Building an Online Learning Community for "Blended" Librarians

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Building an Online Learning Community for
"Blended" Librarians

• Steven J. Bell, Philadelphia UniversitySteve
  Gilbert, TLT Group
• Hope Kandel, Learning Times NetworkJohn Shank,
  Penn State Berks

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Introducing Our Panel
Moderator Steven Bell, Director of the Library
Philadelphia University
Panelists Steve Gilbert, President,
Teaching, Learning and Technology
Group Hope Kandel, Director of Operations
Learning Times Network John
Shank, Director of the Center for Learning
Technologies and Instructional
Design Librarian, Penn State
Berks
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About Our Program

• Dialogue with the panelists about the value of
  organizational collaboration in creating online
  learning communities
• Learn about Learning Times Network
• How the Blended Librarians Online Learning
  Community began and evolved
• Issues related to building and sustaining online
  learning communities
• How you can get involved

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What Is An Online Learning Community?

• A virtual environment where people come together
  to learn.
• The members are drawn together by their mutual
  interests or shared challenges.
• Features advanced technology such as VoIP,
  desktop sharing, online polling, whiteboards,
  etc.
• Source Steven Bell, Creating Community Online.
  American Libraries, April 2005, p.68

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Some Questions For You

• Are you a member of or otherwise involved in an
  online learning community?
• Have you participated in an online synchronous
  event with audio?
• Are you familiar with (a) TLT Group (b)
  Learning Times (c) Blended Librarians

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Introducing Hope Kandel
Director, Library and Information Services Senior
Producer and Trainer LearningTimes
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Why Do We Do What We Do?
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Community FeaturesBlending the Asynchronous and
Synchronous

• Learning weblogs -- text and audio
• Live webcasts workshops
• Virtual conferences
• Discussion forums
• File repositories image galleries
• Meeting room
• Instant messaging text chat
• Recorded archives for on-demand review
• Voice boards

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Learning Times and Collaborative Endeavors

• Individual faculty members -- projects, papers
  and presentations
• Global Collaboration Grants -- teachers and
  students from around the world
• Online discussions to effect change -- weekly
  meetings for faculty support
• Event planning -- online conferences

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How It All Began

• Library Online Conference 2003
• The LearningTimes Library Online Conference is a
  completely online community featuring innovations
  by information professionals worldwide.
• ACRL/TLT Workshops
• Effective Collaboration for Campus-wide
  Information Literacy The  Blended Librarians
  Perspective on How To Make It Work
• Blended Librarians Online Learning Community
• Space on the Learning Times Network where Blended
  Librariansprogramming and activity occur

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Blended Librarian

• Timeline
• 2003 The formation
• 2004 The Implementation
• 2005 The Growth
• Take a look at web site and a video clip
• More about Blended Librarianship
• Mission Vision Statement

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Mission Statement

• Librarians, faculty, instructional designers and
  technologists, and other academic support
  personnel working collaboratively to integrate
  the library into the teaching and learning
  processTo encourage and enable academic
  librarians to evolve into a new role that blends
  existing library and information skills with
  those of instructional design and
  technologyLeverages innovation, collaboration,
  and communication to bring together its members
  in a virtual environment for professional
  development and learning opportunities.

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Vision Statement

• Our vision for BL is a community that
• Enables academic librarians to integrate
  instructional design and technology skills into
  their existing library and information technology
  skill set to promote better connections with
  faculty and other academic support
  professionals.
• Brings together librarians, faculty, and other
  academic support professionals to find ways to
  effectively collaborate to help students achieve
  designated institutional learning outcomes.

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Focus On Professional Development

• Offers members access to continuing professional
  development through ongoing discussions and
  webcasts focusing on how we fit into the teaching
  and learning process.
• Encouraging librarians to support facultys
  integration of technology, library resources, and
  information fluency into their courses through
  the development of digital learning materials.

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What Happens In The Community

• Webcasts
• Chats
• Discussion boards
• Resource sharing
• Professional announcements

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What Does the Future Hold

• jobs utilizing new and more pervasive
  technologies have appeared, representing a kind
  of professional transformation.
• Joan Starr

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Biggest Challenge

• Overload Too many attractive options
  Expectations exceed resources
• Increasing need for UNIVERSAL, LIFELONG, HYBRID,
  COLLABORATIVE, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• Inadequate priority, time, money, collaboration
• Who cares? Why bother? Who can help me/us?
  Whom can I/we help?

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Chaos ? Coalition ? Community

• When is a community not a community?
• Multi-dimensional
• Stake in each others lives
• Joys and sorrows
• Include the people who wear uniforms when they
  work?
• What kinds of communities or groups can function
  best/worst online? Purely online? Why are we
  here today?

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TLT Group focuses on themesTLT Group looks for
issues that fit

• THEMES
• Collaboration
• Dangerous Discussions
• Assessment
• Professional Development

• ISSUES
• Blended Librarianship
• Information Literacy
• Class Size
• Student Course Evaluations
• Lifelong Learning

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Dangerous
Discussions
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Dangerous Discussions

• Select issues
• Significant, controversial, and tractable
• Bring diverse stakeholders together for civil,
  constructive conversations
• (Re)Formulate issues fairly and inclusively
• Share essential information, useful options
• Keep asking How can we help each other?How
  can we work together?
• Develop/use guidelines, techniques, technologies,
  
• Develop solutions
• Challenge, implement, test, and improve solutions

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Lessons from Online Institute

• Commitment to teams, multiple roles for
  leader/presenters
• Challenge, desirability of getting teams to
  participate as registrants
• Continuing effort to balance technology
  flexibility, ease of use, reliability, quality of
  audio, etc.
• Who has enough time? No assignments?

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Sustainability Community Building

• Lessons from Hope
• Lessons from SteveG
• Lessons from John StevenB

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Discussion Points
How does LearningTimes foster collaborative
projects? How can collaboration be fostered
online? Why work online together? What are we
doing in Orlando that we could doonline in a
community and what can we do here that we cant
do in an online community?