Professional Development as a Game

This week’s reading dealt with a number of professional development strategies and programs that have been implemented in real-life situations with success. Based on these articles, it definitely that an essential element of a successful professional development program is providing people with time to complete the assignments and workshops, rather than demanding that they be completed in employees’ free time. It also is helpful when the planners attempt to motivate the learners by providing incentives, such as a stipend or a reward. Even if the learning itself becomes its own reward over time, there is something to be said for getting people started with more immediate and external motivations.

Something else that struck me about the articles and the plans they described was how much the programs described reminded me of our discussions about gamification of learning. It occurs to me that gamification might actually be an extremely effective strategy for this type of learning and development. The programs described were already part of the way there, as they were very level-based, allowing participants to complete and master certain tasks or skills before “leveling up” to another. There was a lot of choice involved, as participants could select their own professional development paths to an extent. There was also a system of feedback; for example, the Semadeni article described how teachers would be observed by mentors to be presented with feedback about their mastery of the particular skill. Finally, as mentioned before, there was a system of rewards, in the form of a stipend or an item like an MP3 player, which could be likened to the system of badges that many learning game systems use.

The Ever-flowing Faucet

To follow up on our Twitter assignment, we covered a few interesting tools in class. I have to say that I found Twitter Fountain pretty interesting, though I have no idea when I would ever have the chance to use it. I also went ahead and signed up for HootSuite, which I actually did not realize you could use online. I haven’t done much with it so far, but it does make using Twitter at least a little bit less annoying.

I still feel like nothing quite exists to solve my biggest problem with Twitter, though, which is that I can’t organize my feed in any way that’s useful for me. I would like to split people into categories so I don’t have to view everything all at once, which Twitter’s list feature is made for, but the fact that it won’t show re-tweets (the automatic kind) for some strange reason is a real deal-breaker for me.

Twitter as a Tool

Well, this is the week we all officially joined Twitter. I’ve already been on Twitter for a little while (as you may have noticed from the feed on the side of the page), but I will link to mine anyway for the sake of this post and assignment.

Follow me on Twitter!

I’m not sure what exactly to respond to in a blog about Twitter posting, so I will talk a little about the site itself and what I think of it as a service to be used by librarians.

On the Other Side of the Fence

Though we covered a number of topics during our last class meeting, I felt that everything really came together under one broad question: how can we best understand and meet our patrons’ needs? (No easy thing to answer, of course.) Based on our discussion, I feel that an important step in understanding these needs lies in putting ourselves in similar positions and situations, so that we have our own personal experience as patrons and learners to draw upon.

We discussed, for example, a phenomenon I find really interesting, and which I myself have been a part of at times: the reluctance of many library science students (at least the ones in our class) to actually approach reference librarians for help. Many people in the class admitted to feeling uncomfortable or embarrassed to ask for help, as if we will be judged for not already knowing how to research on our own. Many also do not feel comfortable identifying themselves to the reference librarian in a chat reference session, as we don’t want to reveal our ignorance to the people on the desk who we might actually know. For us, I think this feeling stems from the belief that as librarians in training we should already be experts and shouldn’t have to ask for assistance finding research materials. I can’t speak for everyone else in my class, but I know I’ve had this feeling on occasion, and have even felt unsure sometimes about if a question was really a librarian sort of question. For instance, once I spent hours trying to remember a specific word that I had known once, scouring the internet for clues. When I was about ready to give up, I thought of using the Ask a Librarian service, but spent a long time debating with myself. I just wasn’t sure if trying to remember a word was the kind of question you were “allowed” to ask a librarian, or if it made sense to do so.

Developing a Community Spidey Sense

This post has a librarian embedded in it.

Though perhaps a somewhat stereotypical one.
Source

That’s because I think the concept of embedded librarians, as presented in this week’s reading, is pretty interesting. Much as this librarian has made herself part of my blog post, embedded librarians work to become an integral part of the community they are serving. It was interesting to me, as well, that there isn’t one right way to do this; the correct approach depends a lot on the culture and expectations of the community, as well as what kind of relationship with a librarian will be right for them. The reading from How People Learn seemed to emphasize that, in order to educate others, a good teacher (or librarian) must have a solid sense of that discipline and its learning strategies.

One-Shot Workshop

We had our one-shot workshops last class, which I felt went fairly well. I think our workshop (basics of Google Sites) wasn’t too bad, despite having to deal with unexpected technical difficulties. For me, the biggest challenge was adjusting my expectations on the fly as the workshop went on, and trying to mold how I was presenting based on that.

I do have some experience with technology instruction from my job, at which I sometimes act as a floater for technology workshops given at the Faculty Exploratory. These workshops tend to be very demonstrative, and often are given to people who have little to no experience with the specific technology being presented. As a floater, I usually step in to help those on the lower end of the technology comfort spectrum, so I’m used to going slowly and giving people time to make sense of each click and small step of the process. It was somewhat of an adjustment for me to present to SI students, who are on average much quicker at picking up new tech skills. Because I wasn’t sure what to expect, I had to try to read the room as I was talking to determine if I was going too fast or going slow enough that people were bored, and I found that somewhat challenging.

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Discussions of ethics in libraries tend to refer to the issues involved in assisting patrons with potentially-harmful information needs, and so this is what I tend to think of as library ethics. It was interesting and informative, therefore, to hear other examples during class of ethically complicated decisions libraries might face, such as whether it would be acceptable to place ads on the backs of date due slips in order to bring in some funds. In particular, a great number of these ethical decisions seem to come down to the balances librarians must strike in their relationship with patrons.

The ALA Code of Ethics makes this relationship a complicated one with its fairly vague statements. The first guideline, for example, requires librarians to provide the “highest level of service.” Although it does offer some examples of what this might mean (“appropriate and usefully organized resources, equitable service policies,” etc.), there is a lot of room for debate about what exactly the “highest level of service” might entail. Specifically, our discussion made me interested in what both librarians and patrons perceive as the appropriate level of a patron’s involvement in a library’s issues and struggles.

The Greyness of Reference Ethics

Ethics do not generally go hand-in-hand with clear and satisfactory answers, and library ethics are certainly no exception. Even before reading the articles assigned for class this week, I had heard multiple accounts of tricky reference questions and uncomfortable moral dilemmas faced by librarians as they attempted to provide the best service to patrons.

I’ll be honest in saying that I don’t think I fully understand the article “Dangerous Questions at the Reference Desk: A Virtue Ethics Approach” by Mark Lenker. In particular, I was somewhat unsure as to what exactly virtue ethics was supposed to be and why it was being championed as the best approach to ethics in a library setting. The process of a virtue ethics-based analysis, as described by Lenker, seemed no different to me than the ordinary process of thinking deeply about a question of ethics. What special something does virtue ethics provide that someone could not get by just carefully considering and breaking down an ethical dilemma? I guess I felt that I was missing something about what virtue ethics is supposed to be and what benefits this type of approach is supposed to provide.

Attempts to Derive Meaning

The last time our class met, we broke into groups for our book club exercise, which I thought was successful and interesting overall. All the reading selections were well-chosen and gave us a lot to talk about–so much so that twenty minutes seemed far too short to really explore all the ideas we could have discussed.

I believe that part of the point of the exercise was to help us recognize and experience the challenges that might come along with hosting this type of event in a library, and I think it definitely succeeded in that aspect. Some of the challenges were expected, like the time limit or the difficulty of trying to moderate in a non-overbearing way so that everyone would get an equal opportunity to speak. I also think my own nervousness born of inexperience came into play, causing me to push ahead and try to fill all silences instead of stepping back and letting the discussion flow more naturally.

Short Exploration of Book Club Readings

I’m not entirely sure what to say about the readings this week, since I think the real analysis will happen in the book clubs, so I will keep my discussion of each relatively short.

One of the readings was a handful of comics selected from Lucy Knisley’s Stop Paying Attention. They touched on a variety of interesting concepts, like gender stereotypes, threats to privacy, the idea that the supernatural is a manifestation of intangible fears, and so on. I think all of them can spark complex discussions, and I’ll be interested to hear the opinions of the other people in my book club about these topics, especially since many of them are personal concerns for me.

There was another comic chosen for our group called Darkness, by a French artist named Boulet. This one was a little more complicated to take apart, so I’m looking forward to seeing what other people have to say about it. It was not only fairly entertaining, but I think it brought up some good points about gender stereotypes and gender ideals (and possibly even the way men and women are portrayed in entertainment media).