Week 1 & Fink exercise

Introduction

I am currently the Instructional Design Librarian for the Florida International University Green Library. My main reason for taking this online course is to deepen my knowledge of instructional design in order to apply it to my job responsibilities. Right now, I am attempting to pull together a strategic document that will guide the processes of creating learning objects, including storage and maintenance.

For this course, I would like to focus on using instructional design principles to increase the effectiveness of our one-shot instruction sessions for our English composition courses. Each one-shot class has around 25-30 students. We primarily do instruction for our lower division, undergraduate English composition course, ENC 1102 Writing & Rhetoric II. While most sessions are one-shot, we have some sessions that span two class periods.

We teach these sessions in our instruction labs, which have individual computers for the students. The set-up also encourages collaboration. The original design of our labs puts two students to one computer to allow for small group work. The students only have access to this space during the instruction session. We also have a instructor station with a projector, desktop, document camera, microphone, and other technology.

The library instruction session is meant to correspond with the writing assignments in ENC 1102. Each class must write an exploratory essay, an argumentative essay, and a research essay. ENC 1102 is also a required class for our students. There is a similar class that is required of our transfer students. The learning expectations of the course focus on the connection between critical thinking and writing. The students are expected to write for different purposes and audiences, to understand argumentative structures, and to create conscientious research questions that will lead them through meaningful inquiry of a topic.

While there are theoretical aspects, many instructors place a lot of emphasis on the practical aspects of writing. Recently, there has been a decision to transform the first session, ENC 1101 Writing & Rhetoric I, into a course focused only on developing writing skills. As a result, we have see the numbers of ENC 1101 library instruction sessions drop away while our ENC 1102 sessions have held steady. Our professors complain about the lack of critical thinking skills among our students. Since information literacy skills support critical thinking, it is easy for us as librarians to see our role in support student success.

At FIU, we have a number of students who are nontraditional or first-in-the-family as well as a number of transfer students. While we are diverse, we also have many students who have grown up in Miami. FIU has seen a huge growth in its student enrollment and expectations of students has changed over the past 5 years. Many of our students are also juggling other work and family responsibilities. Our students are very comfortable with collaborative learning. This is due to the fact that a number of the larger core courses employ collaborative learning in order to engage students. As a result, group work comes together fluidly and naturally. For me, instruction is the most engaging and exciting part of my job as a librarian.

I believe instruction to be my key responsibility. I focus on incorporating active learning and collaborative group work but I worry about ensuring the quality of work that results from these activities from instruction session to instruction session. I also struggle with engagement, particularly due to the constraints of a one-shot session. I believe my strengths in teaching lies in my willingness to guide learners and the encourage them to find their own answers. While I'm comfortable with instructing undergraduate research classes, I do worry that my subject knowledge is not deep enough for graduate level classes. Regardless, my hope is to increase my understanding of instruction design to create a classroom environment that will allow for greater opportunities for learning.