Instruction

Amgen

My first experience in a special library setting also conveniently provided me with my first teaching experience. As a library intern for the biotechnology company Amgen, I sat in on every training session my supervisors held for the scientists, and eventually had the opportunity to contribute to a couple of sessions myself. These sessions covered the use of specific tools that the library offered (specific proprietary databases), as well as an introductory class on the library, its intranet presence, and the services it provides the global Amgen community. Because I had played a large role in updating and identifying major problems with the library’s catalog and its pathfinder portals for specific research areas, I contributed to this latter session. It became my responsibility to demonstrate how to use the library’s OPAC and how to find and use the pathfinder tools. I discovered this was not as easy as I originally expected for several reasons. First, I only had a short amount of time (10-15 minutes) to cover both these topics. This forced me to really think about my audience and the level of understanding they needed to obtain for their jobs. I created brief, real-time demonstrations in order to accomplish this, for instance leaving out in-depth descriptions of subject searching (my own personal interest) in order to make sure I could go over other access points. I also did my best to incorporate the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) motivational model into my teaching, as a practical implementation of what I had just learned from my 560 class (e.g., asking if any of the scientists had any particular books that they would like to search for). The largest challenge, however, was actually getting over my own intimidation. Although the classes were not large (8-10 people, plus my supervisor), the participants all had higher degrees in various science disciplines that I had last seen in high school. I had to mentally prepare myself for the possibility of difficult questions with unfamiliar vocabulary. I also tried to balance the previously mentioned difficulty of not describing certain aspects in too much depth with the potential that I might be explaining things a too low a level for my audience. Looking back on both presentations, I have now concluded that although it was certainly a helpful exercise to think through these possibilities and to mentally prepare for them, it is useless be intimidated by an audience who is coming to you for information that they do not have. And although the time allotted to me within a given session was brief, and I unfortunately only had the chance to lead it twice due to the unexpected termination of funding for the internship, I came away from the entire experience with a much deeper understanding of how to reach other people.

LIS 560 Presentation

Documentation:
• 560 Presentation (HTML)

The final presentation for LIS 560 was a similar major experience for me, although for different reasons. At the end of the 2006 autumn quarter, I was required to give a solo presentation on a topic of my choosing, and successfully teach my classmates about a concept or skill. I decided to focus on Robert F. Mager’s definition of an instructional objective. Some of the challenges were similar to my experience at Amgen: I only had 5 minutes and I had to incorporate all aspects of the ARCS model. In addition, this was not a topic I had prior experience with, I was being graded, and I needed to present to a large group of my peers who were not necessarily there because they wanted to be. I had not yet dealt with teaching people something they did not ask to be taught. I did not do the best job of it in the end, but I learned several things that will help me the next time, which is why I chose to include this experience in my portfolio. First, I attempted to grab my audience’s attention by using a different presentation tool (my presentation uses HTML slides rather than PowerPoint). This did not have the effect I wanted; the slides distracted my audience and flustered me when they did not work quite as planned. Although this medium has distinct advantages (accessibility, aesthetic value, etc.), I came away from the experience with a firm grasp of the importance of being comfortable with your presentation (more than just knowing the content, this includes knowing limitations and understanding how it is appropriate for a given setting). And on the positive of this issue, I did get more experience presenting with a non-PowerPoint tool, became more comfortable with designing and creating content for HTML slides, and will be better prepared for the next time. The next issue came from the content of my presentation. Although the quality of the content was fine, and my slides consisted of brief bulletin points that I expounded upon (side note: the value of doing this over putting everything into a slide is something else I learned from this presentation), I attempted to cover too broad a topic for the time that I had. Mager’s definition included three distinct parts, and I included all of them in a 7 slide presentation. I discovered that having more than one slide a minute is not conducive to talking slowly. Even though I had practiced the presentation slowly and consistently in under 5 minutes, I had not prepared for the blank looks that indicated to me that I needed to go into even more detail than I originally thought. I ended up trying to get more information across by talking faster and looking at my notes rather than the audience so as to not lose my place. As expected, and as communicated to me in the presentation’s feedback, this made it difficult for the audience to understand and stay focused on me. Against all odds, at the conclusion of the presentation, my audience seemed to learn (at least for the short-term) how to distinguish a Mager objective from a non-Mager objective as was my original intention. However, I came away from this teaching experience with new knowledge of how to improve for the next time.

Adult Rehabilitation Center

Documentation:
• ARC Presentation (PowerPoint)

In February 2007, I co-taught around 100 people about sexually transmitted diseases with a student from the UW School of Pharmacy. Our pupils were enrolled in the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center’s (ARC) program, which consists of 6 months of work therapy and structured activities. All of the “beneficiaries”, as they are called, are recovering drug and alcohol addicts (although they are required to have already gone through a detoxification program). One of the prescribed activities were lectures, followed by question and answer sessions, presented to the group by the students in UCONJ 444, a collaborative, interdisciplinary course that I was fortunate to be a part of. Every group of two or three in the class picked a topic from a preselected list and presented on that topic. Although there was a community resources topic I was familiar with and comfortable researching, I felt that I should take advantage of this opportunity to present on a topic that would normally be outside of my comfort zone. I chose STDs because I wanted the challenge of teaching a controversial, difficult subject and because I have always believed that health literacy in this area is extremely important. Although much of the content for the presentation had already been created for previous versions of the lecture, it was my responsibility to check for currency and find a suitable PowerPoint template. I also made sure that my slides (the first half of the presentation; see link) covered the information they needed to and that they did not include extraneous information or facts that were not important for this audience. Some of the material, especially the pictures, was very graphic, and I spent extra time preparing myself for giving this information to a mostly male audience who may not be the most informed on this topic and who could be expected to react in a negative way. Because the presentation was the only requirement for the course, I was able to focus and work hard on the planning and preparing stage and developed an appreciation for the work necessary to create even a fairly short (20 minutes) lesson plan. The actual presentation went well; not only was it my first time presenting to group larger than about 25 people, it was my first time using a microphone in a teaching setting. The microphone had some technical difficulties (it kept buzzing), but because I had prepared well and had learned from my 560 experience, I was able to ignore it and keep the audience’s attention by speaking clearly and slowly. Although this was not a huge problem, it was a challenge I had not thought of, and I left the ARC that day understanding the importance of being flexible (next time I will prepare for the microphone, or the computer, to not work at all). At the end of the presentation, our audience asked thoughtful and interesting questions (although there were some groans and whispering during the pictures) from a perspective my partner and I were not familiar with. As a result, I feel that I learned as much, or even more, from them than they did from us, and the importance of understanding and respecting your audience is something I will never forget.

I feel that it is a little difficult to describe the importance of this experience in this context and that I am not fully articulating all the ways that this whole process was challenging and significant for me. The last thing I will say is that I will always carry this experience with me and will continue to look for ways to improve my teaching abilities, while not being afraid of a challenge, in order to better serve others.

Conclusion

Although these experiences were separate events, my knowledge was cumulative. I drew upon my Amgen experience to get over my fear of presenting to my knowledgeable peers in my 560 class. After the 560 presentation, I was careful to talk slowly and clearly at the ARC, and I made sure that I was covering the right amount of material. I have taken everything I listed above and used it give a recent presentation in another class (LIS 580) that may have been my best presentation to date. However, that teaching experience was not as significant to me, and in fact felt almost natural, simply because of the strong foundation of these other experiences. I know there will be more challenging opportunities in the future, but there will also be of others that will come easily because of my time at the iSchool. My hope, and belief, is that even the challenges will be easier to face and more successful because of what I have learned.