I made a lot of changes to the topics covered in the class in light of how much Web 2.0 technologies have changed. I’d originally wanted to teach a class on online communities, but I couldn’t find enough good readings (or a textbook) for an entire course (now that Nancy White, et al.’s new book on Digital Habitats is out, it might be easier to do). I decided instead to focus more on online community-building in the course and am spending two weeks on it. I’m also having three guest speakers who run online communities: Frances Roehm of Skokie Net, Jessamyn West of MetaFilter, and my hubby, Adam Farkas, of ODwire. I know there are a lot of other topics I could have covered (cloud computing, mobile technologies, mashups, etc.), but I’m pretty happy with this semester’s lineup and I look forward to read my students reflections and discussions on these topics.

A while back, I’d asked folks on Twitter/FriendFeed/Facebook for suggestions of good Facebook pages to use as examples in my class. I thought I’d share those in case others are interested. You can find the list here. I don’t know that they’re the best Facebook pages, but I think they will give students some interesting food for thought.

As always in my classes, people from outside the class can register in the classroom and post comments on mine and my students’ posts. So feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed and/or join the conversation!

In the beginning of my talk, I showed screenshots of library blogs that haven’t been posted to, MySpace pages that haven’t been logged into, and podcasts that haven’t had new episodes in years. And I talked about some of the reasons why these 2.0 projects may have failed:

The first reason is that frequently social software implementations are not tied to institutional goals. Research has shown that libraries have been much more successful in marketing information literacy instruction when it’s tied to University goals/General Education requirements/etc. It’s the same with 2.0 technologies. Whatever we’re doing should be tied to the library’s strategic goals and planning. If it’s not tied to the library’s goals, then how will it be seen as a priority?

Similarly, 2.0 technologies should be planned for in a strategic way, which I think has not happened at a lot of libraries. Some libraries jumped on the blogging bandwagon because they thought (or were told) that every library must have a blog. Other libraries started wikis because staff were really excited about the idea of having a wiki. Neither are good reasons to implement a technology. We first need to understand the needs of our population (be it patrons or staff) and then implement whatever technology and/or service will best meet those needs. We need to have clear goals in mind from the outset so that we can later assess if it’s successful or not. These technologies may be fun, but they’re simply tools. We don’t walk around with hammers looking for nails to smash in.

In some cases, social software is treated as one staff member’s “pet project.” The use of 2.0 technologies in the library is often one person’s initiative at their library. They will make a passionate case for a blog, wiki, or whatever and will end up handling every aspect of its implementation. When that person leaves their job or gets too busy with other job responsibilities, guess what ends up being abandoned? I heard a horror story from a library that entrusted one staff member with running their MySpace profile and when she left under not-so-friendly circumstances, she refused to give anyone at the library the login information for their profile. This is just as foolish as a library only having one person who can access the back-end of their server or ILS. What if that person gets hit by a bus?!?!? Cross-training is a critical component of building an effective organization, and the same should be the case with any 2.0 technologies a library implements. Making it one person’s sole responsibility is a great way to doom a project.

I think one of the biggest reasons for problems with 2.0 technologies is also one of the major reasons why so many libraries are using them — they’re just so easy to get started with. It takes five minutes to start a blog, a wiki, a del.icio.us account or a MySpace page. And yet, keeping 2.0 technologies going takes significantly more time and effort. Blogs need to be posted to, MySpace pages need to be updated, and wikis need content. And something that people are very excited about maintaining in the first month or two of its existence might lose its allure over time. If there isn’t a plan for how you will maintain the tech from the get-go — be it scheduling posting and moderation, updating the software, etc. — it’s very possible that it will be abandoned when staff become less enthusiastic about it or they just get busy with other things. Libraries need to plan for the implementation and continued maintenance of 2.0 tech in the same way they plan for the technologies they pay a small fortune for. Even 2.0 tech costs money in terms of staff time, so it’s important to take it just as seriously as costly tech.

Finally, I think a lot of library staff end up abandoning 2.0 projects because they simply aren’t given time to work on them. We all have lots of duties that are non-negotiable in our job — reference shifts, instruction, web updates, committee appointments, etc. — and blogs, wikis and podcasts are often seen as something “extra.” If you create a weekly podcast and are totally bogged down one week with library instruction, it’s pretty obvious what won’t get done. While administrators may initially say that implementing 2.0 tech is important to keep up with other libraries and our patrons, they may not give you any additional time to work on these things. I’ve heard that complaint from a number of people at talks I’ve given. If you already have a full workload, your Director tells you that it’s critically important that the library have a blog, but doesn’t free up any time for you to work on it, he or she is sending a really mixed message about its import.

Two attendees actually asked when they should abandon a 2.0 project that just doesn’t have the ROI they were hoping for. Here are some of my thoughts on that:

I think before you abandon a project, you should try to figure out why your 2.0 technology isn’t having the impact you’d hoped for. That way, even if you do need to abandon the project, at least you’ve learned valuable lessons about your population from the failure. We can learn a lot from trying things and failing that can help us better meet our patrons’ needs in the future.

If it’s something your patrons aren’t visiting/using, think about why that might be. Are they not aware it exists? Then try doing more marketing. Is it just not meeting their needs in its current form? See if there’s a way you can make it more useful to them. Maybe your podcast is too long or your blog posts are boring. You should survey your patrons or at least talk to some of them and figure out how you can better meet their needs. Are there barriers to use that your patrons find unacceptable? See if you can bring those down. Our distance learners didn’t use our IM reference service when we first launched it 3 years ago, because most of them didn’t use IM normally (their average age is significantly older than that of our undergrad population) and weren’t exactly going to download a client and create an account just to chat with us. When we started using MeeboMe, everything changed, because the students just had to type words into a box and click enter to chat with us. So look for possible barriers to use. Are you making it too difficult for patrons to comment on your blog or add content to your wiki? Bring those walls down.

If it’s something that’s failing because staff aren’t contributing to it, you need to try to understand what’s behind their resistance. Make sure you’ve done all you can to secure buy-in. Are staff comfortable with the technology? Are they not being given time to add content? Did you offer trainings on it? Are there any technology barriers that you can bring down — make it easier to post, make the wiki/blog/etc. the homepage on their computer, even post things for people to get them started, etc.? But honestly, if most staff members don’t recognize that there’s a need for a library wiki or library blog or whatever in the first place, or the project isn’t strongly supported by administration, it’s not going to be a good fit for your library. That doesn’t mean that it might not be a good fit in the future, but it’s not a good fit now. I’d been wanting to create subject guides using a wiki at our library for a really long time, but waited until my colleagues recognized a need for it (and our Head of Public Services saw a need for it) to actually develop one. And I made sure to offer trainings so that people could practice editing the wiki in a safe space with a knowledgeable facilitator there. Had I introduced the idea earlier or not offered trainings, it would likely have ended in failure.

These are just some thoughts off the top of my pregnancy-addled head. What tips would you give to people who have implemented 2.0 technologies in their library and just aren’t seeing much return on investment from them? What can libraries do to get off on the right foot with 2.0 technologies?

The online conference that’s coming up is the ACRL Virtual Conference. This is the virtual component of ACRL’s National Conference which takes place next month in Seattle. I’m on the ACRL Virtual Conference committee, though I can’t take any credit for the coolness of this online conference. ACRL has had a virtual conference component for many years, though in the past, it didn’t offer a lot of bang for the buck — usually a few virtual talks and access to the conference community for networking and conference handouts. This time it’s very different. ACRL has contracted with a company that will be capturing the audio and slides of every presentation, and offering them as a movie at nearly the same time that the live session is going on (with just a tiny delay). This means that people registered for the virtual conference will be able to access every single presentation at the live conference. In addition, there will be live virtual presentations that are completely unique to the Virtual Conference, organized chat discussions, events in Second Life and more!

Attending the ACRL Virtual Conference will only set you back $165 (if you’re an ACRL member); a lot less than the physical conference, especially when you factor in travel expenses. And if you’re already registered for the National Conference, it’s FREE! For those who would love to attend ACRL but just don’t have the funds, this is a terrific opportunity to benefit from the knowledge being shared in Seattle without leaving your office.

The ACRL Virtual Conference committee is actually offering a Webcast kickoff event this week that anyone interested in social software, research and education should definitely be interested in:

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 – 1:00 – 2:15 p.m. CST
(11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. PST | 12:00 – 1:15 p.m. MST | 2:00 – 3:15 p.m. EST)
The Virtual Conference kicks into high gear with a new feature for 2009 – the Kick-Off Webcast! On Tuesday, February 17, the Virtual Conference presents Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry and E-Learning Coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, giving an invited presentation that can be seen as part of the Virtual Conference. Take advantage of this opportunity to interact in real-time with this expert in e-learning and “open science.”

Jean-Claude is someone who has really inspired me with his use of social technologies and gaming in the classroom as well as his research on the potential of social software in improving research. More information about registering and the features of the Virtual Conference are available on the ACRL Conference website.

The other awesome online conference I was involved in was the Iowa Small Libraries Online Conference. In places like Iowa, small library can take on a meaning totally different from ALA’s definition of what a small library is. The libraries targeted by this conference tend to be really small and without the resources to send its library staff across the state to attend a conference. So, instead of having a conference that only libraries with sufficient funding could afford to send staff to, the regional library associations in Iowa created an online conference that any interested librarian could participate in. They capitalized on their WebJunction membership and used the Wimba web conferencing platform. It was just like any normal conference with live scheduled presentations. They even had a virtual exhibit hall where attendees could chat with vendors!

I had the pleasure of giving the keynote presentation at the conference. As someone who has done gazillions of webcasts using just about every platform imaginable, I was really impressed with how well the conference organizers supported attendees and speakers technologically. Things went extremely smoothly and given the professionalism and preparedness of the organizers, I would assume that it continued that way throughout the day. I was absolutely touched that they sent me a little care package with chocolates, socks, a mug and hot cocoa so I’d be cozy and comfortable during my talk (that has to be the most adorable speaker’s gift I’ve ever received). But much more than that, I was so proud to be part of a conference that made professional development accessible to people who may never have been able to get to a national or even state conference. Associations that have lots of rural or small library members should definitely take a lesson from the wonderful people in Iowa who made this possible.

I’d originally wanted to make the ALA Unconference a hybrid f2f/online experience, but most people on Jim Rettig’s advisory committee felt that we should focus on the in-person element. In hindsight, I think they were right. As it turns out, the Unconference is going to be located in a hotel that may or may not offer wireless Internet access (or Internet access at all — I have no idea since we don’t even know what hotel it’ll be in). Given how difficult it can be to get really reliable wireless access at an ALA Conference we could have ended up creating expectations for an online component that we simply could not deliver on. And while the online/offline balance for the Top Tech Trends meeting at Midwinter was brilliantly executed to allow for maximum participation from all (kudos to the tireless organizers of that!), the online components integrated into that same panel actually ended up being a distraction at Annual. While I’d love to do a hybrid Unconference in the future, I’m glad other folks talked us out of it this time around. I’d hate to have created something that would have served to show ALA that Unconferences are not a good model for them.

I feel much more optimistic this year about the growth of online conference opportunities than I did last year. And as budgets shrink and professional development funds become scarce, I hope more organizations will consider creating online conferences — if not as the main event, at least as a component of a F2F conference like ACRL. Because it’s likely that far fewer of us will be able to jet off to Seattle or Chicago or Boston or DC next year and conference organizers will have to be creative to keep their own revenues up.

It was some of the comments on David’s post (and in follow-up posts on other blogs) that really made me write this post. Particularly this comment from “Jill” (which also included her sweetly telling David that he’s out of touch with the realities of public services):

As to defining parameters for the service, I don’t see this as a bad thing. Unless you have a staff member dedicated to monitoring virtual reference at a location away from a public service desk, in-person patrons should absolutely take precedence over a virtual patron. Common sense dictates that you pay attention to the person who is physically in the same space as you. Not that the virtual patron’s question is any less important, but you do need to set some guidelines of who to help first

I may be as dense and out-of-touch as David, because I don’t see why common sense dictates that in-person patrons should take precedence. Why? Because they are standing in front of you and the virtual patron is easier to ignore? It’s still a human being sitting at their computer waiting for your answer. Because they took the time to come to the library? Don’t we all have patrons who are physically unable to come to the library? The logic of this really escapes me.

In academic libraries, I’ve seen a lot of virtual reference policies that say that they will always give priority to in-person reference queries. Anna confirms that her library has just such a policy in her post:

There is a note on the IM page of the website which states, “Users at the Main Service Desk have priority over IM users. IM users are taken in a first-come, first served order. If you would prefer not to wait, you may always email a librarian.” Essentially, this is the only way we can manage IM reference service with one person handling it at the same time they are answering questions at the desk and responding to email queries. So far, our users have been understanding, and IM reference makes up approximately 10% of our reference interactions.

I don’t see this as discriminating against our virtual users. Anyone in customer service will tell you that the person standing in front of you takes priority.

I work at a library that has fewer than half the staff of Anna’s library at the University of Richmond (and we serve a larger combined graduate/undergraduate population). We have six librarians who staff all of the hours we are available to provide reference services and only one person covers IM, phone, email, and physical reference all at once. Yet our policy for reference has always been “first-come, first-served.” If I am online working with a student via IM, I will not tell them to wait or give me their email address when a physical student comes to the desk. I will tell that student, “I am working with another student through IM, can you wait a couple of minutes?” Each situation is different and sometimes I can work with both simultaneously. Sometimes I will take down the question and email address of one of them (if their question is particularly in-depth and/or their paper is not due in 10 hours — sometimes we’ll do this regardless of having competing priorities because the question is huge or would be better answered by another librarian or I want to do more digging on it and the patron needs to go) and will get back to them as soon as things settle down. But I never give preference to the student physically standing in front of me — each type of reference customer is equally important and deserves the same level of service.

I really have to question the logic of the statement “the person standing in front of you takes priority” for libraries that offer synchronous virtual reference services. People keep saying it, but no one has explained why they should take priority. And I don’t get it. Is it because your physical patrons are more important than your virtual patrons? Because the reference interview can take longer with a virtual reference patron? Because it makes you uncomfortable to tell someone standing in front of you that you’re working with someone online and they’ll have to wait a moment? I really can’t understand that statement at all.

When I developed our IM reference service three years ago, I was guided by the ACRL Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services, which includes the following statement:

Members of the distance learning community, including those with disabilities, must therefore be provided effective and appropriate library services and resources, which may differ from, but must be equivalent to those provided for students and faculty in traditional campus settings.

If you are saying that in-person questions take precedence over the medium open to distance learners for contacting you, you are not providing equivalent services. I can’t stand when distance learners are treated like second-class citizens — having been a distance learner and a distance learning librarian, it really makes my blood boil. And this is just one example of how service to on-campus patrons takes precedence over service to online patrons. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re less deserving of timely and high-quality services. They pay your salary as much as every other student does. Here’s our help page for distance learners which clearly does not state that there are any limits to the reference services available to them or that questions from other patrons take precedence over their questions.

I know plenty of libraries do not serve distance learners, but I think the spirit of this document should apply to all virtual users of our library. There are many reasons why people may not come into the library to ask their question. It’s not just because they’re lazy or didn’t feel like it. Perhaps they are disabled. Perhaps they do not have transportation. Perhaps they have a mental illness like social anxiety disorder or agoraphobia or are asking a question that they’d be too uncomfortable to ask in person. What excites me most about providing synchronous virtual reference services is not the convenience, but that it has made reference services accessible to many people who never would have or could have used our reference services before. And to tell these people that your physical patrons take precedence is a subtle message that they are less important than the people who could make it to the library.

And let’s not forget that there is a whole other synchronous reference medium that’s been around for many, many years: the phone. At our library, when the phone rings and I’m working with a patron, I’ll answer the phone, take down their info really quick and let them know I’ll call them back because I’m with another patron. If I’m on the phone with someone and another patron comes to the desk, I’ll let the in-person patron know that I’m answering a reference question on the phone and that I can work with them in a few minutes or they can write down their query and leave me their email address and I’ll get to their question as soon as I’m done. It’s no different from how we treat our virtual reference patrons. And I don’t understand why it should be any other way.

I know that the reference interview can be more challenging and take more time in the virtual medium. I know it’s hard to staff four forms of reference service at once. I get it. I work in public services too, at a library where our reference stats have not gone down over the past five years and where we have a very small number of staff members to cover reference (and we don’t use students). But to say that there’s some logical reason why the person standing in front of you should receive preference over the person on the phone or in your chat window makes absolutely no sense to me. Can someone explain it?

I deeply love teaching; I love everything about it (with the possible exception of giving people bad grades, which I fortunately don’t have to do too often). Probably the thing I find most exciting is to watch students go from a point where they are not particularly confident in their technology skills to realizing that they are capable of more than they’d ever imagined. One student in my class had emailed me before the start of class wondering if she should be in the class at all because she’s not “techie.” She now can syndicate RSS feeds using JavaScript, create personalized home pages for a library, create podcasts and screencasts, edit a wiki, and so much more. She did incredibly well in the class! All of the students in the class were surprised by how much they were able to do with social technologies by the end, and that’s really what I wanted to hear. This social software stuff ain’t rocket science, but it does take patience, persistence and the willingness to sometimes ask for help. I’m blown away by their accomplishments.

On Tuesday, I received an email informing me that I’ve been chosen to receive a Faculty of the Year Award for Excellence in Online Education from WISE (a group of 15 LIS schools — including UIUC, UNC, Syracuse, and San Jose State — which allow students to take online classes at other schools in the group). I don’t think anything could have surprised me more. What means the most to me is that people must be nominated by their students for this award. That my students think my teaching is worthy of recognition means more to me than anything.

What this award really validates, in my view, is the method of online teaching that I’ve adopted. I’ve been using Drupal for my classes as its flexibility supports my more constructivist approach to teaching. As one of my students wrote:

Comparing Blackboard and Drupal, I thought that the opinions and thoughts of the students are treated with respect by using the Drupal system. In other words, by using this system, students are like the main actors and actresses in movies. I thought that the features of Drupal were built around blogs and focused on connections and communication among teachers and students. On the other hand, Blackboard focuses on announcements and instructions from teachers to students.

Well put, Toshu! The focus isn’t on me imparting my wisdom to my students (thought hopefully my lectures were worth something!); it’s on their impressions and reflections about what they’re learning and the conversations that come from sharing those reflections. I believe strongly that the more students control the conversation and guide the class, the better their learning experience will be. I see my role as a facilitator — not an authority. I need to know a lot about the topic to provide guidance when needed, but I don’t want my thoughts on an issue to ever be seen as gospel. I hope my students realize that we’re all learners and teachers and that they’ve learned as much from each other as they have from me. I’ve learned from them too. Social learning is awesome, and I think social technologies enable that sort of learning better than traditional course management systems.

I’ll be taking a break from teaching for at least the next 2-3 semesters to focus on my baby. While I’ll miss teaching, I don’t want to put students in a situation where I’m not totally committed to them and I can’t imagine how I could be with a new adorable little boy to love up. But I hope to come back to teaching for Spring 2010 (if they’ll have me), as it’s become one of the more fulfilling activities in my life.

When I was asked to teach, I really wasn’t sure how things would go or if I would be cut out for teaching online (or teaching at all), but it ended up being one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I loved designing the learning experience and I loved working with the students. It was so rewarding to watch them learn, reflect on their experiences, and develop new skills. I was blessed with a fantastic group of students. They were bright, enthusiastic critical thinkers, and I was blown away by the insightful conversations that took place in the classroom.

I’d say the most difficult part of the class was grading assignments. I made my life a lot easier by creating structured rubrics that forced me to be very consistent in how I graded each student, but still, it was hard to give people bad grades. While no one got a bad final grade in the class, I think I may have been a tougher grader than some of them were accustomed to. But I also gave them lots of comments on their papers, offering lots of constructive criticism. So hopefully they at least understood why they got the grade they did.

I owe a great deal of the success of the class due to the encouragement and support of Debbie Faires and Linda Main at SLIS. Both were 100% supportive of my abandoning Blackboard for Drupal, which allowed me to really design the course much in the way we did with Five Weeks to a Social Library. I think it made the classroom more flexible, participatory and egalitarian. It also allowed me to integrate the discussion elements of the class (the blogs) into the classroom instead of having students each create their own blog in various places (thereby scattering the discussion). Had I used Blackboard, I think the experience would have been quite different (less flexible, more fragmented).

I thought I’d write a little about some of the things that went right with my course, things that were not successful, and what the pros and cons are of using Drupal as a course management system.

Things that were a big hit:

Blogging = reflective learning – I’d say blogging was of critical importance to the success of the course. We covered a lot of material in the class over 15 weeks, and it can be easy to go on auto-pilot and miss absorbing much if you don’t really think about what you’re learning. However, each week, students had to reflect on their thoughts about and experiences in using the technologies. That reflection is so critical to learning, because it forces you not just to read and regurgitate but to think about its meaning and significance. It was also helpful that students were required to respond to other students’ reflections, because it helped them to challenge and support each other as well as better understanding other points of view.

Conversation = Connection – In the classroom, what you see on the front page are the most recent blog posts from all of the participants (not just me). Putting the conversation at the forefront in the classroom really makes that the most important element of the course. It’s not just an afterthought like some discussion boards feel like in courseware. Making those conversations central, I think, leads to better conversations. And those conversations lead to students getting to know each other better. Students seemed much more interested in each other than I remember from my classes at FSU. Also the level of conversation going on was so much deeper than I found when I was a student. People really had insightful things to say and challenged/supported each other in the comments on their posts.

One student commented on the level of engagement in the class:

This has been one of my favorite classes that I’ve taken in the SJSU slis program. I don’t think it’s all because of the material, either. It’s the connectedness that’s made it different. When I feel more connected to the class and the people in the class, I feel more engaged, and when I feel more engaged, I do better work and learn more. Funny how that is ☺

Experiential learning – In addition to reading about social software, students were also exploring social software through 10 discovery exercises. Exercises included creating podcasts and screencasts, editing wikis, creating Facebook or MySpace profiles, building a Yahoo! Pipe, displaying/filtering/mixing RSS feeds on a web page and more. It’s one thing to read about MySpace profiles, another thing entirely to try and create one. Students learned a lot from actually doing and not just reading. In addition, while the activities were challenging, students really felt a sense of self-efficacy when they found they could do it:

What really surprised me more than anything about a specific tool we’ve learned this semester is my own ability to learn these applications and put them to use. Every week it seemed I was saying to myself something along the lines of “Oh man, I have to learn how to make a podcast today. I don’t even know what a podcast is!” and then, sure enough, the next day I had learned what it was, how to create one, and how to teach others how to make one.

In addition to that feeling of self-efficacy, I think the read/experience/reflect cycle each week made learning much stickier:

My experience in this course was practical and hands-on. Instead of reading about concepts relating to library and information science and discussing them, we read about concepts, applied them in a real-life setting, and then shared our experiences. I really liked the dialogue we developed as a class, and all of my classmates had thoughtful insight and suggestions to share. I am thankful to have been given an opportunity to practice using different types of social software so that I can make future recommendations according to personal experience. I am also thankful I was forced to use applications I would not have used otherwise because now I am not intimidated by them.

Fantastic!

I know some people have argued that classes that teach about social software are frivolous and trendy, but I strongly believe that this class taught students so much more than just how to use social software. It taught them to not be afraid to try out technologies they’re unfamiliar with and to bang things with rocks to get them to work. It taught them how to evaluate new technologies and visualize how they can be used in different settings that they may not have been intended for. It taught them how to plan for and manage new technologies in libraries. It taught them how to use technologies for instruction. It taught them how to better collect knowledge internally in libraries. It taught them how to “sell” new technologies to colleagues and administrators. And much more. One student commented on the timeliness of the topics, but the timelessness of the lessons learned: “I imagine that someday soon the stuff from this class will be ’so last week’ but it has gotten me into the practice of trying new stuff and trying to use it for other purposes.” Developing that mindset, I believe, is critical to being a successful librarian in the 21st century. And while other classes could teach that mindset, there certainly weren’t any that fostered that in me when I was at FSU.

Guest speakers – I was very keen on exposing my students to librarians who are successfully using social technologies in libraries, so for the synchronous web conferences we had during class, I invited librarians to speak with my students about their work and views on social technologies. I had three speakers from different library types (public, academic, corporate) who had implemented a number of different social tools in their libraries and had interesting insights (thanks Chad, Dan and Vicky!). Students commented that they really loved hearing from other librarians who could offer practical advice. This time around, I plan to have six speakers, so students can get even more perspectives!

Transparency – There was transparency at a number of levels with this course. First of all, there was my transparency with students. I was very open with my students in explaining my reasoning for doing things and was very clear that I would be willing to make changes to the course if students told me that things weren’t working. It was my first time teaching a for-credit course online, and I wanted to make sure that I was giving students the best experience. If I wasn’t, I really did want to know and would have been happy to make changes. Luckily, it seems that the experience was enjoyable for them. The other level of transparency was the course itself. Instead of being locked into online courseware, this was on the open web. The students could access all of the lectures and assignments without having to log in. In addition, anyone could see what they wrote, making their use of social software tools much more in-line with the reality of using them in libraries. It was great having it be so open and we did have a few people comment from outside of the class. The same will be true for my upcoming class, so if you’re interested in taking part in some pretty interesting conversations about social software, please pop by.

Drupal is so much better than Blackboard for anyone who is keen on an easy-to-access, easy-to-follow, streamlined experience. The content can be organized flexibly to best meet the needs of students. It’s easy to find content by a specific author or about a specific topic. A number of students commented on how much they loved being able to follow the class using RSS:

Drupal was much better for me than Blackboard. Finding old items and keeping track of threads was easy. And being able to keep track of the class through RSS was just fantastic. It was also interesting to see the occasional comment from someone outside the class. This was a very open and transparent class, just the exact sort of environment that social media creates.

Things that missed the mark a bit:

Social bookmarking – I wanted the students to explore other resources out there since the readings I chose and my views espoused in lectures were not the only points of view on the topics covered. So I required students to bookmark three resources/articles/etc. each week and tag them with the course tag. I had a page where all of the bookmarked content was aggregated, but I don’t think students looked at what other people were bookmarking and it became more of a chore to do each week than a means to an end. This time, I’m going to have students find one resource/article/etc. and write a brief blog post about it. I think this way it will feel more integrated into the course and will be more than just a title on a list for students. They’ll still use del.icio.us for a discovery exercise one week, but I hate to make anything in the class just feel like busywork.

Forums – I’m not going to say that these were a total dud, but they definitely didn’t get used much. Since the class is so open to the public, I wanted to give students a space that was only accessible to people in the class. So if students had questions, needed help, or just wanted to discuss something in a more private forum, they could do that. The forums were only accessible to me and the students, but they actually got used very rarely and I found that students tended to email me about things rather than using them. I still plan to have Forums for my class in the Fall, since you never know how a different group might use the tools differently. I feel strongly that they should have a space that is more private.

Commenting due dates – Not being a procrastinator, I hadn’t anticipated this would be a problem, but I stupidly made blogging and comments on other students’ blog posts due on the same day. Each week, there were a few early birds who wrote their posts towards the beginning of the week and those people’s posts got lots of comments. The people who posted at the last minute consistently ended up getting no comments on their posts (other than from me). This time around, I’m making commenting due two days after the blog post itself is due, which I hope will help a bit. I know the early birds will still get the most comments on their posts, but I can’t control everything.

Drupal issues:

While I think Drupal is an amazing amazing educational tool, there are a number of things about it that drive me nuts. Perhaps some of the these things I’m mentioning here are fixable, and if you know they are, please let me know.

No way to save posts as drafts – If you use a traditional blog, you’re probably used to being able to save your posts as drafts so it doesn’t disappear while you’re working on it. With Drupal, there’s no easy way to do this for regular users. If you’re an administrator, you can choose to save the post as unpublished and then you can access it again when you’re administering all of the course content. If you’re not an administrator, you have to write your entire post and publish it in one sitting, or you’re stuck composing it in a word processing program and porting it over to Drupal (which often wreaks havoc with the WYSIWYG editor — see below). A few students commented that they’d lost blog posts when they started writing it and then accidentally left the page to look at something else. If anyone knows of a module or patch that will give users Save as Draft functionality in Drupal 6, please let me know.

Modules work, modules don’t work, modules break Drupal – I’ve used a lot of Wordpress plugins, and I’ve never had such problems as I’ve had with Drupal modules. So many of them have the feel of being put together with with the online equivalent of wire and duct tape. Some work just fine, but I’ve had more not work than work in my experience. Sometimes modules don’t work for no apparent reason. I’ve been trying to get the Comment RSS module to work, and I get an error message with it that I’ve searched on and can’t figure out. I installed a Gradebook module that nearly broke Drupal and that would not allow me to uninstall it. And once you come to depend on a module, you may well find that it is not being developed for newer versions of Drupal, so you either have the choice of giving up your module or continuing to use an older version of Drupal (or, if you’re a programmer, continuing development of it, but most of us don’t have that option). I know that’s a possibility with any open source tool, but it seems more common with Drupal.

WYSIWYG editors in Drupal – I’ve now used FCKEditor and TinyMCE and both are pretty fraught with issues. The first issue is that every time I upgrade to a new version of Drupal, I have to use a different one because the one I was using before suddenly doesn’t work well anymore. The biggest issue I’ve had is with the WYSIWYG editor actually altering the style sheet on the entire front page of the site, changing the font and/or font size of everything. This meant that I frequently had to go into students’ posts and fix the raw HTML so that there were no font tags. Really annoying.

Taxonomies schmaxonomies – Although I’ve been using Drupal now for two years, I still feel like I don’t understand the whole taxonomy system that underlies Drupal. It’s not intuitive. To accomplish anything, I usually try a bunch of things until I get it to work. If anything, that should probably be encouraging to people who are nervous about trying Drupal. If you are a “beat stuff with rocks” kind of person and half a halfway decent tolerance for frustration, you could probably manage to make it work.

In spite of the many annoyances associated with using Drupal, I still wouldn’t trade it. It’s been a wonderful tool for online learning that encourages reflective learning and transparency. It gives me the ability to create just the sort of learning experience I want for my students, instead of trying to make my class fit into the inflexible beast that is Blackboard. While it’s certainly a lot easier to develop a class in Blackboard, I think the experience you can create for students using Drupal makes the additional effort very worthwhile.

I can’t wait to start teaching again!

The annual LOEX conference is trying something new as an experiment this year: three of their breakout sessions will be presented as live, interactive webcasts a few weeks after the conference: http://www.loexconference.org/2008/virtualsessions.htm
I think this is a terrific idea, and addresses two distinct issues with LOEX: first, the number of people who want to go but can’t because registration is capped at a certain number of attendees; and second, the inevitable problem of too many good sessions scheduled against one another at the conference itself. It’s also great for anyone who can’t go to the conference due to funding or travel restrictions, library school students, etc.

The virtual sessions will take place between May 20 – 22nd, and registration for it will open up tomorrow (April 29th) at 1pm ET. Registration is reserved for LOEX members or those who are attending or were wait listed for the LOEX conference this year.

It’s really nice to see conferences experimenting with the development online components for those who are unable to attend, and it’s especially nice to see opportunities like this offered at such reasonable prices. LOEX is definitely a conference I hope to get to next year in my new role as Head of Instructional Initiatives.

Join us on Wednesday, April 2, from 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CDT for a lively discussion about the future of higher education with Henry Jenkins, the Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. Henry will also explore the skills and fluencies students will need for the 21st century and what the library can do to prepare for the future of higher education.

MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS BENEFITS
By providing this Springboard event, the ACRL Board is responding to your feedback that professional development is one of the most important services that ACRL provides and that members want additional online learning opportunities. ACRL is pleased to offer this inaugural free professional development event and will continue to sponsor a free Springboard event annually if there is sufficient interest.

It’s a good start with a very good speaker. I really think providing additional member benefits like this will bring more members to ACRL. For those who can’t attend the physical conferences and have a very small professional development budget, this is a great opportunity to learn new things without leaving your desk. While I would have been a member of ACRL either way, it makes me feel like my money was better-spent.

And ACRL, you don’t have to always get a speaker outside of our profession like Henry Jenkins. There are lots of academic librarians out there who would be willing to give a webcast like this for free. I know I would, especially if it meant that free webcasts could be offered more than once a year.

I’d actually written a few weeks ago about a service I was thinking about discontinuing because it wasn’t having the results we’d hoped for. That program was our embedded librarian service where I was embedded (with a discussion board) in 14 classrooms for 4 academic programs. I used the opportunity to provide instruction in addition to answering the questions I got from students. I though it would be good for students to get their questions answered in a public forum because then the answers would benefit the entire class.

Unfortunately, I got very few questions from students and about half of them ended up asking me for help through WebCT email, defeating the purpose of being in their classroom. There were some classrooms I didn’t get any questions in at all throughout the semester. And it didn’t seem to make a difference whether the professor pushed the library services or not (confounding my hypothesis). In some classrooms where instructors frequently suggested that their students discuss their topics with the librarian, I only had one or two questions. In others where it wasn’t pushed I’d get more questions. Given the time it took me to check 14 separate classrooms each day, it didn’t seem to warrant the effort. So after talking to my supervisor, I decided to discontinue the program, though the instructional content I created for the discussion boards will now be placed within all the classrooms for those programs.

While time constraints were a factor in my decision to discontinue the program, I would have continued no matter what had it been a really useful service for students. The very small number of questions I was getting just didn’t merit the effort I was putting in. I thought that making myself “more available” would lead to more questions from students, but it didn’t. The same number people just now asked the questions in WebCT instead of via email meaning that I had to visit 14 classrooms to answer them instead of doing it from a central reference account. In some ways, it actually served students worse since if they posted to the discussion board and I was out for a few days, no one would get back to them until I returned (versus emailing the reference email account that is checked by multiple librarians 7 days a week).

If I’ve learned one thing from the experience and from student surveys, it is that what our online learners here want most is for access to resources to be as simple and streamlined as possible. They don’t care much about having a librarian available to them; they just want things to work. No matter how available I make myself, there will be people who ask for help and there will be people who won’t. Some students who took classes I was embedded in admitted to me that they didn’t bother to read what I was writing. I realize that I’m far better off focusing my energies on making our services easier to use and having good (brief, easy to find) documentation for when people have problems.

I’ve been feeling in a bit of a rut at work over the past few months. I do enjoy working with the distance learners and doing tech stuff, but there are certain things I’ve been wanting to do more of that really aren’t something a distance learning librarian usually does. One of them is instruction. I love teaching. It’s really been my favorite part of being a librarian, to my great surprise since I dreaded it all through library school. Our distance programs don’t have any synchronous components, so all of the instruction I do for them is in the form of screencasts and HTML tutorials. I have gotten to do a fair bit of instruction with the undergrads over the past few years, but it’s more as a backup for when liaisons are overwhelmed than as the main person focusing on that area. I’ve really been chomping at the bit to do more of it.

The other thing I really have been missing is working with the print collection. I love doing collection development and weeding. As the liaison to online programs, “my collection” was all online and isn’t something you can really purchase on your own or weed at the individual title-level. I’ve gone up into the stacks with colleagues while they weeded because I really love that part of the work we do as librarians. By doing that, you get to know the collection in your area so much better and it’s kind of cathartic to get rid of things that only serve to make the collection look dated.

So I have absolutely loved being the liaison to the social sciences. I like being able to manage our collection and to look for holes in our collection that need to be filled. But most of all, I love teaching. Our Historical Methods course was redesigned for the Spring semester by two of our most enthusiastic faculty members. They really wanted students to get excited about doing research and to really be immersed in the process. As the new liaison, I’ve had the chance to work closely with the faculty and students in the class. In fact, library instruction is really integrated into the course, with four instruction sessions with the library and one with the Norwich history museum.

So far, I’ve gotten to teach students about tertiary sources and Web research (including all the great historical primary source material that can be found there). It’s been fun helping students find reference sources on their topic, seeing their surprise at the existence of Google Books, and marveling at how sharp they were in the activity where I had them determine whether online historical resources were trustworthy and/or cite-able. It’s made me much more aware of what we have in our reference collection in the 900s and 355s and which parts could probably use some beefing up. On Tuesday, I get to teach each of the three Historical Methods sections about the catalog and our databases, and I’m having fun going up into the stacks and picking out popular and peer-reviewed history journals for them to actually leaf through. I’m loving creating course guides and subject guides. It’s sick how much I’m enjoying all this.

These new responsibilities have made me feel recharged. Of course my work day is way more exhausting and I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water, but I’m loving the fact that I have new challenges and that they’re in areas I really want to be focusing on in my career. I feel like a brand-new librarian again; full of energy, new ideas, and probably a moderate amount of naiveté. I come home from work and want to tell poor Adam all about my day. It’s just nice to feel this excited about my work. I am concerned about what my job responsibilities will look like when we hire a new Coordinator of Public Services, but we have a history at my library of responsibilities getting shuffled around and my Director is really supportive of my getting involved in the social sciences. And if it doesn’t work out, at least I’ll know what sort of work I want to be doing.

I think a lot of people who hit that rut in their career feel like they need to look for another place to work. In some cases, that rut is more about what they do every day at work than their general work environment. I know it’s not possible everywhere to redefine your responsibilities, but it never hurts to ask. A friend of mine was able to get staff training added to her position, which was something she was really keen on doing. Brian Matthews became a User Experience Librarian and shifted his focus towards the things he was really passionate about. Considering the cost of hiring and training a new employee, it would seem easier to shuffle job responsibilities around a bit than to let an employee leave. It isn’t always possible to shift towards things that would get you out of that rut, but if the worst answer you’ll get is “no,” the price of asking about it doesn’t seem so high. And considering that boredom has the same effects as stress on the body, the price of not trying to get out of that rut may be much higher.

Tonight is the first live Elluminate (web conferencing) session for the class I’m teaching at San Jose State University and I can’t say more than five syllables without my chest hurting. Should be interesting. Fortunately, we’re having a fabulous guest speaker (Vicky Chase from the Lucy Robbins Welles Public Library in Connecticut), so that will take the heat off of me a bit. Thank goodness Elluminate has text chat as well as VoIP!

Hopefully I’ll feel better soon and will be able to write about what I learned in Toronto. In the meantime, here are my slides from the two talks I gave:

Building the Social Library Online

| View | Upload your own

Top Technology Trends (with my partners-in-crime Casey Bisson and David Fiander — not sure where they posted their slides)

| View | Upload your own

All in all, it was a great conference and I learned about some exciting projects being developed by Ontario libraries. I’m definitely impressed with how collaborative libraries are in Ontario and wish we had that same spirit of collaboration in Vermont. We can do so much more together than we ever could individually.