Recently I read The One World School House by Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy. We are already diving into Khan Academy with gusto and gratitude because while our son will complete his 6th grade coursework in June (he’s in 5th grade, our district doesn’t skip grades but accelerates curriculum) he’ll cover 7th grade coursework this summer with us so he is prepared for another jump ahead to 8th grade coursework in the fall.

This excerpt in particular has been resonating with me, from pages 251-252

The school I envision would embrace technology not for its own sake, but as a means to improve deep conceptual understanding, to make quality, relevant education far more portable and – somewhat counterintuitively – to humanize the classroom. It would raise both the status and the morale of teachers by freeing them from the drudgery and allowing them more time to teach, to help. It would give students more independence and control, allowing they to claim true ownership of their educations.

To humanize the classroom with technology.

I love this. I sincerely care about both the subject I’m teaching and my students being able to deeply understand it, regardless of if I’m teaching in person or via distance learning. I don’t want to be a presence of disembodied pixels scratching a superficial surface of learning. I try to keep authenticity at the core of every webcast I host and/or present, every Moodle course I teach, and in our Thursday night #medlibs chats. I have been thrilled to see so many new students and colleagues joining in, and am so thankful for everyone stepping up to share in leadership of the discussion.

So how does all of this tie in to medical education, let alone medical librarianship?

Did you know Khan Academy already has a Healthcare and Medicine section with some really great resource videos? Last week the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced a collaboration with the Association of American Medical Colleges and Khan Academy to provide free online resources to help students prepare for the revised Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) coming in 2015.

Per the news announcement

“This exciting new collaboration with Khan Academy and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will provide all students with free access to high-quality online educational materials to help them prepare for the revised MCAT exam in 2015,” said Darrell G. Kirch, MD, president and CEO of the AAMC, the organization that administers the MCAT exam. “We view this effort as an important addition to the work the nation’s medical schools and teaching hospitals are doing to encourage and attract future physicians from diverse backgrounds, including students from economically and educationally disadvantaged communities.”

Medical students and residents are encouraged to find out more at MCAT Video Competition, but I especially encourage librarians to scroll down that page a bit and check out out the wealth of resources under How To Make a Khan Academy Video. The guidance and tips there are key for all effective and engaging instructional videos. Think of your screencast tutorials and Jing recordings on your library website/LibGuides – is there potential for some revamping?

Me, December 15, 2007 – University of North Texas

Yeah, I can’t believe they let me have a Masters degree either, especially after the other five year anniversary post I wrote about the process of being waitlisted and ultimately declined.

To mark the occasion I’m sharing excerpts of my 2009 nomination letter for Dr. Ana Cleveland, who received the 2010 ALISE Award for Teaching Excellence in the Field of Library and Information Science. It tells a story that many know parts of but not as a collective whole and certainly not with the picture that says a thousand words.

My name is Nicole Dettmar and it is an honor to support the nomination of my former professor and lifelong inspiration Dr. Ana Cleveland, Regents Professor and Director of the Houston and Health Informatics Programs of the Department of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas (UNT) for the ALISE Award for Teaching Excellence.

On the day Dr. Cleveland called to notify me that I had been accepted as one of the fellows but needed to be a full time student as part of the fellowship program, I tried to decline the opportunity as I didn’t see how this would be possible while working and raising a family. Dr. Cleveland refused to allow me to do so. I will never forget her saying “Do not despair! We will support you!” and was humbled by her confidence in me and my abilities when I had little in myself.

Dr Cleveland was true to her words of support then, numerous times throughout the sixteen months it took to earn my Masters of Science in Information Science degree with a 4.0 average, and now as I am one year into my professional career. When I was a student, she advised me on a course load each semester that included challenging core courses and her health informatics curriculum with other classes that allowed balance for school, work and life. Dr. Cleveland contacted several of her colleagues in the Seattle area about me, an essential introduction that gave me a vital boost from being an unknown distance education student at a Texan school living in Washington to ‘one of Ana’s students.’

Nine days before graduation in December 2007, our house flooded from a storm. I called Dr. Cleveland in tears, once again not seeing how things would be possible for me to still graduate. “Do not despair!” She took the lead and contacted all of my other professors, explaining the situation and coordinating times for me to work out modified final project arrangements with them. I could not have made it through that time without her support and was grateful to still be able to fly out to Texas with my family for graduation after all. Her beaming smile behind me on the platform speaks a thousand words of pride.

I cannot envision a more dedicated, knowledgeable advocate for students and professionals in the medical information field, nor a more genuinely supportive professor than Dr. Ana Cleveland. I also cannot adequately express how grateful I am for the many opportunities she has given me.

Forever and always, thank you Dr. Ana.

After writing Feeding hungry minds: Libraries and MOOCs I backed it up a few steps over at our work blog to cover in more detail What is a MOOC and Why Would I Take One? with a picture that was so much fun to work with. That preoccupied cow line just had to be written to support it, and that’s what I’m always going to think of MOOCs as since our 10 year old son bellowed ‘MOOOOOOC! MOOOOOOOC!’ when he saw what I was writing about. Speaking of distance education, I forgot to mention here that I wrote A Librarian’s Guide to Webcast Wrangling  for Letters to a Young Librarian back in September – whoops! I hope it’s of help for librarians who are increasingly becoming involved with webcasts.

Back to MOOCs. The day after I wrote the work article, our Provost wrote about the University of Washington’s involvement in MOOCs. What was mentioned as the future of higher education in the opening keynote by Steven Bell at our Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association (PNC/MLA) Emerging Roles Symposium in Portland a few days later? MOOCS and the fact that just 6 months ago no one was really talking about them.

I’m a huge fan of distance learning since it is one of the main focus areas of my job and also how I obtained my graduate degree. I constantly seek out opportunities to attend webcasts, online courses, Twitter hashtag chats (#medlibs tomorrow on expert searching, anyone?), you name it – I want to experience it all, see what does and doesn’t work, and see how I can adapt my teaching style to be more effective. Speaking of, check out the free new courses from the National Library of Medicine National Training Center along these lines!

Over the weekend I read a great article from The Seattle Times entitled Why some of the best universities are giving away their courses that I highly recommend if you have remained skeptical about all the distance learning buzz as it provides a great overview of the history of distance education and the reasons why more universities are offering classes via Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs.

I’ll give away the surprise ending because it’s easy to miss, and more in our field need to think about this role in the future (Sally Gore already is!), bold emphasis mine:

People with hungry minds will always find a way to feed them.

“We’ve had MOOCs and open learning resources for centuries,” says Dave Cillay, executive director of WSU Online. “They’re called libraries.“

I’ve never met Mr. Cillay but I want to even though he’s obviously a Coug and I’m, well, a Dawg (our mascot is cuter).

The social network analysis course I wrote about earlier began on Monday and I am very impressed thus far. This is not so much due to the content (although I am learning from it!) but the Coursera class page layout, navigability, integration of adult learning concepts (how do they have these videos with quizzes embedded at intervals within them that offer immediate feedback to student answers along with tracking that they’ve been attempted?!) and other features thus far blow everything I’ve experienced in distance learning via Vista, Blackboard, Moodle and other platforms completely out of the water. I want it for my own teaching!

By the way, Massive is an understatement when it comes to this particular online class. Consider the course launched on Monday, this tweet as of just before 6pm Tuesday notes

@alberto_cottica So far 55K have registered, 11K have watched the first video, 730 have submitted the first assignment #SNAc.

— Coursera SNA (@SNAcourse) September 26, 2012

I don’t know what librarian involvement there may be in this particular MOOC but I’d like to hope there was some.  I see opportunities for health sciences librarians to become involved in similar settings that align well with the international Trends in Health Sciences Librarianship that Mark MacEachern featured (links all better now! the PubMed link includes a UMich proxy so it’s a little off but you can grab the PubMed IDs ) especially increasing roles as teachers and greater emphasis on online access. My coworker Gail Kouame alerted me to a free webcast series from Libraries Thriving, “A Collaborative Space for e-Resource Innovation and Information Literacy Promotion. Thinking and doing” and I’m checking out their January webcast To Evaluation and Beyond: The Evolving Role of the Embedded Librarian.

More thinking and doing by librarians leads to satiated minds. What better way to do so than checking out quality free education resources that are accessible from anywhere, analyzing the concepts you’ve learned from them to see what would & wouldn’t work for you and your job duties/setting, and sharing with your colleagues?

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks – John Muir

For the past several weeks our 10 year old son has been saying with unbridled enthusiasm that he can’t wait to go back to school and he’ll finally get his wish today as he begins 5th grade. I can’t relate since the first day of school since 4th grade or so for me was met with something between resignation and gut-wrenching anxiety. I am beyond thankful he doesn’t seem to take after me at all in that regard.

It’s impossible to not reflect on the passage of time during a quiet family morning last week walking through Muir Woods National Monument in California, where a vast number of the coastal redwoods are between 500-800 years old with some topping 1,000.

I’ve been reflecting on time ever since – especially about Thursdays at 6 pm Pacific/9 Eastern as the Twitter #medlibs chat began this summer. It’s been fabulous and a great start for a new channel of professional networking for our field, and I’m very thankful for guest hosts Patricia Anderson, Alisha Miles and Michelle Kraft. However, it takes a large amount of time outside of work for promoting, hosting, then parsing out transcripts and pulling links from the chats.  When I’m on vacation, not all of that happens as the Transcripts show. As a new school year begins and all the extracurricular activities kick into gear once more I know there will be some time shifts, and the chat needs even more promotion to encourage others to participate in the networking fun.

What is the most effective use of time and resources for the #medlibs chat? Does something need to change? What connections need to be tapped for effective promotion and engagement? I certainly don’t know, but I’m investing some time to try and figure these dynamics out better by enrolling in Social Network Analysis – brought to my attention thanks to social networking via Patricia Anderson. Unlike my earlier elementary school days, I also can’t wait for the first day of school to start on September 24th and encourage you to take a look and considering signing up too!

Update: Per first Perhaps Bright Idea below, affirmative!

@eagledawg Yes, if you preface questions with a “Q:” that would be a great help.

— Debra Cavanaugh (@debracav) April 17, 2012

On Wednesday April 18th the Medical Library Association is hosting a webcast, Leveraging Mobile Technologies for Health Sciences Libraries, that is 1) On Wednesday again (yay!) 2) Brings back the live studio panel of presenters (yay!) and 3) Has an established hashtag ahead of time (woohoo!)

Everyone already knows what the hashtag is because it’s clearly listed on the webcast website, right?

Well… no.

The hashtag #mlamobiletech is within the guide that is sent to site coordinators, specifically to be used as a way to send in questions during the webcast time to MLA in addition to email.

Establishing a hashtag ahead of time for the MLA webcast is a very welcome step in the right direction. However, it will requires a lot of effort for MLA staff to filter questions from our natural social communication channel discussion of the webcast content, resources, and thoughts that are being shared both during and after the webcast.

Perhaps Bright Ideas:

• Should we preface our #mlamobiletech webcast tweets with a Q: to make it easier for MLA staff to identify and convey our questions?
• Will MLA staff relay #mlamobiletech questions to the presenters to answer verbally, or will they be tweeting answers too?
• If the latter, could they preface an answer with an A: so it’s clear?

We have come a long way since last fall’s MLA Webcast: Change and WTH? and I want to acknowledge that but still see opportunity for improvement. What do you think?

Side note: If it hasn’t been abundantly clear already due to my abysmal lack of posts this year, literally all of my professional brainpower is being used up between the job that pays me and helping to coordinate an incredible local assistance committee to bring you the best experience possible at MLA 12 in Seattle.  I decompress every night by indexing the 1940 census (my goal is 1,000 names by April 30th) instead of thinking more about medical librarianship or I’d never sleep. Trust me, this is just a temporary phase.

Our son at an old cider press on Guernsey Island, Summer 2008

I’ve had this imagine in my mind since June as I’m seeing a sharp uptick in the number of students who enroll in my online classes then aren’t able to finish for Medical Library Association continuing education (MLA CE) credit by the end of them. Some students contact me to let me know the reasons why, some students don’t, others aren’t seeking MLA CE credit in the first place and are happy to audit and learn a few new things.

I’ve been teaching online since 2008 and am constantly seeking ways to reduce the barriers involved in distance learning for my students as I know full well from earning my Master’s online that they are numerous.

However, I can’t do a thing about what I think is a corresponding sharp uptick in demand for employee productivity (maybe make that constant speedup?) in the wake of budget cuts that have often decimated staff levels. Perhaps there’s been an unspoken culture shift resulting in no value given to on-the-job time for continuing education. Even worse, people may be encouraged to take free CEs but must do them on their own time since there’s not a second to spare at work. Heaven forbid we give ourselves time to think after completing a project at work, I have nothing to do with e-resources but need the book for that chapter alone. I only mention time since my online MLA CE classes are free – this doesn’t include those who are prevented from taking continuing education classes due to cost after training budgets have been axed.

Are students angry about this?

Absolutely, but in the wrong direction: turned inside and deprecating themselves.

I feel awful about the number of messages I’ve received along these lines this summer. I know my students are smart and extremely hardworking and some of them may even read my currently infrequent rambling over here since I’m also crushed this summer.

I shall speak clearly and may have to include this in my future class expectations documentation:

No bullying allowed. This includes towards yourself.

We have greater awareness today of the harmful effects of teasing and bullying, but there is one area of our lives where it remains unchecked: within ourselves. Even the most sensitive and compassionate among us, who would never intentionally hurt another, do not think twice about mercilessly berating themselves. I would like us to examine this accepted practice.

Dr. Linda Silverman continues

At the end of an exhausting day, when my own “Peanut Gallery” reminds me of all the things I didn’t get done, and starts to make me feel guilty, I now hear another voice in my head with competing messages. This appreciative voice says to me, “Look what you accomplished today! Good job! You’ve done enough. Now it’s time to rest and rejuvenate. Everything else will wait until tomorrow.”

If the line between my students’ self-perception as a success or failure as a result of taking a class from me is obtaining MLA CE credit, something is seriously wrong. I certainly want to encourage everyone to seek MLA CE credit but if it doesn’t work out I am not sitting in judgement of my students. That would take a level of audacity even my snarky self can’t pull off in good conscience.

Just because I teach free CEs does not mean I have the right to waste anyone’s time. It is not a waste of my time to create the classes and not have people finish them for credit. I’m not a professor and have no tenure riding on MLA CE credit outcomes. All I want to know is if whatever time my students were able to spend on the class is in any way helpful for them. If so, they have succeeded. Good job! Celebrate taking the time to learn! If not, it is I who have failed my students by not making the class abstract and objectives clear enough for them to be able to determine before enrolling if this is a true learning opportunity for them.

For those of you in the field who teach, are you seeing similar patterns? What can we do to help to reduce this self-imposed stress?