Professional Development for Online Instruction Librarians: Recommendations

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