At the end of the Birds of a Feather session, the top 3 (or so) suggestions/tips/take-aways from each group was shared with the rest of the groups. These are shared below.

Improvisation in Instruction

• difference bet. planned and unplanned improv
• requirements of improv (experience, knowledge of subject, confidence, risk-taking, spontaneity, PLAY!, back-up)
• pros and cons: increases alertness, fun, engaging; no interaction, don’t know the answer, difficult to assess learning when content not planned

Expanding ILI to more than just text (videos, maps, images, etc.)

• how to promote specialities (maps, environmental knowledge) to colleagues
• internal workshops, LibGuides, cool tools, SEXY!, knowledge-swapping, interdisciplinarity, BEER, be passionate, build others’ confidence

Motivating students: how to inspire passion!

• acknowledge that motivation is an issue: ask students why they’re there and use that to inform session structure
• recognize that not all students have the same motivation
• have students self-select their skill level and then teach the same session anyhow
• let students define what they need
• meaningful assignments; treat students as scholars

Serving international students in academic libraries

• need to investigate stats and trends: how many int’l students do we have in our libraries?
• recognize cultural differences and differences in libraries and access to resources (closed stacks, AI)
• partner with other campus units (writing centres, grad student advisors, outreach to int’l students during summer, programming such as language exchange)
• Int’l Students Library Tutorial at University of N. Carolina

ILI for Nursing / Health Sciences

• “Reading Research” book by Davies and Logan as a tool for us and students
• using online tutorials for students to learn basic skills so we can address higher level skills in class
• affirmation in knowing that other librarians who share the same challenges

Digitization/Metadata

• make use of student assistants for the laborious work (scanning, etc.)
• make sure you have policies/procedures/workflows in place ahead of time
• build a community of peers in digitization/metadata through a blog (You are not alone)

Student contributions to library materials (LibGuides, etc.)

• BoF: YAY! 🙂
• partner with a class when building the guide
• get student feedback on content and placement, language
• use student groups as a sounding board (announcements, repeate customers, incentives)
• embed links in LMS/CMS
• all but one using LibGuides
• teaching from the guide during class (realtime feedback)

Ideas for active learning

• large classes: have a pair of students do a database search using kw suggested by peers (FIGHT!)
• plant questions (Cephalonian method) in audience using coloured cards (Q&A)
• using Twitter in class: instructor sets up accounts in advance and have students get into groups; one student tweets answers to questions posed by instructor

Developing blended ILI

• blended: making videos, screencasts
• encourage the use of blended learning because it meets different learning style needs
• know why you’re doing it (NOT JUST COOL); gaps and overlaps in your programming/ILI; needs assessment
• high repetition topics (database searching) are good candidates as well as topics that are very specialized
• will not save you time