Professional Development for Online Instruction Librarians

Distance education is booming, but how do librarians best teach and engage students to find and evaluate information in an online environment, beyond using tutorials? The ACRL Instruction Section currently has committees that focus on online instructional materials (Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online), the impact of technology on instruction (Instructional Technologies) and face-to-face teaching methods (Teaching Methods), but the Section has no resources available for librarians looking to develop and improve their online instructional methods and class content. This project assesses what is needed for librarians to further develop their online teaching skills and explores the options of creating a new Instruction Section committee, or expanding the charge of an existing committee, to focus on resources and best practices for online information literacy instruction.

We recommend that the ACRL Board of Directors appoint an Online Instruction Task Force to implement more unified and concrete measures to provide assistance and support to online instruction librarians. We recommend that this task force be, in part, composed of representatives from existing ACRL-IS committees. These stakeholders may include PRIMO, Instructional Technologies, and Teaching Methods, as well as the Committee Assessment Task Force, Discussion Group Steering Committee, and Professional Education Committee. We recommend that the ACRL-IS task force focuses on providing support in the following four areas:

Training: Develop low-cost courses in technology, instructional design, and pedagogy in both synchronous and asynchronous formats.

Tools: Create best practices publications, online toolkits, and a repository of sample activities and tutorials, with special regard for assessment.

Advocacy: Promote the creation of new positions, develop talking points for administrators, and support scholarly research related to online instruction.

Communication: Facilitate communication, develop virtual learning networks, and establish a network of online instruction experts