ALA Learning contributing author Lauren Pressley and her husband John welcomed a new baby to the world on May 1st at 6:00 pm. He weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces and was 21 inches long. His name, Leif, is Scandinavian, can mean “heir” or “beloved,” and is pronounced “layf.”
Congratulations Lauren and John, and welcome to the world Leif!
You can read more at Lauren’s blog.
When I think about teaching and learning, assessment is probably the messiest area of the process for me. The longer I teach, the more I seem to struggle with feeling as though I am designing and administering assessment tools that not only measure and reflect the content and skills a student is mastering , but also capture the student’s thinking in the learning process.
One tool that I have found helpful in creating formative and summative assessments this academic school year is Google Forms, a free tool in the suite of Google Docs. Google Forms allows you to create assessments that can be open-ended or objective in nature; you also can create survey style assessments in which learners respond to questions by ranking or rating their responses. With Google Forms, you can create assessment questions in the format of:
Once you have created your assessment form, you can apply a theme from the menu of choices and then share your survey either via a URL or you can embed into into a web-based tool that accepts HTML code. Once participants are finished with the assessment, you can easily pull your data into a Google Forms spreadsheet; you can either work with your data within the Google Docs spreadsheet application or you can download into other third-party formats, including Excel and Open Office. You can also choose to keep this data private or to share it with selected users; for example, when I use Google Forms to engage our Media 21 students in self-assessments, I can easily share the document with Susan Lester, my collaborating teacher, by providing her a private and direct link to the Google Docs spreadsheet that is generated from the data in the form.
Check out how Jessica Hagman, Ohio University librarian, embedded this Google Form for assessment into this LibGuides page:
Here is an example of how I used Google Forms to engage our 10th grade Media 21 students in self-reflection and self-assessment on their most recent presentations:
Google Forms are not just for librarian who work with teen or adult patrons! The Birmingham (MI) Public Schools’ elementary school librarians Julie Green (author of Super Smart Information Strategies: Write it Down) and Kristin Fontichiaro (editor of 21st-Century Learning in School Libraries) collaborated to create a second grade fixed-schedule unit bringing together the inquiry process as described in Debbie Miller?sTeaching with Intention with age-appropriate resources about seeds, embedded in a wiki. After their multimedia explorations, students reflected on what they had learned about research and what they had learned about the content area. Google Forms made it easy to integrate the reflective assignment into the wiki space, and the results, gathered behind the scenes in a single spreadsheet, facilitated quick analysis of student responses.
You can see a snippet of their data form that Google Forms pulls into the Google Docs spreadsheet below:
Not only can you use Google Forms for assessing student learning, but you can also utilize Google Forms as a pre-workshop or pre-training tool to assess participants’ prior knowledge, and consequently, incorporate that information into your instructional design. Polly Farrington recently used this Google Form to administer a pre-assesment to her Tech Camp participants:
In addition, you can use Google Forms to assess participants’ evaluation of your teaching and workshop/training session to improve and craft your practice as a trainer or instructor:
This video, while not geared for a library setting, is a quick and helpful overview of the process of creating and publishing a Google Form for assessment:
Google Forms makes it easy to collect and share qualtiative and quantitative data for evaluating student learning as well as library instruction. If you are using Google Forms as a means of assessment in your library program, how are you incorporating this evaluation tool? Please share your best practices here in the comments section of this post.
The TED Talks promoters send this tablet as a guide for speakers prior to each event. In her TED Talk Amy Tan described the arrival of the TED Commandments as “something that creates a near-death experience; but near-death is good for creativity…”
Used in a broader sense I’m convinced that many of these rules can be applied to almost any talk or presentation, but (of course) would welcome your comments!
Image by Rives, transcribed by Tim Longhurst. Via Garr Reynolds.
Pressure yourself to keep learning about a topic. I have an Information Overload talk I gave a few years ago, and wouldn’t dream of presenting it again without catching up on the latest theories and contributions to the debate.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with what you’ve already learned. Share not only what you know, but what you’d like it to be. Look at your processes, at what you do every day. If it works for you, it’s quite possible the process is a good one and could be shared, inviting discussion to make it even better.
It’s your topic, your audience. Own them. Your talk may be at a monthly department meeting or national conference, but most likely you’ve got a keen interest in the subject. Show it!
Perhaps you actually are passionate about the topic, even better. Share your excitement as well as your progress.
Involve your audience by giving them someone to empathize with and to make them care. The story might be about yourself or someone else, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s a good tell.
As you catch up, read and get involved on blogs by those you admire within the topic. Commenting on posts is a great way to become engaged with those who care about the same things you do. Also explore dissenting opinions, adding your own if you have them.
No one wants to hear about how wonderful you are because you figured this out, but the different methods you used to get the conclusion. If you’ve learned from your mistakes, someone else will, too.
While I agree that I don’t usually want to hear a sales pitch, I’d take exception to this when appealing for library funding or for my job.
I’ve heard different opinions on humor during talks, but I gave this advice to a staff member just the other day: If you’re going to use humor point it towards yourself. I use self-deprecating humor quite a bit, it seems to somehow relax the audience, especially when teaching technology. Also be careful of humor that may offend someone: I thought about writing this post as if I were Moses and God Himself had delivered the tablets and burning bushes were involved. I reconsidered…probably very wisely.
Worse yet, never turn your back to your audience to read slides. Then again, don’t put so much text on a slide that you’d have to read it at all! Text is for handouts.
Make your talk worthwhile with your passion and your knowledge. Give them one big thing to remember a week later, your chance of retention is better the less you try to put in their heads. Even though some training is repetitive in nature, get them excited, fired up and ready to go use what you’ve taught them!
As I get older, I have come to realize that embracing change is like drinking from a fountain of youth. Change keeps the brain healthy. The brain thrives on learning new things and forging new neuronal pathways. An active brain supports overall health and quality of life.
There are many types of change that we welcome in to our lives—travel, children, new languages, athletic challenges. But even when change is voluntary, there are times when it makes me feel old and tired, like I’ve been asked to adapt too often for too long. That’s because the mental muscles get overworked, according to Switch, the new book from the Heath brothers of Made to Stick fame. The brain muscles for creative thinking, focus, and persistence, which are key ingredients for effecting change, can get exhausted, just as the body’s muscles fatigue from strenuous exercise. Preparation for significant change in a person’s or an organization’s life is critical. It is akin to preparing for an athletic event. If I want to participate in the annual bicycle ride from Seattle to Vancouver (RSVP), I would set myself up for failure if I were to embark on the ride without any prior training. Planning for any major change is no different. Create a training program for change and enhance your probability of success.
Here is a 6-step training program to prepare for change.
(This plan is based on much of the Heath brother’s book. It uses some of their terminology, without going into their elephant/rider metaphor. You’ll have to read the book.)
1. Know where you’re going
For the RSVP, the destination and direction are straightforward. I can look up the route, the distance, even the location and elevation gain of the hills (obstacles). There is little ambiguity about what I’m aiming for and what success entails. This kind of specificity feeds the cognitive part of the brain, the part that grasps logical sequence and strategic analysis.
It is too often the case that organizational changes are vague. “Everyone in our library will be web 2.0 savvy by next year.” “Our library will become a learning organization.” What does that mean to each individual involved? What is desirable about the change and how will we know when we’re there? What is the distance and where are the hills to be climbed, i.e., when can we anticipate the tough spots and potential setbacks? It’s not possible to predetermine all the variables in a big project but the more specific and clear you can be, the more you engage the cognitive processes of each of your team members.
2. Get the feeling
It is crucial to motivate the emotional side of the brain, that ancient lizard brain that can put up amazing resistance to the rational, cognitive side. If it’s not on board, the change is not going to happen. For the RSVP ride, it’s not hard to feel enthusiasm, to be caught up in the excitement of my team members and to imagine the satisfaction of crossing the finish line.
For any organizational change, find a way to appeal to the emotions of your team. Create a vision of the library thriving in its ability to reach new users by telling stories of how social network tools dramatically extend that reach. Frame a learning effort as a fitness program with near-term targets and rewards for small steps toward the goal. Emotion is infectious—both positive and negative. Get ahead of any negative tendancies by identifying early enthusiasts and working with them to infect the rest of the team with their excitement.
3. Cultivate identity
Identity is a powerful aspect of emotional engagement. It promotes a “growth mindset” in which the entire brain is geared toward success. If I start calling myself a power cyclist and start thinking of myself as someone who can go the distance on a bike, I increase the likelihood of actually becoming that person. The Heath brothers cite some convincing examples: a Brazilian tin can manufacturer calling all of its employees “inventors” and thereby inducing thousands of suggestions for improvements to their production; a class of disadvantaged students calling themselves “scholars” and leaping ahead in scholastic achievement. Notice how these identities eliminate hierarchy or elitism. Everybody is an inventor or scholar or power cyclist.
I would love to find a strong identity for people who work in libraries. I would start by ditching that strained differentiation between librarians and library staff. What if we all started calling ourselves “catalyzers”? Everyone who works in a library has the potential to catalyze information access, research, community connections, demonstration of impact, etc. Everyone is invited to envision better ways for the library to thrive.
4. Clear the path
It is a major point in Switch that so often we tend to blame character flaws of individuals and ignore the impact of the situations in which they are involved. The Heath brothers repeat throughout the book that “what looks like a person problem is often a situation problem.” Let’s say that I’ve been on a few practice rides building up to greater distances. While I’m improving my stamina, I’m still frustrated that I seem to always lag behind the rest of my team. I start to think that I’m just too old and out of shape. When three of the other women on the team tell me how much their performance improved by switching to road bikes with high pressure, low friction tires and light frames, I get a clue about how my situation on a heavy, fat-tired bike impedes my progress. Getting a faster bike clears my path for success.
In your large organizational change effort, think about how you can reduce the friction and smooth the way. Avoid the tendency to label individuals as flawed: “that person is a luddite and just won’t adopt new technology.” Take an objective look at the situation surrounding the resisters. Are there structural changes that will make it easier for people to adapt? If team members are resisting the switch to a new technology, look for unnecessary hurdles that can be removed. If staff are not finding time to achieve their learning goals, look for ways to build in time by letting them start an hour before opening or reserving an hour/week in a quiet office. Pair up learning buddies to learn together and coach each other.
5. Chunk the change
You may be clear about the direction and still see the end point as daunting and unattainable. For the RSVP ride, the elevation gain in those hills lights a bit of fear in my gut. It would be ridiculous to try to ride the 183 hilly miles on the first practice runs. It’s just common sense to start out with easier near-term goals, building up from 25-miles to 50- and 100-mile rides. A cycling performance recommendation is to increase your mileage no more than 10-12% per week.
Think about the achievable increments in your organizational change. What are the small wins that will help people feel like they are advancing? Knowing that you are 20% toward the overall goal is a sense of accomplishment that increases motivation to go the rest of the 80%. If your overall goal is to get staff up to speed on 23 web tools, set weekly targets with a way to check off the achievement—it worked like magic for the 23 Things programs. When you construct a learning plan for staff, make sure there are some easy successes early on in the plan to build up that “money in the bank” motivation.
6. Find the bright spots
It may happen that I’m following my training plan but find that I’m struggling and getting discouraged. This is a good time to look around and see what’s working for others, or in Switch terminology, “find the bright spots.” If one of my teammates tells me that she makes sure to ride at least 5 times a week, that may be just the tip I need to improve my path.
Organizational change on a large scale will inevitably hit snags. Some of these will have been identified in step 1 so that the team is mentally prepared to encounter and overcome obstacles. It’s those unanticipated obstacles that can cause a plan to founder. When it does, look for examples of people or teams who seem to have surmounted the difficulty and figure out what they are doing that is enabling them and promote the solution to everyone. If one person is keeping on top of blog and Twitter news while the rest of the team claims to have no time, it may be that the exceptional person has her computer set to logon to those accounts so it’s the first thing she sees in the morning. If something is working for one person, it just might work for the many.
Good luck with your training and may the change be with you!
The 8th Annual Training Showcase at ALA Annual in New Orleans Going to the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans? Don't miss the opportunity to participate in the training showcase! Who: Trainers, Continuing Education Providers, Vendors of learning/education related products and … [Read More...]
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