The Guide on the Side
By Meredith Farkas
Tue, 04/10/2012 - 10:32
Incorporating active learning into online instruction
PrintMany librarians have embraced the use of active learning in their teaching. Moving away from lectures and toward activities that get students using the skills they’re learning can lead to more meaningful learning experiences. It’s one thing to tell someone how to do something, but to have them actually do it themselves, with expert guidance, makes it much more likely that they’ll be able to do it later on their own.
Replicating that same “guide on the side” model online, however, has proven difficult. Librarians, like most instructors, have largely gone back to a lecture model of delivering instruction. Certainly it’s a great deal more difficult to develop active learning exercises, or even interactivity, in online instruction, but many of the tools and techniques that have been embraced by librarians for developing online tutorials and other learning objects do not allow students to practice what they’re learning while they’re learning. While some software for creating screencasts—video tutorials that film activity on one’s desktop—include the ability to create quizzes or interactive components, users can’t easily work with a library resource and watch a screencast at the same time.
In 2000, the reference desk staff at the University of Arizona was looking for an effective way to build web-based tutorials to embed in a class that had resulted in a lot of traffic at the reference desk. Not convinced of the efficacy of traditional tutorials to instruct students on using databases, the librarians “began using a more step-by-step approach where students were guided to perform specific searches and locate specific articles,” Instructional Services Librarian Leslie Sult told me. The students were then assessed on their ability to conduct searches in the specific resources assigned. Later, Sult, Mike Hagedon, and Justin Spargur of the library’s scholarly publishing and data management team, turned this early active learning tutorial model into Guide on the Side software.
Guide on the Side is an interface that allows librarians at all levels of technological skill to easily develop a tutorial that resides in an online box beside a live web page students can use. Students can read the instructions provided by the librarian while actively using a database, without needing to switch between screens. This allows students to use a database while still receiving expert guidance, much like they could in the classroom.
A great example of Guide on the Side is this tutorial University of Arizona librarians created for JSTOR (http://bit.ly/zA9DCf). The tutorial not only provides help locating and using the database, but it also gets patrons actively using the database and answering questions about it. Having the tutorial right beside the student is reassuring and convenient, giving him or her experience using the database with help easily accessible.
The moment I saw a Guide on the Side, I was convinced this was a model we should adopt at my own university for database instruction. It’s so much simpler than the multimedia tutorials many librarians have been developing, yet it may be a much better way to actually teach students how to use library resources. The team at the University of Arizona plans to provide the code for Guide on the Side through GitHub (github.com) in early summer so that other institutions can benefit from their innovation.
This project is also an excellent example of what is possible when teaching librarians and technology librarians and staff collaborate to find solutions to common instructional problems. “Many University of Arizona instructional librarians have contributed to helping shape the design and pedagogical approach over the years,” Sult said. “The effort and input of members of the team is a major factor in the campus success of the current iteration.”
MEREDITH FARKAS is head of instructional services at Portland (Oreg.) State University. She is also part-time faculty at San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science. She blogs at Information Wants to Be Free and created Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. Contact her at librarysuccess[at]gmail.com.
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Comments
I noticed that the code has
I noticed that the code has been released at http://code.library.arizona.edu/gots/
This seems like a great alternative for certain kinds of content. But it’s not really active learning, is it? Are worksheets that lead students through a set of predefined tasks active learning? Because that’s what this is—except that instead of a worksheet, it’s all there on the screen. That’s convenient—probably better, more user-friendly—but I don’t think it’s active learning. (which is fine, you don’t need active learning in every case, just trying to clarify)
Also seems worth pointing out that this is sort of an evolution of a format we’ve seen in TILT, Searchpath, etc., but with very welcome updates on the web coding side.
Guide on the Side public beta released
For those who are interested, Guide on the Side is now publicly available. It is available on GitHub, but it’s probably easier to visit our website to learn more and get the download.
http://code.library.arizona.edu/gots/
Thanks!
How can I get the code?
I wonder #1 when the code will be released and #2 how will I find it on Github? There does not seem to be a, easy or clear way of searching the site. I am very interested in trying this out. I think it will be a great tool for our online classes.
Active Learning and Guide on the Side
I saw a librarian from U of A demonstrate this Guide on the Side template at last November’s Arizona Library Association’s annual conference. I thought it was wonderful and probably the best online database training from an academic library I’d seen. It simulates the actual experience that the user will have. She also talked a bit about getting some software and training from the corporate training world, who in my opinion are way ahead of us in the academic library instruction world. I know that last statement may not be appreciated by some librarians.
About ten years ago I worked as a corporate trainer and took a workshop in activity based learning. It was being used successfully in k-12 and in corporate environments like nuclear power plants. I also was exposed to curriculum developers who had studied the concepts of how our brains function when learning, how frequent our brain zones out, automatically, no matter how hard we are trying to focus on something, and also if you don’t practice something within 24 hours of learning it, you lose 80 % of what you just learned.
Something that has struck me about how we have to teach in the academic world versus some corporate environments is that we academic librarians frequently only get 1 hour with students f-2-f or no f-2-f in the online situation, and we are teaching *both* research concepts and how to use an electronic resource. We are teaching ideas and systems training at the same time. In the corporate world, they have the luxury of the time to teach each one separately and then bring them together in a later session. We are at a disadvantage.
As was mentioned in previous posts, some folks don’t like active learning. I am an introvert who also found the on the spot, in front of the class exercises uncomfortable, but I also saw that they can work. Meredith’s point about some international students not liking active learning gets at some cultural differences that I too have heard from faculty teaching international students. In my opinion, the Guide on the Side developed by U of A will be a valuable tool for many of us offering online instruction. It is hands-0n and while it could be an assignment, it can be done independently at one’s computer. I’m looking forward to it’s release this summer. I think it will be a leap forward for us.
Guide on the side
I get so frustrated when I have to maneuver from screen to screen to try and do a new task. Sounds like guide on the side is just what I need. Many times I have to print out the guide so I can look at them while doing the task and I have often wished I could minimize the instruction screen and work at the task without the instruction screen popping off. In the back and forth, I miss some small detail that causes what I am trying to do not to work and then I have to begin again. Then you have the printed guide that you may never need again and feel guilty about wasted paper. You decide to keep it in case it is needed again at some future date and then can not locate it if/when needed again. Sounds like a great program and I am hoping to be able to get it to use. Can picture using it with my kids learning how to use the OPAC, doing netTrekker searches, setting up backpacks in AVL….
Actually, I get pretty
Actually, I get pretty irritated with the whole “guide on the side” thing, particularly in a webinar environment. Tutorials, yes — hands on, great. Face to face training, where there’s opportunity to try out things in private, great (think computer lab for learning databases). Being put on the spot in front of a class so that I’m getting active learning… not so much. And in webinars, I hate, hate, hate silly exercises that are there simply because someone read that it’s supposed to be interactive. (Please no more maps where I click on where I live. Please?) Time is limited in a webinar. I also prefer webinars because I CAN set aside my attention for a minute and go back and pick it up from the recording. That doesn’t work so well if instead of communicating information, the presenter is having everyone do exercises. A more information-focused webinar + a post-webinar tutorial for those who want to try it seems more reasonable to me.
There is something to be said for the sage on a stage in reasonable doses. If you do not know more than I do, if you are not a “sage,” why attend your training? And if you do know more than I do, I’d really like you to impart some of that information before setting me loose to try it myself.
I think of my MLS collection development class on this — we were working in groups and essentially on our own, expected I guess to learn from each other. I probably knew more than anyone else in the group, and I knew next to nothing beyond what was in the text. It was not productive. I really needed a sage on a stage on that one to at least get me started.
Activity is not always the answer
You make some good points in your comment and it really highlights the fact that any pedagogical approach must be used thoughtfully. For most of the webinars I’ve done, I’ve found that a poll before the session asking participants what they hoped to learn followed by a combination of lecture and Q&A works well. It really depends on the subject area, the technology used, and the population you’re working with. A colleague of mine works with a lot of international students who — by and large — HATE doing active learning exercises. With other populations, they are absolutely necessary because of either what’s being taught or because of the motivation/attention span of the population. Part of designing a good learning experience, online or in-person, is thinking about these factors instead of assuming that one approach is going to work for every population and subject. Lecture is great for some situations. Active learning is great for others. A combination is even more frequently the right fit.
And I’m with you on the non-meaningful interactivity in webinars. I give webinars frequently and am always encouraged to have polls during the session. Often when I do they just feel forced instead of meaningfully informing the session. Again, if it’s a good fit (and I’ve had situations in which it was) great. If it’s just to make sure people aren’t snoozing, skip it.
“If it’s just to make sure
“If it’s just to make sure people aren’t snoozing, skip it. “
Amen. Some of what I’ve read about online training seems to say that you incorporate these things to make sure you have people’s attention. Honestly, my feeling is that I’m a grownup (mostly) and if I choose to do training by webinar, my attention is my own responsibility. The pre-poll on what should actually be accomplished w/time for Q&A sounds really good.
And what I really, really don’t like about active learning in any venue is when I am put on the spot publicly. Ouch. Uncomfortable. I’m an introvert by nature and like to process things privately before jumping in publicly. I also tend to not feel competent until I’ve learned quite a bit about the subject. I’ve been reading the book “Quiet” by Susan Cain, and I wonder if there’s a difference between how extroverts and introverts respond to active learning.