 We are at the top of the hour. So let's begin. Let me welcome everybody. Let me welcome you all to the Future Trends Forum I'm delighted to see you all here today My name is Brian Alexander. I'm the forum's creator I'm the host and I'm also the chief caterer for the next hour of conversation. Now, let me introduce today's program You know, we're in an extraordinary situation where the COVID-19 pandemic continues to roar through society's worldwide And that has enormous impact on higher education now If you'd like to research that if you'd like to learn more about it You simply go to this URL here Just go tiny or all comm slash COVID EDU and I have some resources linked from there Including a book status of higher education in the US and some other countries abroad as well as links to resources on how to keep up with the virus And also one of the things that people have been doing these conversations is they've been sharing News and information that they get from these conversations So for example here is one campus in the United States where someone learned about a way of using VR that was very Inexpensive and already deployed it on their campus. So please ask us questions about practical usage and we're really really happy to share that Now speaking of happy. I want to welcome our three guests are absolutely delighted to have three really Extraordinary people here today. Now, who are they and where are they from? Well, two of them are coming to you from the library space We have the very very awesome Lisa Hinchliffe who is among other things a well-known widely known figure in the entire library world including the fields of digital literacy and library policy and Along with her we have Christine Wolf Eisenberg who works at Ithaca SNR who is among other things a researcher Who just has fantastic work and the two of them have been researching how? Academic libraries have really been responding to COVID-19 and their work gives us I believe the best information we have on that and alongside them We have the awesome flower Darby flower is a professor at Northern Arizona University and the author of a really really nifty book on Teaching online which you'd think will be required reading now speaking required reading before I bring them up If you look in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, you should see a couple of buttons One of them will take you to flowers book and the other one will take you to the COVID-19 survey of academic libraries, so Before we go any further. Let me just grab one of our guests and bring her up on stage Professor Darby welcome. Hi. Thank you Brian. Hello to everybody who's made the time to be here today Thanks for being here. I'm really really glad that you can make the time I know you must be enormously in demand both at your university as well as around the world three expertise I'm busy right now Well, you're busy, but also let me ask how are you doing? How is the pandemic treating you? How is life in lockdown in our little corner of the world? I'm grateful to say that we don't seem to be very affected We're certainly taking all of our precautions and following guidelines, but I'm thankful that so far life here has been relatively stable I'm very grateful for that. Good. Good. Me too. Me too on your behalf. I'm very really glad to hear that. Thank you And now are you teaching this semester? I'm actually not. No Teaching or working with faculty on their teaching right now. Very good. Very good Well, they really owe you a lot to have you on campus Hell or I should say in the institution helping them with their transition online. Yes I have so many questions to ask you and friends if you're new to the future transform I'm always I have tons and tons of questions, but the key thing is your questions So as I interrogate our poor guests, please think of your own questions your own comments that you'd like to jump in Especially as our guests reveal more about their own thinking again Just press that raised hand button to tell me that you'd like to join us appear on stage or click You know the question mark button if you'd like to type in a question or kind of To begin with flower You know so much about how to teach effectively online I'm just wondering if I can ask you to start off with What are some of the most effective practices that you've been witnessing? Being used in this fantastic transition that are on the most basic end the kind of baseline practices I don't mean programming an AI to control your VR helmet I mean, what are the basic things for the faculty who are just really having the hardest time getting online? Well, Brian, if you know my work, you know, I'm all about the simple and the doable Techniques that we can all employ and so actually I observed quite a bit of struggle with some of those really practical things And so that's why yesterday the Chronicle printed my latest advice guide on how to teach in time-saving and low-tech ways in online instruction and People have been teaching online Understand these approaches, but for folks who have never really thought about how to do this There are lots of very simple things that you can do that really do help students engage and learn in low-band with Asynchronous in other words, they don't have to be there in real time with you more accessible ways so Posting it sounds boring, but it works. It's it's mundane. You can post your static content such as readings or short video micro lectures You can assign students to complete some questions while they're reading a textbook chapter Some of those very simple Low-hanging fruit things are what I would be encouraging folks to use right now Very good. Very good That really really helps and that brings up some issues of equity and imbalance You're thinking more about How faculty are making this transition. How do we best support faculty? I'm coming to students everybody else in a second I just want to start off with faculty I mean, what are the best ways to keep faculty sane and healthy and doing the most effective job in this incredibly difficult environment a Lot of folks has a great question a lot of folks have been Encouraging us to remind faculty that it doesn't have to be perfect right now doesn't have to be high tech That that we need to be kind to ourselves as faculty Understanding that no one who was teaching in person asked for this situation and so Kindness to ourselves and our students compassion and being willing to try something new So if faculty in the heat of the moment right around mid-march thought, okay I'm just gonna move all my classes to zoom and teach at my same time and day You know, you might be I think people are finding that that approach is problematic in many ways And so the master's not over yet. We can try something new and be transparent with our students and say, okay Let's let's let's simplify and see if we can help more people be more successful How do you help support faculty in that attitude of trying something new? And we've had a lot of debate on Twitter and the blogosphere and on YouTube lately about just how much improvisation Just how much creativity should we either expect or try to help happen? I mean, how do you get people who are who may being feeling that they want to be defensive and conservative? That's a great question again For me it is and this might be a hackney dancer but it is about reminding faculty that we too can have a growth mindset about our ability to fail forward and learn from Practices that didn't really work the way we expected and the incredible value of demonstrating that willingness to think again You know for our students. That's a life lesson that Everybody can continue developing. So for me, it's about empathy again for yourself If something isn't working as in your class Give yourself permission to try something new and be very transparent with your students and say I don't think this is working very well Encouraging a more open mind instead of a stubborn. We're we're gonna do this till the end. I think can go a long way Well, that's great transparency and I can see why your faculty really really belong in you We have a couple of questions are just bubbling up from the audience. I'm gonna flash these up on the screen right now To begin with we have one from Tom Haynes in Texas a wonderful scholar and a great friend of the program who asks Are you finding that faculty are more willing to deconstruct what they're doing and boiling teaching down to its essence? I? Think right now faculty are also in survival mode And I think that this deconstruction and boiling down to the essence will be happening after the close of this semester I think people are just trying to get through Many of the folks that I'm working with are keeping their heads down They're just trying to get to that finish line and help their students do the same But I think this summer provides an opportunity for some deep reflection about how we could do this better If we're in this situation again So look ahead to the summer for that Tom a great question and Thank you for a really good answer a couple more questions just piled up And then we have a couple of guests that we want to add to the panel One has come from I believe Diane Deuster who? Who asks what are some of the low-hanging fruit in terms of online pedagogical practices could you provide practical examples? Absolutely Diane good question, and this is what I do all day long So low-hanging fruit again give your students static content that doesn't require high bandwidth and can be accessed at any time Of the day or night that really supports students in uncertain circumstances Use your learning management systems a assignment and quiz functions in order to check for student understanding and hold them accountable for their learning those tools are Accessible by nature of being in that system, and they're relatively easy to learn and use I'm also a big fan of the online discussion forum. It is low-hanging fruit It can be done effectively you can have a conversation just as stimulating and robust as the one we're having today with a little bit of Intention about how you set that up here here Diane that's a great question, and I fear may miss pronounce your name. She's at the st. Mary's University and flower Thank you for that really really solid answer We have a different question that comes from Jessica surgeon who believes at Penn State And she asks what surprised you the most when universities began going completely online That's an awesome question and really what surprised me the most is how difficult it was for faculty to conceive of how to do this Without lecturing during their regular day and time and that took me off guard We literally heard from hundreds almost thousands of faculty around the world Saying well all I know is to that I should be teaching in zoom What do you mean a synchronous and so it took me back to my origins about 12 years ago when I first started teaching online And if I step back a chapter before then I Definitely recall having no idea how you would teach a class you know online and so this learning curve this Aware this dawning of awareness of hopefully an opportunity to learn a new skill set and a new way to support our students That took me off guard at first But it just reminded me that if people haven't had to think about this before and it is very different than how would they know That's a good question. I mean, I remember this during the MOOC days where people hadn't didn't take MOOCs And so they weren't able to understand them, right? That's a great question and a really Wow challenging answer the lecture just won't die We have a couple more comments that are fans of yours flower Just didn't let you know people are one really liked your piece this morning and chronicle And we have one more question from Eric mystery At the College of Saint Scholastica who asks a precise question, but one of those technologies What are some good ways to help increase the quality of online discussion forums? Great question, Eric And it's it's easier than you think but it does take some effective planning So the main takeaway is you need to ask questions that are Discussable you can't ask a really black and white question with no nuance and expect a robust conversation So ask things with some nuance with controversy I love to ask students to apply the course content and concepts to their own experience It really helps them process material in different ways I also like to provide three or four different discussion questions per Forum that students can then choose to engage in according to their own interest and Meanwhile, other students can learn from what the group talking about that question is is discussing So there are definitely some ways to add complexity For me a really big takeaway is to think about what happens in a good in-person discussion or conversation like we're having today and to structure your Questions and your facilitation as if it were an organic conversation with lots of guidance facilitation questions clarification clarifications those kind of things So if for the faculty members who are thinking I need to lecture I need to lecture I need to lecture You're saying well, you need to discuss you need to help discussions matter So you can use that discussion board to do that very thing. That's right Well, fantastic question. I said, okay, we're done. We're ready to go. No, we have Let me just if I can bring in the library world to add to our teaching and learning focus Lisa I'm so glad to be here. Thanks. Great to be here. How is everything in quarantine and You're you're in Illinois, right? Right. So we are We are sheltering in place. I like to keep separate the quarantine Obviously quarantine is very important for people who do know they've been exposed or who are sick, but I am fortunate Sheltering in place and I'm really grateful to our governor who I think is providing really good leaders especially for someone who works for the state at the University of Illinois, but I've Been personally quite impressed those of you who know our last election we had our choice between two billionaires and Apparently, you know, so it's interesting because So we have Pritzker governor Pritzker and as many people have said we didn't Didn't know this is what we would see but we're very very pleased to see it So it's been a long time since we had good news about Illinois politics. Well, you know, Illinois politics is just the gift that keeps giving Yes, like a comic opera Governor Pritzker was interested in organizing a coalition in the western states Yeah, I mean, I think he's Certainly stepped forward in in many ways and I mean Chicago is obviously a really major Major city for the US right with also being internationally important as well as crossroads of a lot of a Lot of commerce honestly, so there's a lot going on but so we are you know He's giving date daily briefings actually that I've encouraged other people in other states to listen to just because I feel like they're so informative and With a real leadership perspective, so well, thank you. What time was? You know, I don't know they just pop up on Facebook live for me, so But they're recorded of course as well and Yeah, so I think I should stop talking about politics at this point Another interesting thing is I've learned to do some basic plumbing at our house, so who knew I'm glad for your learning I Swear owning a home is all about water being where it's not supposed to be or water not being where it's supposed to be It feels like 90% of the task upon water is the great enemy Cities, let me introduce your colleague Christine Wolf Eisenberg, hello, hi Brian. Thanks for having having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. It's great to have you back Listen, how was everything for you under lockdown? I am personally well and safe and and healthy I work out of I normally work out of an office in Manhattan. I am in my apartment in New Jersey Our our governor has just stated that schools are to stay K-12 schools are to stay closed through May 15th at this point that was just announced today, but yeah Just just you know on a personal level staying staying in my apartment. No no plumbing plumbing dilemmas or issues to take care of So I'm you know, I'm hanging in there. Oh good. I'm glad to hear it. I'm glad you're safe Listen, I love to ask people to talk about they introduce themselves by describing what they're working on for the next year But our situation now is so extraordinary that the next year is mind-blowing to think about and we're really focused on the next few days If I could ask the two of you Lisa and Christine Why don't you introduce your fantastic research project your spreadsheet looking at what's going on with academic libraries? We've been talking with flower Darby about what's going on academic teaching. Tell us what's going on the libraries and campuses So maybe I'll do just a little bit of background on the survey and what we're collecting and then I'll turn it over to Christine to share about some of the findings so Inspired Brian by your Google doc that you had started on what was happening with campus closure and Christine's work there March 11 feel so yesterday Christine tweeted out. Hey is anyone capturing what's happening with libraries and I said hey I looked for that yesterday and we jumped on a phone call actually and Said we you know, we should do something and At first Christine, I'm gonna call her up for this She's like I think we could have something done by Monday, and I was like no it has to be done by tonight We have to have it out tonight So and we did ten hours later we had Gone to the literature Developed survey questions field tested them with some cognitive interviews programmed it in the platform Did some pre-testing walk-throughs? We really have to give a shout out to the whole academic library community because we were you know on Twitter at one o'clock Hey, who can test this for me in the next hour? 26 people walk through it within you know 30 minutes or something So we were able to get it out in the field on March 11. We've been collecting since then It's a very basic straightforward survey We did embed the iPads Indicator in it and librarians are great because they understand metadata so everyone goes and gets their iPads code and puts it in We designed it as well. It captures what's happening with instruction What's happening with whether students are still in residence? As and then has a series of questions about what is happening with the library with respect to both the building the physical collections Number of services whether remote work is being allowed and some other open-ended things We also designed it so that libraries could take it repeatedly So if we have you know before and after and during we have at least a couple libraries Who have filled it out six times as their policies have changed over the course of the month? So we have some we have some great data on any given moment in time But we also have the ability to see how things have changed over time And so with that maybe I'll let Christine do the the second part, which is so what what have we found? And I see you did put the URL in there Brian because the other I have to say it's one other thing Christine. Sorry Um We designed it so that as soon as somebody answered the survey It went on to a live dashboard where people could see the results So we had a reporting happening as soon as the very first library filled it out Which by the way happened in like seven minutes or something so This is real-time data that everyone can get to at any point in time It's not like we're collecting it and we'll report it back later. So Christine You know that was it that was a great intro piece because I just hit refresh on the dashboard myself to see how many That was our what our latest figures are so we um, you know through through kind of Organic outreach. Um, we've been able to capture responses from from eight hundred and forty one institutions across the us thus far, which is uh, really, uh, you know lisa I don't know what you expected at the beginning of this I I could not have expected this. I mean, I don't think we knew what to expect but um, It it is um, and and people have been as as lisa said people have been really generous. We have Five hundred and eighty four logged updates Now some of those do represent college is coming back or libraries coming back You know multiple times to report updates But many many many are coming are coming back to provide updates Which allows us to not just you know get get results, you know at a single point in time But we can can track along a long time and a lot a lot has changed. So lisa and I have done analyses um With the first 24 hours of responses when they came in the next 48 hours of responses the first two weeks or so of responses So we've really been been tracking this as it's been been evolving And so as the community as lisa said, you know the results are out there people are actively using it for for decision-making and and for advocacy Primarily to to advocate for for closing physical library locations So i'll just mention a couple a couple of the things that that we've we have found. Um, so the the first is really that Campus practices and and policies are really water falling to the library. So We are seeing, you know a certain change happen at the institution and then it might take a couple days Or might take a week for the library in turn to make to make some kind of a change to their policies or or building hours um, and so speaking of building hours What's great about the the data collection happening over time is we can really map out at a given point in time Where most libraries totally open and that happened in the first two days three days of data collection in early mid mid-march Then they had, you know partial openings for about a week and then and then it really trended towards being being closed which which means that access to physical collections is Uh limited or non-existent at this at this point. Um there's been a really huge expansion of of shifting to digital Reference and an instruction for information literacy classes. Um A lot of remote work happening now as as is the case across higher ed that was never really really happening before a lot of policy changes Around that as well. So maybe that's that's where I'll leave that's kind of the the landscape high level over a view of what we've been What we've been finding so far Well, that's fantastic. What a rich trove. Uh, I mean, that's a lot of libraries And at least you're up to six changes in one month for each library So we we did have a couple survey. So this was at the 10 day mark Which is the last time we pulled all the data and by the way All of these analyses that christine mentioned are also on that portal page that we created with the tiny url slash covet library um At that point we saw a few libraries that had actually submitted six times So because the survey can be done as many times as you want Some places are really doing this amazing job for us of like we changed this policy So we'll report in we changed this policy. It was more common that we saw one update or two updates Um, as opposed to five or six The other thing about this survey the way it's designed. Um This survey can actually continue to be taken as libraries reopen At whatever point that is let's we have hope that at some point we're going to reopen The way it's designed right now even if people started reopening they can still take the survey and and so We may add some questions over time. That's possible But at the moment the survey would still completely work if all you were doing was just swinging back into being open so Question we get a lot is how long are you going to leave this open and we just don't know like Until it's not useful anymore, but at the moment it still feels like it's And this would be a great historical document I'm looking forward Uh, we have a quick question from uh, jordanis shaw from middle sex community college who asked What is the url? If you look on the bottom left corner of your screen, you'll see two, uh, kind of tan or uh brown colored buttons The top one is academic library response. Just click that and you'll pop right into the google doc And right below that is a link to small teaching online flowers book about teaching online So i'm telling you this knowing that you both will be so interesting that you'll leave the conversation It's a risk because they're both such great Oh, we have a another question that i want to put up on the stage and then we have a then we have video guests. Um, this is from Gretchen with you one of your ethical colleagues Who asks do you find that most faculty are asking librarians for help in this transition? Or are they working through the issues on their own? What is your best most effective outreach method to reach faculty and i'm going flower Could you start us off with this because you're saying this right at the front at the cold phase? So we had the greatest, um turnout in literally years for support from faculty But um many more faculty are figuring this out on their own and I do think it's a faculty mindset that That's what we do when we're when we're given a class to teach. We figure it out I hope that this opportunity invites faculty to take advantage of support folks like librarians and instructional designers in terms of Ways that we can support them that they of course might not even know about it. They haven't come to us before Well, thank you lots of DIY go ahead Yeah, that's my sense. So I can say um, Brian, this isn't necessarily something we really sought to capture in the survey Which was more about operations, but I myself being the coordinator for information literacy at the university of the library The university of Illinois work closely with our center for teaching and learning and I am on one of our many Keep teaching teams Teams Which were put into place to support this. Um, our library has also put into place a really expedited Licensing and purchasing process for anything that is needed for courses um, so I was actually just on a phone Meeting phone call this morning With our user services team, which is where I report And we're already thinking ahead and starting to acquire things for people for summer and thinking ahead to fall because we um, even if faculty are back in the classroom Everyone will teach differently because of this experience. And so we're already seeing people sort of Thinking about these pedagogies that they've developed and starting to having then experienced them Seeing that maybe there's some things that they'll even want to do differently if they are physically back in the classroom Although they won't be this summer. We already know that So, I mean, I can say that we are very busy Locating materials for faculty Um, I kind of like this. I saw Emily Drobinski put on twitter yesterday. She said we have an e-book detective service Um, because librarians just are very good at sort of searching out Where could this e-book be where might it be? Who could we license it from? Maybe you can't get it from the publisher, but it's from one of our platform providers. So I mean, we're seeing faculty Look for those resources Not so much. It's so for us. It's more assistance with with content Thank you. I a quick shout out if I could to Georgetown university librarians who've been helping Find e-books all over the place. So Christine Yeah, so I guess I'll I'll I'll maybe say two things one One is kind of echoing back to something that flower was saying Earlier and and also built off of what lisa was just saying which is that I think I think right now Everyone's just trying to scramble to do the best the best they can so I think You know the time for for reflection and additional support certainly, you know is is now But also also is going to happen in the in the month to come I think everyone's just trying to get by with what they what they can what they can do right now the the other thing that I've been hearing from a lot of from a lot of Library leaders library practitioners that we've been talking to is around a lot a lot of publishers are opening up a lot of content right now That was was never available previously. And so what I'm what I'm hearing often is that you know There's a there's a challenge in that which is that you don't necessarily want to refer Refer faculty or even students to that resource necessarily without the kind of explanation around its availability past You know the middle the middle of this year So that that that presents its own kind of challenge There's this great opportunity with more content perhaps out there than ever than ever before But what's kind of the the mediating role of the of the librarian and explaining what that access is going to look like Long term and the effects that that's going to have on on library acquisition budgets That's a really great point as usual open is a complicated term it. Yeah. Yeah Uh, we thank you all three of you uh for a really really rich trio of answers to a great question um, and uh, thank you, uh Ms. Ms. Mikhyun if I mispronounce your name um Now I'd like to bring on the stage um a reference librarian from franklin pierce university But to do this we hit the limit of how many people can be on stage at one time So this is a library question flower. I'm just going to take you down for a minute Bring, uh, katie beth ryan up. I'll bring you right back. We'll swap. I'll take ryan hold on for one minute Um, let's say we have katie beth ryan I'm sorry flower. I really didn't mean didn't mean to bump you off That's not the way I wanted to introduce myself No, welcome. Uh, how are you doing? I'm doing as well as I can given the circumstances, you know, just doing the best as as as everyone here is is doing so Good So my question actually it's somewhat related to gretians. Um We're a really small library staff for a small, you know undergraduate in-person focused university We've made ourselves as available as we can Uh via chat reference via email getting the word out to people about through our our campus wide app social media, etc And I haven't run figures, but we're not seeing a lot of A lot of traction, especially on chat reference. We've really tried to make ourselves available on chat reference And you know, we're kind of scratching our heads. I think we were thinking this would be, you know, more heavily used Um, but I'm just wondering if if if you all have ideas for maybe what either what we could be doing differently or How else we can demonstrate our our value to the faculty during this time because we want we we Keep You know driving home the point that we're a resource and we want to be there for them Can I ask a quick question? Is something that you started for this pandemic? No chat reference is not new for us. I don't Franklin Pierce about six months. So I don't know how long we've had it, but it's been kind of a mainstay in our I know our reference Yeah So, I mean, I think one of the things I would reflect upon, um, which is a little bit of what flower said so Sorry, we lost her here for a second, but um You know, I think we also need to recognize that What students need the library for is dependent upon what they're expected to do in their classes And as faculty are adjusting and in many cases, um, removing certain assignments Those may be the assignments that would have required library use and so one of the things we're missing Right now is we don't really know what's happening inside the classroom except anecdotally So, um You know, so we just we don't have a good sense of that right of like it has every research paper Just been dropped and instead people are writing more of an exegesis on a course text, right? So rather than expecting students to go out and gather up materials. They're just doing a more Close reading say for example of a particular Text that was already assigned So it may be the students are still doing writing, but they're not doing research based writing So I think that's one of the things that's a little difficult for us right now I think the other thing is You know without a doubt for students if we actually looked at the proportion of students in the building at any given point in time I was head of the undergraduate library at Illinois for a couple years You know, there would be 700 students in the building And you know, we'd get 20 questions that were research questions, right? So So one of the things that's difficult is is really getting that sense of like what should your traffic be If you And so many of those questions were also driven. I think by opportunity like we were just right there Right. So how do you develop presence? I think is the real question for us So we have digital services, but I don't think we always have digital presence. So In the library in the in the physical world the way we had presence was quite literal, right? They walked right by us to get to their study room or what have you So what's the equivalent of that digitally? And I think one of the challenges is we don't have virtual student unions We don't have the virtual study spaces I saw somebody put up this idea, which I think is a really fantastic idea because Like this they were thinking like maybe they would create like use zoom or something and basically have a Library space and then people could go study in small groups within the zoom rooms This is like not the most natural use of zoom But it was this idea that you would still come to a place and this would be your study time And I thought that was an interesting sort of recreation That's not asking us questions, but it's our it that's our community cultivation role in the library Um that I think we could think about what does community cultivation look like online in the outside of the classroom But academically focused way And I think this will be an interesting challenge for us in this time that we could potentially do some interesting things with That's a great answer Thank you, katie. Uh, I think we just lost your sound It's okay, I think you're muted Yes, we lost your sound Okay, you're not wearing a mask so I could read your lips. You're welcome. I think you said thank you Thank you. That was a fantastic question and in the meantime, please stay safe um, so let me uh, let me bring up And go back to our our previous configuration Let me uh, bring a flower back on stage because we have a question for all of you Um, and I want to make sure that we get a chance. Uh, all you get a chance to wrangle this one Um, so the question has to do um with uh, where excuse me There you are the question has to do with Other groups on campus and this is aileen daily boss coming from the university of rochester Uh, and she asks there are lots of other groups excellence in teaching librarians Who are more who are trying to help with ta's workshop two years in therapy. It's challenging. It's more than just faculty Any advice I think she means you know any advice for for helping to support all these groups and doing this work Aileen if i'm wrong, please uh follow up I think for me, um, what i've seen is that this is an opportunity for folks who aren't used to doing online support uh, or online, um professional development opportunities I think this is this is a time that centers for teaching and learning Can embrace and and take this opportunity to learn how better to facilitate faculty learning in online environments um I'm not sure what librarians how how you would answer lisa christine I guess maybe maybe i'll answer from from uh, not not a library representative because I you know am not really one but from from an outside research perspective and um You know, we've had this this interesting challenge this semester in in the work that that um, I lead with with my team Which is what are we going to do with all of our our data collection processes? Our our projects where we're partnering with academic libraries to collect information on how Students are going about learning what their what their assignments look like how faculty are teaching and performing research And we've had to suspend all of all of that research right now There isn't there isn't a lot of research that's being um allowed to be done in that kind of way in terms of survey research by individual parts of the institution and so so what we've done in an effort to kind of bring together um A lot of different disparate parts of the institution is to field institution-wide surveys in partnership with the institutional research office or perhaps the provost office To gather information. I mean lisa to what you were just saying We don't we don't know necessarily what's going on in the classroom and how faculty are adjusting their their assignments right now Um, and that's not just important for the library to know or for the center for teaching and learning to know Or for a third group to know it's it's really something that needs to be to to be shared out really broadly And so so we've been offering um, you know, for example a student survey For institutions to field that hit on very particular topics right now how our institutional communications going What are you being assigned? What resources are you using to do that? How are you doing in terms of your, you know general wellness and are you likely to return next semester? And we have some plans to to roll out something similar for um For faculty as well So I I guess what I would what I would say is that you know, it's not necessarily a time to be doing You know individual activities. It's a time to to come together and look across different units and figure out How best to to support faculty and students at this time? more More more collectively We actually we we have a question that came in from a different person that actually I think connects directly to this I'll put it on the table so you can see this this is from charles finley at northeastern who asks What's happening with e access to content for remote learners who are completing the final project? so, I mean If we're talking about remote access to content resources that are not openly available as I presume the context there because if they're openly available Yeah, but one thing I do want to sort of just like in elegantly insert into this Conversation is Something I think christine survey is going to help institutions get at but I think we also do not have a sense We had a good sense of what students computing access and their Access to technology was on campuses in part because our investments in libraries and in other places level that up I think that our students even at the best institutions with you know, lots of on campus resources Are experiencing an incredible digital divide Within any given classroom and I was talking to a student who Is a physics major at our institution and you know, she's left the campus per the residential requirements She's from a rural farming community They do not have internet access where she lives. She is trying to finish her her Her undergraduate major in physics on her phone with two bars of data um, we got an email from our vice president about the use of Proctor ute proctor proctorio or whatever that testing software in which she said We now realize that five to ten percent of our students do not have technology That can that that can support using this in the classroom. You need to make other arrangements Unfortunately, like I think as a faculty member like you need to make other arrangements is kind of a lot to just You know, so like there's a real digital divide here that I think we need to Really face up to um, so what's happening with e access? I mean libraries have long developed ways for people to get through proxy servers and the like but All of these systems are straining under remote access Our campus vpn has a message that pops up Did at least maybe they fixed it now, but it basically said please don't use the vpn unless you have to Because like it's so strained Why we saw publishers that made some content freely available at cambridge university press put out some content freely available And they had to put the paywall back up because the demand that suddenly started hitting their servers Men that even people who were paying for the content were able to get to it so The flip side of this I think is that faculty really have to adjust their expectations to the access that their students have and um Yes, maybe the assignment was going to presume you were going to be able to get into the rare book room and examine that 14th century manuscript or what I make with that 17th century whatever They can't do that now that is not a student failure And so those assignments need adjusting So there's just this huge range that students are experiencing between faculty who are you know adjusting and and really Conversing of these things and then other faculty who are sort of like this is the syllabus And I I do hope that what pristine talked about with some institutional attention to this we can sort of Address I mean just obviously a digital divide. It's just got me obsessed right now But I'm I'm so concerned the students who are already disadvantaged by certain policies were putting in place around testing proctoring et cetera you know, they This education was their lifeline and now We're like making it impossible for them to get that education so I obviously went really far to the right Chuck's question, but like That's a that's a great question Or charles because I don't know you well enough to call. Oh, I'm sorry charles But but lisa. Thank you. Um that went in all kinds of great directions Um I really appreciate and this circles back. I think as well to flower to your points when you opened our hour by talking about using asynchronous and More basic technologies and teaching We have a question from the west coast for all of you Which I want to put on the board and this is a little balcony This comes from mark doll And louis and clark who asks here's an area to survey staffing changes academic libraries are Begin to face furloughs and layouts as this goes on and I want to put this to all of you in part because I think Mark's question is a good one for your for your research. Um, and when he says changes that probably doesn't mean expanding new lines or new hires Um, so I mean christine and lisa I'd love to hear what some of your you're hearing about this Then also flower like to come back to you to ask you about this and what you're thinking about in terms of general faculty Staffing changes including the faculty and staff who teach in all these different areas including teaching and learning centers and writing centers So if we could start off with lisa and christine first, what do you see in the library space? So so I'll I'll jump in and I think lisa probably already knows knows where i'm where i'm going with this so we um Every every three years we had at the guest in our conducted national survey of of library genes and directors and We did that in fall 2019. We did not expect that. Um, you know, the world was going to look like what it does now And so the the usefulness of that or or the ways that we can use those data Have have really changed. Um, we released our report Earlier this month of what those findings were and I think they give us they give us some sense of of The intention of libraries they give us the the most comprehensive data set really on on where academic libraries at at four-year institutions Intended to go before before all of this. So when it comes to When it comes to staffing we see we see a big shift Away from staffing to support collections and towards supporting services for example We see greater investment in electronic resources over over print resources. That's one might expect and so, um, you know We we expect that that some of those changes that I just mentioned that we've observed since the prior survey three years Three years ago Many of those will will probably accelerate. Um, and I know a lot of a lot of libraries are being faced with Real or or anticipated they they will be real budget cuts in the in the current month or months to come as we enter another another fiscal year Um, and I I think we will probably see greater investment in in digital and in in services to support research teaching and learning not necessarily towards Towards collections and especially not towards towards print collections, of course, while those are are inaccessible. So We we will be fielding another another survey of library directors later this year to capture What has changed even just between? um last fall when we did the the last survey and Probably a couple of months from now to see to see what has changed and staffing staffing Will will change and and and some some libraries may pursue um, you know strategies of making changes across the board some may make very deliberate changes to Ramp up areas where perhaps they they already had intended to make greater investment And and now is the time when there isn't an option to do to do otherwise So I'll I'll you know can't predict the future, but maybe I'll leave it at that And I'll just share that I'm seeing this brian from a very particular vantage point that I'll share personally Which is we have a school of information science. It's here at the University of Illinois so I have all of these Students that I work with who are graduating with their library science master's degree In may and they were on the job market Especially the ones I work with are looking to go into academics and um Yeah So I have a weekly coffee hour with lisa with my the grad students that I work with in any number of capacities We just all get online together on thursday morning and a lot of it's about the job hunt right now and Honestly, it's rather depressing Many of them have had almost every application that they had out have received notice that the search has been canceled Or it's been indefinitely postponed There has been a couple rays of sunshine One student did actually interview for a job all day zoom hint maybe break those over a couple days for the candidates people but She was offered the job and is you know, we'll be going off to a professional position But I think that's going to be the rare story and more likely is the story of of the people who are saying I can't even get an interview because there's not even jobs to apply for or everything I applied for has been closed So it's it's a really difficult time. Um, you know from that market and I think it's it's not going to be easier for a while I I think also just to just to piggyback on that for one second I I think what we're hearing from from some leaders within academic libraries is that Perhaps the best case scenario out of this is a hiring freeze Like, you know that that that would be a relatively good outcome And that a lot of a lot of searches where they were ready to extend a job offer And had a really great pool of candidates. That's you know, been been cut off at this point Oh flower. Do you want to add the picture and cherish that for is it just going to get worse? Well, really quickly I have one perspective to share Certainly, this is a heavy question and a heavy future that we're looking into But I also think this is an opportunity for academic leaders to expand support services for remote and online teaching for better quality online teaching And so I I believe that teaching and learning centers and instructional design folks are oftentimes not really resourced in the way Where they can make a meaningful impact Or that processes at institutions don't meaningfully embed these support folks and so I Although it's a challenging thing to say when we're looking at such financial difficulty I do believe the time is right to invest more in support folks who can Make this teaching and learning experience and research experience better more effective Well, I I agree and I share all your the three of you. I share your your concerns Um, and I applaud your answers your sanguine data backed answers and I thank mark for the really really excellent question We have time for one more question before we completely run out of time And this is a mental health question. It comes from one a mindfulness educator the awesome Roxanne Risken Who is a longtime friend and supporter of the program who we love very much and she asks How are you and this is for all three of you? librarians library professionals Dealing with stress and anxiety and what services are you seeing students ask for to help with stress? So, I mean, I think it you know, a lot of our organizations are doing very similar things So we my organizations had a number of sort of like all all staff Dropends with the dean kind of thing. I mentioned that For my own Sort of group of graduate students that I work with either they're taking classes from me or they work for me Or what have you we have this weekly coffee hour But I don't necessarily know that we have seen I think typically libraries had developed their Sort of study and stress support services in partnership with counseling centers on campus And so librarians weren't necessarily themselves Delivering that kind of support so much as we were delivering it We were we were partnering with the campus wellness center or the like to bring their services into our spaces I suspect at the moment that that's just Like those sorts of things have just sort of like no one's ready to figure out how you collaboratively build programs online because everyone's just kind of like how do we just keep everything functioning at the moment if we go Longer than summer in this mind that I expect we'll start seeing ourselves turn to as more of these like actual intentional programming Of sort of programs that we would have had in person, but at this point I think those are You know those have been kind of left to the campus wellness center the counseling centers Which have had the extra challenge of course that their services need Even more privacy kinds of protections around them than even library services do so. I know on my campus There's a lot of work to And in other communities to build that up Well, this goes back to aileen daily boss's question earlier But these other groups on campus and now we add to it Christine you have this fantastic vantage point from the ticket SNR. What are you seeing? Yeah, so I mean on a on a personal level and speaking of my my organization It's it's really good to have meaningful work to do right now. I'm really glad to have a my plate very full of of Projects where I feel like we can really contribute to the community that that makes that that really works for for me Our organizational leadership is really emphasizing a lot of care in their communication So, you know telling staff very clearly that their health and their families and their wellness comes comes first some some staff are Organizing Monday and Thursday lunches to kind of simulate what it's like to be in the office together And anyone can can pop in and get split out into a zoom room where they'll have a group of about four to six people to just Just chat with Otherwise there aren't a lot of opportunities to just catch up in the way that you might at the the water cooler or getting Getting coffee or eating lunch I think You know, I'll just just say one one quick thing about supports for students So, yeah, the the kinds of supports that libraries have built out Digitally have been to date probably much more robust than other support services on campus And I will not be surprised. I mean, we're starting to get some preliminary survey data from the institutions that are fielding our Our kind of emergency response survey right now I will not be surprised if we continue to see students having relatively Much higher concern over their mental health as opposed to to their physical health right now Um, and so, you know, certainly a time to to be thinking about how to how to make those services more robust Thank you. Thank you very much christine and my best to my friends and other guests Thanks, right flower. What are you? What are you seeing? I know you've got some great advice for people too Well, thanks for that uh voter confidence, brian Well, I was going to say that I like what lisa said about planning better for the fall because I don't think Students especially are receiving um effective support right now and in terms of those of us who are Trying to help classes complete successfully I think we're all doing the best we can and the best most support that I have found personally is When people post things about it's okay if your brain isn't really working as well as it normally does and it's okay if you have fuzzy pandemic brain or Um, like aisha amad last week on the chronicles forum talking about We need to give ourselves permission to only do low hanging fruit tasks and for me That's been the greatest source of comfort, but I don't think anybody is really managing this Um, quite as well as could be I I do give credit to everybody who's doing everything we can in this situation Well, thank you. Thank you rocks in thank you for a great question from the heart and Thanks to all three of you for your answers, but we are out of time So I need to thank all of you for your answers and discussion throughout this hour It's been a real pleasure and and in my thanks to the wonderful flow of questions from all over the place Uh, let me just let me just ask each of you really really quickly What's the best way for all of our listeners and viewers to keep up with each of you flower I'm pretty active on twitter at flower darby Can't miss that uh christine Same same thing. It's uh seawolf eisenberg first initial last last name without the hyphen Very very good Lisa librarian Well follow these follow these tweets everybody and uh, let me thank each of you so much. I need to uh, Right now. I'll just show you just a quick note about where we're going next week But I do want to thank everybody for the uh, really wonderful string of questions that we've had Just to point out of moving ahead tomorrow from two to three I'm working the chronicle of higher education on a event about fixing higher educations inequalities in a time of crisis Sarah goldrick ram who was a fantastic feature transform guest will be there along with some other folks Now next week. We're going to continue our focus on coronavirus So please watch your twitter feed or your email for a detailed description of next week's program If you want to keep talking about this if you want to keep bashing on these ideas of mental health and Layoffs and how to keep access to e-resources. We have all these venues available for our facebook group or twitter hashtag and our linkedin group and our slack channel If you'd like to go back in time and look at our previous sessions on covet 19 If you'd like to look at our previous sessions on libraries or e-resources Just head to tiny url.com slash f df archive I've been adding a whole bunch of recordings up there lately. So it's a pretty rich thing to go In the meantime from all of us to form Please stay safe Avoid infecting others. Don't get infected. Please. Please be well We love you all and make sure that you're in good shape We'll see you online and we'll see you next week. Take care everyone Bye. Bye