Innovative involvement not embarrassing imitation: using technology to connect with students without treading on virtual toes
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Presented at the BIALL Conference 18 June 2009, Emily Allbon gives her paper about connecting with law students via her website Lawbore, her teaching and the use of classroom clickers. Question slides (and answers) from the session are included. For full description of session: http://www.biall.org.uk/pages/session-2a.html
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Innovative involvement not embarrassing imitation: using technology to connect with students without treading on virtual toes
- 3. Notice us!
- 4. The Web 2.0 answer?
- 5. What happens at ?
- 6. Why is Lawbore great? …because it’s like a Mini… Deceptive capacity – loads crammed in! Fun to use Ingenious design touches to make life easier
- 7. Brand you can trust Clear vision Economical Lights up your life!
- 8. Oh man – these students are messed up – how can I help?
- 9. Images from law student hell #1 Students getting buried under vast quantities of information
- 10. Images from law student hell #2 Reliance on one or two textbooks and not much else….(blinkered to the joys of journals etc…)
- 11. Images from law student hell #3 Too many of them… … only one of me!
- 12. Images from law student hell #4 Isolation – need for a ‘community feel’
- 16. Free publisher content!
- 24. New features for Lawbore? Twitter feed onto City Hub Careers blog Alignment with Lawbore Pro Greater content for Learnmore
- 27. Why use ‘em?
- 35. So what do the students think?
- 36. “ Having just had a manic term on the CPE just wanted to say thank you for all the work you put into Lawbore - it's phenomenal!” “ Lawbore is AWESOME, it really is. Helping lots with the revising.” “ I found your tutorial on mooting invaluable and referred it to anyone that has questions about mooting. It is really really well done” “ Learnmore is so useful and helpful! Such a support when everything is so new…” “ I love the fact the site is completely different to anything else out there: vibrant, stylish, attractive and interesting. Lawbore is totally focused on students.” “ Learnmore = a tutor on duty 24 hrs” Great graphics and has a real interactivity feel, the talking guides for law reports and citations are brilliant. Just the right tone of practical information with encouraging personality of your voice. I love the Moots guide - very funny. I have just come across your Lawbore portal and wanted to say how impressive it looks. Very inviting, easy to navigate and informative.
Editor's Notes
- Thanks for coming – you’ll have noticed by now that you all have a handset – I’ll be talking a bit about these towards the end of the paper, but you get the chance to use them when you see a question slide…
- Like this one! Simply press the button on your handset between 1-4.
- For most academic librarians, the challenge offered today more than ever is that of getting students to recognise that we have something to offer them – that our expertise can make their lives easier – by taking on board the recommendations we give them, attending training we put on, using our online tutorials we can make their research easier and help them keep up to date. When I first began at City in 2000, I wasn’t too much older than my undergraduates and was around the same age as the average GDL student, which made it easier for me to fool myself into thinking I knew what they wanted as well as what I thought they needed. Things are very different now in the post-30 world and I have to work much harder to connect. I worry that the highlight for my students during my teaching programme last year was when I unwittingly stepped in a wastepaper basket! No-one could stop laughing for half the session.
- Much of the conference this year (and indeed last year) focuses on the technologies available, and how we can harness them to better connect with our students. Many of you in this room will have been experimenting with blogs, wikis, twitter, facebook and instant messaging. There are loads of examples of good practice in this – the Bod Blog is an excellent resource for students, with new content appearing most days, blogs from LSE, Birkbeck and more keep students informed with library news, law-related developments and musings on life. Some of you will be feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all, wondering if it really is worth jumping into the web 2.0 frenzy, whether you have the time or indeed the skills for it. There has been much coverage in the press over whether students really want their lecturers and indeed librarians in their space. Are we risking credibility by trying too hard to be cool? The truth is I’m floundering around a bit too – wondering what is the best direction for our provision, and what I can cut back on to mean I have the time to dedicate to this. All hardened bloggers will say anyone who says they don’t have time to blog is talking rubbish, so I won’t risk it here…but it is a concern of many. Thinking of communicating in new ways requires some imagination, and I think many of us are wary of looking like we’re trying too hard to be revolutionary. Where do we fit in all the essential stuff – collection development, book ordering, teaching, enquiry work – with the growing number of students and ever decreasing budget pressures on our time are weighty. Is it realistic to imagine we can take on another commitment?
- All of the communication with students at the City Law School comes via Lawbore, the portal I set up some 6 years ago now. It’s a bit of a dinosaur compared to all the new stuff many of you are creating. Some of you will have heard me talk about Lawbore at the Biall conference in 2005, and hopefully I won’t repeat too much of that here! A lot has changed in those 4 years, personally-speaking I’m a mum now, offloaded a husband, professionally I’ve taken on a massive new role at work and Lawbore mirrors this, offering so much more than the 2005 version. I used a slightly convoluted analogy then to flag up Lawbore’s features and thought I’d have another go here. In 2005 I used my Mini One and in 2009 I’ll be using my newer Mini Clubman to describe the newer Lawbore.
- Economical - saves you time researching
- So I’ll briefly just talk about where the idea for Lawbore came from all those years ago – way before the explosion of web 2.0. Crucially it was based entirely on my observations of my students and the questions they were asking me. As sole law librarian, my office is on the floor dedicated to law within the main university library, students are happy to drop by with their concerns about all sorts of things. The law school office is a 5 minute walk away from the main building so burning questions often don’t seem to be able to hold until then, my office being a closer bet. Also the teaching I do for undergraduates highlighted a lot of gaps in knowledge which I wanted to address.
- We all know the issues students have with even locating resources detailed on a reading list, never mind doing research of their own. The difficulties in tracking down journal articles online when they could be present in any number of databases remaining a trial. The GDL at City is extremely intellectually rigorous and the sheer quantity of reading they need to do each week, as well as all the extra-curricular stuff they need to do to remain competitive (pro bono, competitive mooting, writing prize essays) means that some find it difficult to keep their heads above water. I wanted to ease this – signposting some curriculum material, demonstrating that finding resources isn’t as daunting as it may appear at first.
- Undergraduates are most likely to have this problem, with many finding it challenging to read around a subject, preferring in many cases to stick to a couple of student textbooks, rather than using a wide range of materials. They needed to have their horizons broadened – again by presenting information to them in a welcoming and easy-to-understand fashion. They don’t really ‘get’ the point of journals at first.
- Student numbers are increasing every year, as do the hours I need to spend away from my office in meetings. I wanted to make sure there was support online as an alternative to me.
- There were lots of problems some years ago with regard to students not picking up messages, their inboxes getting full up and a good deal of confusion about what was going on. I wanted to address this by giving the students all the information they needed in one place, from all parts of the Law School. Also as the City Law School comprises of the professional courses at Grays Inn Place (previously known as the Inns of Court School of Law) there were issues getting news about events out there to students.
- I’ve not been tempted to try a Lawbore facebook page but twitter was worth a try. I’ve only just started tweeting and am finding it quite challenging, mainly because of this whole ‘where do students really want us to be?’ question. The last thing I want is for my students to say – ‘why does she think we care what she’s been up to?’. I have always had a good relationship with my students – they know it’s worth keeping on the right side of me. During my teaching one of their assessments is to do a presentation on Lawbore and many of them pick out the About Us page as one that interests them. Similarly we recently had a Learning and Teaching conference at City and one of the speakers was the Dean of Students, a professor in Sociology. He’d done some research on student feedback and one of the things that came out was that students liked to know about their lecturers and liked to think they had some insight into their lives. That said, I’m finding it difficult to strike a balance between the personal and professional threads of my life, which is why I’m hoping to hone my skills over the summer before the students start again in Sep.
- Careers blog – new sub-site featuring vid interviews with alumni, pro bono, unique content written by academics, alumni, current students, careers advisors – Lawbore Future Lawyer
- So what about the teaching then?
- Telling a large lecture room full of excitable 18 year olds about the joys of legal citation and trying to explain why it’s important to update is an uphill struggle. It’s never going to light anyone’s fire and unless you have some pretty good jokes at your disposal or are maybe wearing something glam you’re going to find it difficult to keep them from chatting to their neighbour or dropping off to sleep. Obviously this is worst case scenario, and most of the time the students are keen to learn, but when teaching to very large groups you need something extra. PRS is a great way to keep them focused. They are genuinely interested to see what everyone else responds and they get pretty competitive. It’s a good way of checking knowledge before and after, to make sure you’re not just talking to yourself. Asking a question at the beginning of a session and then again at the end, can be a very effective way of checking information is going in. You can make up PRS slides on the hoof, so if something comes to you during the session you can just insert it in. This flexibility means to a certain extent the session can become student-led. It encourages participation – those shy uncertain students are much more likely to participate when answers are anonymous. Good also as an ice-breaker at the beginning of a session. Let’s have a go at some eg’s….
- To get them going you can use an ice-breaker – a silly question or an anagram like this one. Can you choose the letters which complete the name of the social tool of the moment.
- Yes/No ones are great for a broad brush assessment of knowledge
- 34.37% canada 28.47% UK 46.89% iceland 26.52% chile
- You can do questions which can take into account first, second and third choices, weighting them differently.
- Feedback on session v important!
- Hopefully not this!! Stats? RtL – 70% students thought it made it more fun Presentation went down well –though some repetition. Liked the practice of public speaking. Wanted marks. Hands on = popular. 100% liking the combo of hands on sessions and workbooks.