Lessons to Deploy in a Student-Driven, Self-Paced World

by Alyssa Mandel, January 2021

Immediately after schools nationwide were forced to shift gears and begin delivering content remotely in order to continue educating students during a global pandemic, educators of every type began exploring ways in which to deliver lessons and conduct assessments virtually. Many of us turned to recording video content and relying on a variety of electronic tools to ensure we could continue to deliver read-alouds, guide research, and encourage maker skills.

Well before the pandemic I had begun experimenting with creating short video tutorials on a variety of library research skills as a way to reinforce the lessons I gave during class visits. This summer it became clear that delivering virtual education would become even more vital and that video tutorials needed to serve a much greater purpose than as a helpful tool to free up time I had been spending on a repetitive task, particularly as a solo librarian filling some additional roles. Above all, I needed to assume fall semester would be utterly unlike any that had gone before, a great deal of content would need to be delivered asynchronously, and anything I did create would have to make life easier for teachers and students. Finally, even the most robust technology can fail in the classroom during a face-to-face session, and having a backup plan to recover lost time seemed like an excellent insurance plan.

Of particular concern was translating the most important research-skills project I carry out each year into a new format. The No-Paper Research Paper Project (NPRPP) is a two-week workshop I conduct each fall with the entire ninth grade in conjunction with the English faculty, but this concept could be carried out as early as the intermediate grades in elementary. As its name suggests, there is no paper. That is by design, in order to ensure research skills are cemented before tasking students with high-stakes writing. The project assigns a broad but unique topic to every single student in the grade. Students learn to narrow a topic down and practice research using every tool available, electronic or analog, and then document their sources to teach bibliography skills. The end product is an annotated works cited page and a short thesis statement. The real end product is a solid foundation for going forward prepared to research and document any topic.

For years I had been working towards solving a nagging problem: how to ensure classroom lessons were available to anyone who was absent or simply misplaced his or her attention that day, so that time could be better spent fine-tuning or expanding skills rather than repeating the same lessons outside of class to catch up. I love the one-on-one conversations I get to have with individual students, but those conversations are even easier to love if they aren't the sixth time I've repeated how to do a publication search by title in one of our databases that day. Furthermore, any student matriculating with us in the second semester or in tenth grade is disadvantaged by not having the same preparation this workshop affords. And thus, NPRPP:Self-Paced Digital Edition!

The steps I took to translate the NPRPP into its new format—a self-paced set of modules teachers could assign at any time during the semester to any student regardless of high school grade level—are steps anyone can use to create asynchronous lessons. The exact tools for achieving these ends will vary by individual and school district, but the general guidelines can serve as inspiration for a variety of projects. In the last six months, most school librarians have become conversant with tools like Edpuzzle, PearDeck, Nearpod, and Explain Everything, and plenty have become resident experts at their respective schools—raise your avatar's hand if you built a Bitmoji library! So, as the kids say, your mileage may vary, but let this inspire you to take the plunge if you haven't already or to refine your technique if this is not new.

Here's an example of how I created a new module on identifying the basic types of print resources and how to use them. First, I identified which ones to discuss and then identified the basic learning objectives. To keep things feeling familiar, I photographed examples of each type of resource from our own collection as much as possible—the front cover, an inside page or two, indexes—anything that a student would encounter if he or she used that example in person. I set up the photographs with limited text in a Google Slide presentation with arrows, text boxes, and other simple annotations. I practiced my presentation, then opened up the free version of Screencast-O-Matic and recorded the video. (Did it take more than one attempt? Maybe.) Once the video was done, I created a 10-question, multiple-choice quiz and placed them both into their respective locations for students to access. At my institution we use Canvas as our LMS, which allows me to create and manage content pages, quizzes, and other materials, but there are a variety of approaches to distributing the lesson and gauging its reception depending on what is available to you.

• Consider how any scope and sequence plan you have can be broken down into individual components, bearing in mind that each screencast should be short. With what we have learned about the tolerance for screen time over the last few months, fifteen minutes is too long.


• Use one screencasting software recorder rather than recording videos on several platforms and keep the focus on the material rather than crowding the video with too many special effects. Ensuring consistency of style across the modules you create will avoid confusing the learners, and relying on a simple approach will keep you from burdening yourself with trying to create something Oscar-worthy a dozen times over.


• Find the right place to record. This can be challenging if you are tethered to a desktop computer, or even if you have a laptop and can be mobile if your schedule and space are crowded. You may need to get creative to find a spot with good acoustics where you can record a presentation free of surprise interruptions.


• At least at first, write a script and practice it out loud. The advice we give our student writers—read your work aloud to clear up awkwardness—applies here above all. It will feel more like "you" to your students if your natural manner of speaking is evident in the recordings. It can be difficult to speak extemporaneously when there's no audience, so try a script for your first few attempts.


• And speaking of your voice, get used to how it sounds. This can be the hardest hurdle for even the most experienced public speaker. "Is that what I sound like?" It is. That is the same voice your students have happily been hearing in read-alouds, during classroom visits, or chatting with you in the library, so take heart.


• Determine how you can share these, in deference to what your administration will allow. If you are permitted to manage a library page within your school LMS, that can serve this purpose. Although I have control of my own LMS page, I use Google Sites to build a variety of library research guides that are linked within the LMS, because they easily allow me to embed and arrange a variety of assets such as screencast videos, printed guides, text boxes, and images.


• Decide how to assess the learning that has taken place. Per module, this can be a short quiz, a scavenger hunt, a screencast narration of the student's own, an annotated bibliography, or a book trailer. Whatever form the assessments take, they are useful both for students to help them reflect and keep them accountable, and for you to gauge the efficacy of the lesson. If the lesson needs tweaking, this is where it will most obviously show.


• Collaborate with teachers to launch the modules in the most appropriate way for your situation. Mine are part of our ninth grade English curriculum every year, but they could just as easily be inserted into history, social studies, humanities, or into an existing information literacy course.

This sounds like a substantial investment of time and labor, and that is correct. However, that investment is up-front, one-time, and can be parceled out to fit among other tasks as scheduling allows. Once the modules are finished, they can be used over and over again any time they are needed. The lessons may benefit from some touch-ups, expansions, and additions, but the potential for improved student outcomes as well as the liberation of time in the librarian's schedule is worth the initial investment of time and trouble. Start with just one, then add a second one, then another, and soon there will be an entire array of modules the library can offer teachers and students whatever the environment, whether learning takes place in-person, online, or a balance of both.

You can read more about Alyssa's no-paper project in her article with Christina Pommer: "Process Apart from Product: Two Not-Really-a-Paper Research Papers"