Our first week in class involved the very meta activity of learning about different conceptualizations of learning! For me, the “Put Understanding First” article was a review from last year, but I reveled at how relevant Acquisition, Meaning, and Transfer still continue to be now that I am more experienced librarian. My own exposure to instruction through my U-M library job has shown me how difficult it is to get over the hurdle of simple acquisition. You only have so much time to provide students with the tools they need, and not everyone can learn at the pace that you would find ideal. Last year, I remember writing a blog post where I berated my high school Spanish teacher for not going beyond vocabulary in our lessons. Well now I know how hard it is to go beyond the basics, so my sincerest apologies Señorita Schramm!
I still believe focusing on deriving meaning from subjects and learning to transfer that knowledge to different areas is essential. Yet, I think the points brought up by others in the class prove that applying this theory universally is hardly easy. I thought Michael’s comment trying to relate this learning conceptualization to theoretical physics, a subject he had experience trying to teach, was very eye-opening. His question posited that to what degree do you sacrifice inherent abstraction of a subject in order to convey meaning that can be transferred? The ability to which you can relate a complex problem that plagues scientists to one’s everyday life is obviously strained by the fact that some subjects require a deep reservoir of knowledge in order to make it “real’ and tangible to the learner. The strategy outlined by the authors of Put Understanding First therefore works much better for teaching basic algebra than high-level calculus. But you also don’t want to streamline a subject for easy consumption. Otherwise, you have a whole generation of “block coders” who supposedly learned a significant skill in an hour. Overall, I thought the arguments and stories that classmates brought up were very insightful, proving what an engaging semester this will be!
Our readings this week mostly focused on the best practices for screencasts, which are short video tutorials that give library patrons a way to learn about library services from anywhere with an internet connection. I think all of the different strategies to create quality screencasts were incredibly useful, such as slowing down your speech and using YouTube annotation links to “create your own adventure” and break down multi-step processes. These strategies all work toward the same goal, which is to maintain the learner’s attention so that they find the instruction helpful. One of the big advantages to screencasts was noted by Terry-Bowles, who quipped, “The videos can be viewed as many times as necessary; and, unlike a librarian at the reference desk asked the same question repeatedly, the voice in the video never acquires an air of exhaustion when repeating basic information.” [1] With screencast videos, students are able to approach the library without fearing that they will be seen as “basic”, “dumb,” or a novice, especially if they have not used libraries much in the past. This technique of putting students at ease so they can pursue their questions is incredibly important for learning, according to Emily Thompson, who I interviewed last spring. On librarians teaching students, she says that “if you don’t know how [something] works, we’re the ones who will tell you in a non-judgmental way and we’re willing to tell you why and we’re willing to tell you how to do it over and over and over again until you get it because it’s a learning process.”[2] I find it no surprise that Thompson’s experimental “choose your own adventure” screencasts have inspired others with their interactivity, as her work relies on creating processes that are both unassuming and reflective an iterative learning style. The allure of screencasts rests in their potential to be accessible to all types of learners with varying degrees of expertise. Whether they achieve that level of accessibility...I’ll leave that for another blog post!
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[1] Bowles-Terry et al. 2010. “Best Practices for Online Video Tutorials in Academic Libraries.” p. 19.
[2] Thompson, Emily. “Usage of Academic Library Makerspaces: The Studio at UT-Chattanooga.”
Interview by Russel T. Peterson. Unpublished. April 2017.
“if you don’t know how [something] works, we’re the ones who will tell you in a non-judgmental way and we’re willing to tell you why and we’re willing to tell you how to do it over and over and over again until you get it because it’s a learning process.”[2]
ReplyDeleteThis quote from Emily Thompson was probably the biggest idea I took away from class this week as well. Anyone who signs up to be an educator in some form should be prepared and totally willing to repeat themselves as many times as it takes - even if that means you have to repeat yourself in a different way that comes at the question from a different angle, because you never know which angle which strike a chord with the learner so that it really sinks in for them. This week was a great reminder for me that my job is to listen, be patient, and definitely not to judge and, even if I might get tired on the inside, to not show that to the learner. I think that learners who have experienced their teachers getting tired of teaching them would obviously begin to feel discouraged and maybe like they want to give up and simply will never get it.