Approaches to Teaching & Webinars

This week to delved further into approaches to teaching through our textbook and an article that addressed some of these issues in relation to librarianship.  We also start to learn about webinars and picked a webinar to watch in preparation for creating our own in a couple of weeks.

I really enjoyed the readings for this week about teaching in our text "How People Learn."  I think that people far too often take teaching for granted and don't realize that it is actually incredibly hard to do it and do it well.  Our book focuses more on K-12 teaching, while I tend to think more in terms of post-secondary education. However, I think that all of the issues discussed in the book can easily be applied to college and university settings as well as K-12.  

Although our reading in "How People Learn" is focused more on on-going course instruction, rather than the one-off or one-shot instruction style that most of us will be using as librarians I think that the principles and ideas are still very useful.  This reading continued to focus on the idea that strong subject knowledge and the ability to engage with students ideas and interests is a huge asset to teaching.  It also continued with the idea that we have seen repeatedly this semester that if students can learn to connect ideas and concepts and think about the bigger pictures questions of "why?" and "how?" rather than memorizing, the "where?" "when?" and "who?" they will be far better equipped to understand and use that information in meaningful ways in their course work and in the future.

I think that librarians can make use of these teaching tactics by being as well educated about their collections as possible and by creating educational materials that seek to engage their audiences with those collections.   One way to do this that we have discussed before is to tailor teaching sessions to specific classes where the information being taught can be applied directly to that class that the students are in. 

If as a librarian you find yourself teaching to a general grouping of students who are not in the same class, it could be useful to instead try to identify what they do have in common beyond being students at the same university.  Are they all incoming freshmen or outgoing seniors? Or did they elect to take the session based on its topic.  The answers may provide a broader scope than a specific course would, but they are a starting point for what you can start to think about as you plan the session and try to think of meaningful ways to engage your audience.

I'd like to wrap up this post with some of my thoughts on webinars. I have attended a few webinars in the past as well as watched a couple recordings of them.  I find them interesting because they always feel far less polished to me, as compared to prerecorded presentations.  This isn’t surprising really, but it does always feel a little weird.  I have also NEVER seen a webinar that didn’t deal with some technical difficulty during the webinar, this always results in a couple of minutes of stalled time to figure out the problem.

Keeping this in mind as I begin to think in terms of having to create a webinar with a team, I think that the main things I am going to want to remember are that a webinar isn't going to be as polished as a presentation might be, or even flow as smoothly as an in person workshop might because the technology will likely cause some minor disruptions along the way.


Another thing that I think will be important to keep in mind is to make sure that and images used whether slides, screen captures, etc. are very clear and easy to read/see.  Something about webinars can make them a little more difficult to follow than in person presentations. I think it is simply the inability to see the speaker.  When you watch an online tutorial you often don't see the presenter, but you're also not expected to be interacting with them, it is a one way instruction. With webinars though, you are expected to interact and it is a little strange to do this when a) you can't see the instructor and thus are unable to use visual cues to know when it is a good time to ask a question or even to get the instructors attention and b) you know that there are a number of other people also attending the webinar and participating, whom again you cannot visualize.

From a presenters point of view I have a feeling the webinar format is going to feel strange.   I have a background in theatre, and I have given workshops and presentations on numerous occasions.  However, in all of these situations you are standing in front of your audience and can see how they are reacting to what you are saying.  I know that I rely heavily on visual cues from my audience in all of these situations.  When giving a presentation or a workshop I rely on visual cues to tell me when the audience is bored, engaged, or confused. I then may choose to go faster or slower through a section based on how my audience appears to be reacting, or I may provide further detail that I had not initially planned on discussing if my audience seems confused.  Furthermore I use lots of visual cues myself to interact with my audience. These range from smiling and other facial expressions to hand gestures, and other body language to emphasize a point, or make it clear when I am making a joke.  Due to all of this I expect doing a webinar to present a unique challenge from any presenting experiences I have had before, and I am very interested to see how it turns out.