Embedded Files
Communicating day to day with my immediate team
Communicating day to day with my immediate team
As referenced in Core Area 3, I'm work in a supporting role with a team of Teacher-Librarians, with whom I'm in close contact on a daily basis either contributing to team meetings, or the general day to day conversations you'd expect as part of a team. We use a range of tools to do this, but MS Teams is currently favoured for its Whatsapp-style real time chat function, allowing organic informal discussions to develop easily.
(CP4) One small example of the many different conversations we all have is via a team meeting. We're all welcome to bring topics we think are of concern, or ideas to be discussed, and you can see an example agenda screenshotted below. An example of a discussion I recently initiated involved a new PowerPoint template that colleagues in another part of King's had developed, to be accessible, modern, and clean, as well as helping to standardise teaching material (the lack of standardisation is a complaint from students at King's).
I thought our adopting the new template would be a good idea for a few reasons:
It's purpose designed to meet 'good practice' and accessibility standards.
Our own template is tired, and an inefficient use of screen space.
I'd like to support these kinds of initiatives from colleagues - this kind of cultural change can founder without investment from across the college.
We wouldn't be responsible for keeping it up to date!
This isn't the kind of thing I can just decide for the team, and if we're to successfully transfer 'old' material to the new template and establish its use as a new standard, I should seek agreement and commitment from my colleagues. To do this I would need to present my idea at a team meeting, which I did by adding it to the online agenda ahead of the meeting and then presenting my case on the day, outlining the benefits I thought we would see.
My team agreed, and to make the process easier I pledged to a) provide an easily accessed link to the template and b) provide a hi-res image to use as Library branding (the MS Teams screenshot below). This is a small example of how an example of good practice from outside the Library can be integrated into our day to day work through discussions with my immediate team, enabled by the technologies we use every day.
Screenshot of an example team meeting agenda. You can see under 'General Agenda Items' I have added a topic (see my initials, JW) on whether we agree to adopt a new PowerPoint template for our teaching material - I think it's a good idea, but we all need to agree! This agenda is held in a shared SharePoint space linked with our MS Teams space.
And the follow up - from the discussion I had agreed to find and provide a convenient link, and then an image for colleagues to use as a bit of Library 'branding'. This conversation is happening in a shared MS Teams space.
Presenting at LILAC '22 and collaborating afterwards
Presenting at LILAC '22 and collaborating afterwards
Mia and I disseminated our practice to the wider Academic Library community at LILACL 2022, a flagship conference for Academic Libraries in the UK and Ireland especially, but also drawing attendees from across Europe and from North America.
(CP4) Mia and I spoke for thirty minutes - it was supposed to be twenty - even after skipping whole sections of the talk. I made sure to explain to the listeners why, and I had purposely designed the slides so that they would be useful if read on their own, as I couldn't be sure the presentations would be recorded (they weren't) and I personally find slides with no context or explanation very unhelpful after the fact.
We made sure to be present and available on social media after the talk to help build connections and contribute to the community as so many others were. Twitter was crucial in that regard, especially using the conference's hashtags to find others in the conference and build links to the community in real-time.
(CP4) I'm happy to say we've already had a couple of colleagues follow up with us and ask more questions about designing and running a course aimed at Researchers completing their systematic reviews.
A counterpart from the University of Manchester reached out very soon after we got back from LILAC, and we had an interesting chat about how their teaching could be influenced by running an online course.
Mia and I are ready to present!
There was some interest, so I popped up on twitter to help attendees find me to keep in touch
Learning at LILAC '22
Learning at LILAC '22
(CP3) I've picked out three presentations that resonated especially strongly with me and the work my team has been working on - we have a strong remit around developing KCL Students' Information Literacy.
Understanding the importance our learners place on their Information Literacy, and how they make that decision, will help us better design our broader learning offering (i.e. the range of sessions we offer to the community) and our learning interventions (i.e. better tailored and targeted lessons, tutorials, and materials).
I'm deeply interested in how we can use innovative technologies or approaches to revisit how we teach our subjects, especially 'dry' subjects like teaching referencing styles and the concept of plagiarism at University. Seeing how others have approached topics like this in creative and interesting ways, like the presentation above, is inspiring!
We're always looking for better ways to scaffold our learners' development and understanding of their own Information Literacy - something that is notoriously difficult to quantify/pin down
I enjoyed Ellen's talk on the various tools she has developed over her PhD process, and I will be bringing those tools to my team to examine and determine if they have a part to play in our Information Literacy teaching.
Tearing Strips off our Students at Playful Learning 2022
Tearing Strips off our Students at Playful Learning 2022
My colleague Jane and I had developed an online version of an in-person group exercise called 'Tearing Strips off Mary'. We start with a drawn image of a woman, called Mary. A member of the group reads Mary's 'story', and whenever the group feels Mary has experienced a barrier to her engaging with the Library, someone tears a strip off the image - dismantling Mary piece by piece.
The online version has a recorded or written transcript for the viewer to read, or listen to, for each persona - currently Mary and Kareem. To tear a piece off a character you click a button, and the image moves through a gallery, losing pieces as the button as pressed. A sound file of paper tearing is triggered with each button press.
(CP4) Jane and I demonstrated the exercise in the online section of the Playful Learning Festival hosted at the University of Leicester over zoom to a group of counterparts from across the UK (and New Zealand!).
The exercise is designed as a way to centre the experiences of our learners when they try to engage with the various teaching and learning we offer. In this way we're aiming to develop teachers' empathy for their students - especially useful for teachers who have very little contact time (e.g., Librarians).
To help contextualise this we set up a PollEverywhere question asking how the attendees saw the value of empathy in the classroom. Jane and I talked through the word cloud responses in real time, before we demonstrated each of the characters - the attendees would type 'Tear!' into the chat whenever they thought Mary and Kareem encountered a barrier, and I would tear a strip off each character.
I felt the session was well received, and one of the attendees reached out with some kind words on LinkedIn afterwards. Perhaps it's something we'll collaborate on in future?
Reflection
Reflection
I thoroughly enjoyed attending the recent conferences - Manchester being a fun place to be certainly doesn't hurt. I was glad to have had my colleague Mia to work with on designing and giving the presentation - she brought a lot of enthusiasm for Gather.town which a few people remarked on after the talk! I signed us up (back in November) to do a short 20 minute presentation thinking I wouldn't have enough to say, and ended up instead having to skip whole sections.
I was honestly a little surprised at the level of interest our talk received, which I realise is probably down to how rarely I get (or try to take, I suppose) the chance to step out of my day to day context. It was interesting to hear how many colleagues were grappling with the same situation we're in, namely:
increasing numbers of students.
more students part time, or distance learners.
Teaching Librarians not seeing an increase in their teams or resourcing.
I'm really looking forward to checking in with new contacts about LIB262, and to looking up the projects and presentations I found inspiring when the LILAC team makes all the slides available.
As a large, disparate, department I think we are often too culturally inward looking - lots of reporting and communication is entirely internal. This could in part be due to the size and complexity of a multi-campus Library service, but I wonder if it's also a side-effect of some kind of 'occupational distinction', a professional barrier we raise around ourselves to distinguish ourselves from our colleagues. Travelling to and being involved in conferences has been a welcome 'step outside' the day to day context, and a healthy reminder that:
a huge amount of effort and really positive work is going across the sector and across national borders.
we in HE Libraries are not facing unique or isolated challenges.
Recognising the benefit I have seen in being able to attend conferences recently, I have been a much stronger advocate for making these kinds of opportunities more available to the junior members of our team. There's no reason that they can't, or won't, see the same kinds of benefits that I have, and I hope this will help keep colleagues engaged and motivated to contribute to our work in the longer term.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse