INLS 502: User Education

I redesigned and taught a graduate course at UNC’s School of Library and Information Science aimed at preparing librarians for educational roles. The course provided a comprehensive overview of instructional and educational design theory and offered a supportive environment for students to design and implement evidence-based learning experiences. This allowed students to immediately apply their understanding of learning and develop their own strategies for creating high-impact educational experiences.

The course design featured three key components:

1. Learning Reflections – Each student was required to post a daily reflection on the class content and experience to the LMS. This helped reinforce the day’s learning, facilitate further discussion, adjust the instructional approach, and strengthen the students’ abilities as educators.
2. Assigned Learning Facilitator Days – Starting from the third week, students would take turns leading the class. They selected a course topic from an approved list and worked with the course instructor to develop a lesson plan. During the debrief after class, the students and instructor used the Learning Reflections to discuss the session and the students received a development plan to further enhance their “teaching style.”
3. Final Project – The final project required students to write their own teaching philosophy and then create an annotated lesson plan applying that philosophy to a real-life educational scenario.

Links

My original syllabus

A more recent version of the course taught by Dr. Sandra Hughes