Instruction Section Website

Several times a year, the ACRL Instruction Section Teaching Methods Committee selects and interviews a librarian who demonstrates a passion for teaching, innovation, and student learning

Name: Jane Hammons

Institution: The Ohio State University

Job Title: Teaching & Learning Engagement Librarian

Number of years teaching: 14

Are you a dogs or cats fan?

Both! I have a dog and a cat and they are both great. My dog’s name is Kia and she loves cheese and hates walking in the rain. My cat’s name is Lucky and he loves to be on camera during Zoom meetings. He shows up so often that my supervisor said she was planning to write him a performance review letter.

What are you reading right now?

I am always reading multiple books at one time. I get so excited when I find a book I want to read that I can’t stop myself from starting a new one before I finished the previous one! At the moment, this includes Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, Binge Times: Inside Hollywood’s Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix by Dade Hayes and Dawn Chmielewski, Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, and Son by Lois Lowry.

Describe a favorite activity that you use with students (this could be for a face-to-face class, online, or hybrid class).

Although it sounds simple, I have found true/false activities to be really helpful. I provide a list of statements such as “plagiarism is illegal.” Then I ask participants to decide whether the statements are true. I find it works best when the statements are ones that are a little ambiguous or where I think that the audience is likely to get it wrong. I try to directly address potential misconceptions, such as “If a source is a .org, then it is likely credible.” I find this type of activity allows me to get a better idea of prior knowledge. It gives me the opportunity to directly address misconceptions. It can be done in a face-to-face classroom or online using different types of polling software. And I have done this with different audiences, including students and instructors, and it has worked for engaging both groups.

Tell us about your favorite teaching tools (e.g. cool apps, clickers, etc.).

When I give online workshops, I love using Jamboard. It works really well when you want to give the audience a chance to provide open responses to a discussion question. Everyone can post their response by adding a sticky note and the notes can be moved around the board. It is anonymous so it allows you to hear from many different voices without the participant feeling any pressure that their response has to be right. I have also had a lot of fun recently using Adobe Express to create instructional resources. You can very easily create a professional-looking, sharable web page or guide without having any knowledge of coding. I recently created overview guides for each of the six Framework concepts using this tool, as well as a guide to Source Evaluation myths, and I love how they turned out. 

How has your teaching practice changed over time?

For the first ten years of my career, my primary focus was on working directly with students in the classroom in one-shot sessions. However, in my current position, I work much more often with instructors. For example, I provide multiple workshops aimed at helping instructors to think about how they can incorporate information literacy concepts and skills into their own classes. While I still think that working directly with students is valuable, I think that working with instructors through a “teach the teachers” approach is another path that librarians can take to support student learning and the integration of information literacy into the curriculum. I also feel that my teaching has become much more informed by research than it was when I started. Over the years I’ve had a chance to learn more about pedagogy and instructional design and to review great books on teaching. I have been influenced by this learning in how I approach teaching. Some of the books that have impacted my approach include Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning by James Lang and Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World by Paul Hanstedt.

Name two things you would share with a librarian who is new to teaching.

First, I would say try not to be too hard on yourself and expect that you will get it right every time. Teaching is challenging, especially teaching through a one-shot approach, and many of us go into teaching with little preparation for the role. It will take time to really feel comfortable teaching and even after you have gained some experience, you will still sometimes make mistakes. And sometimes you can do everything right and still have a class that just doesn’t go the way you had hoped. I’ve tried many activities that I was excited about that ended up not working well at all. It happens to us all! I know it can be hard, but don’t let yourself get too down if you have a difficult experience. 

Second, be open to learning more about teaching as a practice. Read books about teaching, attend teaching workshops or conference sessions if you can. Learning more about the science behind learning, and teaching, really helped me to feel more confident in my own teaching. 

Several times a year, the ACRL Instruction Section Teaching Methods Committee selects and interviews a librarian who demonstrates a passion for teaching, innovation, and student learning.

Name: Stephanie Evers

Institution: University of Northern Colorado

Job Title: Teaching & Outreach Librarian

Number of years teaching: 10

What are you reading right now?

Rivers of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard.  I always enjoy a harrowing exploration tale!

Where do you do your best thinking?

Unfortunately in the middle of the night when I’m trying to sleep.  That’s when I’ll come up with solutions to problems, or new insights. Just wish my mind could find another time to be so helpful!

Describe a favorite activity that you use with students (this could be for a face-to-face class, online, or hybrid class).

For one-shot instruction sessions, I like to try and take a personal situation from my own life to help frame an example research topic which the class uses for an activity on source evaluation. For example, for a class of Education majors, I talked about how my son has the block schedule at his high school and how I have all these complaints about it but have never sat down to research the impacts of block scheduling on student achievement – so that became our research topic.  Then students evaluated 3 sources around this topic, and we had a good discussion about the sources, and the topic itself.  I find that making this personal connection with the students helps them engage with me and the class content, particularly in the one-shot environment where they don’t know you and there isn’t time to develop relationships.

Tell us how you assess your classes (e.g. mud cards, clickers, reflections).

One assessment tool that we take advantage of at our institution is online forms.  We use these extensively in one-shot instruction as going through the form questions helps guide students through the session and then we have all that data to use for assessment purposes.  Often in these sessions students are finding sources on their own research topics, and so when we look at their responses to the online form questions, we have their stated research topics and the title/author information of the sources they found. This allows us to see if students are finding peer-reviewed, relevant sources. Having this knowledge has helped us show the value of our instruction program, and of course led to changes in our curriculum.  We’ve used both Qualtrics and LibWizard for these forms, and briefly used Google Forms as well, so there are several options out there for creating these forms and collecting the data. 

Name two things you would share with a librarian who is new to teaching.

I would tell new instructors to try and not change who they are as a teacher too much.  In the beginning I really thought I needed to put on more of a performance, but that is just not who I am.  So, I’ve learned to embrace that and find other ways of engaging students, and hopefully not bore them while still being myself.  My other piece of advice is to give it time.  In that first year or two, you will have sessions that just don’t go so great, and you need to give yourself some grace.  As with most things, the more you do it, the more comfortable you will feel until eventually you realize being up in front of the class is second nature

Several times a year, the ACRL Instruction Section Teaching Methods Committee selects and interviews a librarian who demonstrates a passion for teaching, innovation, and student learning.

Name: Patricia Hartman

Institution: Auburn University

Job Title: Biology, Forestry & Wildlife and Math Librarian

Number of years teaching: 9

What’s your favorite thing to do in your free time?

In the last six months or so, I started making soap. It’s totally addictive and makes your house smell amazing!

What is your favorite movie based on a book?

This might be a controversial answer, but I’m going to go with Spike Jonez’s Adaptation, which was technically based on Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. I loved both, but those looking for a faithful retelling of the book were sorely disappointed.  

Describe a favorite activity that you use with students (this could be for a face-to-face class, online, or hybrid class).

I primarily teach small classes for upper division students. My favorite activity is in a small rural sociology class I team-teach with our Agriculture Librarian. We introduce students to the American Community Survey and the Census of Agriculture, published by the US Census Bureau and USDA, respectively. The first part of the class is a straightforward explanation of what the resources are and how to use them. However, once students learn to view the data and export it into spreadsheets, we, along with the instructor, spend the majority of the class visiting students and asking questions as they explore it. The data speaks for itself in exposing the inequities built into our food system and for some students, it can be life-changing. 

Tell us about your favorite teaching tools (e.g. cool apps, clickers, etc.).

For larger classes, I really like to use Slido. Our department recently purchased a license, and I find it a bit more intuitive (for instructors and students) than some of the other polling/participation software I’ve used. The short answer responses serve as a great jumping off point for class discussion, the quizzes allow for instant summative assessment, and I’m always a sucker for word clouds. It is seamlessly integrated into PowerPoint.

When professors are amenable to pre-class homework, I also like to use LibWizard to get a sense of what students know ahead of time so I can adjust class content accordingly.

Are you involved as an embedded librarian? Tell us about your experience.

Yes, I have been involved in natural resources, wildlife science, biology, and rural sociology courses as an embedded librarian. Each experience is different, but all make me think more deeply about what students really need to know and how best to convey it. They also all involve working with small groups on class projects, so I get to know students more intimately. In one course, I collaborated with the professor to develop an “information literacy rubric” that was applied to their final papers. I scored the papers, and in reading them, I learned a lot about unintentional plagiarism, the kinds of sources students use, and how they use them to support their arguments. In another course, I communicated with student groups both before and after in-person research “brainstorming” sessions tailored to their specific topic. Prior to the session, students sent me descriptions of their project, along with the information they hoped to find in our meeting. Afterward, they were assigned to reflect on what they found, how they would use that information, and what they still needed to know. In every case, being embedded is time-consuming and labor-intensive but makes me a better instructor, not only in that context, but in one-shots as well!

Name two things you would share with a librarian who is new to teaching.

1) Don’t be afraid to try new things! You will be much more critical of yourself than the students will.

2) Listen to and incorporate peer feedback into your teaching practice, but do it in a way that feels authentic to you and your voice.