenging assistantship. I took an international LIS class and met LIS students from around the world. While all of these decisions mean that I have more experience, I also believe they have made me more thoughtful. I can relate to others’ positions more now. I am more willing to try new things and take risks. Everyone has to follow the path that makes the most sense for them. I would just encourage you to find ways to get outside of your comfort zone while you’re on that path.

Take your own stance/ Push your teachers, mentors, and colleagues

You’re going to have a lot of different people tell you a lot of different things. Everyone has a different opinion on everything, from teaching methods to the best tools to use for a specific project. Moreover, many people—even within our small library world—take different high-level stances on things like theory and ethics. These people are people you look up to. They have been in the field for decades and they have professional experiences you won’t have for a long time. Take their wisdom seriously and let it shape and challenge you.

At the same time, hold your own! You have a voice! You are becoming a professional and an expert. They can learn from your experience too. I know it’s challenging and even scary to take a different stance then someone you look up to, but our profession will never grow if you don’t.

A quick note: I have to again emphasize that I have privileges that others do not. I am in no way advocating that this is feasible for everyone. We have bills we have to pay and sometimes challenging someone—especially if they have some level of authority over you—is not feasible. In short, if you have the privilege and space to challenge some of the issues in our profession, think about doing so, especially if they affect people that can’t have a voice.

Know your value

This is especially true in the job search. You’ll hear that jobs are difficult to land and they are. But you have worked really, really hard to be where you’re at. Recognize how incredibly intelligent, talented, and unique you are. I know that the job market is tight and you really just need to get your foot in the door. But remember why you came to library school in the first place—to do interesting, rewarding work. Think less about what kind of job you want and more about what kind of work you want to do. If a position doesn’t seem to give you space to do that work, seriously think about whether it’s right for you. This is all to say that if you believe you are a great library professional, others will often start to believe you are too. Don’t feel like you have to work somewhere were the work is mediocre, the pay is unfair, and the leadership isn’t active (often all in a region where you won’t be happy). You have to be realistic but  you should also realize that you are the best advocate you have.

Reflect

All of the things you’re learning are new and exciting. You’re reading new topics and scholars in your courses, you are developing new relationships, and you might even be teaching or programming or doing some other exciting activity for the first time. It all happens so quickly. You will blink and forget those first experiences. In some ways, this is great. You get to improve without ruminating on some the stumbling blocks you had to get over.

At the same time, you risk being able to tangibly see how far you’ve come. Take some time, either weekly, monthly, or even once a semester, and think about all of the skills you have learned and all of the connections you have made. Often writing, discussing, or critiquing something we have done allows us to digest it. We gain new insights and are better able to identify successes and failures, all of which make us better practitioners the next time we do something.

Start healthy practices now

I hope that this doesn’t sound preachy but this is so important! Grad school is a stressful time—financially and emotionally. If you work and attend classes, you have little to no free time. I get all of that. I have lived it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t set boundaries. At some point, you and your needs have to come first. If you don’t set boundaries now, it will be even more difficult to suddenly start setting them when you start your professional life.

I know you’d really like to be part of that new project. Or you think it might not be that big of a deal to take on one more hourly project. Maybe you think you can pick up the slack for your group for an assignment. Habits are hard to break! Think critically about how you like to work. Do you lead? Do you let someone else lead? Are you a perfectionist? Think critically about how you communicate. Do you say what you think directly? Are you sometimes passive aggressive? It might sound silly but take note of all of these now. The better you know yourself, the better you can advocate for yourself and your time. The more transparent you can be with yourself (and with others), the more successful and healthy your life will be.

My advice is simple. Be intentional and realistic about how much time you have. SAY NO! You never want to be in a position where you really care about something you volunteered for but you can’t actually do what you said you would. Put your needs first. Realize that you have an identity outside of your professional interests and that’s okay. You are an entire person—with a family, hobbies, and interests. Embrace that now and set boundaries when you can so you can enjoy all of the aspects of your life, personal and professional.

Embrace rejection

Last fall, my proposal for a large international conference was rejected. Many of my friends were attending and I felt foolish for not getting in. When asked about it, I glossed over it like it wasn’t a big deal. The truth is that talking about it more would have helped me grow. I would have been able to think about the quality of my proposal sooner and more effectively. Moreover, this wasn’t a career changer! I can still submit an improved proposal to another conference. I can take their feedback and use it constructively to challenge myself. (Also, sometimes there are just a lot of awesome proposals and the planning committee can only pick so many. Now that I have gone through this process myself, I realize how difficult choosing really is!).

Failure is hard, especially when you care as deeply about the profession as many people do. But see it as an opportunity to learn, grow, and reflect. Embrace it, stand back up, and try again!

Be kind to yourself

I’m not sure if I’m qualified to write about this because I’m not the best at it. It’s a goal I’m working toward. Be patient with yourself. Remember that learning and growth takes time. Remember that you can’t do it all. You can, however, acknowledge your successes and be proud of how far you’ve come. You deserve it.

More Resources Worth Exploring:

Brianna Marshall, Professionalism and Self- Presentation

Brianna Marshall, We Need to Share our Rejections

Jennifer Guiliano, Time, Money, and the Academy

Gennie Gebhart, Five Mistakes I Made in My First Quarter of Library School

Amanda Hope Davis, A Librarian’s Approach to Self-Care

Lix McGlynn, On Overcommitting

Brianna Marshall, Library School Life Lessons

Robin Camille, Hello from New York! My new job, how I got here, and the value of my MLIS

Open Education Week 2015: A Reflection on IP, Infrastructure, and Interest

This year, Open Education Week ran from March 9th to March 13th. Open Education Week, like Open Access Week, is a celebration of what has been accomplished and what is currently being done within the greater open movement. The Open Education Consortium sponsors the week by compiling resources, marketing materials, and educational tools for librarians, faculty, and other instructors around the world. One of the best parts about this process is that after the week ends, the Open Education website becomes a repository of sorts for events that happened that year. The resources for each event include recorded lectures and webinars as well as supplementary guides and tools. This year, just the webinar topics ranged from ensuring quality of digital content in the classroom to the impact of the open educational movement on the internationalization of universities globally.

This is the first year that UIUC has participated in Open Education Week and I was lucky enough to help create and lead two of our events, which were spearheaded by the Office of Information Literacy. Before I describe my experience with those events, it might be helpful to back up and explain why open education is important, especially within the library community, and what Open Educational Resources (OER) are. SPARC defines OER broadly as any learning resource that is released “under an open license which permits…free use and repurposing by others”. I would argue that the most important word in the last sentence is repurposing. The Open Education movement is built on the idea that education is about sharing, expanding, and refining knowledge. That can only happen if licenses allow educators to revise, adapt, remix, combine, and then redistribute resources. If you take a learning object that another educator created, improve upon parts of it, and then only share it in the classes that you teach, some would argue that you are not fully participating in the Open Education movement. Re-sharing is key.

But why does all of this matter? The Open Education movement works to mitigate the legal and technical barriers that impede collaboration and instructors’ ability to create the absolute best learning objects possible. Instructors are often frustrated with traditional learning content platforms, like textbooks and even course packets, which paint their course with a broad brush and often do not allow adaptation and flexibility. Likewise, students become frustrated when they have to buy a $100+ textbook and it is not completely or consistently used. To make the matter more complicated, many educators (including librarians) find fair use law subjective and confusing. OER is a solution to many of these issues. In addition, OER often reduces the costs we put on our students, many of whom are drowning in an incredible amount of debt already. The use of OER has been proven to increase retention and foster equitable access to learning regardless of socio-economic status. Librarians obviously care deeply about both of these goals.

My department hosted two sessions, one for library staff and one for instructors across campus. We used the same companion LibGuide for both sessions but the learning outcomes for each session were different. I taught the session for staff and my colleague, Crystal Sheu, taught the session for instructors. It’s important to mention, however, that we created the lesson plans and presentations together and we often consulted each other and our boss, Lisa Hinchliffe, about learning activities and presentation details. I share a few reflections below with the hope that others will think about how this type of programming could affect their library programming and culture and possibly make OER a more central conversation on their campus. Please note that these views are my own.

Interest

Getting buy-in is difficult! Both of our audiences were definitely smaller than we had hoped. This was our first year doing this type of programming so smaller numbers are to be expected. At the same time, it is important for us to think about why there might not currently be a large audience for this topic. Do faculty already know about OER? Do librarians get enough OER training through their professional development experiences? Do faculty not have the time to find and adapt OER? Are librarians weary of telling their faculty about yet another thing they should think about doing? Should we have used different marketing techniques?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions and I think that’s okay. Still, whenever we do this type of programming, whether it is internal or open to the entire campus, I think it is important to find a deeper understanding about what’s happening. Sometimes there are just odd conflicts or planning issues. But for the most part, there are structural reasons people do or do not find value in something. Even putting the programming out there allows us to gauge our audiences’ interest and then do further research based on that.

IP

Somehow it always surprises me just how complicated intellectual property and copyright is. OER definitely attempts to reduce the confusion around the legalities of sharing by using Creative Commons licenses. We introduced these licenses on a very basic level, in case any of our audience members weren’t familiar with them.

Nevertheless, even CC licenses can be complicated and require thoughtful planning. One great example is the Share-A-Like license. We tried our best to tell participants that Share-A-Like requires intentionality. When you take an OER (or any licensed material) under a Share-A-Like license and adapt it, reuse it, and then share it again, it has to be licensed under the same original license you started with, which is obviously some variation of a Share-A-Like license.

When I first learned about this license, I was excited about its function. On face value, the license seems to take a major tenant of the open movement and put it into practice. If you use something that someone else has spent time and energy creating, you, too, should share your final product openly. Yet, a more critical look of this license paints a more nuanced picture. By making openness “infectious,” we take away the creator’s ability to choose how they would like to share and disseminate their work, which (I believe) is one of the most important reasons we have become author rights and open access advocates. Note: this assertion is most definitely being influenced by some of the resources I have been exploring lately, including one of the best critiques of openness and assuming openness is always the best option that I have ever read and a project that contextualizes information instead of assuming that it should always be free and open to all, specifically in regards to cultural heritage objects that have historically been attained through violent and colonialist means. I also recognize that “open” often means different things when thinking about educational resources, publications, cultural object, data, code, and software and we can’t group them together. While I think sharing is the point of OER, I’m not sure licensing is the place we should force educators to do it.

I’m currently taking a data policy seminar with Victoria Stodden. A trained statistician with a legal background, Dr. Stodden has been an incredible advocate for the open science movement. She regularly speaks about sharing data, code, and software to increase reproducibility and progress within the scientific community. Our last class session focused on intellectual property, with a more specific focus on licensing data and code. The Share-A-Like license came up in our conversation and, of course, I was a huge proponent for it. I explained that in a movement like Open Education, where the goal is to take some power and autonomy back from the commercial entities that make textbooks and other learning materials, Share-A-Like is imperative for making sure that no one is selling OER that have been adapted downstream. Her point, however, was that Share-A-Like actually impedes the OER movement to some extent. She argued that if an instructor finds two OER under different Share-A-Like licenses, they can’t combine these two resources and re-share whatever they make. Why? Because both licenses require you use that same license and you can’t use two licenses on one OER.

This is getting confusing, right? My point is simply that as we embrace CC licenses, many of which make our lives easier and make sharing less complicated, we need to continue to be critical of their purpose. Likewise, we need to teach instructors that CC licenses aren’t a quick fix for everything but instead one option in an entire toolkit of legal resources. Moreover (and this is my epiphany from Open Education Week), every library that expects to do robust outreach around OER or OA needs to have at least one person on staff that understands some of the intricacies of copyright and intellectual property rights.

Infrastructure

This brings me to my next point. Before really starting OER outreach, your library should start to think about what kind of infrastructure it has to support such a movement. It is difficult to get people excited about an OER initiative when there isn’t much in place within the library to help get it off of the ground. Now obviously some libraries have more resources than others. But I’m suggesting you ask the same questions you ask before you start any outreach, including everything from information literacy sessions to collaborations with other campus programs.

Who will be the primary contact person for OER? In other words, who is the face of the library’s initiatives in this area? If you have a strong subject specialist model, how will the library foster collaboration between OER experts and subject specialists? What forms of internal training are needed? Similarly, who will be the point of contact for IP and copyright issues (if there isn’t one already)? Is this person familiar with OER and CC licenses? What’s really challenging is that the library needs to help instructors with copyright, instructional design, and technology. This means that teamwork and internal communication is essential.

I believe that one of the most important forms of infrastructure in the OER conversation is the University IR. If we are telling instructors that sharing and re-sharing is important, are we backing that claim up through our resources? Many institutions, including the University of Michigan and MIT, have repositories for their OER. This fosters internal collaboration and sharing, especially when two instructors might teach a similar class and learn from each other. Additionally, most (if not all) of these institutional repositories for learning objects are open to non-affiliates, which aligns with the greater open movement. I’m not suggesting that learning objects have a place in the IR that usually holds research materials. But there needs to be an outlet or service for instructors that would like to go beyond disciplinary or general OER sharing.

Alternative uses

The session aimed at staff really surprised me. We based our lesson plan on the standard subject specialist model: you talk with your faculty about OER and teach them the standard process of finding, evaluating, and repurposing OER for their classroom. Our participants had much more nuanced and complicated reasons for using OER. Some examples include using OER as a solution to sharing educational materials internationally. We often think about this as giving others access to our OER but I think we have just as much to learn from their learning objects. Covering this intended use meant taking a minute to talk more explicitly about access and repositories in other languages.

An additional use that we hadn’t thought of was using OER when working with unaffiliated patrons at the reference desk. Because of the size of the library and our great VR service, Illinois often gets questions from around the nation and world. Community members are also some of our most regular patrons. We are often able to help patrons with their needs, but if they do not have access to our electronic or physical collection, OER could be a potential resource for their question because they can be accessed by anyone.

Moving past consumption

The Office of Information Literacy recently applied to present some of this information at Illinois’ Faculty Summer Institute (FSI). If we are accepted, our primary audience will be faculty members that have applied to be a part of the institute in order to learn more about new instructional movements at Illinois. Our goal for this session is simply to go beyond consumption. The two workshops we just taught were primarily based on how to find, evaluate, and use others’ OER. But what if you have an existing learning object you’d like to share as an OER? What is the right venue for you? How can you use your subject expertise to create metadata and documentation that allows re-use by others? What license fits your needs? Our profession is continuing to teach students and instructors that they aren’t just consumers of information. They create and disseminate information every day. Our hope is that faculty are see the value in sharing their expertise with others teaching within their discipline.

Libraries are apt to do this work!

I made the following graphic for my session with staff. I think that it’s important to keep all of these in mind when doing open education work.

library explination

We are experts in many of the areas OER touch upon! Our time at the reference desk is often spent locating hard-to-find information through a variety of sources. We teach information evaluation everyday. Many of us have some expertise or understanding of copyright and/or copyleft. We are trained in instructional design and instructional technology; we spend a lot of our time crafting learning outcomes and identifying activities and assessments that can foster experiences that address these outcomes. We have all of the tools we need to be conversant with faculty, staff, administrators, and colleagues about the need for open education and the use of OER. It is time for us to embrace the Open Education Movement as a valuable tool for increasing access to education, improving learning, and furthering the mission of the campus library.

A special thanks to Lisa Hinchliffe for letting me explore my interest in OER. Thanks, too, to Crystal Sheu for collaborating with me to make this vision a reality. Thanks to Sveta Stoytcheva, Kyle Shockey, and the Twitterverse for pointing me to the awesome critiques of openness discussed above.

 

Reflections on the Job Hunt: Writing a Teaching Philosophy

As an LIS student graduating in May 2015, the job search is on my mind a lot these days. One of my more recent applications required a one-page teaching philosophy, in addition to a letter of interest and resume. Like many people that write a teaching philosophy for the first time, I have years of varied instructional experience but I often don’t take the time or space to do intentional, deliberate reflection of my teaching.

I think that ACRL’s recent decision to move forward with the proposed Framework, while simultaneously making a conscious stand not to rescind the Standards is more than relevant to this post. With that being said, I think there has been a multitude of brilliant blog posts on this topic, some of which have taken place on ACRLog. (For some of my personal favorites, see Meredith Farkas’ post, a reflection from Donna Witek, and a resource that Nicole Pagowsky shared).

Instead, I’d like to think more critically about why reflection is important, how it is often integrated into our daily lives (even if we don’t realize it), and what the construction of my teaching philosophy entailed. My hope is that this post might help other LIS students or recent grads in their journey to construct a coherent statement.

One of the reasons I like Twitter is that I am reminded daily about what other people in our field are doing, especially in relation to instruction. Many #critlib discussions have explored critical pedagogy and reflection. Now #moocmooc is exploring some of these topics in more depth while challenging participants to blog and reflect on their professional praxis. I’m personally hoping that these discussions will develop into a longer chapter on critical pedagogy and reflection or teaching assessment in an exciting work that’s still in progress.

One of the more recent #critlib conversations was about critical reference. Somewhat unsurprisingly, a lot of the conversation about how to do good critical reference also applies to instruction. Here’s one of my favorite tweets from that conversation:

critlib conversation

I understand that potential employers want applicants to write a teaching philosophy so that they can make sure the person is well suited for their institution’s teaching culture and set of values. But what I learned is that it does so much more than that. It makes your teaching more intentional and nuanced. When you have to sit down and really ask yourself questions like “Why do I care about or place value on this instructional method?” or “What are the big questions I ask in my classroom?” you become a more thoughtful teacher.

This might seem really obvious but I’m not sure I realized the true value of reflection until I actually did it. As librarians face more and more time constraints, I think that this is something good to keep in mind. Yes, it might take a few hours to hash out how you teach and why, but if it improves your practice and your interactions with students isn’t it worth it?

I’d like to give a tangible—albeit cheesy—example to illustrate what I mean. I try to attend a yoga class at least once a week. It gives me a space to decenter and relax while stretching and improving my posture and strength. One of my favorite yoga classes is a hot yoga session at a swanky yoga center in town. There are a few reasons I like the class. The heat intensifies my stress relief, they let you borrow equipment, and it’s a fairly small, close-knit space. But to be honest, the biggest reason I go out of my way to attend the particular session is because of the instructor. He starts every class by telling students that the session isn’t about replicating the exact pose he is doing. It’s more about how your individual body feels in the pose. In other words, he empowers students to do what they can without feeling shame about not being as flexible as their neighbor. He also solidifies the expectations of the class by saying upfront what the goals are and then he reiterates those expectations by giving modifications for each pose and talking about how your body should feel instead of how it should look.

I am, of course, living on a graduate student budget and I can’t afford to go to this expensive class every week. I decided to compromise by going to a much cheaper yoga session sponsored by the student recreation center every now and then instead. I went to my first session last week and quickly learned that the instructional techniques used there are very different. This instructor scolded students for looking at their neighbors’ pose for guidance instead of looking directly at him. He made students stop the flow they were moving in so that they could move to one side of the room and watch him demonstrate exactly how poses should be done. He never talked about modifications for those with limited flexibility or injuries. In short, he made the practice tedious and maybe even discouraged newcomers from practicing yoga again.

There are many things I learned from these two very different experiences (besides the fact that you get what you pay for):

  • Teachers are not the keepers of knowledge. They are there to facilitate, mentor, and encourage. Being a guide can often be more productive than being an “expert”. And why can’t teachers be both?
  • If both of these instructors would have reflected on not only their respective sessions but also their teaching philosophy and their goals when teaching yoga, there would undoubtedly be some improvement. (Maybe this is me being optimistic or naive, but I don’t think anyone intentionally tries to be discouraging).
  • Teachers reflect on teaching even when we don’t mean to. If that one experience informed my teaching, I know that reflecting more consciously would be even more beneficial.

This brings me to constructing my actual teaching philosophy. I tried to keep all of this in mind while doing so: what is important to me as a student, what good (and poor) experiences I have had with past teachers and why, and how a reflection might inform and represent my teaching. I searched for examples in many different places and asked my mentors to share their teaching philosophies with me. A quick Google search brings up an overwhelming amount of resources. There are many sample philosophies, checklists, and rubrics. If I had to simplify and just give a few pieces of advice, they would be the following:

  • Use examples from fields like rhetoric and composition. Sometimes it’s hard to find good library examples because our field is so diverse. Graduate students writing statements in these areas often have similar goals to our own (facilitating critical thinking, putting information in context, etc.) and I think we can learn a lot from them.
  • Be yourself! More than anything else, your energy should shine through. Think about how your lived experiences have guided your teaching practices and philosophy. Reflect on your role and why you believe in the importance of that role.
  • Give examples. Most of us can write all day about what we want to do in the classroom. But what do we actually do? How do the activities we create embody the concepts we want students to understand? This might seem harsh, but if you can’t give a practical, tangible example of how you teach a particular concept or philosophy, it might not be as important to you as you claim.

My philosophy is in no way perfect. I actually think of it as a living, developing document that I hope will continue to grow and change as I grow and change. Still, I think that sharing parts of it might help others are they are thinking about their own philosophy. Here are a few excerpts:

As an educator, my goal is to foster personal exploration, challenge critical thinking, and frame students’ experiences within larger societal issues. Multiple teaching experiences have taught me that this process only happens if students develop a sense of autonomy and accomplishment. My role, then, is less about being an expert who dictates content and authority and more about being a leader who guides students through learning in the context of their lived experiences.

 I am also an information expert with a tangible agenda for my classroom. The students of today are swimming in information, all of which differs in format, reliability, and means of production. Thus, today’s librarian teachers are facing a very different obstacle than the librarians of even twenty years ago. The challenge is not in teaching students how to find information, but instead in teaching them how to be critical, contextual consumers of the information they already have access to. Therefore, my role as an information expert shapes the way I teach the skills needed to understand the complicated relationship between knowledge, information production, and power.

My greatest calling as an instructor is to help students realize their responsibilities as citizens, consumers, friends, mentors, and ethical human beings. Teaching them not only how to be more information literate but also why it matters is the constant objective behind my instruction.

Have you written a teaching philosophy? How often do you revise it? What advice would you give to new librarians going through this process?

 

 

Students Taking Back the Conversation: The 2015 LIS Symposium on Education

I wouldn’t normally use this space to discuss or promote upcoming professional development opportunities. However, as an LIS graduate student contributing to a national platform like ACRLog, I feel compelled to share LIS students’ current concerns and activities, especially if they affect the rest of the professional body.

LIS students have been discussing placement, pay inequality, a lack of diversity in the profession, and gaps in LIS school curriculum and pre-professional opportunities through informal means for at least the last decade. These conversations have taken place in white papers, blog posts, and even in ALA or ACRL newsletters. They range from new librarians calling for more transparent program and placement statistics to recent graduates expressing their bleak job search and why they regret going to library school to minority librarians expressing the difficulties they face during the transition to their first professional position. They are, unfortunately, often cries of outrage or despair from one practitioner’s personal experience within the field, sometimes corroborated with statistics or other sources that prove that the individual’s issue is part of a larger trend within librarianship. A quick Google search brings up titles like these:

(If you’re trying to better understand the issues recent graduates are facing, looking at the comments is very enlightening.)

Regardless of format or venue, all of these discussions are relevant and fundamental to any change taking place. Nevertheless, we often see these conversations become stagnant and fruitless. LIS colleagues might chime in with a few comments but that is usually the extent of the impact. Or worse, a commenter will suggest that complaints about LIS education and placement are unwarranted and that new graduates need to be more autonomous and creative, completely disregarding the structural issues at play and shutting down any change the conversation could have influenced.

To make matters more complicated, the LIS practitioners that care about these issues often have little or no voice in our profession because of their status. The minority LIS student or recent graduate that feels uncomfortable and undervalued in their position often has no means of revolutionizing the issue. The unemployed (or underemployed) LIS graduate can’t necessarily rely on their alma mater or even ALA for support and most of the time their only option for voicing their frustrations is to warn current LIS students about the challenges the job market presents. Even current LIS students have little to no voice in curriculum or administrative decisions (for a great example of this at Illinois, see one of my colleague’s recent posts through Hack Library School). As a result, it’s relatively easy to find LIS blog posts that are primarily a vehicle for voicing frustrations, often because there is no other avenue for tangible action.

Thus, it has become clear to many that a more formalized, holistic movement needs to happen in order to see any real change. Moreover, it is apparent that this change should be student-led and collaborative. Students and recent graduates are, of course, stakeholders for all of these issues and should have some authority on how they should be resolved. Borrowing from (and reframing) one of the basic tenants of second wave feminism, we have to believe that the personal is political. Library students’ experience doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The personal experience of being unemployed, undervalued, and underpaid, in addition to having a lack of access to pre-professional opportunities or coursework on an important topic or in an instructional mode that meshes with your learning style is part of a trend. Our experiences are often more than our own personal endeavors. They also help us realize when institutional change needs to happen and they help inform what exactly needs to be revolutionized.

For these reasons, a group of LIS students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has created the 2015 Symposium on LIS Education. The symposium is completely free to registrants and will take place on April 10 & 11 at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Champaign, Illinois. The event will have a virtual component for those that would like to participate but are unable to make it to GSLIS.

The symposium has similar goals to the innovative #critlib unconference to be held in Portland in March. We believe that experience informs real solutions and the theory and praxis needed to create them. We’d like to call on students to lead the change in LIS education and educational policy. Additionally, we hope that the symposium will provide a safe space to address these controversial issues in a collaborative and productive way.

Potential topics for proposals could include, but are not limited to:

  • Diversity
  • Advising and mentoring
  • Gaps in LIS curriculum: critical theory, technical competencies
  • Administrative transparency
  • Information ethics
  • Reflections on online education
  • Pre-professional experience and opportunities
  • Costs and funding
  • Required courses
  • Career placement
  • Dual degrees and specializations

If you are a current LIS student, recent graduate, or scholar of LIS education or diversity in LIS, we would be ecstatic to have you participate. One of the main objectives of the symposium is to simply have a centralized space to look at LIS education more critically. But it is also worth noting that a larger goal of the symposium is to facilitate the creation of a deliverable. While it isn’t clear what form the deliverable will take, we know it will be important to have a summative document or declaration from participants that informs LIS schools and ALA of what was discussed and how students are addressing these issues. We hope that this will only be the first conversation/ step in this imperative discussion for the future of librarianship.

*The ideas here are my own and do not formally represent the Symposium on LIS Education’s Planning Committee. Conversely, I can’t take credit for thinking of this innovative event. I’d like to thank Madison Sullivan for asking me to help bring her idea to life and for rounding up a group of dedicated and passionate LIS students to work with on the planning committee.

Using the New Framework to Teach Ferguson

In moments like the reaction to Brown’s death, we need more engagement, not less, and each of us has something to offer. –#FergusonSyllabus by David M. Perry

Last week, on November 24th, the grand jury of St Louis County announced their decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the August 9th murder of Michael Brown. A flurry of conversation and protest started. People began tweeting and media outlets started covering multiple cities across the nation (and the world) that were protesting in solidarity with Ferguson. London, Atlanta, Boston, New York, and Chicago were just a few that participated.

Amidst the tweets expressing outrage and shock about the decision, a conversation began about education, pedagogy, and the nation’s youth. Marcia Chatelain, an Assistant History Professor at Georgetown, had already started the conversation in late August with #FergusonSyllabus.  But the decision not to indict revitalized the conversation. More educators—of any level, from elementary school teachers to college professors—added suggestions under the hashtag. Moreover, blogs and media outlets started to curate the resources being shared and interview other educators about best practices for starting the Ferguson conversation.

A passage from Dissent illustrates the complexity and magnitude of the effort:

“A middle school teacher in Madison, Wisconsin had students review the grand jury evidence. Meanwhile, I had my students in Washington, D.C. connect the Ferguson decision to Rosa Parks’s activism in seeking trials for black women raped by white men in the South. Volunteers in Ferguson read books from #FergusonSyllabus to children—unexpectedly out of school again—at the local public library.”

Some of the most profound teaching recommendations (I think) came from instructors that were utilizing inquiry-based teaching models. By encouraging students to construct their own meaning and giving them a space to do, these instructors stimulated critical thinking, metacognition, and deep self-reflection in their students. One such example, from an instructor named Melissa, was featured in the New York Times Blog. Here are some of the insightful, open-ended questions she posed to her students:

  • What is justice?
  • How can we enforce it?
  • Who should enforce it?
  • What factors stand in the way of justice?
  • Do we need police? If so, what should be their job?
  • What role does/should the media play?
  • How did the media frame Michael Brown’s shooting and why? (Looking at various media outlets, including the New York Times obituary, which surprised me…)
  • Why do humans hold prejudices and how can we acknowledge them and move on?

The variety of topics introduced range from racism, housing inequality, and militarization of the police to international human rights. This movement has even gone beyond the humanities. PBS reported that science teachers were also challenging their students with issues surrounding Ferguson. One example included an instructor asking his students to learn more about tear gas and its effects on the human body.

Yet, the conversation—at least publically—on education and Ferguson has been almost silent in the library world. Some of the incredible #critlib folks mentioned it in passing in regards to critical pedagogy, but otherwise it is difficult to find other conversations. Many have rightfully acknowledged the Ferguson Public Library and their instrumental support of the community. But there still seems to be a gap in librarians’ conversation and sharing of resources, specifically among those of us that do instruction and work directly with students on information literacy.

And there is a need for our voices! The same PBS transcript featured the following conversation:

Jeffery Brown: You know, Liz Collins, you just said something a minute ago about determining the truth. When information is coming at us so quickly, especially in social media, there’s misinformation, right? How do you — how have you dealt with that?

Liz Collins: That’s so tricky and something that teenagers deal with all the time, because they love Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram, and the information moves faster than the fact-checking. So, I think that’s an important lesson for them to learn across the board.  Just because you’re getting this information, who’s the source? How trustworthy is it? What’s that person or organization’s bias? What do they want you to think and why?And I think teaching them to challenge that and think about that goes beyond this issue, but also gives them a lens with which to approach this issue as more and more facts come out.  And every day, we’re learning more and more about what happened and having to sift through all those facts.  And I think teaching that skill is valuable in any subject and easily transferable. 

If this isn’t information literacy, folks, I don’t know what is. It might be a coincidence that ACRL released the third version of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education exactly two weeks prior to the grand jury’s decision, but I think that we should see it as an opportunity.

Several pieces of the new Framework challenge us to teach students these exact skills. The issues in Ferguson can be a current, relevant, and important vehicle for students to explore their information literacy skills in. Here is an introductory list of the more salient examples in the newest document that could reflect issues specific to Ferguson as well as questions/ starting points librarians might use to form learning outcomes and activities:

Experts understand the need to determine the validity of the information created by different authorities and to acknowledge biases that privilege some sources of authority over others, especially in terms of others’ worldviews, gender, sexual orientation, and cultural orientations (lines 160-164) 

  • What type and/ or medium of information is privileged? What are some structural reasons for this?
  • How might you be an active member of the information ecosystem in combatting this privilege? What specific forms of communication might you use?
  • What modes of communication lend themselves to bias? How can you detect bias about current events like the issues in Ferguson?

Recognize that authoritative content may be packaged formally or informally and may include audio, visual, and other nonprint sources (lines 185-186)

  • Find an example of authoritative, visual content about Ferguson. What type of source is this (primary or secondary)? Why do you consider it authoritative?
  • Compare a tweet, blog post, and news source about Ferguson. Which one(s) are authoritative and why? Does authority always correlate with medium?

Understand the increasingly social nature of the information ecosystem where authorities actively connect with one another and sources develop over time (lines 191-192)

  • Find one conversation on Twitter that includes more than two people and has more than ten tweets. How were opinions changed? Were beliefs confirmed or challenged? Was anything cited and if so what impact did that have? 

Understand how and why some individuals or groups of individuals may be underrepresented or systematically marginalized within the systems that produce and disseminate information (lines 276-278)

  • Find one source where a protester is interviewed (not just photographed). How difficult was it? How is the protestor portrayed? How does this portrayal relate to the medium and/or the article’s author’s affiliation?

Employ critical skills to evaluate information; effectively resolve conflicting information; monitor gathered information and assess for gaps or weaknesses (lines 319-321)

  • Find two sources that express conflicting information about what happened between Michael Brown and Darren Wilson. Where are gaps present in either? What sources do they have (eye witnesses, forensic evidence, etc.)? What conclusions did you reach and why?

This work is hard, especially if you only have one-shot sessions. But it’s still important. For those of us that would rather stick with looking at peer review or studying the information cycle, David B. Cohen has some wise words to offer. He challenges us to think about this singular time in history as well as what we want and expect our students, the future leaders of this country, to be able to do:

And for some students who will most certainly remember this time, we’ll have to explain why this particular event—and the tragic pattern in which it fits—that mattered so much to them was not worth our time, not considered educationally relevant (emphasis mine)

We must remind our students that both stories and information are not one-sided but instead very complex and contextual. Despite some technical flaws I (and others) might see in the Framework, it is clear our profession is moving in this direction. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie articulates what happens when people engage with only one story or perspective:

The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar- “The Danger of a Single Story”

As librarians, we must still continually remember that failing to teach students to be perceptive, empathetic critical thinkers has immense consequences for our entire society.

Note: It would be impossible for me to cover all of the brilliant blogs, tweets, and summaries of teaching material covering Michael Brown’s death within this forum. This is in no way an exhaustive list. Please feel free to explore more sources on your own and tailor the pedagogical conversation to your area of expertise.

Likewise, the ideas generated from passages in the Framework are merely starting points intended to start conversation. They are not meant to be prescriptive or exhaustive. Librarians should adapt these ideas (and other parts of the Framework) to best accommodate their teaching constraints and style.
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