Transferably learning in libraries

This week's readings focused on the importance of being able to transfer learned knowledge from one year to the next, from the classroom to the real world, and from one situation to another.  One of the biggest issues inherent in the educational system is that students are far too often taught to memorize rather than participate in the kind of learning that teaches transfer skills.  The readings mainly focus on high school aged learners and different methods and strategies for creating an educational environment that can meet the demands of preparing students for standardized tests, while also going beyond memorization to transfer and real understanding.

This is all fine and well, but the question is, how does it apply to us as librarians? Many of the examples given deal with teaching semester or even year long courses, while most librarians only get one chance, whether in an informal reference setting or in a one-off workshop or seminar. I believe that the answer is that although the approach may be somewhat different the principles behind creating a learning environment in which students learn transferable information and understand how to make that transfer it is just as important if not more so. 

There is very little that we as librarians can about a person's education prior to their arrival in the library, some may have experienced learning environments where they acquired strong transfer skills and others may have had their educations focused on memorization for tests.  What we as librarians and educators have to do is find a way to introduce the information we are providing in a way that will step beyond memorizing the steps one takes to search for a book or article in the library database. We have to allow students to see the connections between what we are teaching them and how they can apply those concepts to things outside of a single basic task.

For me this really goes back to some of the ideas I encountered two weeks ago when we got to choose our own readings.  One article in particular discussed teaching students about secondary source materials and searching for journal articles by first introducing them to the idea of primary source materials.  Rather than just explaining what primary sources are they actually brought in materials from special collections to show students, and allowed them to handle the materials.  Later when the instructors did a search in JSTOR for secondary source materials they showed the students a journal that actually sited one of the primary source materials they had just been handling in class.  I loved this approach because it literally shows students the connection between primary and secondary sources in a very real and tangible way, but it also provides them with transferable information. 

Because primary sources weren't just talked about but were actually shown to the students, and because it was made clear to them where in the physical library the primary sources had come from students could then transfer that understanding and realize that there would likely be other primary sources in special collections that might be useful to them.  It would also provide transfer for them when they read articles in the future, allowing them to be able to better understand the concept of citation and why citations in article might be of interest to them or lead them to further information.

It is easy enough to show a student a journal article and explain to them that if one article is of interest to them then they might find other useful articles by checking the citations, but it is so much more powerful to show them.  Showing them also helps to illustrate the difference between citing primary sources and other secondary sources and will help students to really understand the difference between the two.

I think as we approach teaching in libraries we need to always consider how the skills and concepts we are teaching can be transferred and utilized in other ways both in the library and elsewhere.  When we are teaching someone to search within our library database we should think about it in terms of teaching them to search in any similarly structured database, and where possible use examples that allow them to transfer prior knowledge to their learning experience in a library.