Tag Archives: Continuing Professional Education

CPDWL Coaching initiative: Campaign for volunteer coaches

The coaching method has been explored by the Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning Standing Committee over the years, as part of Satellite Conferences and as part of the IFLA WLIC programme. Since 2019 CPDWL is collaborating with Management & Marketing Section on the Coaching initiative.

We are now very pleased that the Coaching initiative was approved by the Professional Committee of IFLA for the next three years 2020 to 2022.
At the WLIC 2020 n Dublin the session will focus again on individual coaching, and the format will be a drop-in/walk-in session where coaches are prepared to meet the delegates that want to be coached. As was the goal of the 2019 session, CPDWL and M&M aim to offer coaching in all IFLA languages this year too, as well as any additional language spoken by volunteer coaches.The purpose of the Coaching initiative is to support the coachee (the person who wants to be coached) in aligning organisational and individual goals to improve individual performance and to ensure that the organisation’s mission is achieved.

Coaching focuses on asking open questions, and allowing the coachee to come up with the solution. This differs from mentoring which mainly focuses on giving advise.

In order to give the coaching session, we need many coaches. Maybe you are one of them? If you have experiences in coaching or if you are interested in developing your coaching skills, you are very welcome to contact us!

During Spring term 2020 an online coach training programme will be given in the format of webinars, in order to prepare for acting as coach at the WLIC coaching session. Vera Keown, member of M&M SC and Certified Leadership Coach, is planning the training programme and will be instructor at the webinars.

Since we aim to offer coaching in many languages, we are also interested in knowing if you can coach in any of the IFLA languages or your mother tongue.

Please send your expression of interest to: Carmen Lei carmen@ift.edu.mo or Barbara Schleihagen schleihagen@bibliotheksverband.de.

For further information about CPDWL’s coaching initiative, please contact: Ewa Stenberg , Convenor of the Coaching initiative ewa.stenberg@mau.se.

More general information about the Coaching Programme here https://www.ifla.org/cpdwl/projects

The coaching work group: Ewa Stenberg, Almuth Gastinger, Barbara Schleihagen, Carmen Lei, Ulrike Lang, Vera Keown

INELI-MENA-Egypt: librarians as motors of change

INELI-MENA-Egypt is one of the great initiatives and voluntary efforts that need to be highlighted. INELI-MENA-Egypt is a leadership e-training program working under the auspices of the Egyptian Library Association, aiming to cultivate and develop future Egyptian public library leaders and build a strong professional network to advocate for their libraries.

The e-training program will last for one year & provides online learning modules adapted from Global Libraries Initiatives (GL) program INELI (The International Network of Emerging Library innovators), but in Arabic language through Moodle platform.

Currently 19 innovators (cohort 1) are being trained on mandatory modules (i.e. Innovation in libraries; change management; Advocacy; and libraries & SDGs) and one selective module (using data; risk management; conflict management & building successful teamwork) that will enhance their competencies and build national e-learning network to improve their leadership skills. INELI-MENA-Egypt Director Mr. MustafaTuhami was keen to add a new module titled “communication skills” to enhance English language among the participants, as he believes that this is the right path to be connected with professionals and peers around the world and practice international librarianship, this was done in partnership with IDEAS.

INELI-MENA-Egypt innovators at Greater Cairo Public Library

It is worth mentioning that INELI-MENA Egypt is a national network build on the tremendous success of the International Network of Emerging Library Innovators – Middle East & North Africa “INELI-MENA”. INELI-MENA is one of a kind and unique e-training leadership program in the region, implemented by the Arab Federation of Libraries & Information (AFLI) from 2015-2018 and funded by Global Libraries Initiatives (GL) at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). It provided the emerging library leaders with opportunities to connect with each other to explore new ideas, to experiment new services, and learn from each other.

Over whole four days INELI-MENA-Egypt held its 1st. convening in Egypt from 26-29 June 2019, the schedule was full of training practices that focused on engaging librarians in a learning environment.

Change in the digital era

Prof. Shawky Salem, Professor of Informatics, at the University of Alexandria & IFLA Governing Board Member 2003-2007, the keynote speaker presented an important lecture on change in the digital era and emphasis on the importance of investment in human resources. He praised the voluntary efforts exerted by INELI-MENA & INELI-MENA-Egypt & staff. He focused on the leadership & innovation as an element of change in the digital age.

I am an expert @

An activity conducted by Mrs. Marwa Kamel, INELI-MENA-Egypt Network Coordinator and Director of Elzawya Elhamra Public Library. The idea is to let the innovators explore and reflect on just how amazing they are in certain subjects related to their work in libraries. This is matched with the ALA Libraries Transform campaign messaging that reflects the new emphasis on library expertise, with such messages as “Because the expert in the library is you” and “Because the best search engine in the library is the librarian.”.

Unconference:

An open session to address many ideas & issues in librarianship field, the session was led by Ms. Rasha Essmat INELI-MENA Network Coordinator and Head of Programming Sector at Egypt’s Society for Culture & Development.

Innovation:

A workshop about innovation was conducted by Prof. Emad Saleh, INELI-MENA Learning Coordinator and the Director of the Egyptian National Library; he focused on the definition of creativity & innovation; innovation in libraries; creative thinking strategies; models and creative practices in libraries and the importance of creativity and innovation for libraries.

Collaborative team projects

Team projects are an outstanding outcome of the program, as participants will form action project teams to develop a service and /or program to benefit their libraries to consolidate their learning and support the implementation of the SDGs in Egypt. A brainstorming session were conducted, innovators were given the opportunity to develop a program/service to be implemented in their libraries. The outputs were four programs to be implemented: “We are all one hand; Green library; Book delivery App; Make your book”.

INELI-MENA-Egypt at Zawya el Hamra Public Library

 

Impact assessment:

Within the framework of the periodic evaluation of the program, Prof. Amany El Sayed, Head of LIS Department at Helwan University focused on measuring the personal & work skills that was enhanced for innovators during their e-training.

Library tours:

Innovators visit two libraries 6th October Public Library a branch library of the National Library of Egypt, and Bibliotheca Alexandrina to get acquainted with the services provided in both libraries, a session was conducted later on their reflection about the tours and pros. & cons. About library visits.

INELI-MENA-Egypt innovators @ 6th october Public Library

 

INELI-MENA-Egypt innovators @Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Communication skills workshop

Led by Libby Bergstrom, the Global Reach Libraries Program Director at IDEAS & Patty Larson, Global Educational Consultant at IDEAS to boost the innovators English communication skills and prepare innovators to the English modules through the learning platform.

Coaching:

Following the steps of IFLA CPDWL, a coaching session was conducted to offer career and professional development coaching for the innovators.

Innovators at Coaching session

Heba Mohamed Ismail

Libraries Technical Manager at Egypt’s Society for Culture & Development
Director of INELI-MENA Program

Work hacks – upset those work routines

Nothing is more seductive than (work) routines and the notion of ” that`s the way we’ve always done it”. When we work reliably then we get reliable results – but rarely something that surprises, that is new or leads unexpectedly to completely new findings. Sometimes just small changes help teams to come to new conclusions.

Can only software specialists hack? No, in the meantime, the term “hack” has become generally accepted as an unusual and creative way of solving a problem. In this sense, much can be “hacked” – even the work.

Continue reading

Hamburg Open Online University

In 2015 the Hamburg Senate, the government of the City and the state Hamburg in Germany, founded a digital strategy to bundle up all digital processes and create structures for those. For education, the Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU) stands for this. This cross-university project is funded by the network of the six state-owned Hamburg universities and the government.
In the future, the HOOU wants to enrich and supplement the classical teaching of the Hamburg universities with the possibilities of digital technologies. The learning offers of the HOOU are to be made freely accessible to all interested in the Internet.

The peculiarity of the concept lies in the desire to create a digital space in which students, teachers as well as the interested public can meet to work together on interdisciplinary, cross-university projects with academic aspirations. And it also should be a low-threshold offer for refugees.

Four aspects serve as guiding principles:

  1. Orientation on learners and collaboration
  2. Science
  3. Opening up to new target groups and civil society relevance
  4. Openness /OER

The content is constantly growing and a number of learning courses and webinars are in different languages, for ex. interactive programming courses, topics in law and economics, sonic environments for healing, project management in urban design or the sounds of the Port City Hamburg.

Beside this they offer a lot of materials (eg texts, pictures, videos or links) on a specific topic, such as a specific research question or learning unit.

If the content of HOOU is not interesting for you it might be interesting for your users and customers.

 

German library conference 2019

The German library conference took place this year in Leipzig. It is the biggest annual librarian`s conference in Europe. More than 260 lectures, workshops and hand-on-labs were presented together with a huge exhibition of hard-, software and services. Under the title “Libraries for change”  4000 librarians from Germany, neighbouring countries and abroad met to discuss a huge variety of topics. Societies are changing and libraries have to follow these dynamics with innovative concepts and lifelong learning staff members.

The last three years ALA was partner of the German library associations. This year the official partnership switched to the Netherlands where the libraries are very active to promote “the library as a third place”.

One of the recurring themes were fake news and the best way to deal with. “Put the focus on the victims and the outcome instead of only looking at the offenders and give them another platform to be famous” a journalist proposed.

More and more frequently, false information is scattered across all communication channels in order to influence public opinion or to discredit other-minded people. Portrait photos with quotes take out of context, which are often distributed via social networks, are just the tip of the iceberg. In their role as information brokers, libraries must counter this and empower more and more people to distinguish fake news from actual news. There were plenty of suggestions for such formats for work on the ground – especially for the youth. And of course the education and strengthening of our own staff is very important not only in this context.

More than 400 presentations are already uploaded online for those who want to recap or had not the chance to participate in Leipzig. Most of the follow-ups are in German but some are in English, too.  And more will be uploaded in the next weeks. At the  BIB Opus publication server you can also find the presentations of the past German and Austrian library conferences, the articles of some German library journals in fulltext and more.

Key Takeaways from Library 2.019: Shaping the Future of Libraries with Instructional Design

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, library professionals are increasingly engaging in instructional design. The Library 2.0 virtual conference – Library 2.019: Shaping the Future of Libraries with Instructional Design –explored this topic on March 13, 2019, attracting close to 6000 registrants from around the world. The virtual conference consisted of an opening keynote, 16 concurrent crowd-sourced presentations, and a closing keynote. It explored how librarians are engaging in instructional design practices and how advances in technology are changing how instruction in libraries is being delivered.

Opening Keynote Panel

The conference kicked off with an opening keynote panel featuring three instructional design experts Dana Bryant (Emory University), Michael Flieri (Purdue University), and Lindsay O’Neill (California State University, Fullerton). The session was moderated by Steven Bell (Temple University) and John Shank (Penn State University). In advance of the conference, conference attendees helped pick which questions the keynote panel would address.

The keynote panelists were asked to give a one sentence definition of instructional design, identify what their “go to” educational technology is, provide suggestions for librarians who want to build instructional design skills, discuss how best to keep instructional design skills up to date, discuss how to plan for “one shot instruction,” provide their thoughts about how instructional designers can shape the future of libraries, and provide their perspective on how librarians who are not formally trained in instructional design can implement instructional design principles in their work.

In response to the question about giving a one sentence definition of instructional design, the speaker responses ranged from defining instructional design as an approach for creating learning environments that is conducive to student learning and student success to instructional design as solving an instructional problem with the tools and resources you have on hand.

Collection of Resources Mentioned by the Speakers

When answering the question about what “go to” educational technology is, many great resources were suggested by the keynote panel – and, through the chat, suggested by the participants as well. Peggy George, one of the participants, created a Wakelet collection of the resources that were mentioned during the keynote: http://wke.lt/w/s/zwHDc

How to Develop Instructional Design Skills

Lindsay O’Neill, who has a Master’s degree in Instructional Design, felt that this was a very good way to develop in depth skills and knowledge around instructional design. The speakers recommended several ways to keep instructional design skills up to date, particularly by attending conferences and getting involved in different instructional design communities. Their suggestions included Educause/ELI, Online Learning Consortium (OLC), eLearning Guild, Professional & Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD), and International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL).

For More Conference Highlights

There were many other useful tips that the speakers mentioned. For more highlights from the Library 2.019: Shaping the Future of Libraries with Instructional Design conference, I recommend reading this blog post: https://ischool.sjsu.edu/istudent-blog/highlights-library-20-instructional-design-conference

Conference Recordings are Free

I also recommend listening to the video recordings to learn more from the opening keynote session, as well as the other contributed sessions and the closing keynote. All of the conference recordings are free to watch, but you do have to sign up (for free) to the Library 2.0 network in order to access them.

Upcoming Library 2.019 Conferences

I hope you will participate in these upcoming free Library 2.019 virtual conferences (all 12-3pm Pacific Time) — one of these will focus on Open Data on June 5th and another will focus on Emerging Technology on October 30th.

Instructional Design is the next topic of the Library 2.019 Virtual Conference on March 13, 2019

Beginning in 2011, the Library 2.0 conference series was created as a free online conference for information professionals around the world. Three virtual mini-conferences are now offered each year; each mini-conference focused on a different topic. All conference presentations are recorded and freely available in the archive. Each conference typically attracts more than 5,000 registrants, with people from many different countries participating. It is an easy way to keep up with your continuing professional development and to engage with and learn from other information professionals from around the world.

Next week, the next Library 2.0 virtual conference — Library 2.019: Shaping the Future of Libraries with Instructional Design — will take place. Instructional design is an activity that library professionals are increasingly called upon to do. This conference explores how librarians are engaging in instructional design practices and how advances in technology are changing how instruction in libraries is being delivered. All library professionals, employers, LIS students, and educators who are interested in instructional design are invited to participate in this three-hour web conference.

The conference is free and will be held online on March 13th from 12-3pm Pacific Time.  You can register at https://libraryinstructionaldesign.eventbrite.com/

The conference will kick off with an opening keynote panel featuring instructional design experts. The keynote panelists will tackle many important questions about instructional design. The keynote panelists are:

  • Dana Bryant – Lead Instructional Technologist for Academic Technology Services, Woodruff Library, at Emory University
  • Michael Flieri – Assistant Professor of Library Science, Purdue University
  • Lindsay O’Neill – Faculty, California State University, Fullerton’s Master of Science in Instructional Design and Technology Program

In addition to this keynote panel, there are several concurrent, crowd-sourced sessions.  Some of these sessions include:

  • “Collaborating in the Cold: Connecting Learners Across a Canadian Province”
  • “Gamifying Instruction: Breakouts and Badges!”
  • “An Accidental Instructional Design Librarian”
  • “Designing, Delivering, and Evaluating and Interactive Online Learning Experience”

For more information about the Library 2.019: Shaping the Future of Libraries with Instructional Design conference, go to: https://www.library20.com/instructionaldesign

You may also be interested in speaking at and/or attending other upcoming Library 2.019 virtual conferences (all 12-3pm Pacific Time):

  • Library 2.019: Open Data – June 5th
  • Library 2.010: Emerging Technology – October 30th