Competencies

Competency 11: Instruction

STS-51-L astronaut and teacher Christa McAuliffe training in the Vomit Comet. Inset: logo for Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center (Pleasant Grove, UT)

COMPETENCY STATEMENT

Each graduate of the Master of Library and Information Science program is able to…

…design instructional programs based on learning principles and theories

Page Contents

IMPORTANCE OF THE COMPETENCY TO ME

An important part of the job of a data curator is to teach users to help them better find and utilize information. As a data curator for geoscience datasets, I expect to help users with, and, where possible, teach them the following:

How to define their information needs
How to find the best information
How to acquire the information they have found
How to use the information

This will include helping and instructing users in multiple aspects of dataset retrieval, such as: using the catalogs, with media formats, with analysis tools, with evaluating the quality of metadata and data, and with understanding and mediating for the differences between datasets. This may also include helping them create information with the best possible metadata and data formats so that it can be found and used by others.

As an expert, it will be my responsibility to not only do the information finding for my users but also, where possible, teach them how to do it for themselves, empowering them to explore more archives than my own.

In order to provide better instruction–be it in a formal, planned training or in off-the-cuff teaching during a procedure such as a search–it will be helpful to know the main theories of learning, all of which have some validity:

Behaviorist: based on the idea that the environment, as well as repetition and reinforcement, is the most important factor for learning (Smith, 1999, "The behaviourist…")
Cognitive: focused more on the individual, a belief that prior knowledge, focused perception, and learning style (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, or Tactile [VAKT] [Clark, 2011]) affect learning (Smith, 1999, "The cognitive…")
Humanistic: related to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, learning is most effective when it is self-motivated (Smith, 1999, "Humanistic…")
Social/situational: learning happens best in a community (Smith, 1999, "The social/situational…")

These very high-level summaries refer to complex instructional approaches that will help me as I design ways to instruct users on how to search and use datasets more independently if they so choose.
Top[8]

WHAT WORK PREPARED ME TO UNDERSTAND AND PERFORM THIS COMPETENCY?

In elementary school, I was usually further along in schoolwork than other students in my class, and I was asked to help other students understand and complete the work. This was my first experience in instruction. Throughout my career I have tried to teach people techniques for solving their own problems when I help them. In particular, I have been able to help several women who did not have technical backgrounds learn how to use computers.

In my current position as software quality assurance (SQA) manager, I am teaching scientists about the intricacies and theories of software testing.

In iSchool, I have had several opportunities to give presentations. Because my projects have been geoscience-oriented, and none of the students in my classes had that background, I have done my best during presentations to teach a bit about remote sensing and geoinformatics. I have done this in discussion groups as well, both in assigned discussion posts and in "coffee break" discussion rooms.
Top[8]

EVIDENCE

Paper: "Following Horace Greeley West"

Website: "Horace Greeley: A Book and a Map"

For the final project for "Resources and Information Services in the Disciplines and Professions: Maps and Geographic Information Systems" (LIBR220), I decided to take a travelogue that was freely available and historically significant and plot it on a Google Map. The combination of the website I created for the project and the formal paper show how I wanted this project to become a combination of instruction and user-driven interaction and exploration.

If this project was used in a classroom environment (which I still hope to make happen), it would be a cognitive learning experience; the interactive nature of the map would depend on the interest of the viewer to explore and drill-down. Theoretically Horace Greeley's book would provide a chronological, narrative drive to the exploration–as might the direction of the journey from east to west–but the map is set up in such a way that it can be accessed at random, even as a reference (if a student wanted to investigate a particular town).

ScienceDirect Handout

Presentation: "ScienceDirect: A Database" (click link to download .jar file; double-click .jar file to open Elluminate; presentation is from 8:47 to 19:15)

In "Reference and Information Services" (LIBR210), I made a presentation in Elluminate that was a review of the ScienceDirect database. The assignment was intended as much to get me to examine a database in-depth as it was to instruct my fellow classmates on its features. The handout that was sent to my classmates before the presentation was meant to reinforce the lessons of the live database demonstration in the presentation and also to potentially serve as reference for later use.

This instructional presentation relied primarily on demonstration of the database and its less obvious, deep-research features. Merrill (2009) included demonstration as one of five instruction design principles (p. 44). "The demonstration principle is most appropriate for…carrying out a procedure (or how-to)" (p. 44), which was the intent of this presentation: to show my fellow students how to use ScienceDirect.

If I was able to present this in a more interactive environment than Elluminate, I would add in the element of soliciting search items from the audience and asking them what they thought would happen when I clicked on various elements of the interface, drawing on the "learning by doing" principle of behaviorist theory (location 391) and Merrill's task-centered principle (p.44).

Slides: "Test Camp Feb 2014″

As SQA manager, I needed a way to bring my small team of part-time testers together and help them approach testing with some of the basic theories and practices of software testing. None of them had ever been trained in software testing but instead had just sort of started doing it. I designed a presentation that was intended to lead them through some of the theories and give them some grounding in the fundamental practices. The first part of this "test camp" was a straightforward lecture; the second part was an interactive task, drawing a bit upon social learning theory in having them work on an exercise on computers next to each other. The lecture attempted to leverage visualization techniques by using plenty of graphics even in the midst of PowerPoint slides, going for a hint of PechaKucha flavor.

The test camp met with limited success. One tester who was convinced that he was too good for test theory zoned out during the experience and left the class with no greater understanding of test theory, if his subsequent performance was any indication. Several testers seemed intrigued by the subject matter, and it may have helped provide a basis for their further growth as testers. If I had it to do again, I would draw upon both cognitive theory and social theory: I would attempt to tailor the class a bit more for the individual personalities and learning styles of the testers, and I would make the final exercise a communal one in which they would have to work as a group in order to finish the task.
Top[8]

CONCLUSION

Instructing users in how best to find and use information is an important part of data curation. iSchool has taught me the concepts of information management and has given me a chance to practice instructing people. I feel confident that I will be able to teach my users about the myriad aspects of information use and retrieval in my next career.
Top[8]

REFERENCES

Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center. (n.d.). Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center logo [Online image]. Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christa_McAuliffe_Space_Education_Center_Logo.png

Clark, D. (2011, July 12). Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/styles/vakt.html

Merrill, M. D. (2009). First principles of instruction. In C. M. Reigeluth & A. A. Char-Chellman (Eds.), Instructional-design theories and models, volume III: Building a common knowledge base (pp. 42-56). Routledge. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=csqLAgAAQBAJ&dq=theory+demonstration+as+an+instructional+method&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Myers, K. (1986). Christa McAuliffe experiences weightlessness during KC-135 flight [Online image]. Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christa_McAuliffe_Experiences_Weightlessness_During_KC-135_Flight_-_GPN-2002-000149.jpg

Smith, M. K. (1999). The behaviourist orientation to learning. Retrieved from http://infed.org/mobi/learning-theory-models-product-and-process/

Smith, M. K. (1999). The cognitive orientation to learning. Retrieved from http://infed.org/mobi/the-cognitive-orientation-to-learning/

Smith, M. K. (1999). Humanistic orientations to learning. Retrieved from http://infed.org/mobi/humanistic-orientations-to-learning/

Smith, M. K. (1999). The social/situational orientation to learning. Retrieved from http://infed.org/mobi/the-socialsituational-orientation-to-learning/

Last updated: Friday, April 17, 2015