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I always enjoy NCLA, and this year I was extremely fortunate to participate in three sessions led by ZSR Librarians and I want to brag on those awesome librarians in this post!

#SquadGoals: Creating and Sustaining a Library Instruction Community (Kyle, Kathy, Meghan, and Hu)

Per our description in Sched, in this round table, we collectively defined instruction communities and invited participants to share their personal experiences with formal and informal instruction communities. We identified some of the common instructional challenges librarians face and discussed some of the benefits of taking part in an instruction community and share how our community has encouraged personal growth, team cohesion, collaboration, and improved teaching.

Kyle and the rest of the panel came up with a highly interactive model for this round table that worked very well, engaging the participants more than many of the traditional round tables I’ve experienced! It was such a pleasure to assist with this round table!

Watch this Space: Emerging Trends in Credit Bearing Information Literacy Courses (Amanda, Kyle, Summer, and Hu)

Again, borrowing from our description, this panel presentation explored how several academic librarians are pushing the boundaries on information literacy instruction in the credit-bearing setting in the areas of content, grading, assignments, and pedagogy. Amanda discussed her face-to-face course that incorporates critical information literacy, critical pedagogy, open pedagogy, and Wikipedia-based assignments. Kyle discussed his introductory online course that challenges students to be agents of social change and incorporates open pedagogy, problem-based learning, and un-grading.  Summer discussed her upper-level discipline-specific course that incorporates entrepreneurial pedagogy and non-traditional research assignments, and I discussed the LIB 290  course that explores fake news, junk science, and fact-checking through the lenses of cognitive biases and logical fallacies. We also discussed various emerging trends related to these courses.  Amanda, Kyle, and Summer were amazing on the panel, developing an approach to the session that struck a balance between describing what we are doing in our courses and the trends we see for the future.

Know when to hold ’em, Know when to fold ’em: Reinvigorating, reinventing (and occasionally relinquishing) library outreach programs (Meghan and Hu)

Meghan developed this amazing title and awesome content that clearly resonated with the crowd of 60+ who attended this session! Through a series of failure confessions, an examination of unintended consequences and slip-ups, we explored the life cycle of library programming and discussed when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, and when to walk away, and we shared some great stories. This presentation was so much fun! It really made me want to see an NCLA outreach group akin to the ACRL Library Marketing and Outreach group.

I was honored to be a part of these great presentations, led by amazing and talented colleagues. And while I’m at it, here is a shout out to all the members of ZSR who worked so hard to make NCLA such an excellent experience for everyone who attended! (there are just too many people to list!) Thank you! I can’t wait to see what NCLA’21 looks like!