This post is part of an ongoing series by the authors of Instructional Design for Teaching Information Literacy Online: A Student-Centered Approach. For more information about the entire series and to meet the authors, check out our welcome post.
Post Playlist:
The Scientist - Coldplay
As it Was - Harry Styles
Another Lifetime - Nao
Alien Superstar - Beyonce
Free - Florence and the Machine
Thinking about the origins of this book feels like one of those record scratch “yep that’s me moments”, in which we begin with a freeze frame of all of us in new situations than when we began. Between the authors, we have had job changes, degrees started, homes moved, pets adopted, and new classes taught.
I have a penchant for dramatics, so I want to compare this process to the change your favorite character went through from season 1 to the finale. Or the ways in which a pop singer changes between album releases. This thought process did bring me to a Buzzfeed list on the best examples of TV character development.
These, of course, when applied to our lives are exaggerations, but the truth is that the world at large and our individual worlds are different than they were three years ago. This is no time for a soap box talk, but it would be dishonest to pretend that our inspiration today is exactly the same as it was at the beginning.
So, let’s jump back to the start.
I can’t be certain what role the years of online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic played into our decision to write this book, and I am not sure that we would have written it in a different non-pandemic universe. The world suddenly seemed to be interested in online instruction, and it could no longer be just one individual’s job. Library instructors were burnt out, and it felt like there was never enough time to do all the work while just handling the emotional toll of being in a global pandemic.
During these years, many folks grew in their knowledge of online instructional design as quickly as they could on the job, but their professional development happened because of urgency. Library workers were not able to engage with the core concepts as we did not have that kind of time.
In mid summer 2022 (think Don’t Worry Darling movie drama and Harry Styles everywhere), we began seeing the need for information on online instruction for librarians. As librarians, our first thought was to see if we can find existing work that covers the topics we want to address. Maybe, we would find that what we want is already out there and easily accessible -- In short, it was not. Nothing seemed to acknowledge the realities and limitations that librarians face nor could we find a resource that focuses on the pedagogical approaches necessary to help our students.
We were aware that folks had a desire for this knowledge, and we had information to share that did not seem to exist yet. So, we decided that meant we needed to write it ourselves.
Forming the book
We knew a few things at the outset.
We wanted to focus on areas that we had interest and expertise (instructional design, online-focused library instruction, and project management)
The work needed to be practical and geared towards the busy professional without a lot of instructional design background
Empathy and community are vital for ourselves and for our students
With each of these elements, we were already including parts of ourselves (personally and professionally) - informing our work into something that has a human element to it.
LOEX 2023 - test run
While we had experimented with introducing Instructional Design to librarians in online courses to internal workshops, LOEX 2023 presented us with the first opportunity to take the concepts that were fueling our book and see if others connected to them the same way we did.
In our session, Turn on a Dime Instructional Design: Solving an Instructional Problem in 50 Minutes or Less, we took the concept of Rapid Instructional Design and the ADDIE model and made it into a simple worksheet. We also provided learning theory cards to assist attendees who may not have that background knowledge. All of these documents are available to access through the James Madison Scholarly Commons.
As we talked to attendees, we heard how their unique individual institutional contexts affect how they can/can’t involve instructional design in their process. For some, they fulfill so many roles in their job that it is hard for them to fit instructional design into their growing catalog of responsibilities. For others, they lack the institutional collaboration needed to complete the instructional design project of their dreams. But they were all trying to meet the needs of their learners.
In this workshop, we saw that librarians wanted very deeply to support their learners, but they did not know how to accomplish this while accommodating the realities of their work. Folks shared how they encountered instructional failures but were willing to try again. This helped us reshape the book, as we knew it then, into emphasizing that rapid models exist in the instructional design process and acknowledging that we can’t accomplish everything.
Taking us to today
Once again, I need to bring in my dramatics. Now sitting here approaching 3 years since we first submitted our book proposal, I think about how we have evolved our ideas and expanded upon our work as we experienced personal changes, (though only a little in the Breakfast Club kind of way), innovations in technology - like AI - and navigated the changing political scene. Writing our book has involved early mornings, tons of caffeine (those Panera lemonades are no joke), laughs, and frustrations. We have worked through our own dilemmas between when is it appropriate to give advice when to just listen. We have seen ourselves trying to engage with online students, and not always feel successful. The anxiety is real.
These affect us as librarians and as humans. In these moments, I feel the need to take part of the book out of context that I think can be helpful, “While it might be tempting to apologize every time something unexpected occurs, you can instead choose to simply acknowledge what is happening and then move on.”
Want to learn more about this series? Head over to the welcome post for the details and to meet the authors.
Interested in your own copy of our book? You can purchase it on the Association of College & Research Libraries website.
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