Emerging Technologies, Emerging Teachers:
Collaborative Workshops at Simmons GSLIS
Beginnings of the Workshop Series: Spring 2006
In the spring of 2006, a conversation between Linnea Johnson, Alison Cody, and Jennifer Lege (chair of ASIS&T@Simmons) led to the creation of a workshop series focused on technology topics. Alison Cody was appointed workshop coordinator. For the first round of the workshop series six topics were chosen:
- How to Set Up an RSS Aggregator
- Social Bookmarking & Tagging
- Podcasting & Internet Radio
- HTML & CSS
- Wikis
- Buying Technology Gadgets
- Microsoft Office Suite (PowerPoint, Word, Excel)
Each workshop was scheduled for two sessions. Volunteer teachers were recruited from the membership of ASIS&T@Simmons and the TRA staff. Volunteers were given very little in the way of formal guidelines regarding what content to cover and how to develop it—the hope was that this freedom would foster sessions that would harness the enthusiasm of the instructor as much as possible. Instructors were encouraged to include hands-on content, references for additional information and exploration, and handouts when appropriate.
The workshop series was met with great enthusiasm from the GSLIS community. Students and faculty attended the workshops, and conversations between instructors and attendees throughout the semester indicated that the workshops were a valuable resource for students. Workshop attendance for the first semester totaled at 72 participants, with a high of 17 and a low of 3. On April 25, as the series was in full swing, Michael Stephens mentioned the workshop series in a post on the ALA TechSource Blog:
"On the 2.0 Job Description (Part 2): LIS Students in a 2.0 World"
Candy Schwartz, co-editor, Library & Information Science Research at Simmons College GSLIS, wrote to say that GSLIS students are teaching social software and more "for the whole student community, not just one class." She urged me to visit the course listings at http://my.simmons.edu/gslis/techlab/workshops.shtml. Classes are co-sponsored by the Tech Lab and the student chapter of the American Society of Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T). Each is an hour of hands-on experience in the lab, with discussion and a resource list takeaway. "If this flies," Candy said, "they will probably do it every semester."