ALISE16 : Valuing Student Voices: Master's students critical perspectives on LIS education

Presenters:

• Kathleen McDowell, faculty at Univ. of Illinois
• Anna Chovanec, graduate of SU 2015
• Madison Sullivan, graduate of UIUC, 2015
• Sarah Crissinger, graduate of UIUC, 2015
• Sveta Stoytcheva, graduate of UIUC, 2015

Chovanec - Filling in the Spaces (FiTS)

• Treats the MSLIS experience as a human library.
• Focuses on student needs and gaps in the curriculum
• Began in 2010 by Chris Turner, who was then a student.  Could the students be resources for each other?
• Leveraging the knowledge and expertise of our student community
• New librarian based model focused around membership.  Students as members of the academic community.
• On-site events that are streamed and archived.
• How we do FiTS?
• Run by the LIS Student Assembly
• FiTS coordinator
• Tools - Google Drive, Adobe Connect
• Needs?
• Support from the school
• Connections between students
• Technology
• Administrative - workflow and policies
• Valuing student input
• Day of FiTS - first attempt to scale FiTS
• Partnerships
• Incentive
• Assessment
• Future of FiTS
• Can it be scaled even further?
• GA-ship
• Alumni outreach
• Issues of ownership and privacy
• What we have learned
• Classmates to colleagues
• Online student participation
• Value of informality
• Value of continuity - in partnership with the school

Sullivan - GSLIS Speaks

• Gather opinions, etc., from students about the program 
• There is information  on this in the blog Hack Library School
• The survey had 69 respondents
• Information was anonymized before being presented to faculty
• How did students rank the program?  3.8/5
• Asked for information on improvements that students wanted.
• Asked some opinion questions.  Some questions could be answered in long form.
• Also had a student led town hall. This was a safe space for discussing opinions openly. Both on campus and online. Collaborative note taking.
• Students want to provide more input to faculty and faculty committees.
• Some conversations are privileged.  GSLIS Speaks tried to pull the curtain back on the conversations.
• Students fear retribution from open conversations.
• Presented comments at two different faculty meetings.
• Would like to see the survey done on a regular basis.
• Clear that students want to be involved in the decision making process.  Involving them needs to be in time and genuine.

Sarah Crissinger and Sveta Stoytcheva - 2015 Symposium on LIS Education 

• Http://lisedsymposium.wordpress.com
• Held two days on site and virtually
• Both unconference and accepted presentations
• Had keynotes including people from Hack Library School
• Conference registration was free
• Has a code of conduct
• Work to meet any accommodations needed
• Unconference themes were developed from an upfront survey. Info is on the web site.
• Logistics - ask for help, not for permission.
• Used existing infrastructure.
• There was a lot of uncompensated time put into the event
• How can something like this be available to more students?
• Results and outcomes:
• No easy solutions, but many conversations
• On-going peer network
• Informs our professional practice
• Non-students were welcome but were asked to listen and not talk
• What's next?
• Would like to see this happen again and at more schools
• Would like to have a national LIS student conference, perhaps as part of another conference.  Would need to be affordable for students.
• Would like to see more LIS conferences made affordable for students.