Do You Practise What You Preach?

(First posted on my Teaching Artist blog)

Recent training sessions that I’ve received and given, have prompted me to ask myself whether I actually practise what I preach. (Most of the time, I do …)

I pitched a session at the second Glasgow Library Camp last Saturday (8 November 2014), which provoked quite a lot of discussion.

•  I began by describing the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Teaching Artist Course (in the Short Course form that it adopted last session), which took place 12 Feb – 28 May 2014.
• Do I count as an Artist? Yes, I think I do. I may not teach performance at work, but I am a church organist and choir director.
• Why I did it? To gain theory about pedagogy, teaching and learning, current best practice …
• There was a wide variety of recommended readings, and a mixture of virtual and physical meetings.
• The idea of reflective practice featured very prominently. Therefore, from the beginning, we had to keep a blog. This is it; I’ve continued to post on it since the course ended.
• Outcomes: we had to produce written assignments; an E-Portfolio (one of the tabs above); and a Bibliography. Mine is in my E-Portfolio, but there’s also a web version as a separate tab.
• I recently gave my first distance learning user education session to PGCert students. I had half an hour on a Thursday evening, and had to get used to using a headset and webcam with Adobe Connect.
• I talked about our library service, holdings, e-resources, and good academic practice. Bearing in mind I hadn’t got long in which to cover the topic, I briefly covered referencing, avoiding plagiarism, keeping a bibliography, and annotating it for one’s own benefit. Bibliographic software. Mendeley, Zotero, Endnote, Word.
• Remembering the Teaching Artist course, I sought feedback afterwards, so I could reflect upon how it went, what went well and not-so-well, and what I’d do another time. Talking about reflective practice over coffee, we asked ourselves the question that I then asked LibCamp delegates last Saturday: Do we reflect adequately on what we do? Do you?
• For myself, I certainly do keep a bibliography, use bibliographical software, and Diigo for useful websites. To be fair, I do a lot of writing, so it’s particularly important for me. And this blog is still a place where I can reflect on what I do, whether as a librarian, a researcher or a musician.

This blogpost was a ‘pitch’ at Library Camp Glasgow 2014, which took place on Saturday 8th November. I also did a quick-fire rant (Minute of Madness) about the extreme usefulness of Diigo.