September 2019

UnCOILed 2019: Summary of the Workshop – “2 Player Mode: Level Up Your Collaboration with Faculty”

ABCs of Persuasion

  • Attunement: Use empathy and recognize common goals to attune yourself to faculty’s perspective.
  • Buoyancy: Take control of your self-talk to stay buoyant after negative interactions.
  • Clarity: Help faculty identify problems they don’t realize they have, perhaps by asking to see student work.

From Dan Pink’s video: https://bit.ly/1nF15L8

Relationship Dynamics

  • Waller’s Principle of Least Interest: The party with the least interest has the most power.
  • Goffman’s Gift Giving: If a librarian feels like receiving class time to teach is a “gift” from faculty, it contributes to the power imbalance.
  • Goffman’s Deference Behavior: Using deference in the form of qualifiers (“I’m sort of a co-teacher with Dr. X”) also contributes to the power imbalance.

Consider the language you use with faculty and how it contributes to the power dynamic.

Successful Faculty/Librarian Collaborations

  • A shared, understood goal
  • Mutual respect, tolerance, and trust
  • Competence for the task at hand by each of the partners
  • Ongoing communication (Meulemans & Carr, 2012, p. 84)

See the COIL blog for examples of successful collaborations.

Meulemans, Y.N. & Carr, A. (2012). Not at your service: Building genuine faculty-librarian partnerships. Reference Services Review 41(1), 80-90. doi:10.1108/00907321311300893

Level Up Your Collaboration with an Actionable Value System

Part 1

Create a teaching philosophy that answers the following questions:

  1. What are your objectives as a teacher?
  2. How will you achieve these objectives?
  3. How will you measure your effectiveness?
  4. Why do you teach?

Part 2

What requirements should requests meet? What are you willing to do?

Examples:

  1. Students must be working toward a research assignment.
  2. No “point and click” database demos.
  3. Instructors must provide a class syllabus and/or an assignment sheet prior to a session.

Part 3

What are common misconceptions about library instruction among faculty? How can you respond when faced with those misconceptions?

See the slides with sample participant responses to the activities at https://bit.ly/2xJH7si