Lesson Study in Libraries

Shevon DesaiMarija FreelandUniversity of Michigan

Eric FriersonUniversity of Texas at Arlington

Lesson Plans

• How do you plan?– No lesson plan document at all– Bullet points highlighting main concepts– Fully fleshed out, scripted lessons

• How do you execute lessons?– No matter how prepped, I never look at it (or don’t have one)– Use it only as a rough guide– Read it as a script

Lesson Plans

• Why don’t we just read from the lesson plan?– We’re flexible– We know this by heart

• We’re experts.

Expertise

“Expertise in a particular domain does not guarantee that one is good at helping others learn it. In fact, expertise can sometimes hurt teaching because many experts forget what is easy and what is difficult for students.”

- How People Learn : How Experts Differ from Novices

Expertise

• Our sheer genius hinders us.

Lesson Study

Topic Selection& Group Formation

Scope Issues &Lesson Study Intro

Select a Teacher

Discuss the Topic& Teaching Strategies

Teach the Lesson& Observation

Solicit StudentFeedback

Meet Again& Revise

Final Lesson Plan

Expertise

Implementation

How did we get started?• Instructor College Involvement• Choosing a topic

• What do we teach?

• Core group of volunteers

Implementation

Implementation

Core Group

• Librarians and library students

• Different levels of expertise

• From across the libraries

• Different perspectives on the material and our

patrons

Find E-Journals

Find Databases

Quick Search

CSABiological Sciences

Databases

SocialSciencesAbstracts

Implementation

Doing it all over again

• Later implementations of Lesson Study

• RefWorks

• Critical evaluation of resources

• Some of core group remained involved

• Lesson Study method particularly useful as

subjects taught changed

Benefits

• Instructors at all levels of expertise can participate

• Allows collaboration among a wide range of instructors

• Helps instructors become comfortable with being observed by their peers

• Students have an active role• End up with a useful file of lesson plans

Challenges

• Instructors and students are busy people!• Dissemination of lesson plans• Evaluation

Try it out!

• Use Lesson Study to teach a lesson– Undergraduate students– Using FirstSearch’s WorldCat– Under 20 minutes

Q1 & Q2

• What to teach…– What is it?

FirstSearch? – Catalog, not Index– Title Searching /

Formats– WHY? WHAT? HOW?

GETTING STUFF.– What it DOES and

DOESN’T.– Known item / keyword

• How to teach it…– Making relevant –

SCENARIO (has it happened to you)

– Overview – then students find top 10 videos on Spec. Ed.

– STUDENT teachs how they got to results

– Going into Local Cat. Making comparison

Q3

• What did you learn?– LOTS of different ways (depending on audience)– THIS IS SMALL GROUP – modeling good

behaviour– Great variants in opinions (esp. about HOW TO

TEACH) – different UNIVERSITIES, audiences, urban/rural

YOU AS STUDENT

• WHAT IS IT?• Visual aid would help• LONG LIST, then pared it down to what was

important• COMPARING to a KNOWN tool (iTunes – by

Artist, by Title, by Genre)• Thinking about faculty reactions to

‘pedestrian’ examples• Are teaching faculty involved? It’s a valuable

P.O.V.

Lesson Study at Your Library

• Get buy-in from instructors

• Recruit volunteers• Decide what will be

taught• Get together, plan 1st

lesson plan, teach• Talk about it, revise it• Lather, rinse, repeat

Lesson Study in Libraries

• Even the best teachers need a fresh perspective

• Newer teachers need guidance• Robust Lesson Plans

– Even if they go out the window when we teach, creating them helps us to prepare & think

• Everyone has something valuable to say

Lesson Study in Libraries

• Feel the Lesson Study Love– Felt like a team

accomplishment

• Questions?