2007-01-21

Lightning Learning

One of my late night brainstorms from the Missouri Library Association conference is coming to fruition. Lightning Learning @ Your Library begins this Tuesday. The project, of course, went through some transition from idea to implementation, so I'll describe in detail what we are actually doing.

We will be doing six fifteen-minute drop-in instruction sessions during the next three weeks conducted by four different librarians. All of our marketing material refers to this web page with the dates, times, and locations.

We are starting all sessions at fifteen minutes after the hour to emphasize the fifteen-minute length--and because on our campus classes usually start at seven minutes after the hour (a ten-o'clock class is really 10:07 to 11:00). If someone shows up to a fifteen-minutes session seven minutes late, they missed it! So we thought the odd start time would help get people there on time.

We have been told by other people on campus that the 4 o'clock hour can be a good time for a student activity since most classes are over but students are still on campus. So we selected Tuesday at 4:15 as one start time.

The other time, Fridays at 12:15, honors the original idea for fifteen-minute sessions. Our Social Work librarian offers fifteen-minute lunch time sessions at her library. The Social Work school doesn't have classes during the noon hour and she finds that some students are willing to give up fifteen minutes of their lunch time for some library instruction. Classes throughout our campus tend to end early on Fridays, so we thought that this time would be a good alternative to the Tuesday times.

Session Topics

The first two sessions are, essentially, the two things that librarians would most like to cover in our EComp 101 instruction sessions but there just isn't enough time. Searching 102 will about why good searchers learn to love Boolean operators. Find It! 102 will be about the advanced features of our metasearch program.

The second two sessions are our acknowledgement that students are going to use Google so they might as well use it well. This is material that we have been asked not to provide during EComp 101 sessions (and wouldn't have time for, anyway).

The fifth session is the one I will teach and is essentially Bloglines for Students in Three (and a half) Easy Steps (analogous to my handout, Bloglines for Librarians in Three (and a half) Easy Steps).

The sixth session was originally going to be mine as well. I was going to cover Keeping Organized as a student, but I didn't find anything that I really wanted to teach. I covered my explorations in these posts: Z is for Zotero, Review: EndNote Web, and Research Management. Fortunately, another librarian wanted to do a session on Library of Congress Subject Headings, so I gave her my time slot.

Marketing

In the past, we have had discouraging turnout to instruction sessions offered outside of ones that are tied to classes. My hope is that shorter sessions will draw more people, but I was also pretty sure that more marketing was required. I have spent more time on marketing efforts for these sessions than I have preparing for them. Here's what we did:

Posters. The Earth and Planetary Sciences library has a large format printer I've been dying to try, so I made two posters for Lightning Learning. The lobby poster has the times, locations, and brief descriptions of all six sessions. The other poster will sit outside the room where the session is offered--it has the lightning bolt, headline, and a big arrow pointing to the room. As you can see, my color scheme is electric blue and black. I intend to steal the lobby poster for a few hours tomorrow to display at our table during the Student Activities Fair.

Flip chart. This will be as I described in my original brainstorm post. I plan to make it this afternoon, assuming we don't get a sudden rush of patrons at the Reference Desk on a snowy Sunday.

Library's Web Site. The Lightning Learning sessions are currently featured on the What's New box on the library's home page, blog, and web page.

Facebook. I made an event for each of the six sessions on Facebook.

LiveJournal. I haven't done it yet, but the day before each session, I'll make an announcement on the Live Journal for Washington University Students.

Bookmarks. Our library assistant designed bookmarks on electric blue cardstock. We gave these to the EComp 101 instructors so they could let their classes know about the sessions, most of which will take place before our normal EComp 101 instruction sessions for the semester. We will also be handing them out tomorrow evening at the Student Activities Fair.

Flyers. I posted flyers on bulletin boards around campus last week. The design is similar to the lobby poster. The tear-off tabs have the web address to the Lightning Learning web page.

Assessment

Since we, like other academic libraries, are developing a culture of assessment, we wanted a way to ask students how Lightning Learning worked for them. Rather than take time away from our short session for a paper survey, I developed this survey at Survey Monkey (don't take it--you'll mess me up!).

We're going to ask for the email address of each attendee. Since it's no great treat to get to fill out a survey, we'll be offering a link to the virtual handout of the session as an enticement for them to give us their emails. That way students don't need to take notes during the session. The virtual handouts aren't ready for prime time--let me know if you see any typos, etc.

Comments are open for suggestions, discussion, or ideas for future programs.

Comments:

Your lighting sessions sound interesting. If I was still in school and attending that university I would probably attend. I'm still not very good with Boolean operators, but I do like to think I'm good with the Google.

Your excitement should be contagious to the students. Keep up the good work my trusty librarian!!

# posted by Harley Davidson : 3:17 AM