Graduate Assistantships
"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." - Henry Brooks Adams.
Two very unique opportunities to work closely with SILS faculty shaped my graduate school experience and professional views.
Graduate Assistant to Dr. Nasser Sharify, Collection Development Course (LIS 660)
My work with Dr. Sharify honed my teaching skills and ignited my interest in library education. As his research assistant, I worked closely with his collection development classes as a mentor on their various assignments - weekly readings, literature reviews, and the class' capstone experience, a collection development policy for a library of their choosing. When the need arose, I would prepare tutorials for difficult concepts (my subject analysis tutorial was quite popular and most requested). Students could contact me with basic questions or ask for longer one-on-one instruction, and several would send me their draft policies for review and comment.
There were chances for curriculum development. Dr. Sharify and I would review student readings and the latest publications in the field of collection development for inclusion in the course bibliography. Based on this work, we were able to adjust the bibliography to reflect student interests and the latest trends, adding sections in museum and archives collection development, teen and YA collection development, collection maintenance and preservation, zines and graphic novels, and copyright. A section on gifts and donations is expected for the next time the course is offered in Summer 2010.
In this work, I grew more comfortable in a classroom and learned to deal with different interests and learning styles, as well as confront other administrative issues (lesson planning, student complaints, etc.).
Graduate Assistant to Charles Rubenstein, Information Technologies Course (LIS 654)
My experience with Professor Rubenstein was different than with Dr. Sharify, in that it concentrated more on the research and curriculum development aspects of teaching.
Curriculum development took the form of preparation of a course bibliography for the Information Technologies class that students could use in their weekly readings, based on Professor Rubenstein's research and previous student readings. Like with Dr. Sharify's work, I was able to expand my knowledge of information technology issues and adjust the bibliography to meet student needs and interests, particularly in the areas of Web 2.0 and social networking, digital collections, electronic reference, online searching, web usability, and information literacy.
Our research work furthered our commitment to curriculum development. In an effort to redesign the course, I conducted a survey of LIS students across North America to determine the scope of and subject matter of their respective Information Technology courses. The goal was to get a snapshot of LIS education in information technologies, a benchmark to compare to our course. Survey results were sent to Professor Rubenstein in January 2010 and are available upon request.
In this work, I developed my research skills - information retrieval, information evaluation, critical thinking, and data synthesis.
