Honestly, I've been struggling through the transfer material. And I think class this week helped me to both understand how it can be applicable to libraries, as well as why I've been struggling with engaging the material this week.
Until recently, I was never the student to ask why I should learn something or how it would be applicable to my "real" life. As a K-12 student, I assumed the teachers just knew what they were talking about when they said it was important (so trusting and naive, I know). I also inherently liked school and was good at it, "transfer" never really crossed my mind. Then, as an undergrad at a liberal arts college, I never really assumed that what I was learning was supposed to have direct applicability - in some respect, I was learning a way of thinking and learning, not just actual the material itself (which is transfer, but it was not really presented as such on a day-to-day basis). I also think this made me a lazy learner. Not that I didn't study hard, but that I really hated when teachers or professors tried tactics like the "hook question." I just wanted them to get on with teaching us whatever material would be covered for the day, and I'd make my own meaning later... if and when I felt like it. Basically, for the majority of my education I have not consciously thought of "transfer" as a particularly important part of my education.
It is only now that I am in a professional program, working towards a more distinct career goal, that I feel the need to ask "when and how will I use this?" This shift is coming slowly, which means it has been difficult for me to really internalize the importance of transfer. In some of my classes now, particularly the ones that are not overtly focused on libraries, the importance of transfer is becoming increasingly important to me. It's not that I no longer find knowledge for knowledge's sake to be important, but that on a very real level it's not what I need from education at this time. I need to be doing more transfer, and I need my professors to be helping. Ironically, I feel I've been getting less of it now than previously when I didn't find it to be all that important.
As a future professional, I can see the importance of transfer, even in a library setting. For instance, do we want the same patron coming back to the reference desk every time they need to find an article in a different database? Or, do we want to teach them skills that will transfer across platforms? Do we want to teach them "yes, you can check the database box that says 'limit to scholarly articles'?" Or do we want to teach them the different values and features of scholarly vs. popular articles so they can evaluate future sources themselves?
I also really liked the idea of the "hook question" from a practitioner's standpoint. I've been struggling with practical examples of how to capture student's prior knowledge. Tonight I thought the in class example of surveying how people would go about doing research on cars was a really valuable in understanding a method to tap into that knowledge base in a concrete fashion.
So, not a particularly exhaustive review of class, but rather this is what I am contemplating as we move into the next week.
Office hours can be a great way to probe your prof's thinking and see applications/transfer. Most SI profs are eager to show how their passions connect to other areas.
ReplyDeleteI agree - at my small liberal arts undergrad college (with less than 1,000 students), those types of interactions happened pretty naturally. Here at Michigan, I've had to be more purposeful in making those interactions happen, and they are typically very helpful and interesting.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking about your comment on SI professors not being so good at transfer. I am thinking particularly of 500, in which I have no idea what is going on, because I have no prior knowledge whatsoever of any of the topics, and since there is no background information on each lecture, I am lost. Therefore, how am I supposed to use the knowledge I gain in class to transfer across to other classes and studies? How would we gain transfer in a class such as this? I am looking at the previous comments, and agreeing with them, and I think visiting professors in office hours might be helpful, but what about when you don't understand basic lecture material?
ReplyDeleteSlightly a tangent off of Natalie: my problem with transfer in a lot of these circumstances is that I'm a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. So, for example, we get a lecture on network systems and information diffusion, and it gets filed into that section of my brain that read about that kind of thing in Scientific American a while ago, but I don't really draw connections to my professional practice or major field of study. I'm not consciously aware of fitting all of those bits and bobs of knowledge into one coherent view of everything. Maybe it happens, but I'm not aware of it on a conscious level, and I'm not really sure what teachers and librarians could do to promote that kind of coherence.
ReplyDelete