Instruction & Reference Meeting Redux

Some of us were chatting tonight, thinking through some of what was brought up in our meeting today. We wondered about making our meetings be more of workshop atmosphere by having librarians take turns demonstrating different things

Some ideas that we considered (there were probably more, but this is all that I absorbed):

1. Taking 10 minutes or an entire unit of a lesson (perhaps it is something that you have done 20 times and want to freshen it up, maybe it’s a new idea that you want to have a chance at a ‘dry run’ with before premiering to the students) and doing it for the group. After, the group takes time to write evaluations, perhaps anonymously on cards. Then have a discussion about the merits as well as ways to improve and/or brainstorm other possibilities.
2. How do librarians prepare their lessons? Is there a process or procedure?
3. Librarians bringing in an issue that they would like to overcome (how to incorporate X in to a lesson or deal with student or faculty behavior) and using the group to come up with creative solutions.
   

I would suggest that if this is something that we intend to do, we ought to organize ourselves. Let’s first brainstorm here on the blog for what we might like to see or experience to grow our skills. At the next meeting where we come together, we then decide what is the most important and plan out the remaining meetings with topics and have people volunteer to present or organize or run each meeting.