The Common Gaze: Conversations with Cataloging Instructors about Teaching Online at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

Past and present instructors from the Library Education Experimental Program (LEEP) online graduate education program at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois discuss their instructional experiences. Topics include: discussion of learning activities that work and those that do not, the differences in participation rates among online students, the challenge of instruction in an environment where visual or physical cues are absent, and the ways in which instructors measure learning outcomes and encourage students to work in groups.

KEYWORDS:

• library and information science education
• cataloging education
• case studies
• interviews
• cataloging
• distance education

Notes

1. LEEP1 was Pauline Atherton Cochrane's project at Syracuse University; see http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v5p331y1981-82.pdf for further information. LEEP2 was an experimental version of the core courses that Pauline Atherton Cochrane and Bryce Allen taught for one year on the University of Illinois campus.

2. Leigh Estabrook, “LEEP3 at the University of Illinois,” Journal of Library and Information Science Education 38, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 157–160.

3. Leigh S. Estabrook, “Distance Education at the University of Illinois,” in Benchmarks in Distance Education: The LIS Experience, ed. Daniel D. Barron (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2003), 63–73.

4. Linda C. Smith, “Faculty Satisfaction in LEEP: A Web-Based Graduate Degree Program in Library and Information Science,” in Online Education Volume 2: Proceedings of the 2000 Sloan Summer Workshop on Asynchronous Learning Networks, ed. Janet C. Moore (Needham, MA: Sloan Center for Online Education, 2001), 87–108.

5. Caroline Haythornthwaite and Michelle Kazmer, eds. Learning, Culture and Community in Online Education: Research and Practice (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), x.

6. Ibid.

7. Estabrook, “LEEP3 at the University of Illinois,” 157.

8. Pat Lawton and Rae-Anne Montague, “Teaching and Learning Online: LEEP's Tribal Gleanings,” in Learning, Culture and Community, ed. Caroline Haythornthwaite and Michelle Kazmer (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 199.

9. Linda Smith, Sarai Lastra, and Jennifer Robbins, “Teaching Online: Changing Models of Teaching and Learning in LEEP,” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 42, no. 4: 348–363.

10. Caroline Haythornthwaite and Michelle Kazmer, “Bringing the Internet Home: Adult Distance Learners and Their Internet, Home and Work Worlds,” in The Internet in Everyday Life, ed. Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2002), 443.

11. Smith et al., “Teaching and Learning Online,” 198 and 202–203.

12. Patricia Lawton, interview by Kathryn La Barre, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, September 10, 2011.

13. “IBM PC AT,” http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=185(accessed September 29, 2011).

14. Megan Edwards, “GSLIS Student Information” (unpublished manuscript, September 1, 2011), Microsoft Excel file.

15. Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, “Bringing the Internet Home,” 443.

16. David B. Ellis, Becoming A Master Student (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 35.

17. Scott Keeter and Paul Taylor, “The Millennials,” Pew Research Center, last modified December 11, 2009, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1437/millennials-profile

18. Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, “Bringing the Internet Home,” 437.

19. Smith et al., “Teaching and Learning Online,” 206.

20. Lisa J. Orchard and Chris Fullwood. “Current Perspectives on Personality and Internet Use,” Social Science Computer Review 28, no. 2 (May 2010): 155–169.

21. Alvan Bregman and Caroline Haythornthwaite, “Radicals of Presentation in Persistent Conversation,” New Media and Society 5, no. 1: 117–140.

22. Smith et al., “Teaching and Learning Online,” 206.

23. Bregman and Haythornthwaite, “Radicals of Presentation,” 128.

24. Smith et al., “Teaching and Learning Online,” 204.

25. Ibid., 206.

26. Ibid., 207.

27. Ibid., 143.

28. Karen M. Letarte, Michelle R. Turvey, Dea Borneman, and David L. Adams, “Practitioner Perspectives on Cataloging Education for Entry-Level Academic Librarians,” Library Resources & Technical Services 46, no. 1 (2002): 11–22.

29. Merry M. Merryfield, “The Paradoxes of Teaching a Multicultural Education Course Online,” Journal of Teacher Education 52, no. 4 (Sept./Oct. 2001): 297.

30. Smith et al., “Teaching and Learning Online,” 207.

31. Ibid., 208.

32. Ibid., 208.

33. Haythornthwaite and Kazmer, “Bringing the Internet Home,” 438.

34. Ibid., 444.

35. Ibid., 453.

36. Ibid., 446.

37. Ibid., 449.

38. Ibid., 456.

39. Ibid., 459.

40. Smith et al., “Teaching and Learning Online,” 210.

41. Ibid., 211.