Instruction Workshops Report

About 160 UC librarians brainstormed, reflected, and learned to insert active learning into library classes over four days in January and February.  The instructional workshops were led by Debra Gilchrist, Director, Pierce College, in the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington State and Susan Barnes Whyte, Director of Linfield College Library, outside of Portland, Oregon.  Both workshop leaders are also faculty at the annual ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Immersion Program, which several UC librarians have attended.  The workshops were held on January 31 and February 1 at Preservation Park in Oakland, and February 4 and 5 at UC Irvine.

Attendees departed the workshop having had active learning techniques modeled throughout the day, and as reflected in their evaluations, many apparently left determined to change the way they teach.  But the workshops were not all serious business-the instructors, following the model of the design company, IDEO, which they visited last summer, brought toys to play with during a brainstorming session (or rapid prototyping, in IDEO lingo) to help release participants’ brains to generate more creative ideas.

A website has been created that has additional materials to those in the packets distributed at the workshop, and where information generated by the workshop participants will be added shortly.
[http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/education/instructionworkshop.html]