One Week Left!
Posted May 4, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
My final group project for LIS 451: Academic Libraries is done! Completed! Turned in! As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, the final project for LIS 451 is a Committee Group Project which you work on with a group throughout the semester. The final product was a written report as well as a recorded presentation. As this is an online class, my group collaborated via Google Docs and presented our project using Voicethread. I was on the Space Planning Committee, where our charge was to assess the current use of first floor space in a library and make specific recommendations for improvement. One of our group members is actually a library director at an academic library (she is a Ph.D. candidate) so we chose to use the library she works at as our model. This project was really interesting and useful as this task is something that a Space Planning Committee could have actually been given in an academic library. Additionally, this project was great in another way that I didn’t think of until I watched my professor’s wrap up video earlier today–it gives me something to talk about with prospective employers when I’m looking for a job. I could put this project, as well as other projects I’ve created at SLIS, into a work portfolio. These projects are real-world products as they are similar to things that I would be asked to create in an actual library, and I am getting real-world experience.
This group project was actually really easy collaboration-wise. A part of me thinks that it was because we had due dates for our chair reports every few weeks, so it forced us to strategically plan but honestly with most of the classes I’ve had at SLIS, group work has gone really well. Every class I’ve had at SLIS has had some aspect of group work or collaboration of some kind. When I took my first online class at SLIS that had a group project I was terrified. I had never done group work remotely before, and when I was in high school and undergrad I always dreaded group work. The work distribution was never equal, there was no good way to collaborate, etc. However, I’ve learned that Google Docs are such a wonderful thing, and while I had never used Voicethread before starting at SLIS, it’s a great way to present a project remotely. The hardest thing about doing a group project online is finding a time that works for everyone to “meet” online if there needs to be a live meeting to discuss the project. With online classes, often times there are people in different time zones, and sometimes there are even people on different continents! I’ve now successfully completed several group projects at SLIS, and I truly think that this one has been one of the best collaborations. We had several live video meetings, we used Google Docs to collaborate, we had a bunch of email chains, and we stayed organized and on-track!
Anyways, now that my final project is done, there is one week left of class. I have one week of lectures, readings, and one last assignment and then I am done with LIS 451: Academic Libraries, and I will officially be a third of the way done with my degree! Four classes down, eight to go!
PS: Congratulations Megan!!!!!