Readings: Week 2

This week's readings formed an interesting set that furthered the interests in information literacy and library instruction that were piqued during class last week. It's interesting to look at different implementations of library instruction and see the ways in which they work toward meeting goals.

This is maybe a little embarrassing to admit, but in my past experience with library instruction, I hadn't realized how much thought needed to go into these sort of instruction sessions. Though I suppose I acknowledged in the abstract that this sort of planning went into teaching in libraries, it wasn't something I'd ever given much thought to; librarians simply plan workshops that they run every now and then-- I don't really think of them primarily as educators. This is a pretty naive assumption for somebody in library school, I guess, but since primarily studying archives and not librarianship per se, it's not something that's come up often in my classes. But it's refreshing to know that this is an important conversation in the library literature.

I thought the ADDIE model laid out in the Veldof reading was very... interesting. When I first encountered it, it seemed like a rather obvious putting into words of the steps that should be taken in any instructional setting. However, as I read more and thought about it, I realized that often these sort of steps don't really go into planning instruction at many levels of formal education, and that education is the worse for it. I also realized that this process was designed to work especially well for the sort of instruction that librarians are likely to do, which is "one-shot" in nature and often focused on teaching specific tasks. (With the goal that knowledge gained from learning those tasks can be transferred to completing other tasks, of course.) I wonder how well this model can be implemented in a variety of settings, especially those in which the monetary and time constraints are as significant as those faced in many libraries. Though the article mentions doing a scaled-down or miniature version of the ADDIE process, I'd need to have some more specific examples of how to do this before I felt comfortable doing so.

My main reaction to the two case study readings (Yelinek et al. and Johnston) was basically that they were definitely just that-- case studies. In both cases, the implementation of the instruction they were designing was over such a small group and the feedback they received representative of an even smaller group that it seems hard to use them to draw any more general conclusions at all. Though both projects discussed seemed to have gone well, I was really looking for more information on the decision-making that went into the content of the instruction and how to present it intellectually, rather than the issues of usability and organization that were primarily discussed. I understand that with web-based instruction these are significant concerns. Content, though, is still what matters. Though the content seems to have been well-communicated in these cases, there really isn't enough information to tell without follow-up or further studies. Still, their conclusions lead to an interesting basis for discussion on the pros and cons of web-based versus in-person instruction.

And that's all for now. Hopefully I won't blog so close to the deadline next week!