August 14, 2017 Meeting of User Education Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Members Present: Susan Avery (ex officio), Lisa Hinchliffe (ex officio) – Chair, Jameatris Rimkus (17), Scott Schwartz (17), Kelsey Cheshire (18), Piper Martin (ex officio)

Members Absent: Kirsten Feist (18), Harriett Green (18), Rebecca McGuire (18), Anna Trammell (18)

Additional Attendees: Delaney Bullinger (Information Literacy GA)

1.      Welcome and Introductions

• Lisa welcomed everyone and introduced Piper Martin, the new Reference Service & Instruction Librarian in Research and Information Services.
• Piper introduced herself, her background, and talked about her new role at the University of Illinois.

2.      Agenda Review

• Lisa went over the agenda and announced that this is her second-to-last meeting as the chair of this committee before sabbatical.

 3.      Acclamations and Accolades

• Everyone celebrated recent travel and vacation.
• This is the last meeting for Scott Schwartz and Jameatris Rimkus. Lisa thanked both of them for many years of serving on the committee.
• Lisa was recently elected chair of IFLA Information Literacy Standing Committee. The committee congratulated her.
• Susan Avery and Kirsten Feist’s Assessment in Action projects are being wrapped up. The final articles and book chapters are being submitted and published.
• There are 28 sections of first-year ESL in Fall 2017 for UGL.
  • Campus is being attentive to uptick in ESL students and also making sure ESL students register for ESL rather than Rhetoric courses, in part due to ongoing commitment to student success.

 4.      Status Update on LibApps

• Lisa is working on getting renewal for LibApps because of a need for a new method of payment.
• There are discussions in the information literacy community about Elsevier acquiring bepress but acquisition of SpringShare is unlikely.
• The Library is continuing to use LibCal for subject specialist appointments, which has been success so far.

5.       Web Content Update (Susan)

• Susan reported that the team has almost finished conversion of unit libraries and is close to getting core content (administration, advancement, etc.) completed.
• After conversion is complete, the working group will most likely be disbanded and responsibilities for upkeep will most likely be moved to individual departments.
• The Web Content Update will no longer be a standing agenda item for the User Education Committee.

6.      Instruction Studio

• Lisa ran the first Instruction Studio in spring 2017 as a three-part workshop. Library workers attended in cohorts to learn and implement instructional design methods, assessment, etc. as supported practice.
• There was a change in model during summer 2017 to let participants choose the dates of their 3-part workshops but no one signed up for the workshops.
• The Instruction Studio will not be offered in fall 2017 or spring 2018 (Lisa will be on sabbatical). Lisa is working on plans to make curriculum more robust for summer 2018 using the pre-date scheduled model.
• Lisa is holding office hours on the day of the User Education meeting (8/14/17) and may continue in the future for guided instruction consultation.
  • The committee advised improving future emails regarding office hours to give more specific examples of questions patrons could bring to the meetings.
  • Committee members were asked to give feedback: is it better to have a set time each week that office hours are held (every Wednesday, for example) or schedule specific dates over multiple days?
  • The Committee suggested that it may be helpful in future emails to have a set day/time and also include a message like “appointments are also encouraged.”
  • Lisa also wondered whether there is a value to having a collective office hour with the Office of User Services and will consider this for future.
• The committee discussed the idea of “drop-in clinic” for instruction and debating name possibilities.
  • Committee members were asked to brainstorm ideas for a name — “clinic” may be too medical.
  • The consensus was that there are advantages and disadvantages to the term “clinic” including “clinic” seeming planned, where participants bring a set schedule to review.

• The University Library recently joined the Open Textbook Network.
• The initiative has two parts – the first is the publishing of textbooks into OTN and the second is outreach to professors and faculty, helping them know which textbooks are available and how to use them in classes.
• Janet Swatscheno will attend the September 2017 User Education meeting to discuss the initiative.
• A possible outreach aspect could be linking basic textbooks in a subject in LibGuides or use of exercises in workshops due to creative commons licenses of textbooks.

8.     Education Data Science/Learning Analytics

• The Education Data Science initiative is part of the Illinois Data Science Institute.
• The goal is to improve teaching and learning with use of analytics.
• Attendance is encouraged for committee members at the University Data Summit, which is the outcome of workshops held in spring and summer 2017. The Summit it is free to attend and is schedule for August 23 (Wednesday) 8:30am-5pm. The focus will be on how to better deploy existing data for student support, learning support, etc.

9. Other?

• Lisa shared a call for Savvy Researcher workshop proposals from Merinda Hensley.  Committee members who have never taught a Savvy before are encouraged to consider teaching one.
• Lisa is on sabbatical from September 16, 2017-May 15, 2018. Susan Avery will chair the User Education Committee in the interim.
• During the September meeting, members will talk about plans for the coming year. Susan suggested that one possibility for the coming year is for the committee to host Lunch & Learn sessions on topics related to instruction.

Respectfully submitted,

Delaney Bullinger