Lesson Study in Libraries Shevon Desai Marija Freeland University of Michigan Eric Frierson University of Texas at Arlington

Lesson Plans How do you plan? –No lesson plan document at all –Bullet points highlighting main concepts –Fully fleshed out, scripted lessons How do you execute lessons? –No matter how prepped, I never look at it (or don’t have one) –Use it only as a rough guide –Read it as a script

Lesson Plans Why don’t we just read from the lesson plan? –We’re flexible –We know this by heart We’re experts.

Expertise “Expertise in a particular domain does not guarantee that one is good at helping others learn it. In fact, expertise can sometimes hurt teaching because many experts forget what is easy and what is difficult for students.” - How People Learn : How Experts Differ from Novices

Expertise Our sheer genius hinders us.

Lesson Study Topic Selection & Group Formation Scope Issues & Lesson Study Intro Select a Teacher Discuss the Topic & Teaching Strategies Teach the Lesson & Observation Solicit Student Feedback Meet Again & Revise Final Lesson Plan

Expertise

Implementation How did we get started? Instructor College Involvement Choosing a topic What do we teach? Core group of volunteers

Implementation

Core Group Librarians and library students Different levels of expertise From across the libraries Different perspectives on the material and our patrons

Find E-Journals Find Databases Quick Search CSA Biological Sciences Databases Social Sciences Abstracts

Implementation Doing it all over again Later implementations of Lesson Study RefWorks Critical evaluation of resources Some of core group remained involved Lesson Study method particularly useful as subjects taught changed

Benefits Instructors at all levels of expertise can participate Allows collaboration among a wide range of instructors Helps instructors become comfortable with being observed by their peers Students have an active role End up with a useful file of lesson plans

Challenges Instructors and students are busy people! Dissemination of lesson plans Evaluation

Try it out! Use Lesson Study to teach a lesson –Undergraduate students –Using FirstSearch’s WorldCat –Under 20 minutes

Q1 & Q2 What to teach… –What is it? FirstSearch? –Catalog, not Index –Title Searching / Formats –WHY? WHAT? HOW? GETTING STUFF. –What it DOES and DOESN’T. –Known item / keyword How to teach it… –Making relevant – SCENARIO (has it happened to you) –Overview – then students find top 10 videos on Spec. Ed. –STUDENT teachs how they got to results –Going into Local Cat. Making comparison

Q3 What did you learn? –LOTS of different ways (depending on audience) –THIS IS SMALL GROUP – modeling good behaviour –Great variants in opinions (esp. about HOW TO TEACH) – different UNIVERSITIES, audiences, urban/rural

YOU AS STUDENT WHAT IS IT? Visual aid would help LONG LIST, then pared it down to what was important COMPARING to a KNOWN tool (iTunes – by Artist, by Title, by Genre) Thinking about faculty reactions to ‘pedestrian’ examples Are teaching faculty involved? It’s a valuable P.O.V.

Lesson Study at Your Library Get buy-in from instructors Recruit volunteers Decide what will be taught Get together, plan 1 st lesson plan, teach Talk about it, revise it Lather, rinse, repeat

Lesson Study in Libraries Even the best teachers need a fresh perspective Newer teachers need guidance Robust Lesson Plans –Even if they go out the window when we teach, creating them helps us to prepare & think Everyone has something valuable to say

Lesson Study in Libraries Feel the Lesson Study Love –Felt like a team accomplishment Questions?