Teaching first-year undergraduates about plagiarism

At the beginning of this term I was asked to take over the seminar slots for the first year Sport and PE students during the third week of teaching; two hours in which I would teach the students how to use the library resources, how to reference, and how to avoid academic offences such as plagiarism and collusion. I did something similar last year, and had found it difficult to keep the students engaged over the two hours on what can quite honestly be dry topics. So this year I decided to try some new things to add some more interactivity and liven the session up a bit, and I remembered a plagiarism exercise I had heard about at a Library Camp. This came from a school librarian and I'm afraid I didn't write down her name - if you're reading this, please contact me so I can credit you! - and I adapted it slightly for use with first year undergraduates.

About halfway through the seminar I handed out pieces of scrap paper and asked the students to write down the best thing that had happened since they'd been at university so far. After some looks of bemusement they all managed to write down something (I emphasised that neither I or their tutor would read it!) and I asked them to swap their piece of paper with someone else, then to write their name at the top of the paper they'd received, and to count up the words on it. I then asked for the highest word count, and gave the holder of the piece of paper with it a chocolate. Each time, this person looked baffled and said "but I didn't write it", to which I replied "but it's got your name at the top!" - and then the students realised what I was getting at!

I was worried that it wouldn't work; that either the students would twig straight away and would see the whole exercise as childish, or the opposite, that they wouldn’t realise what I was getting at, but it actually worked pretty much perfectly in each seminar – the students appeared a bit taken aback by it and then realised what I was doing at exactly the right point in the exercise. I think it also worked really well at that halfway point in the session; after the “finding books and journals” bit that they would be expecting, doing this exercise shook the session up, got the students doing something different, and added an element of unpredictability which was also humorous too; the students gently laughing at the rightful owner of the chocolate missing out (I did actually give them one too eventually!), and also much hilarity ensuing when they read each others’ answers to the question I had set!

I will definitely use this exercise again with first-years (hopefully their by-then second-year peers won’t spoil the surprise before I get to do it!).

My "Big Thinker" - Mary Wollstonecraft

Since last September, I have been studying for a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice at UoB; a teaching qualification for HE which will also allow me to apply for accreditation by the Higher Education Academy (HEA). I have been meaning to write some blog posts about it but I have found studying part-time on top of working full-time, keeping up with my writing, continuing to make and maintain friendships in Bedford, and dealing with everything else that life entails quite demanding! I have completed the first unit and found out this week that, subject to ratification at the exam board in July, I have passed it (hooray!) and this week was also the first session for the second and final unit.

We talked about “Big Thinkers” – people who have influenced the way we think about and carry out our practice in teaching – and some of the course staff shared theirs. I couldn’t help notice that they were all men – Lacan, Heidegger et al. – and, whilst these figures were undeniably significant, I couldn’t help but wonder about which women we could come up with. I suspect it’s because of my ignorance of theorists, but I could only think of one – Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary was in many ways the “mother of feminism” – her text A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792, is, as far as I’m aware, the first text arguing for sexual equality, and in it her argument was that women needed to gain equality with men for a happy society, and that the way to achieve this was to educate girls.  Education is a hugely powerful thing operating in a context that goes way, way beyond the classroom. Even now, recent events – the shooting of Malala, the abduction of hundreds of girls from a school in Nigeria – demonstrate the power of education and how it is feared by those in this world who wish to continue to oppress women. As a teacher I am part of something much bigger than helping students find journal articles for their coursework.

I’ve been thinking about this over the past few days, and also the fact that I can’t think of any other female “Big Thinkers “ in education right now, and I’ve decided I want to explore more about educational theory, and in particular feminist educational theory. There’s quite a bit of literature out there on it, and a new book about feministpedagogy in info lit teaching has been on my radar for a while, so I’m going to make the time to learn more, and maybe make this my kind of focus for the remainder of my course.

Oh, and Mary? Well she sadly died shortly after giving birth to her second daughter, another Mary, but her husband William Godwin shared her beliefs, and the girls were educated and exposed to writers and philosophers of the time from an early age. Young Mary went on to, at 19 years of age, pretty much invent science fiction…

My 10 tips and tricks for a happy(ish) Chartership!

I've just returned from a lovely afternoon at a portfolio-building event in Cambridge, to which I'd gone along to speak about my experience of Chartership. I enjoyed listening to the other talks as well as giving mine, and it was a great opportunity to meet some new people and make some contacts. It was also my first experience of creating and delivering my own Prezi, from scratch, and after some initial tech panics, it seemed to go OK! Here's my Prezi (also embedded below) for anyone else who's interested. If I can help with your Chartership at all, do get in touch; I remember how tough a process it can be and so I'm eager to support others where I can.

Happy portfolio-building!

New job, new life!

It's been a while since I last blogged. I hadn't intended to leave it this long, but the past couple of months have just flown by. It seems ages ago that I loaded all of my possessions into a random bloke's van and we trekked over to Bedford on a very cold day, watching in growing horror as snow began to appear on the ground the further east we got! It all turned out OK though, and I'm now settling into my new life here.

I started my new role after the Easter weekend. I'm one of 13 Academic Liaison Librarians supporting staff, students and researchers across the University of Bedfordshire. I'm based at the Bedford campus, responsible for liaison with the departments of Sport & Exercise Science and Physical Education and Sports Studies. And so far I am absolutely  loving it! Everyone has been so welcoming and supportive, and I've been encouraged to be proactive and just get stuck in, asking for help as and when I need it, which is probably why I feel like I've been there for a lot longer than I actually have. What's struck me, which I wasn't expecting, is that it's so much easier starting your second professional role than it is your first. Sure, when I started at UWE, straight out of library school, I had plenty of prior work experience, I'd learnt all the theory on my MA, and I was ready to take on the role, but I just didn't have the experience of putting the theory into practice; of the issues and challenges that regularly arise at that level and in that role, and how best to deal with them. Now I do, and I have been able to transfer my skills to my new role. I'm working with a very different subject (which was a bit of a culture shock at first - I didn't even understand some of the words in the module titles and descriptions!), but many of the liaison skills that I need in order to do my job well are the same. I've also been able to bring to my new job the other skills and knowledge I developed in my previous role as an Assistant Librarian at a satellite campus library, where I pretty much did a bit of everything; I am now working in a very focused area (which has taken some getting used to after working on the service desk, emptying book bins, kicking printers etc.), but my knowledge about things like acquisitions processes and systems is useful contextual knowledge to have in my subject role.

I'm really excited about all of the teaching I'm going to be doing, and the opportunities I'll have to support then development of information literacy in various ways, as this is a major interest of mine and it's the main reason I became a librarian. There is lots of support for developing my skills in this area too; I'm planning to start an HE teaching qualification in September, paid for by work, and as I type this, I am on the train to the ARLG Eastern Teach Meet at UEA.

I've also been getting involved in local professional activity; I've joined the CILIP East Members' Network committee as their Social Media Officer, have meandered my way into the organisation of Library Camp East, and next week I'm off to a portfolio-building workshop in Cambridge to talk about surviving Chartership. Again, everyone's been so lovely and welcoming; I am feeling right at home work and LIS-wise.

And my new life in Bedford in general? It seems to be going well too. Bedford is....small. I am a definite city-dweller and have never lived in a town before. It's different. But I've joined the wonderful Bedford Writers' Circle, started playing netball again, joined an am-dram group, found some people to socialise with, and have located some suitable pubs and cafes for writing in, and London is just down the road when I need a break, so I really can't complain.

So now I will be spending the summer preparing for the new academic year at work, and doing lots of fun things whilst also completing the first draft of my novel outside of work. If you're another sports librarian who would like to chat subject support, another local librarian who would like to meet for coffee/cake/wine to chat library stuff, or indeed just another local person who'd like to make a new friend, do get in touch!

My next Big Adventure

When I started this blog, two months after beginning my first professional role, I called it “Rachel’s Big Adventure” because that was what my professional life felt like; the start of my journey into the career that I had been working towards for a couple of years, actually getting into the position that I had been looking forward to for so long, embarking on a massive learning curve and everything that came with it. It’s two years later now and actually, I don’t think it’s ever stopped feeling like a journey or an adventure of sorts; what with new challenges, responsibilities and opportunities at work almost constantly, organising, attending and speaking at events and conferences, meeting lots of lovely LIS people, achieving Chartership, and my fixed-term role being extended and then made permanent.

I’ve had a brilliant couple of years; developing and learning all the time, gaining new skills, knowledge and lots of confidence, and enjoying it along the way, and now I feel that the time has come to move on to my next Big Adventure. At the end of March I will be leaving my current role and moving on to the University of Bedfordshire, to become their Academic Liaison Librarian for Sport and Exercise Science. I am really excited; it seems like a fantastic place to work and I can’t wait to get stuck in. The role is going to be a real step up for me so I suspect it will mean another steep learning curve, but I feel like I’m ready to take on more responsibility and to develop myself further in an academic liaison role.

I will be sad to leave my current role. It has been just a brilliant opportunity to get lots of experience in different aspects of academic librarianship, and I have learnt and developed so much that I can’t even put it down into words. I feel immensely grateful for the opportunities I’ve had and I know I have been incredibly lucky to have had this job as my first professional role. Then of course there are all the wonderful colleagues I have had at UWE, both in my team at St Matthias and at the other campuses. They have been so supportive and welcoming throughout, and many of them have become friends. I will really miss my close-knit team, and I will miss the other lovely friends I have made in Bristol and the South West too, both librarian-y folk, and a few non-librarians too! I arrived in Bristol knowing absolutely no-one, and in the two and a bit years since, I have built up a life for myself here, which will be very sad to leave I think.

Now this post is straying into dangerously sentimental territory (!), so I shall end it here by looking again towards the future. I can’t wait to get to Bedfordshire and get started on my new role, and all of the challenges and opportunities that will come with it. I fully intend to continue blogging, so (if you want to!) I’m sure you will be hearing all about what I’m getting up to there. There’s another aspect to my moving on too; in my new role, I don’t feel that I will be a “new professional” any more, even though it’s been less than five years (the generally presumed marker of being “new”) since I started my MA or first role. This prospect used to make me a bit sad, as so much of my professional identity so far has involved my being “new”, but now I feel ready to move on from my “newness” and to embrace whatever it is that comes next; I’m not sure that I could describe myself as “established”, but there must be something in the middle (perhaps this is something for another blogpost!)!

I have a really good feeling about the future and feel like I’ve definitely made the right decision. Now for the less fun part; house-hunting and packing…

I'm Chartered! Some thoughts and tips

This is a somewhat delayed blog post, but NaNoWriMo and then Christmas got in the way of me writing anything on my experience of Chartership. I submitted my portfolio in September and received the happy news that I was successful in November. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the experience, I’d like to share some of my thoughts and tips for those in the process.

I registered for Chartership in March 2011, four months after I started my first professional role, six months after completing my Librarianship MA. I had initially wondered if it was too early to start, but I was encouraged by colleagues who had completed or who were completing to register and make a start on it. I had a few reasons for wanting to Charter:

• It would provide evidence of my commitment to my personal development, the development of the service in which I worked, and my involvement in the profession. *I* knew that I had this commitment, but having evidence to demonstrate to others is always helpful.

• I felt that it would help me to really identify the areas on which I wanted to concentrate, the ones in which I needed to develop most. As a newly-qualified person in my first librarian post I felt a bit like I wanted to do and learn everything, a feeling which was exacerbated by the nature of my role which covered a range of aspects and responsibilities, so I thought it would be helpful to learn how to focus my development plans.

• It seemed like the logical next step, after my MA and then getting my first professional role.

After reading the Chartership handbook and instructions, and sending off my registration form, my next step was to find a mentor. I know that recently a lot of people have been finding it difficult. I was lucky in that the first mentor I contacted was happy to take me on, and a phone conversation between us confirmed that we felt the relationship would work. However, I did find that there wasn’t a great deal of choice in my area; many mentors listed on the CILIP website were full, or only taking mentees from their own organisation. I selected my mentor because she was in the same sector as me, but in a different institution; so she would pick up on anything that I wasn’t explaining adequately for someone who didn’t work in my library. Although we were both in the South West region, my mentor was in Plymouth and I was in Bristol, so it was actually a distance mentoring arrangement (it’s a big region!). I found this worked fine; we agreed in our mentoring agreement how contact would work – email for the most part, telephone if there were problems to sort out, and me arranging a trip to Plymouth to meet face-to-face if there were problems which could not be resolved any other way. It turned out that email sufficed for us, with additional use of Dropbox towards the end when I was sending her sections of my portfolio to look at – in this way I could send her links to the documents rather than attaching large files to emails. My mentor was brilliant; she was really supportive and answered my emails swiftly and helpfully. If you’re struggling to find a mentor I would recommend considering a distance mentoring arrangement, but do make sure you both set out what is expected of each other re: communication when you put together your mentoring agreement. 

I then attended a “Preparing for Chartership” course. I blogged about how useful I found this here, so I won’t repeat it; I’ll just say that, although you can attend one of these at any point during the process, I recommend attending one as soon as you can, as it was so helpful. You only need to attend one of these courses, but I also attended a “Building your Portfolio” course a year later too, as I was struggling; as blogged here, I found this one helpful too for building up my motivation again.

I was aiming to submit my portfolio in July 2012, and it ended up being September, so I actually didn’t miss my original deadline by too far, but I do think I could have completed it earlier. I spent a lot of time feeling daunted by the process when, on reflection, I really didn’t need to. My main tip therefore is to just get on with it! Easier said than done, but hopefully my other tips will suggest ways in which the process can seem less daunting…

Be smart and organised in the way you collect your evidence. I fell into the trap of putting anything I thought might be evidence into folders (physical and electronic). When it came to putting my portfolio together, I had a lot of stuff that I actually didn’t need, and I had to spend time looking through other locations to find bits I did need. If I were doing it again I would think before keeping something; will I use it – which bit of my PPDP and which criteria does it relate to? Is it useful and meaningful or does it need something added? Is it reflective (more about reflection in the next tip)? I would also try to organise my folders by criteria right from the start – this is something I only started doing later on. Trust me, you will thank yourself when it comes to putting the final thing together.

Reflection doesn’t have to be a long piece of writing – this is something that the ever-wonderful Annette told me once, and I found it helpful to bear in mind throughout the process. Some pieces of reflective evidence will usually be blocks of writing of course – reports from visits, or write-ups of projects, for example – but sometimes all you need is a few sentences, which was the case with lots of my bits of evidence; for example, just a line or two about why this particular piece is in my portfolio i.e. what it shows.

Review your PPDP regularly. I think I was actually quite good at this – my job changed so much and so frequently during the time I was gathering evidence, I found I had to keep re-assessing what the areas I needed to develop in were. Even if you’re not in a similar position, you still need to be going back to it regularly – it is supposed to be an evolving document and should not be the same at the end of the process as it was at the start. This should also hopefully help with your smart and organised collection of evidence, as described above!

Get all the little things right. Read the submission guidelines carefully and check several times that you’ve included all the bits you need i.e. CV, organisational objectives, mentoring agreement – there’s a clear list in the handbook. Don’t fall down on copyright or data protection issues – blank out names and details if they don’t need to be there, seek permission to include things written by someone else and any names that need to be included, and state that you have done so (I put a statement in at the start of my portfolio that permission had been sought). If you’re worried or unsure about anything, ask your mentor for advice.

Find Chartership communities for mutual support! There is a fantastic Chartership community on Twitter, using the hashtag #chartership to share progress, thoughts and experiences and to ask questions. There are plenty of already-Chartered people getting involved to answer questions too. Every so often there is a #chartership chat, but the hashtag is active all of the time. If you’re not on Twitter already I would even recommend joining just for the #chartership support. Don’t forget real-life communities too – we had a little cross-campus Chartership support group at work, meeting for a coffee every so often, and I also had other meet-ups with other candidates.

Have a look at some successful portfolios – I found it really helpful to see how others had approached it. There are some on the CILIP website, some on LISNPN, your local CILIP CDG Candidate Support Officer will have some, and if you ask nicely, a friend or colleague might share theirs. That said, don’t compare your portfolio to others’ too much – successful portfolios differ wildly in length and approach. Mine was very long, about twice what many portfolios are, and whilst the feedback that I got was that I should more selective in my evidence when I come to submitting for Revalidation, it still passed. 

If you’re struggling, ask for help. Ask your mentor – that’s what they’re there for! Find out who your local Candidate Support Officer is and ask them. Email the Qualifications team at CILIP – they are really helpful. Ask on Twitter to see what others think. It can at times feel like a very vague and daunting process, and no question is too daft!

Lastly – if you’re not already aware, you can now submit electronically. I would recommend this approach as it will save you money on printing and postage! Do read the guidelines for this on the CILIP website carefully.

Was Chartership worth it? Yes, I feel. I have a document which evidences how hard I have worked to develop myself, my service and my professional involvement, during challenging times at my workplace, and I have been recognised for this effort and commitment by my professional body. I was able to devise a focused, appropriate development plan, and, as a result of the reflection throughout my portfolio, have been able to identify areas to work on in the future. I feel able to take control of my own development and to continue to identify what my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are. 

This leads me to “what’s next?” Well, I’m not thinking about Revalidation just yet, but I am continuing to think about my personal development in a focused way, and also to collect useful and relevant evidence (bearing in mind my own tips on being smart and organised with this!). I don’t feel that I could commit the time to being a mentor at the moment, but in the future I would definitely like to do this. In the meantime, I am helping out where I can, on the #chartership hashtag and also advising friends and colleagues who are in the process or thinking about it.

I hope that this post has been helpful in some way to someone! If you’re thinking about Chartership, I would encourage you to go ahead with it, and if you’re struggling, I urge you to keep going! It will be worth it.

Attempting NaNoWriMo

So November has been an extremely busy month with no time for blogging, for number of reasons, but mainly because on the evening of October 31^st I decided I was going to have a go at NaNoWriMo for the first time. For those unfamiliar with it, basically, every November, people around the world attempt to write a novel – or at least the first 50,000 words of a novel – between November 1^st and 30^th. To “win”, you don’t need to have finished the novel; you just need to have written 50,000 words of it during November. There are online forums and chatrooms and virtual and real-life “write-ins” to offer mutual support (and Twitter of course!). 

I used to write a lot when I was younger; prose, poetry, songs. I even had a poem published on Daisy Goodwin’s website as her “poem of the month” when I was at university. For various reasons, I stopped writing towards the end of my undergraduate days, and have struggled to get back into it since.  For the past couple of years I’ve considered doing NaNoWriMo but decided I just didn’t have the time or any ideas. This year I was toying with the idea of doing it as a “rebel” and getting back into my poetry again. When I got into bed on the evening of October 31^st, an idea for a novel suddenly popped into my head, and so the next day I decided to actually sign up and have a go. I didn’t really think I’d finish – I had a lot booked in for November already, and didn’t think I could possibly maintain the momentum to do 50,000 words in 30 days anyway. I hoped I might manage to write a few thousand words to get me started.

As it turns out, I hit the 50k mark on 29^th November. I was surprised at how easy it was; for the first week or so I struggled to stay on target (it works out as an average of 1667 words per day), but as my word count grew and I got further into it, the words came more easily. The novel is nowhere near finished yet, but I have a first draft of a novel forming before my eyes for the first time ever, which is amazing! And I am so incredibly happy to be writing again. I’ve even already got an idea for my next novel too!

I’m not sure I’d like to say I could offer any tips as such, but I can share a few observations which might be useful to anyone thinking about doing NaNoWriMo next year:

• To make time to write I had to give up other stuff; day trips or cinema at the weekends, television, time spent messing around on the internet, etc! This also probably means I have been neglecting my friends a bit, which I will try to make up for in December! I am single and child-free so I can’t comment on fitting writing around family life, but I imagine it must be tricky. That said, I didn’t give up everything; I still managed to go running twice a week, go to Spanish class, run a new professionals’ event, go to London for the day to see a friend and also go there for one night for a gig (the ever-wonderful Alanis!) – and to work full-time! It’s about prioritising I guess, and if you want to write 50k words in one month then writing has to be one of your priorities for your free time.

• I loved the community feel of NaNoWriMo, not just the online support offered through Twitter and the forums, but also the real-life Write-Ins which I went to on Sundays at a café-bar in Bristol. It was lovely to meet other people doing the same thing, and to sit and write together. I will really miss this aspect of it – but happily, Lisa is looking into setting up an online group for librarians who have done NaNo and want to continue writing with support from each other.

• I didn’t read anything during November – not just because most of my spare time was devoted to writing, but also because I was worried about inadvertently copying someone else’s plot or writing style! I’ve missed reading so I’m really hoping that this will be less of a risk when writing at a less frantic pace.

• When I was away from a computer, I wrote by hand. It was frustrating typing it up rather than writing new words (and difficult to resist the urge to edit!) but better than not doing any writing at all, I feel. 

• I haven’t slept much during November, not just because I often stayed up late to keep writing, but also because, particularly at the start, my brain would be buzzing with thoughts and ideas for my novel, keeping me awake. As a result my caffeine consumption has rocketed. This may not be entirely healthy.

So, what next? Well, I am going to keep writing. I’d like to have finished the first draft of this novel by Christmas, then I will put it away for a couple of weeks, before taking it out again to start the editing process. The ideal outcome would be getting it published, and this is what I will work towards. Ambitious, yes - but plenty of people become published novelists, so why not me? As I mentioned earlier, a group of librarians who want to keep writing together are forming an online writing group, so that will be brilliant for keeping up the support that NaNoWriMo offered.

To anyone considering doing NaNoWriMo next year, all I can say is yes, do! I am so glad I decided to give it a go – without it, I’d still be having vague thoughts about doing some writing one day, and not actually doing any. It has been the kick up the bum that I needed, and, without sounding too clichéd (and I promise my writing is better than this!), it has changed my life for the better. I am so excited to see what I can come up with. And if you don't "win", then that doesn't matter - you've still done some writing which you might not have done otherwise. If you need any further convincing, read Bethan’s lovely blog post on her feelings towards writing since starting NaNoWriMo, and Samantha’s post on finishing.

Happy writing!