The Best Classes

The fall rush is on, and I've been teaching a lot of classes on library stuff - mostly marketing classes, with some finance thrown in. Still to come are advertising/public relations classes and accounting. I've had some great sessions and some not so great, so my thoughts today concern what leads towards the best library instruction classes.

• Faculty buy-in. Generally, most faculty don't schedule a library session for their class unless they believe it's important (not counting the "I'll be out of town, can you talk to my students?" minority.) But there are levels of buy-in, including those who collaborate with the librarian on the assignment, or share a copy of the assignment before the session, or who attend the session and participate in it, or time it so that the students realize its importance.
• Student buy-in (which depends a lot on faculty buy-in.) There's nothing like the faculty stressing the importance of the session to make students pay attention (except maybe "this is due real soon, so I'd better pay attention.") When they're really interested, it generates an energy like nothing else.
• "Ah-ha" moments, for the students, and even for the presenter. It's great when the "I get it" light bulb goes on (for them, and for us.)
• Technology that behaves. This includes hardware that works (machines that aren't in la-la-land, computer mice and monitors that are actually talking to the computers) and a network that's in a good mood.
• Databases and other resources that behave. Two weeks ago I presented at one of our satellite locations: the first database I went to gave us the "we're too busy, try again later" message; the third database had a similar message (and these were database messages, not our network.) It's nice when that DOESN'T happen, when everything behaves as it's supposed to.
• Databases that haven't done anything wacky since last term. I understand vendors changing interfaces; I can handle that, and the students can handle that. What I don't like are vendors asking for mysterious plug-ins that you didn't need last term (never mind the fact that you probably don't have admin rights on the machine you're using, and couldn't download a plug-in anyway.) Nor do I appreciate vendors whose products suddenly have less functionality that they had last term (if I could use this example in the spring, why have you changed your content so that it's not possible to recreate that search?)

Here's hoping that your fall is going well, and that things are behaving themselves.