Collaboration in a Digital Age (CDA)

Strategies for Librarians and Information Technologists in Higher Education: A Professional Development Discussion Series

"We have something to learn from one another. We (librarians and IT specialists) should plan time to get together regularly."
-- CDA participant

Thank you to collaborators from Dartmouth College, Monmouth University, and Wheaton College.

CDA's project team invites you to share your videoconferencing experiences. Write to us at:

Susan Fliss (Susan.Fliss AT Dartmouth DOT edu)
Colleen Wheeler (cwheeler AT wheatoncollege DOT edu)
Calvin Williams (cwilliam AT monmouth DOT edu)

Schedule and Topics for Winter-Spring 2005
Monthly sessions ran from 1:30-2:30pm eastern.

Monday, Feb 28. Intro, protocol/ground rules. Topic presented by Dartmouth: Library/IT Collaboration in Course Management Systems
Thursday, March 31. Topic presented by Wheaton: Implications of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) for Small Liberal Arts Colleges
Thursday, April 28. Topic presented by Monmouth: Creating Innovative Tutorials for Teaching and Learning. See draft tutorial here.
Monday, May 23. Wrap up. Discussion of lessons learned about collaboration for integrated projects. Evaluation of series.

Description
Through periodic meetings via videoconferencing, librarians, information technologists, curricular designers, and faculty will identify ways to collaborate to support teaching, learning and research in their academic communities.

Every campus grapples with these questions: Where do our institutions want to be in providing high quality library and IT services? What are the shared needs on our respective campuses? How can our constituent groups partner to meet these teaching, learning and research needs?

Opening a dialog with other campuses around these questions can spark collaboration. Session participants will identify techniques and tools to discover, develop, and implement new collaborative initiatives with the ultimate goal of achieving maximum integration of information literacy and technology skills into the teaching and learning process in our institutions.

What are fertile grounds for collaboration?
Possible topics for discussion are listed below. The team from each institution will pick 2-3 topics that they would be interested in leading during the session they are responsible for coordinating. Wheeler (Wheaton), Williams (Monmouth) and Fliss (Dartmouth) will coordinate topic requests and will send out the topics, dates, and institution responsible for leading the discussion before the first meeting; they may include:

common goals, work, functions across libraries and IT (i.e. liaison programs); defining core values -- Bucknell style -- see overlap even though values are different
best practice; productive collaborative initiatives and projects on our campuses
how to get faculty to rethink pedagogy, try new techniques and technologies, how can we help move the process along? successes around selecting instructional resources that are well-matched with specific instructional needs or goals
examples of integrating information literacy technology skills more widely and thoroughly into the curriculum; effective ways to influence institutional policy regarding student attainment of information literacy and information fluency skills
methods used by each group for assessment
collaboration efforts in course management systems
collaboration efforts in developing, using and storing learning objects

Plus
These introductory sessions allowed participants to meet one another and gain some experience with videoconferencing technology. Participants reported that:

the barriers to speaking were not as high as they had expected;
pseudo-face to face meetings are an efficient way to meet without travelling; and
the sessions about what other institutions are doing led to valuable local conversations and collaborations.

Upgrade
Participants reported that getting to know one another better and earlier would have enhanced the conversations; suggestions included:

have an initial face-to-face meeting for all partipants at a mutually convenient location;
create a participant reference roster that includes names, institutions, roles, thumbnail photos, and contact information;
schedule a 30-minute local meeting before each session; and
use identification protocols during the sessions (stating name before speaking, showing names on screen).

In addition, participants acknowledged that:

Facilitators were needed to structure meetings; coordinate participant communications; manage logistics, scheduling, and facilities preparation; and evaluate the series.
There are still some occasional technical snags.

Next Steps
We would like to focus on a single topic for 3-4 meetings. Ideally, participants would agree on a collaborative project.

For more information on this project, please see:

Susan Fliss, Colleen Wheeler and Calvin Williams, "Academic Librarians in the Age of Videoconferencing: Tools for teaching, collaboration, and professional development."In Teaching With Technology: An Academic Librarian's Guide. Joe Williams and Susan Goodwin, eds. Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2007 (forthcoming).