Reading, Week 2: One Shot Workshops and Online Teaching Tools

This week we read Jerilyn Veldof's introduction to one-shot workshop development, as well as three papers describing efforts to develop on-line teaching tools for self-directed information literacy skill building.  Veldof addressed something that I have been thinking a lot about in my developing understanding of what instruction means in the library setting.  In most settings, librarians are very restricted in the sense that they may only have one 50-minute block to impart all of their information to patrons.  There is little opportunity for that dynamic of assessment and feedback, or targeting specific holes in patron knowledge.  The ADDIE method (which I learned in Ed School as "backwards design") will definitely serve librarians in using that time the best they can, thinking thoughtfully about where they want patrons to be at the end of their lesson.  This level of planning will allow for librarians to have a concrete idea of what they need to accomplish so that they can plan to meet those goals.

In thinking about the variety of online tools developers are creating for independent learning, I see a great potential cor synthesizing the two methods.  My fear with relying on online tutorials, like the ones described in Yilenek (2008), Johnston (2010), and Griffis (2009) is that they are successful only in lower-level thinking skills.  They can encourage users to remember processes, but not to analyze, evaluate, or create.  I love the image I found, linking the different layers of Blooms Taxonomy to online skills.  It's apt that Wikipedia is on the upper level-- sure, you could have an online tutorial teaching users about Wikipedia, and even mention evaluating skills, but unless they are able to do that first hand, with feedback, I don't feel safe as an information professional "releasing them into the wild."

What if we were able to combine these skills- all basic skills were taught on online tutorials as described by the authors- where users could go at their own pace and target skills that they want to work with, and librarians focus on the higher order thinking skills that need in person feedback?  I have a great fear that in the age of No Child Left Behind we are only focusing on these lower level skills, leaving little ability to evaluate or create.  Let's use librarians for those purposes!