Archive

Developing “Talent”: Mindset Matters

I recently attended the First Year Experience conference—a conference put on by The National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. It was a great opportunity to get connected with others in the first year experience world and to learn more about what colleges and universities around the world are doing to help students transition to college life.

While I was inspired by many of the presentations and discussions, the keynote address given by Rishi Sriram of Baylor University was particularly interesting. During his presentation Sriram talked about the development of student talent. We often think about talent as something that is innate—we either have it or we don’t. But what if that isn’t really true? What if what we call “talent” is actually a result of a lot of practice and hard work?  Continue reading “Developing “Talent”: Mindset Matters”

ICoP Announcement: March 1st

The Instruction Community of Practice will be meeting next Wednesday, March 1st, in room 248 from noon to 1pm. We’ll be focusing on classroom strategies that encourage student engagement. Bring your lunches, your ideas, and a lesson plan that you’d like to workshop. (I’ll have some extra instruction outlines and snacks, if you need them.)

If you’d like to review some active learning concepts before we meet, take a look at the following two modules from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Educational Innovation:

This session is geared towards those who are currently teaching instruction sessions but we’d value the perspective of those who have taught in the past and the fresh ideas of those who would like to teach in the future.

Collaboration and Engagement

We had a good turnout for the first ICoP discussion of 2017. We started out with the goals for the session: to get a sense of the teaching and learning landscape in the libraries, to get to know each other, and to identify themes for the rest of the semester’s gatherings. Continue reading “Collaboration and Engagement”

New Year, New Discussions!

On Thursday, February 2, 2017, we’ll be holding our first Instruction Community of Practice (ICoP) gathering of the year! Please bring your lunch and join us from 12:30 to 1:30pm in room 248 to discuss how we fit in to the teaching & learning puzzle and to set some shared goals for the future direction of our community. Anyone with an interest in instruction is welcome to join. We’ll provide tea and snacks.

Discussion Forum October 7th

The discussion was led by Laura Bayard and Mandy Havert, and it was focused on the book Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown et al. The co-authors are cognitive psychologists.

According to the authors, immutable aspects of learning are memory, lifelong learning and acquired skills. Learning is often misunderstood, for example people believe that information needs to be spoon fed to them and that reading and re-reading text will help them learn. Learning is deep and durable when it requires effort. Recalling and quizzing more effective ways of learning than re-reading notes. Low stakes quizzes are extremely effective at helping students learn and recall material over time. Retrieving and testing interrupts the process of forgetting. Continue reading “Discussion Forum October 7th”

ACRL Information Literacy Framework

Today’s ICOP discussion was led by Leslie Morgan. Her discussion, entitled “ACRL Information Literacy Framework (Advisory Board) & Hesburgh Libraries Teaching and Learning Services,” began with a discussion of Leslie’s participation on the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Board, on which she currently serves.
The Board has several tasks, including the review and progress assessment of the Framework implementation plan; to offer strategic overview for future directions for research and practice; to promote communication by contributing to the Framework website and listserv, and to advise and participate in the development and use of a “sandbox” repository for Framework examples and implementation. Continue reading “ACRL Information Literacy Framework”

Discussion Forum

Each month, staff with instruction responsibilities will meet. The person assigned to lead the discussion will post a brief blog entry about the idea/article/topic for discussion and will lead the discussion at the meeting. The “blogger” will will post an article about the discussion after we meet.