Teaching Tips
This page is devoted to strengthening pedagogy for librarians by offering tips on determining learning objectives, creating lesson plans, and basic teaching strategies.
Learning outcomes are statements of what students will learn in a class session. "The statements are focused on student learning (What will students learn today?) rather than instructor teaching (What am I going to teach today?)" (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). It is important to start by identifying your learning outcomes so that you have a clear goal of what information retrieval systems and skills you will cover in your instruction session. If your instruction session was requested by a professor to help his or her students, you will also want to discuss the learning objectives with him or her; this can help ensure that you and the professor are on the same page. Learning outcomes are also integral when it comes time for assessment (see the Assessment tab for more information).
Active Learning
There are a variety of ways to write a lesson plan. You may prefer to do a brief outline, or you may prefer a more formalized lesson plan that includes many details and follows a set template. Whatever format you choose to go with, you should always start by identifying your learning objectives (see box on this page for tips on creating learning objectives.) Below are some sample templates and additional guidelines to help you create your own lesson plans.
