Posts I was watching the unconference Camp session of the ALIA Access Conference via Twitter for most of last Friday. Congratulations to the unorganisers and participants. It sounds like a stimulating and high energy day that did what these events aim to do – cut through the bullshit and got to the heart of what people were thinking and wanted to share.
kjlindsay. (2010). Library Camp. Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/30245219@N04/4962574788/
There was one session that interested me particularly – “what I wish I learned in Library School“. There were a lot of useful ideas floated, but the one that kept being tweeted out was along the lines “we are a learning profession, to know how to learn”, “we need to keep PD (professional development) as what we do”, “being lifelong learners”, “being open to learning”.
In response, I tweeted out three tweets:
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- Re:Need to teach library school students to learn to learn.Think is copout.Could apply to any tertiary discipline.What is special abt libs?
- Agree need to be passionate, engaged example that models how to present and teach and love finding out and provide context…
- Model being engaged *with what*? Model learning *what*? Uni, profession wants assessed & rubberstamped grads.What r assessable deliverables?
Three lots of 140 characters aren’t very good at explaining what one means, so here is more explanation.
What should be in the professional skillset?
At Curtin University, like many universities we have identified “Graduate Attributes“. This is what all academics should remember and incorporate and model for students in the hope of graduates having the following attributes.
- Apply discipline knowledge, principles and concepts;
- Think critically, creatively and reflectively;
- Access, evaluate and synthesise information;
- Communicate effectively;
- Use technologies appropriately;
- Utilise lifelong learning skills;
- Recognise and apply international perspectives;
- Demonstrate cultural awareness and understanding; and
- Apply professional skills.
Now, these seem to be very similar to what people at the ALIA Access conference were identifying they want from library school graduates. And I get the message – but all professions want engaged lifelong learners who use technologies effectively and communicate effectively.What do we want in new librarians’ professional skillset when they graduate?
I have been doing some thinking around these ideas. In my next post I have a whole bunch of questions around how I am trying to decide what I should be teaching and how I should be teaching it. Stay tuned.
This picture is me tweeting “Went straight from library school to workforce feel success not always from skills learned but attitude, aptitude and flexibility”
I think the number one attribute with regard to using technology is flexibility and imagination. Plenty of people can locate new online tools, but it is having the inventiveness to implement in an appropriate classroom activity or range of activities that is the real skill. I’m not sure how you “teach” that though.
Hi Kat and Stacey. I am not sure that the skills you talk about are teachable either. Or rather, whether the people who leave a tertiary education course in Librarianship with these skills already had them anyhow when they came in. In this case, does my job become to model the skills (and personal qualities) that people need and to grow and nurture any spark of these qualities that I see in students? And to somehow help them to see and nurture that spark in themselves??
Hi, I teach a class called Virtual Reference Environments at Florida State University’s College of Communication & Information. My students use different technologies (Twitter, blogging community, Facebook, MySpace, Delicious, Diigo, wiki, Questionpoint chat, Mosio SMS texting, Second Life, etc.) and within these various technologies, explore how to use this for libraries and information services, how it might be useful for reference and for learning more about users and their needs and information behavior. We have discussed issues such as the history and culture within which technology originated in considering who the users are, and why the students might select a particular technology based on the users and needs of their information service. A key point stressed throughout is that technology is always changing, so students need to learn to become comfortable with exploring new technologies hands-on and assessing their usefulness for particular projects from an information professional’s perspective. This is only one small area of the profession of course, but it sounds as though it might be similar in general to the question of teaching about being lifelong learners within the profession.
There are many things that one cannot teach, but can help another master. This is almost always done by modeling the desired behaviour and/or exposing the learner to exemplars. So I would say “Yes, our jobs as educators is primarily to model the behaviors that we seek to strengthen in our students.” Beyond that, praising attempts to acheive a higher level even if the attempt fails, encouraging trying again (and modeling this) and, of course, praising successes are all important as well.