I am wrapping up our instruction program for the fall. I am hopefully taking the last of the requests and can be done by the beginning of December. I have done no promotion for my program this year. Usually I annoy the faculty with multiple emails through the semester about it. I usually have to fight tooth and nail to get our writing composition classes into our sessions. With the insanity of staffing this semester I decided to see how my viral marketing of the past few years has worked. I am proud to add that right now 33 instruction sessions have been scheduled. Of my our first level of writing comp, we all 2/3rds of the classes. We would have seen more, but this year I push information literacy as the content of the sessions rather than tool use. I also insisted on assignment based instruction for our upper level classes.
We tried a variety of new types of sessions this year. With one of our writing comp classes we tried splitting the traditional one-shot (1h 15min) sessions into 4 smaller sessions through the semester. It was labor intensive, but it was pretty good. It did take longer to do, but I am seeing these students come into me after the sessions for help. Right now I have seen at least three of them come to me specifically for extra help.
I also tried splitting a health class into two 1/2 hour sessions. The first served as an introduction and the second as research process. The professor and I did a heavy collaboration to match our content so we could push our parts of the issue. I don’t yet know if this was more helpful, but we were able to schedule the second half to the point where they needed it.
Using assignments was also very helpful to pick the most appropriate tool for their needs.
The best instruction I did was through LibGuides. Creating class specific guides to link to from Blackboard and to organize the session was a step in the right direction. It allowed the students to see how this session was different from other sessions. It also took them right to the appropriate content and tool for their class. I have stopped using PowerPoint as a result. In fact, I haven’t used PowerPoint all semester. I have gotten some great feedback about the class specific LibGuides. So much so that I want to create a special flier to promote the service.
I am so pleased with instruction this year that I plan to actually promote it in the Spring. I am already preparing for my mass mailing of my super-awesome instruction flies I got over the summer.
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