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!