Teaching Skills: Peer Support course - Day 2

Day 2 started with the teaching activity audit, (see the introduction ), followed by a useful session on creating handouts. This was definitely something that I thought I need to work on in future.  Ryan informed us that handouts are the "lasting manifestation of our teaching" and part of the students overall learning, particularly in the case of the theorist learner.  Handy tips given were:

• plan your handouts in advance
• don't just print out your slides - this is one I know I can be guilty of!
• ensure your handout reflects your presentation
• make sure your handout can stand alone
• know when to distribute your handout

We were pointed to the key principles of Edward Tufte for designing documents: the design should be invisible, content counts most of all and maximize your users recognition time. We were therefore advised to use plain language and not library jargon, ie. OPAC, etc.

The main section of day 2 focused on reflective practice, peer review and constructive feedback, as we really wanted to emphasize the peer support element of the course moving forward. Time for reflection is extremely valuable in our daily activities and enables us to think about how things went or whether something needs changing.  Reflective practice was therefore introduced as a useful technique which went alongside delivering teaching sessions allowing individuals to evaluate their performance:

• What went well?
• What went wrong?
• Why?
• What could be done to make improvements

Best practice informs us that reflective practice should be a continuous cycle and not just a one time thing, so plan, do and review.  

Isla talked participants through peer review and giving constructive feedback. Our aim being to build confidence and improve support of both peers and students.  The underlying principles were to be constructive, developmental (not judgmental), formative  (not summative) and most importantly confidential to both parties.  Isla stressed the importance to comment on people's behaviours, such as, "I liked it when you did...." and "what I liked was when you said...." rather than " it was nice" or "your competent".

Participants were then given the opportunity to think about comments that had made them change their behaviours. After this exercise they were invited to watch and comment on a presentation given by myself, where I had deliberately included good and bad elements into the 5 minute demonstration. (I found this demonstration more difficult than giving usual presentations due to remembering to include the bad bits!) Participants were given a feedback form upon which they were asked to write down 3 positive points, 3 developmental points and 3 aspects to take away from the session.  The feedback from the participants was excellent, and demonstrated that they had taken on board a lot of points raised over the previous talks and picked up on all my mistakes. Feedback after day 2,

"it was a great idea to ask one of the trainers to give a wrong presentation, to teach us how to give constructive feedback",

showed that participants felt this was a useful exercise which would stand them in good stead for commenting on the individual nanoteach's during day 3 of the course.

Afterwards we moved on to what to do when it all goes wrong!  One of the other experienced guest speakers led this talk which went down very well.  This was broken down into two elements: technology and people.

The speaker asked for contributions and participants experiences throughout the talk to highlight those dreaded moments during a teaching session, when the computers don't work, the projector has broken or websites have changed overnight.  Tips for smooth sailing were as follows:

• practice in the classroom beforehand
• have the phone number of the IT department
• bring an extra memory stick
• put a copy of the presentation in the cloud
• be able to do the class without a presentation

People issues included, students grandstanding, texting or using the internet.  Above all we were advised to keep calm and take charge.

Participants were then giving a briefing about the "nanoteach" and what was expected of them for their individual presentations on day 3.

From my own perspective, day 2 seemed quite rushed.  We had listened feedback from the previous day and had included the "teaching activity audit".  This was a very worthwhile thing to do as it gave the participants and myself a more holistic view of the teaching going on in Cambridge libraries.  I hope it also allowed participants to think about the possibility of working together and sharing resources or collaborating with teaching.  This inclusion  meant that we cut down some of other aspects of the course, which was easy enough to do on the spur of the moment.  Hopefully this demonstrated the ability to be flexible. If we run this course again, we won't have this problem so we will be able to stick to the original lesson plan for that day.

The participants evaluation showed that they appreciated that we had listened to their feedback and had moved the projectors position and included the activity audit.  There was also a sense that the activity audit, Isla's teaching style and the what to do when it all goes wrong presentation allowed more discussion and made participants feel that everyone was in the same boat;

"Wednesday involved a lot more discussion from the group and I really enjoyed hearing from my colleagues/peers about what they were doing, ideas that they had, etc",

"it was reassuring to hear that even people with lots of teaching experience face difficulties and fears sometimes."

However there was also a sense of wanting more discussion time and a longer break in order to reflect on teaching:

"I know discussion can/and hopefully will continue beyond the sessions but it's often harder to take time out once you leave the classroom. Incorporating that time into the sessions would mean we would have a captive audience and dedicated time to discuss things further".

From a personal point of view I think this would be difficult to incorporate fully into the day and I think we were hoping that the peer support element would continue beyond the course, although I readily take the point that once you leave a course it can be difficult to find time to reflect on teaching.  Also if we do want time to discuss teaching as a whole in Cambridge and possibly collaborate, that might be better in a different event, as there are lots of librarians teaching within Cambridge who wouldn't be able to participate in that conversation, were it held as part of our course. However there would be no harm in organising a bit of both.

References

Edward Tufte, 2006, Beautiful evidence, Graphics Press.

Teaching Skills: Peer Support Course - Day 1

During the introduction on day 1, we emphasized the peer support element of the course. We felt it was important that participants learnt from each other.  Alongside this we asked that everyone contributed in order to get the most out of the program.

very confident----------------little confidence

Before starting we wanted to gauge participants experience in delivering teaching sessions and more importantly their confidence in teaching. as we wanted to measure their confidence after the course and 3-6 months later to see if there was a longitudinal improvement. We measured both experience and confidence using "string theory"; literally a long piece of string placed along the floor, one end being very experienced/confident and the other end being little experience/confidence.  We then asked participants to position themselves along the line and to write their name on a post it note, which we then collected up in order.

Our first session used a story technique developed by the English Faculty Library to identify who are students were, what their skills were and what we should teach them. The skills were then linked to ANCIL Information Literacy strands. There wasn't time to cover Information Literacy in depth but links were given to the main theories, such as ANCIL, SCONUL 7 Pillars, InformAll, etc, for participants to look at in their own time.

We then discussed the importance of learning styles in relation to the students learning and the way in which we choose to deliver our teaching sessions, as our own preferred learning style may have a bearing on our teaching.  We found out our own learning styles by using an activity example from Gravells, thinking about how you learned to use a new mobile phone.  This was a very quick and dirty method of demonstrating Honey & Mumford's learning styles: activist, reflector, theorist and pragmatist and I felt it worked really well without taking up too much time. We also looked at what exercises went best with each style and that it was best to use a mixture whilst delivering our sessions, to ensure we included all the students.

The rest of the first day's content looked at lesson planning, smart objectives, teaching methods and session evaluation.  The importance of having a session plan was discussed in order to give structure and confidence by ensuring that all the elements of a session were thought about in advance. Catherine also mentioned that creating one standard plan and re-using it saved time overall.  Key elements to this were the the learning aims and objectives.  Aims should state the purpose of the session and the learning need being met.  Objectives show the students the knowledge they should be able to take away at the end of the session.  These should be:

SMART objectives

are they clearly defined?

how will you know they've been met?

can they be met by your participants?

do they relate to the aim and needs of the participant?

can they be achieved in the time available?






The merits of different types of teaching method, such as lectures, demonstrations, discussions and assorted practical activities were discussed among the participants as an interactive activity. Participants were asked to think of advantages and disadvantages of  using each one from both the teacher and learner perspective.

Assessment methods were also talked about, as its important to know how you will assess the learners knowledge.  This is sometimes something which is perhaps left out when designing library sessions due to time practicalities, so choosing something suitable is vital.  Practical activities, quizzes, discussions, question & answer and group work can all be done during the session with time given for feedback and explanations of the answers.  Online assessment, peer assessment and learner presentations take longer as preparation time is needed by either the teacher or learner.  However once set up, this type of assessment can give more useful feedback on how the learner has processed the information given.

We finally introduced the idea of reflective practice by asking the participants to reflect on the sessions they'd seen and the different speakers. We deliberately used a variety a speakers throughout the course, so participants were able to see different delivery styles and methods. We wanted participants to see that each person has their own unique presentation style and that it was possible to get ideas for teaching from watching other presentations and presenters.

The participants evaluation of the first day was very positive which we were pleased about, especially the fact that they had liked the variety of speakers.  The Story technique was also very popular, one participant said "it was inspiring and interesting".  The planning team felt this was a great interactive session which was different to the usual lecture style of delivery and we are hoping to use it again this summer if we re-run the course.

The things to improve we took away to work on for day 2 were; an activity audit of what was already being done within Cambridge, the use of too many post it notes and the positioning of the projector which meant we had to stand in front of the screen.  However these are all things which the participants in turn will need to think about when delivering their own sessions.  Handouts and whether to give them before or after a session seemed to be split into the yes and no camp.  I don't think there is any right or wrong answers, it just depends on the individuals taking your course on that particular day.


References
Gravells, 2013, The award in education and training, Sage.

Honey & Mumford, 2006, Learning Styles questionnaire: 40 item version, Peter Honey Publishing.

Teaching Skills: Peer Support Course - Introduction

The idea for the Teaching Skills: Peer Support course came about after I attended LILAC 2012.  I remember listening to one presentation about the teaching identity and how their library staff had a support group, where they read and discussed articles on teaching to help their development as teachers.  I realised that whilst we do have a support group for librarians within Cambridge through our Brown Bag lunches, where articles on a variety of topics are discussed, we didn't specifically have anything for teaching.  As more and more librarians are now being asked to teach information literacy sessions to students, teaching is quickly becoming associated with a librarians role, especially for subject librarians and departmental staff who demonstrate electronic resources to students.  Even inductions and library tours need a certain degree of confidence and teaching or public speaking ability in order to impart information on your library to students and visitors, etc.  However it's fair to say that although some librarians undertake brief teaching skills course organised by libraries, CILIP and CPD groups, teaching is not taught in depth at library school.  More and more librarians are undertaking a postgraduate diploma or MA course in Teaching and Learning, have a PGCE or B.Ed degree or undertake a teaching qualification at regional colleges.  There are also a number of librarians who do not have teaching qualifications. Therefore Librarians can find themselves adrift when faced with delivering inductions and teaching sessions on a variety of subjects, such as, information skills, search techniques or referencing software.

Being the Chair of the Librarians in Training Group at Cambridge also gave me an insight into what training our librarians requested.  Top of the list was always teaching skills, how to teach and presentation skills.  I thought that with all the expertise and experience in Cambridge we could put on a teaching skills course in-house.  The planning team was formed of both college and departmental librarians (Ryan Cronin, St Johns College; Isla Kuhn, Medical Library; Catherine Reid, Lucy Cavendish College (now Clare College) and myself, Kirstie Preest, Murray Edwards College), with some assistance from 3 guest speakers, also from within Cambridge libraries.

The course itself took a lot of organising and planning but this didn't seem too onerous with four team members.  The team members all had something different to contribute in light of their experience; academic, NHS, & schools and in the different skills we had, for example, advertising, writing, presenting, etc.  We envisaged the course as a pilot project upon which we could build further after the first year, so were keen to ensure that the course was fully evaluated by ourselves and the participants.  We also demonstrated this aspect in practice by evaluating each day ourselves and by asking participants to do the same. This enabled us to change the course as we went along, taking into account any feedback received.  We felt it was important to demonstrate the fluidity, flexibility and a requirement "to think on your feet" which is sometimes required during a teaching session, when things don't always go to plan.

Activity Audit of Information Literacy Sessions

Another example of this flexibility is that we had not planned on discovering what teaching already existed in Cambridge libraries, rather just concentrate on the teaching skills itself.  However our first day's feedback showed that participants wanted this information to see if any overlap occurred.  So armed with this knowledge Isla and I changed the format of day two and included a "teaching activity audit".  Not only did this allow us to show that changing your session with limited time was feasible, it also allowed us to gain some useful data on what teaching already existed.  The image shown, details some of the data collected.

The main aims of the program were to:

• Build confidence and skills for librarians involved in teaching
• Cover the whole process of a teaching session from planning through to evaluation and reflection
• Establish teaching peer support within Cambridge for librarians 

For a reflection on each day of the course please see the other blog posts in the series.