Professional Development for Online Instruction Librarians: Confidence &
Challenges

Pedagogical

Many respondents noted the difficulty of assessing student learning in online courses as well as adequately assessing the use of online tutorials and research guides. Interestingly, some respondents contrasted the lack of assessment with the ability to read students' body language, indicating that what some librarians need is not assessment tools, which many online technologies provide, but specifically ways to get immediate feedback on the success/failure of a pedagogical technique. Generally, this also relates to the respondents' concern about the inability to reproduce in-person methods in online environments.  Respondents also noted a lack of pedagogical training, especially as part of their MLIS programs.

Administrative

The most common theme to emerge from the respondents was the issue of time. Creating tutorials, developing research guides, staying up to date with and learning to use new technologies, and conducting assessment were all noted as time-consuming activities. While most respondents noted the inability to find time among the numerous other responsibilities required for their job, at least four respondents specifically mentioned a lack of understanding on the part of institutional administrators regarding the time needed to develop and maintain online instruction programs.

Technical

Many respondents noted a lack of adequate instructional technology due to lack of funding, lack of IT support for new technologies, and lack of administrative support. Ten respondents mentioned having to use free software due to these restraints. Respondents also noted the time and effort required to keep online materials up-to-date due to changing technological formats and changes made to the library website or LMS.  Also of note, at least five respondents mentioned the lack of ADA-compliant materials or the ability to make online instructional materials accessible to students with learning disabilities.

Structural

Many respondents noted having difficulty integrating online instructional materials into university courses either due to limitation of the LMS or lack of buy-in from non-librarian faculty. In other cases where the lack of faculty buy-in was mentioned, it was viewed as an administrative problem: i.e. lack of adequate marketing.  Other respondents noted a lack of instructional design training and their lack of confidence designing "engaging" materials.

Financial

While this was the least mentioned of the five categories, the responses were fairly consistent: providing online instruction requires a significant amount of human resources (time) and the most robust instructional technology costs more than many institutions are willing to support. Some respondents indicated a complete lack of a budget for this type of technology.

Survey Responses

I have no formalized education training, so I, at times, feel unsure of my ability to convey information effectively and meet learning standards put into place by organizations such as ACRL.

Administrators often see online courses as an ATM--it's where the money is, I keep being told--yet they don't put the resources into making it sound, pedagogically and logistically, because they don't understand how much more time/energy it takes to teach well online.

I read about or hear about all kinds of cool technology at conferences, but I have to teach myself how to use most of them.  The overall biggest challenge is sifting through all of the formats for teaching online and determining which ones best meet our students' needs are and what they want!

Currently the biggest challenge is the same as with [face-to-face].  Since we do not teach a credit course, we are dependent on incorporating instruction into courses taught by others.  Convincing instructors to let us include our instruction in their class is a great challenge.