NOTE: If you are signed up as a student in this course, please go to Student Information Form, fill it out and send it to me. Thanks.

Goals and Objectives of the Course

Goals of the Class: Students will acquire broad knowledge of learning theories and instructional design principles sufficient to enable them to design and evaluate appropriate user education programs in a variety of contexts for a variety of audiences.

Specific Objectives: Students, upon completion of the course, will be able to:

Analyze a population within an environment relative to the need for knowledge or skills and design an appropriate educational program for that population Clarify the value set of a specific learner population as to what constitutes good teaching Describe at least two different learning theories and apply to user education situations Analyze and describe the pertinent characteristics of a targeted user population Create an instructional plan for a given population consistent with a design philosophy Recognize what is a natural teaching style and develop a repertoire of teaching styles and coping strategies for different teaching/training situations Select, design and develop a set of active learning techniques for a given environment with attention to appropriate evaluative criteria Plan, create and evaluate an educational training session for a specific user population Design and develop an evaluation plan for a sequence of training sessions and foran individual training session.

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Textbook and Other Resources

One textbook is required and should be available in the Student Stores bookshop. It is:

Lawson, Karen. The Trainer's Handbook. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.

A list of additional print, web, and nonprint resources is provided as well (see Resource List).

In addition, please become familiar with whichever of the following journals that is appropriate to your career plans:

College & Research Libraries
Journal of Academic Librarianship
Public Libraries
Information Outlook (Special Librarians)
Journal of Instructional Psychology
RQ
Reference Services Review
Training & Development

More general journals like Change and the Chronical of Higher Education will be valuable as context for academic librarians.

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Assignments and Grading

There are three primary assignments:

• reading commentaries.
• a teaching portfolio, and
• a project or paper.

Each assignment will count for about a third of the grade. Some of the assignments may be done optionally as a team of two people. If an assignment is completed as a team, both members of the team will receive the same grade unless there is overwhelming evidence why it should be otherwise. Written work will be made available to all members of the class on a designated web space. Each student will be expected to make class presentations based on the work that he/she does and to contribute actively to class discussions.

Please see Assignments for more detail.

Grading will be based on the following weights:

Assignments Class Participation Reading Commentries Teaching Portfolio Project or Paper

Weight 20% 20% 30% 30%

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Class Policies and the Honor Code

Except for specifically indicated assignments, collaboration with your classmates is highly desireable and encouraged. Sharing your work and giving and receiving assistance from others in the class is valuable. My major interest is in your learning which will best proceed as we share questions, answers, and experiences.

I will develop an agenda for each day we spend together. Our class days will be a combination of lecture, exercises and discussion. You will want to participate actively in class discussions by asking and responding to questions and by offering your observations and ideas.

Class policies that you should be aware of:

• All assignment due dates (for reading and portfolio submissions) will be posted in advance. In the event a deadline adjustment is announced during a class session, you are responsible for knowing about it. (It will be helpful to have a class buddy).

• An open atmosphere in which members of the class comment in helpful ways on each other's work is encouraged.

• Attendance at every class session is expected. If you have an unavoidable absence, please let me know ahead of time, if at all possible. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to propose to me how you might make up for the missed experience. We will then negotiate your proposal.

• Reading on the scheduled topic from the text and other sources should take place before coming to class.

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Revised 8/28/2000.