• Are the students in your Library Instruction classes getting the most out of your presentations?

• Do you often find yourself presenting to unengaged, bored students?

The Western New York/Ontario chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (WNY/O ACRL) invites you to a day-long workshop on Active Learning and Library Instruction. Please join us as we return to the beautiful Lodge at Woodcliff and explore active learning and other learning theories and discover how these techniques can be incorporated into teaching, training and other instructional activities in libraries, classrooms and other settings.

This session will provide participants an opportunity to experience and discuss how theories on active learning and student engagement in the acquisition of knowledge can be demonstrated and integrated into the participant's own professional practices. Participants will examine theories on active learning through their involvement in a series of learning activities. The purpose of this session is to identify how the research on learning and instruction can be used as a means to ensure success of students who will be, or are, taught by workshop participants. It is imperative that those professionals who teach in other than classroom settings begin to make use of those strategies that research has identified as most effective. In spite of the volumes of research on the benefits of the use of active strategies, few professors, and even fewer non-instructional faculty, are aware of how to utilize such strategies in their own teaching. The lack of such knowledge forces those who teach to rely on their own understanding of how active learning theories are actually practiced.

The most effective means by which those who teach can understand and accept what research has identified is to experience the way such research actually is implemented in a practical fashion. As noted above, this session will utilize active and cooperative learning as the medium for examination of research on instruction. Cooperative learning is a highly engaging means by which participants actively explore, process, analyze and synthesize the information that is presented. Since research indicates that learning is most effective when participants are actively engaged in such learning, the thrust of this session will utilize this research as the means for acquiring knowledge of effective teaching practices.

Dr. Thomas Sheeran is a professor and long-time member of the faculty in the College of Education at Niagara University. The author of over fifty articles and book chapters, Dr. Sheeran has presented papers and workshops at conferences and colleges across the United States and Canada and recently completed his first book. Dr. Sheeran is a recognized expert in active learning strategies and is widely sought out for his work in that area.

This seminar is for instructional librarians who are interested in combining their expertise in library science with research-based learning theory and methods of instruction toward more effective library information/skills instruction. It includes a theory component and a practice component.

Both components operate on the fundamental premise that the most effective teachers are "teacher designers," not "teacher consumers." Teacher designers are people who have the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to "make a full range of decisions about [instructional] planning, implementation, management," and assessment (Pasch, et al., 1995). The theory component of the seminar will include current theoretical perspectives on teachers, learners, knowledge and learning, and methods of planning, implementing, managing and assessing instruction. In the practice component, librarians will consider the implications of this information for their practice, as well as conceptualize and design materials and strategies that will help them be more effective in the contexts in which they teach.

Jeff Liles is the Library Instruction Coordinator in Milne Library at SUNY Geneseo as well as a Lecturer in the Ella Cline Shear School of Education there. He has twenty years of teaching experience as well as a Master's and a Ph.D. in education. He has presented papers at LOEX and CIT conferences and conducted teaching and learning workshops at Monroe County Community College, SUNY Brockport, Rochester Regional Library Council, and the SUNY Training Center in Syracuse.

Kim Davies has worked as a Reference/Instruction Librarian at SUNY Geneseo since August 1999. Within the past 3 years and through active participation in the ACRL Institute for Information Literacy and a graduate teaching seminar facilitated by Dr. Jeffrey Liles, Ms. Davies has improved her teaching skills and overall presence in the classroom. Her lessons have transformed from teacher-centered to student-centered and incorporate many different hands-on activities and student interaction. Ms. Davies earned her MLS from the University at Buffalo in 1997 and holds a Bachelor's degree in French and International Affairs from the University of New Hampshire.

• Dr. Thomas Sheeran (PDF) -- Need Adobe Acrobat Reader?

• Dr. Jeff Liles (PowerPoint)

• Kim Davies (PowerPoint)