I’ve really enjoyed hearing from folks at ZSR this summer about a variety of small and mighty conferences! Along that same theme, on June 5th and 6th, I attended “The Innovative Library Classroom” or TILC conference, a day-long conference dedicated to exploring innovative practices related to teaching and learning in libraries. The conference is capped at 100 participants, and there are pre-conference sessions on Thursday, followed by a poster session and social held at William & Mary’s Swem Library from 5-7 pm that evening. One of my favorites of all the excellent posters presented was “Learning from Student Perspectives on AI: Considerations for AI Literacy Instruction” by Madison Veeneman at UNC-CH. The results from Madison’s focus group data showed that students share broader concerns about AI than earlier research suggests.

The conference is held at William & Mary’s School of Education from 8:30-4:30 on Friday, and this year’s keynote was given by Dr. Don Simmons from the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons. Dr. Simmons has worked at both public and academic libraries and shared excellent insights on information privilege and the challenges students face when libraries and librarians don’t do enough to make our spaces and classes welcoming and accessible to all.

TILC has three simultaneous tracks and four sessions over the course of the day, two in the morning and two after lunch, closing with a series of lightning talks! I particularly appreciated the presentation by Elon librarians Jasmine Spitler and Patrick Rudd titled “Making Instruction Assessment Sustainable: Exploring a Programmatic Approach to Student Learning Assessment.” They discussed how they implemented “a sustainable, programmatic approach to student learning assessment across the curriculum at Elon University.” The value of having a dedicated assessment was apparent as they discussed the challenges in creating and developing an assessment plan appropriate to their institution.

I also appreciated “The Power of No: Setting Sustainable Boundaries to Avoid Burnout” by librarian Garrison Libby from UNC-Charlotte. During the program, Garrison used well-crafted scenarios that addressed common issues that often prevent one from saying “no,” and then the room crowd-sourced options and approaches! I appreciated the scenario-based approach and even found myself changing my own mind after one particularly thoughtful discussion by the group!

TILC is a well-planned and well-executed conference that I highly recommend! It’s just a four-hour drive, and the campus of William and Mary and the town of Williamsburg are both fun to visit! You can find presentations and handouts from past TILC conferences here. I’ll wrap up this quick post with a pic of the folks from ZSR!