My Stand Up Comedy Routine

I recently attended "Using Humor to Engage Students in the Classroom by Dr. M. Cundall through Faculty Focus, a webinar that was made available by Magna Online Courses.  

Some of the key takeaways from this session included: 

• Finding humour in the incongruities and as a method to build relationships with students.
• Acknowledging that there are many different ways to engage with students and using humour can be very effective provided that you do so with caution.  You must know your audience and be thoughtful in which types of humour you try to employ.  Observe the classroom environment and act accordingly. 
• The use of self-deprecating humour can help to humanize you, and make you more authentic to your students (I definitely make fun of myself all the time when I am teaching and play to the many librarian stereotypes).  One such method is to recognize your errors and poke fun at yourself for the error.  
• Classrooms are performative, so end with your best joke!

The webinar provided a different perspective on learning.  It acknowledges that you can be silly or funny and still respected professionally.  If the goal of teaching is to increase engagement and provide meaningful learning activities, then you can (and should) have fun doing so!

Retrospective Blogging

It occured to me that I haven't linked to any of the blog posts that I have contributed to the Brain Work blog (C-EBLIP) in a really long time.  Here are the links and the titles:

• Reframing Instruction: Get Messy found at https://words.usask.ca/ceblipblog/2017/07/04/reframing-instruction/ 
• NAP: Assisting Students just in time found at: https://words.usask.ca/ceblipblog/2017/01/10/nap-assisting-students-just-in-time/ 
• Lessons Learned: A Book Editing Collaboration found at https://words.usask.ca/ceblipblog/2016/07/05/a-book-editing-collaboration/
• Lessons Learned: The Peer Review Process found at: https://words.usask.ca/ceblipblog/2016/04/26/lessons-learned-the-peer-review-process/

Pro Tip #1

Do you know this simple trick for using PowerPoint like a pro?  Instead of clicking through slides to skip content, use the shortcut # and then enter.  So if you are on slide 29 and you need to skip content because you are running out of time, enter the slide number that you want to go to, such as: 37 and then hit the enter key.  The audience will never know that you skipped 8 slides.

For more shortcuts and wonderful technology tips, see: https://tekhnologic.wordpress.com/navigating-powerpoint/.  

I am sorry the number you were trying to dial is not in service, please phone again later....

This is my first entry of notes taken and information gleaned from last week's WILU conference.  This session on Wednesday afternoon; I attended because I was curious about the title!

'Take Your Phone Off The Hook' covered a pilot project that was launched by a team of 13 librarians to address the learning needs of new undergraduate students and compare which teaching platform was more successful.  To adequately compare online vs. in-class, one of each was offered at the same time.  The librarians utilized Blackboard Collaborate to deliver the online orientation sessions which focused on top ten tips that first year students need to know (similar I am guessing to the U of S' FYIT group and library guide http://libguides.usask.ca/NeedToKnow).  Two librarians were present for online webinars, so that one librarian could monitor the chat.  They recorded all online sessions to personally evaluate the effective of using the tool. 

Considerations:

• test software and hardware in advance
• use chat instead of microphones for students
• have 2 moderators for webinars
• Collaborate has more limited functionality for smartphones and tablets
• don't forget to take your phone off the hook
• presenters emphasized this point by having a phone ring several times in the background.  You could tell that the audience was very uncomfortable by the phone ringing and were becoming irritated.  Very effective illustration of the importance of being completely focused on the webinar, and not external distractions.

Findings:

• students were less likely to attend online sessions even if they had registered.  In other words, if they registered for an in-person session they would show up!
• students chose in-person over online even when offered at the same time.  In other words, there was higher registration in in-person classes.