Relationship Building: Connecting with Faculty

This fall, Bridget Reistad, librarian for Lake Superior College, along with her colleague, Kate Vo Thi, will be hosting eight FIG (faculty inquiry group) brown bag lunch sessions. The discussions and lessons will center around digital resources and how faculty can incorporate them into their curriculum.

One of the resources they will be talking about is LearningExpress Library. Specifically, the Career Center’s program and occupation prep exams like the TEAS and NCLEX. They use the TEAS exam as an entrance exam to the nursing program and NCLEX prep exam at the end of the program. Reistad noted that scores for the NCLEX for their students have gone up in the past 2 years. 

It hasn’t been easy to get faculty to listen to her about the resources the library has to offer. Reistad admits it’s been an uphill climb. However, she hasn’t given up. Staying in regular communication has helped to reach faculty. She is mindful that they have a heavy work load and are not seeking out ways to add to it. She sends out regular emails highlighting resources, attends division meetings, presents to new faculty and invite faculty to one-on-one sit downs to review their specific content and needs, including the development of the Course Guides. During faculty professional development days at Lake Superior College she makes sure to present on the resources and ways to connect with library staff. She’s even invited faculty to Minitex webinars to hear about what is available and how it can be used.

Making content easy to absorb has also been key. Using MNSCU’s D2L (Desire2Learn) Brightspace they have developed their own tutorials, including a Library and Information Literacy Tutorial that highlights library resources. Faculty may choose one or all of the modules ot add to their course work. They also connect with other library resourcses, such as the ELM Learning Center’s Guide on the Side tutorials and the Information Literacy game Information Fallout. D2L allows Bridget to introduce faculty and students to new resources and information literacy concepts as they are more receptive to a quick online tutorial that can be viewed at any time than to an hour long instruction session in the library. Having more online content compliments LSC’s growing online course programs as well.

Other ways she has connected with faculty and students is by customizing library vendor promotional material and creating handouts, getting into as many classrooms as she can both in person and virtually, and have conversations about resources and student learning as often as she can.