Hello everyone!
I’ve already provided a little bit of information about me on this blog’s About page, but here’s a formal introduction! I’m Bryony, and I work for the University of Huddersfield as a Subject Librarian. I primarily support nursing students, but as all the librarians covering the Health Sciences are part time, we often share support between us. I’ve worked at the University for just over 10 years, and studied here prior to that, and things have changed a lot while I’ve been here. When I studied here, there were PCs where you had to request to view CD Roms of the electronic resources… I studied via distance learning for my librarianship MSc, and found using the VLE an odd mix of rewarding and irritating – rewarding to be able to engage with some fellow students across the world, but frustrating when tech limitations let things down a bit sometimes. However, I haven’t tried something as big as this MOOC!
My Big Question is:
How can I use TEL to engage and support students across a large, lecture-only course?
Recently we were required to modify our teaching style for the health practice students (i.e. nursing, ODP, midwifery, physio, general health etc). Last academic year we gave them a standard introduction, and then filtered information skills teaching primarily via hands on sessions through most of the students regularly throughout the whole of their university life. This year we’ve had to rethink things, as we were asked to contribute a 50 minute lecture to all health practice students (two lectures to 150-250 students) with no hands on teaching. My colleague and I put together some content for the lecture, and some materials to host on our VLE (Blackboard), with some quizzes for each section of the content. We’ve polled students for their opinions, and are learning a lot about how they did or didn’t engage with the content and materials. We need to do a lot to try and modify/improve what we created, both in terms of content and how to lecture and support the content, and make it relevant, without boring the students to tears with our voices! I’m hoping this course will help!
I'm a subject librarian at the University of Huddersfield, mainly supporting nursing students.