Welcome back to Season Seven of Linking Our Libraries! Today is the end of our season. We have had a great time looking at a variety of skills to use in libraries, whether you are in the midst of a global pandemic or not. Stay tuned to this feed! We will start dropping short episodes of Browsing Books here on Tuesdays, with about ten minutes of book suggestions just for you.

Today’s episode is part of our series on Library Basics. We are working through some of the skills people need in every library. Not everyone is going to school for a Master’s degree in Library Science, and that’s fine. We want to be sure everyone has the skills to be comfortable in a library and to be successful for the community you are serving.

It does not matter what type of library you are in – we all need to do instruction! Your work might be working with a patron to figure out a specific problem they are having in a moment. It might be a one-shot class, where you just pop into a class and talk about a specific topic. Or it might be a longer part of a class, where you are involved on a longer basis with doing more instruction over the course of days or weeks.

Just remember that our fundamental purpose is to connect information with members of the community. Instruction is the tool we can use to help them to find that information, no matter what topic a patron wants. 

As with everything else we do, there are some steps you can follow to help you to have the best experience and to give your patrons the best information experience! The most common acronym to help you keep track of your own work in instruction is ADDIE. Let’s take a closer look at it here:

• Analysis: Before you start figuring out what you are going to say, you need to figure out a few basics. Who are you instructing? What kind of experience do they have with your topic? Obviously, you are going to talk about different things for beginners than with a more advanced group. Then hone in on exactly what they are supposed to learn. The topic of “copyright” is way too broad; the topic “fair use for third graders in English class” is a useful topic. How is this class being offered? We are all doing a lot more online work, so that’s a useful thing to consider. But the format you plan out may be just five minutes of talking about using the printers or another basic topic. 
• Design: One of the key skills is to make your instruction useful and sticky in the minds of the recipients. Setting up your class to make it attractive will help that. You don’t have to be an expert in graphics online, or making handouts and slides in person. Mainly, you want to be organized and set up to get the best flow of information to the participants. What comes first? Is there a surprise reveal of information? Can you break things down into smaller pieces? All of that will help you to have a well-designed class.
• Development: Okay, this is where we get serious about getting the class put together! This is where you put all the content for class. Follow the plans you made in the Design stage; if you made a storyboard for the work that will help you to keep things organized. And you also want to do some work on testing. It’s great to have the perfectly designed class assembled – but if your in person students don’t follow anything you are saying, or your videos and quizzes can’t be opened, then the class is a failure. So do some testing with someone who is not you and does not know what to expect. Even if they are critical, it’s better to find out things are not working before you share it with the public.
• Implementation: And here is the good part! This is the payoff to all the work you have accomplished: you are sharing the class with the intended audience! For most of us, this is a time to be a little nervous; but when you have a good plan in place that you have tested, it should be more fun than scary. Your goal is to connect your information to the patrons who need it.
• Evaluation: Don’t skip this step! You may have had fun, or you may have felt like it all went terribly wrong – but you do not have all the information you need to know how it went for everyone. So ask people during the session. “Does that make sense? Do you see how we got here?” it’s good to clarify as you are going along, so nobody gets too lost. And at the end, have some sort of quiz or evaluation to see how people did. If possible, just make it informal and not counting against anyone; or let people redo it until they feel confident in their learning.
  You will probably redo this same class, or build on this same topic; so you want to get feedback from the participants on how they liked it. Experience really helps you in giving good instruction and teaching – you get better as you go along. Be sure you don’t just get complacent with the material you have, and that you keep growing your skills and changing up the way you present it! This will keep things more interesting for you over time, and will help to keep your participants interested and engaged.

There are, of course, other ways to structure your instructional design work. Here are a few, from the eLearning Industry.com website:

• Rapid Prototyping.
  This model follows an iterative process to create online courses in a continual design-evaluation cycle.
• SAM.
  Like Rapid Prototyping, SAM (Successive Approximation Model) uses a process that enables analysis, design, and development to take place at the same time.
• KEMP.
  Consisting of 9 steps, the KEMP model promotes a continuous cycle for the design and development process. It places emphasis on defining the instructional problem.
• Dick and Carey.
  Popular in schools and educational environments, the Dick and Carey model starts by identifying instructional goals, and it ends with conducting a summative evaluation.

And a few final tips to help you succeed in any sort of instruction:

• Keep It Simple: don’t have a bunch of different ideas, or fonts, or website to look at – just do one thing at a time. You can always create a second, third, or fourth topic to build on what you are doing today.
• Talk to people, and solicit their participation. Break them up into groups. Yes: everyone hates when they start in small groups in classes – but it is so much more interesting and valuable than just listening to an instructor drone on and one.
• Building on that: keep it brief. You may think that saying something five times is better than once or twice. But including a lot of boring, redundant content just tells the participants that they don’t actually need to listen to what you are saying. 
• And if the work is asynchronous, be sure it is clear what steps people need to take to get through the whole process. Don’t rely on just yourself for this – you know what they are supposed to do. Have someone else test it, as part of your Development process, to be sure they understand how to do the class without your input and assistance.

Hopefully you feel ready now to go out there and do some great instruction! Be confident in yourself, and you will project that to the students. Nobody likes an instructor who constantly says “oh, I meant to put this in here,” or “well, that’s not quite right,” or some similar phrases. You want them to believe that you know what you are talking about, and that you are ready to help them advance their own knowledge.

Books Read

Now, let’s get to the part of every episode that we love: sharing a book we are reading. We will link to these books on our shownotes pages, and the link will take you to Amazon. You probably know this, but when you click one of our links and then buy anything at all from Amazon, they give us a small percentage of their profits. That support really helps us, and although it’s anonymous so we won’t know it was you – we appreciate you taking the time to help us!

• Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 10 New Ways to See the World, by Ian Wright
• The Good Luck Girls, by Charlotte Nicole Davis

This was a quick overview of the foundations of library instruction. We hope you feel like you are part of the larger community of library people! Here are a few takeaways for you:

• Instruction is a fundamental part of library work. You might do five minutes, or five months, of teaching. With today’s tips, you can do either!
• Use the ADDIE acronym to help yourself get ready and to present a good class.
• Keep it simple, be concise, and the important parts of your content will shine through for your students. 
• Be confident! If you believe you can talk about your topic, so will your participants!

Thanks for spending time with us today. It is always great to have this time to chat with you about libraries and the skills we need to be successful. It is always better when you are here with us, as we work through our journey across library skills.

As we said at the top of this episode, today is the end of Season Seven! We have talked about a lot of the basic skills everyone in a library will need. Share these with your colleagues, with new library staffers in your district, or when you start at a new library or a new job. They will always be helpful to you!

On Tuesday we will drop a short book podcast into your feed right here. You don’t have to do a thing to get it, and we hope you enjoy the books! 

If you want to get more book ideas, subscribe to our sister podcast: Reading With Libraries, a  podcast book group. Season Six starts soon, we will look at a new genre of books each week, share a beverage that goes with the genre, and chat with our Guest Hosts about books they have enjoyed! It’s a lot of fun. And if you are in a library, it will give you very useful resources to help you find books for your patrons!