During the past four years I have set up processes to make development and maintenance of the website flow more smoothly. We now have a fully developed style guide and content maintenance process, as well as a guide to writing for the web. We do regular usability testing and review website statistics each semester.
I also have become more involved in faculty development and training on campus through the Center for Teaching Excellence. I believe working with faculty is essential to reaching students. I have developed tools for faculty to help their students succeed. At a CTE workshop focused on developing effective research assignments, I worked with colleagues to develop a handout to help faculty evaluate their research assignments. In response to a faculty member who wanted to know how to support librarians in instruction sessions, I worked with librarians to develop a web page which gives faculty tips for making instruction successful.
As for instruction, I work to try out a new strategy each academic year. I have integrated polling as a formative assessment strategy into my instruction sessions. I am also working to complete the feedback loop. When I realized that librarians were looking at results of Writing 121 assessment, but not sharing this with faculty, I started to compile a report for Writing 121 faculty each semester. I started this fall of 2014 and intend to continue each semester. When we have multiple semesters to compare, it will help us see if changes in our teaching strategies make a difference in student performance.
Under the direction of the Department Improvement Team, all of the Library teams work to align our goals with department goals. Over the past four years, the significant goals I have contributed to include:
Developing physical and virtual library spaces that support student learning
- Refine content development and maintenance process to ensure that the website has meaningful, appropriate, accurate web copy with a consistent voice
Developing online library instruction activities for students to use in personalizing their learning
- Worked with IST to develop an online tutorial for faculty use with students in WRIT 121/124/127 online and hybrid courses
Providing intuitive access to library resources
- Used user centered design techniques such as usability testing as well as web analytics to continuously improve the library website
Fully utilize the expertise, energy, and creativity of every employee
- Provide ongoing training for library staff to improve their skills in writing for the web
I feel fortunate to work for an organization in which I am given the power to implement my ideas and have colleagues who both support and challenge me and are open to learning new things. Also, having the opportunity to present at conferences and volunteer for professional organizations over the past four years has broadened my perspective and helped me to build relationships with librarians beyond LCC. Sabbatical will allow me to further develop my assessment skills and contribute to campus-wide visibility and assessment of information literacy. I am looking forward to what the next four years brings.