24-26 April I attended the LILAC Conference in Nottingham which Leah has blogged about below. This was my first round at LILAC and it reminded me of going to Umbrella due to the number of possible sessions you can attend!
I’ve got a heap of notes to edit but in the meantime I’ve focused instead on using some of the session I attended to get creative for my teaching sessions. The first of these to inspire me was Niamh Hammel Dundal’s session A B C and 1 3 5: Activities to Engage Students in the Library Classroom on day 1. Niamh is from the Institute of Technology Ireland who has been using low tech laminated voting paddles to make skill sessions interactive and assess prior learning of students at the start of a skill session. The paddles enable Niamh to be flexible enough to change activities and the lesson plan as a result of the feedback she gets from the learners through voting with the paddles. The paddles also work well in situations where the wifi signal is poor. Niamh’s paddles have numbers on them for voting responses and phrases on the reverse side. She finds that the paddles also work well with students for whom English is not their first language.
My session last week for Level 5 Childhood Studies students who are getting ready for next year’s dissertation and needed also to hone their searching skills was the perfect opportunity to try the paddles out on a low tech quiz on Boolean searching. I’ve created the paddles with numbers on one side and letters on reverse so you can vary the feedback response. Each year I’ve delivered this session it’s been in a David Goldman lecture room so I’ve not had PCs to make it more hands on. Last year I’d done this electronically via Kwiksurveys but this year I couldn’t create a duplicate so I could view their results unless we had a subscription. Loving as I do tech in all shapes and forms I’m also in the process of turning my quiz into Canvas for a Commons sharing one but the lecturer didn’t get geared up into me as a teacher on a module so I could import it for them. I’ll be looking at fixing that when they return and go into Level 6 and we get a hands on session to follow up on their summer research.
Anyone can use the voting paddles in their skills sessions. The results this week showed it makes a fun game show atmospher of the likes I’ve tried to achieve before from seeing Council for Learning Resources in Colleges presenting at Roadshows each year.
The second one which has impressed me was the Creating And Branding Meaningful Information Literacy Instruction Tools for Developing Innovative Learning Experiences Using the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Framework by Darla Asher and Elana Karshmer from Saint Leo University. This one appealed to me as through my CILIP Fellowship portfolio I focused on digital/information literacy and I looked at the different SCONUL Seven Pillars, ACRL and ANCIL frameworks as well as the CILIP definition. This was a practical workshop where we got to use the Frames.
My plan is now to use different frameworks in my skills session lesson plans. Leanne has signposted me to the Open University which has a Digital and Information Literacy Framework which is very useful for mapping skills to different learning levels for scaffolding purposes. I’ve started using this in my transition sessions for students.
University of Sunderland Library and Study Skills Professional Sharing 