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SCIL Works 2022

Instructional Mix-Tape: Mixing tracts from In-person and Online Instruction

Friday, January 28, 2022
Online

Southern California Instruction Librarians (SCIL) will host SCIL Works on Friday, January 28, 2022 as a virtual mini-conference. This annual mini-conference offers librarians the opportunity to learn current best practices, innovative pedagogy, and creative solutions from colleagues. SCIL Works 2022 will focus on the many ways librarians have combined their skills built during the pandemic in online instruction with our new in-person services.

In March 2020, librarians were asked to quickly shift from traditional in-person services to virtual services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Librarians developed new instructional strategies to accommodate this new virtual learning environment. Now, as libraries reopen and in-person instruction returns, many of us are working to develop the skills gained during the 2020-2022 school year to our new instructional environment in a safe and effective way.

If you have any questions or require accommodations for this event please reach out to SCIL chair, Tim Chu at tschu@ucsd.edu

SCIL Works 2022 Collaborative Notes

Schedule

  • 09:00 - 09:15: Welcome
  • 09:45 - 10:15: Research and Practice I
  • 10:15 - 10:45: Lightning Rounds
  • 11:05 - 11:15: Break

  • 11:15 - 12:15: Research and Practice II
  • 12:15 - 12:30: Closing remarks and evaluations

Presentations

Research and Practice

(20 minutes followed by 5 minute Q&A)

Karen O'Grady
(University of San Diego)
"I Love Your Video!" Using Zoom to Teach Asynchronously

I plan to present the success I have had in answering emailed questions from students by recording personalized Zoom videos to demonstrate how and where to get specific answers to their questions. My students are graduate students who often have intense or detailed research questions. My initial response to a "here is my topic, where should I start looking?" inquiry is to narrate my way to different appropriate databases, and to brainstorm search terms to get students started. I am getting fantastic feedback from students on this method of personalized asynchronous instruction. They tell me they love my videos because they can watch them again and again, stopping and starting them any way they like. If the video is particularly good and I think it could help others, I place it on the video playlist I created on my LibGuide. I point out this playlist to students when I give presentations and library orientations. I promise students they will learn something they didn't know about the library if they watch the whole playlist. I plan to present the benefits of sending personalized Zoom videos. I will describe what works, what does not work, following up with students, and the overwhelmingly positive feedback I receive from both students and faculty when I send them personalized videos to answer their research and library questions.


Kelly Marie Wilson and Jennifer Tirrell
(Soka University of America)
Hybrid Library Orientation: Mixing In-Person and Online Activities for Maximum Impact.

The library tour has always been the traditional introduction to the library for incoming students, however, it did not offer the opportunity for students to learn about and experience all of the online materials and services. In this presentation, we will explain how we turned our in-person library orientation into a hybrid system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing guidelines. To do this, we will discuss the key players (Library Staff & Student Services); how we created an online library tutorial using Springshare's LibWizard; the implementation of socially-distanced in-person tours; the perceived impact of these changes, including participation data; and the potential considerations for future library orientation formats. We plan to start this presentation with a PollEverywhere question to gauge what other libraries did for their library orientations during the Fall 2021 semester. We also plan to provide a quick interactive example of our online tutorial for attendees to experience for themselves. We will discuss all of the above topics in an MS PowerPoint presentation.


Robin D. Lang
(Point Loma Nazarene University)
Going Old School with California History: Helping Students Situate Themselves within the Historical Record by Exploring Systemic Racism through Land Acknowledgements and Racial Covenants

This presentation will be framed by critical theory to illustrate how use of primary sources can deepen students' engagement with and personal reflection on their place within the historical record. Critical theory requires reflection and is defined by three criteria enacted by its practitioners: revealing the problem, identifying ways to address the problem, and formulating achievable goals. An in-person lesson given to a California History course provides replicable examples of how to facilitate reflection by addressing systemic racism through exploration of indigenous land acknowledgements and racial covenants found on property deeds. By framing the lesson with critical theory concepts, students are encouraged to reflect on these questions based on the primary sources used: Who is privileged? Who is disqualified? How are forms of inclusion and exclusion created? How are power relations constructed and managed? One positive aspect of the pandemic has been use of new instructional strategies and different learning environments. The exemplar lesson used the Prezi format for its ability to zoom in and out of a historical timeline, while providing dynamic online access to primary sources. This presentation format was also chosen for its ability to translate easily to an online asynchronous learning experience, available to students unable to attend in-person, and to promote deeper investigation of the primary sources by students independently. Though this presentation will focus on a lesson given to history class, aspects could be easily applied to a political science class, a library session using primary sources, or any lesson using a land acknowledgement.


Mary-Michelle Moore
(University of California, Santa Barbara)
From Breakout Rooms Back to the Classrooms: Encouraging Students to Create a Shared Notes Document to Learn About Library Databases

Recently our writing program adapted their assignment to students using a subject-specific index database rather than a multidisciplinary full-text database or search tool. This creates an exciting discussion opportunity by engaging with the idea that different databases contain different materials in a more concrete way than a hypothetical discussion at the beginning of a lecture. Students worked through a Google Form for their in-class activity in the past. The form is expedient for directions but lends itself to right/wrong dichotomy answers and copy-paste type responses from the students with little critical thinking applied if used for procedures-heavy database demonstrations. To encourage students to engage with the material, I moved to have the students work in small groups to create a slide in a pre-populated Google Slide deck with information on how to navigate and use the database. Then the slide deck is shared in the LMS for students to refer to later. Having students complete an object for use by other students and their own completion of a task or assignment aligns with many of the best practices for digital pedagogy and open educational work. I noticed an increase in thoughtful answers from the students in their open-ended responses. They were less inclined to yes/no than in the form, even when similar questions were asked in both activities. While students worked in a shared Google Slides deck, I was able to observe the draft in progress as students edited it. I was able to check in with the instructor as the students were working, and being able to watch them work live in the document gave us a chance to see how they were approaching the problem in real-time. This activity is one I've kept and adapted as we've transitioned back to in-person classes.


Lightning Rounds

(10 minutes each, Q&A during the break)


Jennifer Tirrell and Kelly Marie Wilson
(Soka University of America)
Hybrid Workshops: How to Broaden your Instructional Outreach

This MS PowerPoint Presentation Poster that will include SUA quick facts in order to give appropriate context. Then, we will explain why we created hybrid workshops when we returned to campus, their implementation, registration format, and assessment. The assessment portion will include what worked, challenges, and suggestions for future considerations. If the conference format allows for it, we will also provide a PDF version of the poster for upload and/or distribution so that users can review and access any links.


Livia Garza
(University of Texas, Tyler)
Increasing Accessibility for In-Person Library Instruction for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individuals During COVID-19

During COVID-19, masks have been essential in reducing transmission of the virus. However, for hard of hearing and deaf individuals, masks present a unique challenge. Those who rely on sign language have lost the nuances of facial expressions that are an essential component of sign language, while those who rely on lip reading are also at a loss due to lips being covered. Additionally, different types of masks can dampen sounds. This brief lightning talk will address the challenges masks have presented to hard of hearing and deaf individuals, as well as recommend solutions to accommodate this community during in-person instruction while still ensuring COVID-19 safety precautions are still being followed. Examples include discussing combinations of clear masks and technology to amplify otherwise dampened speech.


Laura Wimberley
(California State University Northridge)
Outreach Outdoors: Geocaching for Engagement

Lessons learned from an outdoors, socially distanced GIS Day event that promoted student engagement with the physical campus.


David Carson
(Chapman University)
"What Time Works Best for You?": Using Appointment Scheduling Software to Save Time and E-mails

Coordinating schedules with students to find a mutually agreeable time to meet for individual research consultations can sometimes be a time-consuming endeavor with many e-mails back and forth. When all my meetings with students became virtual due to remote instruction, this presented an opportunity to streamline the process by using an appointment scheduling software called Calendly. Calendly allows me to send a link to students to select the time that works best for them within my availability. Once a student chooses a time, a Zoom meeting is automatically created and added to my Outlook calendar, and the invitation is sent to the student. Even though I have returned to working on campus, I have kept my student meetings virtual and will continue to use scheduling software. In this presentation, I will share some tips I have learned (and a few mistakes I have made) using this software.


Nina Mamikunian
(University of California, San Diego)
Using Non-special Materials to Teach Special Collections

How does one teach from a non-digitized collection in Special Collections and Archives without being able to physically be in Special Collections? This presentation describes a class visit to Special Collections that was executed entirely over Zoom from a home office using materials from the librarian's own bookshelf. UCSD's Archive for New Poetry has a focus on twentieth and twenty-first century American poetry and has a long-standing instructional relationship with the Literature Department. Creative writing classes normally visit for one-shots each quarter and it is often students' first visit to Special Collections. Instruction requests slowed once Covid hit, however, a last-minute request in Spring of 2021 while the campus was still closed posed a unique challenge and ultimately, refocused the one-shot from a "show and tell" model to one that was more interactive and made book history more approachable. The class looked deeply at book materiality, defamiliarization, and the creative possibilities that were more closely aligned with student projects. By using "non-special" material to talk through book history and poetry, the focus shifted from "we have these things in Special Collections" to "why do we collect these things and what do they mean." Students were encouraged to think about what they had on their own shelves, why they had them, and how their own projects potentially fit into a broader conversation about book history.

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