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!

Does someone really need to understand the back-end of a system to capitalize on it? I don’t believe that’s true. Most people don’t know how to build a car; they don’t understand all of its internal mechanisms. Yet we still drive cars. We just know where to go when we need help. I have no clue how to debug things in Drupal. I’ve never made any attempt to understand the internal mechanisms of it. Does that mean I shouldn’t have used it the three times I have for classes? No way! I can install it and I can use it for the purposes I’ve had for it. I can’t do a lot of the fancy things a lot of people do with Drupal, but it worked fine for what I needed it to do. All my limited knowledge means is that when I have a problem, I need to look up the answer or rely on the community of Drupal users and developers for help. I did just that and thanks to the community, I was able to fix any problems I’ve had.

Yeah, I’d like to know how to fix every little thing in Drupal and create my own modules, but I’d also like to know how to fix my car. Priorities. In my position, it’s much more important that I know a lot about instruction and a decent amount about instructional technologies. Programming is not a necessary skill-set (not that I wouldn’t like to have mad coding skillz). If I’m going to engage in professional development, it will be to learn more about information literacy instruction and assessment, not to take a class on PHP or JavaScript. I’ve even done stuff with PHP and JavaScript, but it just involved messing around with stuff that already existed. I’d break it, figure out what I did and how it impacted things, and then fix it. Eventually I’d usually get it to do what I needed it to do. Yes, I’d love to have a better understanding, but it’s not a priority with my job and there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to learn everything I’d like.

Should library schools require technology classes? Without a doubt! I don’t think anyone should come out of library school without basic web design skills, a basic understanding of library technologies and Internet technologies, the ability to assess technologies, the ability to be fearless with trying out new technologies, and probably a whole host of other things I’m not thinking of right now with pregnancy brain. But does everyone need to come out knowing how to code? No! While technology is a part of every job, not every librarian needs to know how the back-end of the catalog works or needs to know how to debug a Drupal module. Instruction is a critical part of most of our jobs as librarians too (be it formal instruction, reference assistance, or staff training), but not everyone is required to take classes on instruction. And probably most people don’t need to know as much about instruction as I (and other people in similar positions) do.

People can do so many different things with a degree in Library and Information Science. I think it’s important for everyone to have a certain baseline of technology skills, but beyond that, it’s really dependent on what sort of job you want. The technology skill-sets you need to be a head of instruction vs. a systems librarian vs. a web developer vs. a reference librarian vs. an archivist are very different. I think for any library school student, it’s a good idea to hedge your bets and not just train yourself for a single job. It’s important to take tech classes, but if you know you don’t want to have a job where you’ll need to program, you shouldn’t have to. Focusing only on technology and not at all on public service-type classes is an even bigger mistake, since anyone developing tech for libraries needs to understand user behavior and how to train librarians on how to use the technologies.

Dorothea already wrote a lot of really brilliant things about teaching tech in library school, so there’s really no point in my going into more depth when she already said it all. Like most things she writes, I agree with 99% of it.

But my mind is on all of those people who are already out of library school and didn’t have the opportunity to take tech classes (or perhaps just chose not to because they didn’t think it would be important). Those are the people I write my column for. And the reality is that there are many libraries where no one has good programming skills (mine included) or the money to hire/rent talent. There are also many libraries where no one has an MLS at all, so the issue of tech in LIS education is irrelevant to them. I started writing my column because I saw too many articles that only highlighted things that could be done for a lot of $$$ or with serious programming talent on staff. I wanted to highlight the things that people could accomplish at almost any library so long as they are willing to experiment, maybe break things once, twice (or twenty times), and rely on documentation and the robust user communities that are a part of most of the tools I highlight. I like to show the range of what can be done with any technology, from things that require significant programming to the very simple nearly-out-of-the-box job. That way, they know what’s possible with the software at both ends of the spectrum.

I want small libraries to realize that they can have a decent website without necessarily knowing HTML or having a web designer on staff. I’ve learned over time that most librarians have no idea what they’re capable of doing with tech. I certainly didn’t think I was capable of doing anything with Drupal until I tried it out and realized that it wasn’t as beastly as I’d imagined (though the whole taxonomy/node stuff really took me a while to understand properly). I want to encourage people to try things out and to realize that they’re capable of so much more than they think they are. So, while I’d love for every library to have someone on staff with mad tech skillz, it’s important for people to realize that they still can do a lot of great stuff with tech even if they don’t have tons of money or programming talent.

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.

While I was sad to miss Internet Librarian this year, I found the conference in Iceland to be one of the best I’ve attended in some time. There was so much great food for thought, so many new ideas, so many people I’d never met before. At Internet Librarian, I would have had loads of fun, but I imagine that only one or two of the talks I attended would have offered me something really new. Still, I definitely would have been sad to miss IL had I not been on my own trip.

On the second day of the conference, I spoke about the future of library education as did everyone else who spoke that day. Each talk came from a somewhat different perspective (library 2.0, marketing, skills library leaders need, emerging jobs for librarians, interdisciplinarity, etc.), which led to many fascinating insights based on the speakers’ diverse views and backgrounds. At the end of the day, I was part of a panel discussion, which took an interesting turn. In my talk, I’d emphasized the critical importance of students getting practical library experience as part of the curriculum. This was echoed by other speakers that day, but notably not by those who came from academia in Iceland. After my talk, I was approached by some library school students who complained about their practicum in school which lasts a mere 40 hours. How much can anyone learn about librarianship in one week?!?!

During the panel discussion, talk quickly turned to the importance of practical experience in the LIS curriculum; how library schools that don’t require students to take a practicum are doing a serious disservice to their students. Librarians don’t get a lot of training in this profession; managers expect to hire people who have a clear understanding of how libraries work and how to do the various pieces of their job. If your only knowledge of libraries is academic, you will have a steep learning curve (if you get the job at all in a market where experienced librarians are competing for entry-level positions). Also, what you learn in library school is so much more relevant and meaningful if you already had some experience in a library setting. Some of the LIS students bravely (since two of the panelists were Icelandic LIS faculty) stood up and discussed how useless they felt much of their library school curriculum was and how much they wanted more practical experience to be a part of the required curriculum. You go girls! One of the faculty members seemed to agree that more practical experience should be integrated into the curriculum, while the other seemed mostly to want to defend the current curriculum. It was interesting to see her negative reaction to the notion that the curriculum was out-of-touch with the current realities of the profession, especially since the conference was all about how we have to change to meet the changing needs of patrons and change the education system to train librarians who can do that.

While that tension between academia and those in practice was clearly in evidence at this conference, I think it goes far beyond Iceland. When more than 50% of people who’ve graduated in the past 5 years (and answered my survey) stated that their LIS curriculum did not prepare them for their professional work, I think we have a real disconnect between what is taught and what is needed. I love that San Jose State University’s LIS program has formed advisory boards on various topics that consist of people outside of academia. I’m on a technology advisory board which suggests topics that they should consider teaching in future semesters. That way, they are aware of what skills the profession needs right now and they don’t develop tunnel vision. I’d imagine that there’s a danger of faculty only proposing topics that are within their research interest or that they’d like to teach, leading to a curriculum that may not be designed well to meet the current and future needs of the profession. Getting advice from people who are connected to emerging technologies and to what is happening in the profession makes great sense and I’m surprised that more schools aren’t doing this. A PhD doesn’t mean you have all the answers. Just as academic research should inform practice, practice should inform academia.

You can see the slides from my talk below:

As I told the audience during my talk, a great example of the power of Web 2.0 was my very presence in Iceland. Had I listened to the media (the “expert”) I would have thought that Iceland was in chaos and that I’d have to worry about food shortages, my credit card not working, and not being able to leave because of a shortage of fuel. However, when I looked at sites like TripAdvisor and did blog searches for recent posts about Iceland, I found nothing of the kind. Everyone said that things were fine, that tourists didn’t need to worry, and that the Icelandic people would very much appreciate our tourist dollars during this difficult time. I definitely made the right decision in trusting the “amateur” over the “expert” since it ended up being one of the best trips I’ve taken.

Thanks to the organizers of the conference and all of the wonderful people I met in Iceland. Your hospitality and kindness made icy Iceland a very warm place for me, and I learned so much from the trip.

On Friday, I was down in Rhode Island giving the keynote for the NELINET IT Conference. My talk was entitled Can’t Get There From Here: Achieving Organization 2.0 and it was fun to focus on how organizations need to behave in order to start innovating, keeping up with patrons, and implementing new technologies effectively. Thanks to the folks at NELINET for the opportunity to pontificate on one of my favorite topics. You can see my slides below.

After that, I took a trip down to Connecticut to visit my alma mater, Wesleyan University, and do some serious apple-picking. At Wesleyan, I had two really odd experiences. The first was being asked to pay reparations by some Wesleyan students, which I guess shouldn’t have surprised me since I did spend four years in that environment. The second thing happened in the library, which was my home away from home when I was at Wes. I was showing Adam some of my favorite spots in the library when all of a sudden, someone said, “excuse me, are you Meredith Farkas?” It turned out the Science Librarian (hi Andrew!) reads my blog and somehow recognized me from my picture on it. That was really bizarre! I let him know that I’d sell my soul to one day work at Wesleyan; it really is an awesome library and an amazing academic environment. I still wouldn’t pay reparations though.

Next week, I’m supposed to be going to Iceland to give a talk on library education in the 21st century. I’m getting increasingly nervous about going though considering the state of their economy. I’ve been reading about possible food shortages because grocers can’t get foreign currency, and other pretty serious possible consequences of their rather extreme credit and currency crisis. Of course, I’m also seeing articles about how it’s the best time to visit Iceland. Normally, I’d probably be game to go either way, but now that I’m responsible for another human life, I’m a little more hesitant about going into a possibly unsafe situation. I plan to wait and see how things look later in the week and if the situation there is looking a bit more promising, I’ll definitely go. It would be a bummer not to go since I’d lose a bunch of money, would let down the organizers, and would miss going to both Iceland and Internet Librarian. But baby comes first.

If you are going to Internet Librarian, say hi to my colleague, Toni Josey. She was hired as our Distance Learning Librarian when I was promoted and she’s absolutely fantastic! She even has a blog where she writes about distance learning librarianship.

After October, I don’t have any other speaking engagements until January when I’m giving a keynote for an online conference for rural librarians in Iowa. I’m glad to see there are more online conferences happening; not only because I won’t be able to travel as much as I used to, but because it makes professional development so much more accessible to every librarian. Rock on, Iowa!

I try to teach some of these soft skills in my course on social software. In the second week of class, I assign students to subscribe to five blogs of their choice and follow them throughout the semester. Each week, I also ask them to find one resource (article, tool, application in libraries, etc.) outside of the readings and activities to discuss in a blog post. I hope that this teaches students keeping up strategies and how to find out about things when the information is not handed to them.

In the fourth week of class, students have an assignment where they have to use a whole bunch of RSS-related tools to mix, filter and display RSS feeds in various ways. This often proves to be a challenging activity for many people in the class, as it’s the first time most students are dealing with JavaScript and with tools like this. Both times I’ve taught the class, I’ve had a few students write to me in frustration because they can’t seem to get one part or another right. I encourage them to keep trying, usually offer a few tips (without doing their work for them), and let them know how important it is to not get frustrated the first time a technology doesn’t work. Everyone eventually is able to complete it, and they usually feel so good about themselves for getting it done. Students have commented that it’s the most techie thing they’ve done and they didn’t think they were capable of doing something like it. I think that activity teaches two important things beyond what is possible with RSS: 1) it’s important to manage your frustration and not give up when things don’t work and 2) most people are more capable of doing “techie” things than they think they are.

I also assign a group project in which one member of each group is a project manager and provides leadership and direction to the other members. I think this makes the project much more consistent with the reality of work in libraries, where most group projects are lead by a project manager. I think group projects often teach flexibility as well, because each member of a group has to balance their desires with the desires of their group members. That group project requires them to create some sort of social application for a library. It allows them to be very creative, but at the same time, to develop something that can be used in a real-life setting. They also have to do a presentation and “sell” their idea to us as if we were their administrators and colleagues; certainly an important skill as well.

I think I could probably go farther in incorporating the teaching of soft skills in my course. But the point I wanted to make is that soft skills can be taught — through hands-on activities, role-playing, case studies and more — and that it’s important that library schools teach these soft skills that are so critical to a librarian’s professional success.

What soft skills do you feel were emphasized in classes when you were in library school?

Basic Survey Responses (PDF)
Open-Ended Responses for #1 (PDF)
Open-Ended Responses for #2 (PDF)
Open-Ended Responses for #3 (PDF)
Open-Ended Responses for #4 (PDF)

Some interesting things from the survey:

Of the people who responded, less than 50% thought that library school didn’t prepare for them for their work in libraries. Some who said yes mentioned that they only answered yes because of their internship/practicum.

The biggest things that people thought should be taught as part of the LIS curriculum that weren’t taught when they were in library school were management (#1 by quite a lot), Web 2.0/emerging technology, instruction, web design/programming, and conflict management/customer service/dealing with difficult people. A lot of schools are teaching the first four topics these days, but not all are doing it in much depth or in a practical way. I was surprised to find that still, Florida State is only offering one instruction course and it’s designed for people in a K-12 setting. Considering that instruction is a part of the work of librarians in just about every setting, it’s surprising to me that it isn’t being emphasized more in library schools (though I’m sure others are doing a much better job). Management also really isn’t taught in enough depth in library schools. I frequently think about getting an MBA, because I want to know more about managing people and resources, budgeting, strategic planning, marketing, etc. The one class we had that was about management was really interesting, but it was very focused on theory and I really wished there was a “Management II” and “Management III” that would have gone into more depth and would have been more focused on the practical. With some librarians going straight into management positions (or even directorships) after library school, it’s critical that students are prepared to be great managers by library schools.

The survey definitely gave me a lot of interesting food for thought for my presentation in Iceland. Thanks so much to those of you who responded to my call for help!

How did people first learn about your blog? Do you have a previous blog post on how it became popular? It would be an interesting read!

It’s a good question and one I thought I’d post here instead of just on the class site. At the time, it all felt like it was happening without me really doing much, especially since I wasn’t particularly savvy about how to gain an audience. Even now, looking back, I see where luck played a huge part in this blog becoming a popular read for people in our profession. But I think it also helped that I was writing for the love of it and not just to gain an audience.

I started Information Wants to be Free on November 16, 2004 with a rather uninspired first post. I’d had a blog for a single class in grad school (my policy class) where I wrote about open source software. It was called Code Wants to be Free (yes, I have a one-track mind). I found that I really enjoyed writing my own reflections on the things I was reading about open source software, but, at the time, there was no topic that really grabbed my interest beyond the assignment.

That all changed when I started reading blogs myself. In the Fall of 2004, I started following blogs like The Shifted Librarian, Tame the Web, Free Range Librarian, Library Stuff, The Librarian in Black, and Librarian.net. Back then, those were the major blogs in our profession (and, if you look at subscriber stats, things haven’t changed too much since). I started learning more about library technologies and especially about social software. I started playing with new technologies and found that I had a real passion for emerging tech. I started to drive my husband crazy talking about library technologies, since I didn’t know of anyone else who was interested and he was a semi-captive audience. He was the one who suggested I start a blog, perhaps because he was sick of my yammering on about the stuff or because he realized it would be a good way for me to connect with kindred spirits.

For the first couple of months, I posted almost every day, if not more. Most of my posts were just re-hashes of news I’d found online with a bit of commentary, but mixed in were some of the more reflective posts I write almost exclusively now. I wasn’t particularly strategic about getting an audience, since I wasn’t very blog savvy at the time. I didn’t know about TrackBacks, so it didn’t occur to me that linking to A-list bloggers might get their attention. I didn’t realize that when you comment on someone else’s blog, they might check out your blog to see who you are. Those things are probably pretty obvious to people who start blogging now and if it isn’t, you should realize that it’s a good way to make connections and build an audience (as long as you’re writing something of substance and not just gratuitiously link-doping).

Early on, I’m sure the only person who was reading my blog was my husband, Adam. Somehow, though, Jessamyn found my November 24th post about the bleak job market for new librarians and linked to it on her own blog. How she found it is beyond me, but the link from Jessamyn was crazy good for my blog and got me on a few more people’s radar. In a post three days later, I actually wondered what it takes to become an A-list blogger:

But how does one break into this core group? Will having interesting and relevant content and updating frequently do it? Or is it impossible to join their “clique”? Frankly, I’m just happy to have an audience beyond just me and my husband. I actually got giddy when I saw that Jessamyn had referred to my blog entry of the same name that I’d written earlier that day (meaning that she actually READ my blog). Good lord! It’s like high school all over again, isn’t it?

I wasn’t really sure of myself as a blogger back then. I often forced myself to write things because I thought that posting a lot would get people to read me. So nearly every vaguely interesting thing that came across my radar would merit a post. I actually wrote 63 posts in the month of January (probably helped to take my mind off not having a job)! As I linked to people’s blogs in my posts, I started to notice that those same people would often comment on my blog. And sometimes they’d even link to me, which would make my web stats shoot up. I looked at my web stats obsessively back then — don’t think I’ve checked them in a year or so now.

By February, my posting had slowed down a bit and was getting more focused on the things I was really interested in, like the so-called librarian job shortage, impressions from my job hunting (and interviewing), usability of library middleware, and social software. I noticed that the posts I wrote that were really from my heart or where I felt like I was taking a personal risk in writing it, were the ones that got the most comments and links from other bloggers. By mid-March, I noticed that I had reached 100 Bloglines subscribers, which had seemed impossible just four months earlier. And as I hit my stride with blogging, where it began to feel effortless, things just snowballed from there.

After four months of blogging, I had a pretty good sense about the sort of blog I wanted to write. It wouldn’t have a specific focus. It would be a professional blog with a personal bent. My posts would be medium to long, because I just don’t know how to say anything succinctly. I would be just as opinionated on my blog as I am in real life. And while I’m sure there are people who hate my style, there were others who enjoyed what I wrote. I’m grateful to the people who engaged me in blog conversation back then, who encouraged me to keep it up, and made me feel part of a community during a very frustrating time of my life (finding my first post-MLS job).

If I had to give advice to anyone trying to make a name for themselves in the blogosphere, I’d say that the number 1 thing to do is write from the heart. Write about things you’re passionate about. Put your personality into your posts. Good writing will come from writing about the things that interest you in your own unique voice. Also, link to other people’s blog posts that interest you and comment on them. This will bring those bloggers to your blog (since probably 95% of bloggers have ego feeds) and if they like what you’ve written, they might start following you. Also, comment on blogs that you like (or don’t like). I got to know a lot of bloggers (some even before they had blogs of their own — Ryan!) because they commented on my blog (these days, you probably could also do this on sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, which are great for networking). I usually will check out the blogs of people who comment on mine. However, don’t write comments or posts with the sole purpose of attracting attention to your blog. Those usually are pretty transparent. Just be yourself, write what you love, and love what you write. Good things will flow from that.

I’m actually curious to know how other people got started with blogging and I’ve never really started a meme before. So I’m going to tag Sarah Houghton-Jan, David Lee King, Michael Porter, and Jason Griffey. How did you get into blogging? How did you gain an audience? What advice would you give to new bloggers who want to make a name for themselves in the biblioblogosphere?

To that end, I’ve created a very brief four question survey designed to get people’s opinions about the skills they think librarians need to be successful today and what they think libraries should be teaching. The first question is just for people who’ve graduated from library or information school in the past 10 years, but the other questions can be answered by anyone who’s been through an LIS program. I’d really appreciate it if you’d consider taking the survey (shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes of your time) as it will help me greatly in creating a well-rounded presentation that reflects more than my own opinions. I’d be especially thrilled for people working in public libraries to put in their 2 cents, but insights from any people who went through LIS programs are welcome.

I am super excited about the conference and visiting Iceland for the first time. Ever since college, I’ve been subscribed to IcelandAir’s lucky fares emails, but I never really thought I’d have the opportunity to go!

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!