LOEX Library Warm-ups  

This wiki is a place to continue the community and idea sharing from the LOEX 2010 Interactive Session "Break the Ice, Build the Momentum: Successful Strategies for Beginning a Library Instruction Session" presented by Carrie Donovan and Rachel Slough. We appreciate your participation and great ideas from the session. We'll use this space to post the ideas generated by participants from the session, and hope you'll feel free to keep ideas going here. Names were not included on most sheets, so if you would like credit, please let us know! Please contact Carrie (cdonovan at indiana dot edu) or Rachel (rslough at indiana dot edu) for wiki access or with any questions.

LOEX Presentation Link

Review of Steps for Generating Warm-ups

1. Know your learners

2. Define your outcome(s)

3. Brainstorm. Let the crazy out!

4. Create an activity/deliverable

Session Personas/Sample Situations

 These were the personas/situations used in the workshop.

• Persona #1: Karlie is a first-year student who has had a basic introduction to the library during freshman orientation, but beyond that, has little knowledge of the libraries' resources or services. Her research experience includes term papers for her high school classes and searching online to satisfy her own personal (e.g. non-academic) information needs. You will be meeting with Karlie in the context of her introductory writing/composition course in which she is expected to turn in a final paper that is a comparative analysis of two films of her choosing
• Persona #2: Sarah is an upper-division student majoring in a humanities discipline. She has used general library databases for research to find articles, but she tends to use the same one, regardless of her information need. Though she is adept at online searching, Sara's understanding of scholarly information (e.g. how it is created, published, disseminated) and how to recognize it is limited. You will be meeting with Sara in the context of the required, writing-intensive course in her major in which she is expected to turn in a reflection paper surrounding the identification and analysis of a scholarly source.
• Persona #3: Mack is a graduate student at the master's level. He has a teaching assistantship for an introductory-level undergraduate course while taking courses and preparing to write his thesis. While his advisor and the faculty in the department are encouraging, they provide little support or education in the identification and use of resources to support his thesis research. Mack is familiar with the libraries and the research process for his field, but he is ill-equipped to conduct a complete literature review and maintain a systematic approach to documenting and tracking the sources he finds and uses. You will meet with Mack as part of a cross-listed pedagogy course he is required to take as a new instructor in his department.

Further Readings