Archive for the 'Lesson Study' Category
02-12-2008
Lesson Study in (smaller) Libraries
I’m starting a Lesson Study group here at UT Arlington Library. UT Arlington is very, very different than the University of Michigan. Unlike UM, UTA only has 1 main library, 2 branch libraries, and 2 ‘electronic’ libraries - essentially banks of computers with a librarian on hand to assist with research. UM has too many libraries to count, several of them bigger than our own main library here.
The staff is significantly smaller too. At UM, we typically had a group of 8 - 10 regular attendees at our Lesson Study events. Though 24 or 25 people were on the mailing list, time conflicts and attrition of interest kept the group size down to those core 10. That was a good number, though, I think - not too many cooks in the kitchen, and everyone hand a chance to contribute.
Here, I’ve managed to get 13 of us on the mailing list - that’s promising. Our charge will be to make a lesson plan that will help us teach students how to critically evaluate resources. This was chosen over ‘finding journal articles’ and ‘incorporating LibGuides into instruction sessions’. Oddly enough, that topic was the one being done at UM when I left. I remember the discussions we had in finding a focus for our lesson plan - we had trouble nailing down exactly what it was we wanted to teach.
For that reason, I’m glad I get a chance to do it here. I’m interested to see what kinds of perspectives come from our group at UTA. People from all over the libraries have joined our group - those from Information Resources (collection development librarians), Access Services (circulation/interlibrary loan), Information Literacy (instruction librarians who focus on undergrads), and Information Services (my group - the liaison librarians) are all part of it, along with our library assistants.
Many people have already e-mailed me and said ‘I don’t want to teach - I’m not comfortable with that just yet - but I want to help develop it.’ Here’s where we really test our claim that Lesson Study is a way to encourage nervous teachers to give it a shot.
It, hopefully, will also foster a community approach to instruction. UTA is particularly good about this already, I’ve found - it’s really easy to find people here who are willing to let you come watch them teach. It’s encouraged.
Posted by frierson in Lesson Study | 2 Comments »