What programs and services do we need to provide to meet the instructional and research needs of the various levels/disciplines of UW students in this complex and increasingly electronic information environment? What are we doing now that we can improve? What should we be doing? (And what “roadblocks” stand in your way?) Anything we should stop doing?
1. General User Education Programs
- Despite continued efforts, difficulty continues in connecting with first year students to encourage them to participate in tours, general programs (i.e. TRELLIS, searching electronic databases, etc.)
- variance in need by discipline?
- disinclination by students to come to sessions at time/place pre-planned?
- awareness level of these activities? marketing and promotion?
- concentrate on more “just-in-time” services rather than general “just-in-case”?
- Difficulty in encouraging a variety of UW staff to participate in implementing tours, etc.
- do we concentrate on encouraging broader staff participation?
- look to partnerships with UW student orientation programs outside the library?
- train peer guides, (including paying students already hired by the library on a casual/part-time basis?)
- connect to UW “Bridges” program in fall term for first year students
See: http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infosa/bridges/index.html
2. Course-related workshops
- Varying success rate among Liaison Librarians in implementing individual course-related workshops, despite many pro-active approaches
- Most of the existing course-related workshops for a given department are not systematically integrated into curriculum at varying levels
Dependent upon for example:
a) course and/or discipline requirements
b) cooperation/collaboration with relevant faculty
some factors:
- faculty (and students) unrealistic about level of students’ research skills
- faculty disinclination to use valuable classroom time for
- skill development
- knowing when to “plug-in” to faculty’s planning cycle
c) pro-active approaches by Liaison Librarians
- Some strong partnerships have been forged, but other areas yet to be developed, (i.e. Dons? T.A.s? staff from Faculty Computing Offices? TUG colleagues?)
3. Infrastructure
- No “instruction” lab in Library. This often means that Librarians have to make time-consuming arrangements for room/equipment bookings and/or end up using unfamiliar equipment in Computing Labs, etc.
- New software/hardware not always tested sufficiently prior to implementation
- Data projection equipment, etc. in Davis and Porter Conference Rooms not always reliable. Need for checking immediately prior to any presentations
4. Training and Support
- Some Librarians have strong skills in teaching/instruction, but there is no internal training program in place to assist those still developing in this area
- Foster support for external professional development opportunities re instructional responsibilities as well as encourage follow-up for those attending to share new ideas/expertise with others (Role of User Education Committee?)
- Develop partnerships for training/development with other departments on UW campus, such as TRACE Office, as well as with TUG colleagues
- Frequently insufficient support staff available to assist with programs and/or assist with the development of guides, handouts, etc. (physical and virtual) relevant to instruction
- Need for support staff with specific web-related skills (i.e. html, Excel)
- Need for opportunity to discuss "cutting edge" technological developments (such as metadata) that can advance and enhance instructional programs
- Develop with Liaison Librarians UW Library goals and directions re instructional responsibilities
5. Marketing, Promotion and Assessment
- Who has need of our instructional programs? (And how do we find out about these users/potential users?)
- What are their specific needs?
- How are these users (and/or faculty) made aware of the instructional services we can provide?
- Need for systematic assessment and evaluation of instructional programs
- Need to collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data relating to instructional programs as well as provide easy access to this data.
- What do we currently collect? (Is anything missing?)
- What does the data and other forms of feedback tell us?
- What is the role of the User Education Committee and the Community Needs Assessment Process Group in this matter?
November 23, 1998
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