How your library expertise can influence the learning

environment: an interactive wrap-up session

Sarah MooreUniversity of Limerick

Lesson 1

• Be still and listen

Lesson 2: Getting inside the heads of learners

• When students (N=1500) were asked what they were most concerned/worried about when starting college, the most commonly cited worry was……

Lesson 3: use your imagination

• When any creative person looks at an event, the event is more than itself

Contradictory traits often present in creative people

• Huge physical activity – lots of quiet and rest• Cleverness and naivite• Playfulness and discipline• Imagination and reality• Extraversion and introversion• Humility and pride• Rebelliousness and conservatism• Passion and objectivity• Pain and pleasure

Czikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) The work and lives of 91 eminent people, Harpercollins: New York

Lesson 4: Provide room for the X factor

• The mystery ingredient and allowing for diversity of experience

Lesson 5: Ignore emotions at your peril

• The recollected, lasting effects of education may be more emotional than cognitive– Laughter, humour, fun– Intense positive affect – pleasure, desire, joy,

elation, despair, hope, delight, fear, deep satisfaction

– INTEREST!– Empathy, care– Empowerment and confidence

Lesson 6: Remember the roller-coaster effect

• There is a V shaped adjustment curve for many people arriving at University for the first time

Lesson 7: Be aware of the novice – expert divide

• Based on our statistics, more experienced educators tend to be less effective in the eyes of their students, than new educators are

Differences between novice expert

• Experts underestimate the time it takes for novices to complete tasks (‘ah you’ll be grand)

• Domain limitations (‘I don’t know anything about that’)

• Overconfidence (I can’t possibly be wrong!)• Glossing over (‘that’s not important’)• Overreliance on contextual cues (where did

you find that? Who told you that?)• Inflexibility (This is the way it is done)

Lesson 8: The moderating effects of class size

• Class size is the main moderator of students perspectives on their learning. Student teacher ratio is a political issue as well as a learner focused issue. Improvements in this ratio are necessary but not sufficient for improving learning environments

Lesson 9: try softer – look for the low lying fruit

• Knowing people’s names• Quick checks about what’s happening• Clearer notes/insructions• Easy ways to follow up and keep track

Lesson 10: Risk and growth

• Learning to take risks in safe environments can equip learners with great courage and self-belief

• Education is part of the process of becoming and being

Chance

Looking in unlikely places

• The evidence suggests that students utilise a much narrower repertoire of search strategies than those that are available to them

• Looking hard enough and helping our students to do the same – ‘to strive to seek and not to yield’