Monday, January 24, 2011
Although classes have been in session for a week now, it didn't really feel like the semester had started yet until today. My main focus for this week is to prepare for and teach six HNFE classes by Thursday, the first of which was today. Fortunately, I'll mainly be teaching several sections of the same course: HNFE 4004: Writing and Discourse in the Major. For this class, I generally teach a two-session workshop, which means that I'll see some classes twice this week, and some once this week, and once next week. For one of my classes on Thursday, I'll need to distill my usual two-session workshop into one 75-minute session. Whew!
- [8:15-9:00 a.m.] I create a course guide for each class that I teach; the information that I cover for HNFE 4004 is available on that course's guide: http://www.lib.vt.edu/subjects/hnfe/hnfe4004_courseguide.html. I use Ensemble, Virginia Tech's content management system, to create my course guides. This morning, I spent time updating the guide and double checking the databases for any changes or updates. No major changes this semester, which means I can really focus on talking about the research process.
- [9:00-11:30 a.m.] After I prepared for a bit my class, which I taught later in the afternoon, I met with an incredibly helpful staff member from our Systems Department to have Millennium's (our ILS) cataloging client (essentially, the "work side" of Addison, our card catalog) placed on my machine and learn how to create lists of books, circulation statistics, etc. Way back last semester, one of my liaison departments (and I have 4: Math, Computer Science, Engineering Education, and HNFE) requested a semesterly spreadsheet of all new monographs (books) acquired by the library in their call number ranges; since books come into the library in a variety of ways (on an approval plan, by firm orders that I submit, on gift funds, etc.), I needed a way to pull of this information together. As a reference and instruction librarian, I had never worked with the technical, or "work side," of the card catalog, and was thrilled to discover that I could run all sorts of reports, and gather data that could really help me with collection management and supporting my departments. Although I didn't have time to finish running any large reports, I am glad to finally have the ability to work with this data in a more meaningful way. I'll have to play with that more in a few weeks....
- [11:40 a.m.-1:00 p.m.] This brought me to lunch--every second or third Monday of the month (depending on the academic calendar), the Blacksburg-Virginia Tech branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) meets for a brown bag lunch and discussion. I am the Communications Coordinator for our branch, so have been diligently updating our website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed with information about our first meeting of the semester. During our Monday lunches, we meet, with our lunches, to hear from a speaker discussing relevant issues and participate in discussion and activities. Today, our speaker was Virginia Tech's Executive Director of University Org. and Professional development. She led a discussion on developing leadership skills in order to make professional changes for the new year--pretty fascinating!
- [1:20-2:50 p.m.] After lunch (which was across campus), I ran back to the library to teach my first class of the semester. The first class is always a bit difficult for me, but this one seemed to go pretty well. Although I love teaching at the beginning of the semester, and getting students into the library right away, it's sometimes difficult for them to see practical applications of the material when they haven't started researching yet. Hopefully, though, many of them will now recognize me when they see me in the library, or over in their building for my HNFE office hours, when they DO start researching.
- [3:00-4:45 p.m.] The class, which ended at 2:50, was the last commitment that I had on my calendar for the day; this was a relief, since several major deadlines were looming on my calendar! The first deadline is actually midnight tonight (Monday), when the first module for the class I am taking this semester is due. Since many of my duties at VT are tied to instruction, I decided that taking some classes, and perhaps pursuing another degree in, instructional design might be helpful. This semester I am taking Advanced Educational Psychology through Virginia Tech's College of Education. The class is online, which is a first for me; although I've taught online courses in the past, I've never taken one. I never realized how disorienting it can be to try to figure out what is expected of a student when everything is linked into a course management page. For this class, though, there are reading and activities each week, along with a required "high stakes" test. I had done all the reading and just needed to take the test before 11:59 p.m. tonight. I completed it around 4:45, and am already inspired to introduce some new methods into my teaching.
- [4:45-5:30] Email had piled up all day long, while I was away from my desk, so I responded to questions and requests for meetings. One of my emails was a notification that my request to travel to the ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) National Conference 2011 was accepted by the library committee. I went ahead and reserved my flights to and from Philadelphia, double checked my hotel booking, and got a few other things lined up for my trip and presentation during the conference (Life, Librarianship, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Early Career Librarians Speak Out). I also updated our AAUW sites with information about upcoming events, recorded instruction statistics, and wrote this blog post! Even so, I have one more task on my to-do list for the day...
- [5:30-??] Next Thursday (2/3), several colleagues and I will be presenting (Integrating Inquiry: Student Centered Approaches for Lifelong Learning) at the 3rd Annual Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy, here in Blacksburg. We've been working on our material, which focuses on how librarians and faculty members can create close collaborations, since last semester, and are just pulling it all together into a presentation and an electronic handout. I'll be discussing relevant research, and am responsible for developing the electronic handout, which I'm creating by using VT's ePortfolio software. I've created the shell, and added a few details, but have a lot of information to add by Wednesday, when we're coming together to compare notes again.
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