CPD thing 5: On Reflection...

I feel that this blog is a constant source of reflection for my CPD activities. I think that it is going to be very useful and help me think on a number of different levels about the things we are learning. It is also a good documentation of my progress and development. In my last post I reflected about my increased use of Twitter. In this post, I would like to reflect upon a recent event we did in our library.

A few weeks ago in our staff development week, we held a staff breakfast in our library. We wanted to get in as many members of staff as possible to promote our services and resources to them and we thought the best way to do this was to entice them with food! Our primary aim was to improve staff relations with the library. That's not to say there were any bad relations, far from it, but just perhaps non-relations when it came to liaising about library services. We wanted to show them that are many ways in which the library could help them with their lessons, plans, students, resources, tutorials etc. We also wanted to introduce them to the almost completely new library team. We had a basic list of points that we wanted to ask them:

·        How can we help you?

·        How can we help your students get the best out of our resources?

·        How can we best promote our services and resources to your students?

·        What services would you like to see us providing more of?  (study skills sessions, information skills sessions, IT help, e-resource specific sessions, referencing).

·        Have you seen our library guides? (careers, general, subject area).

·        Do you know about all of our e-resources and how to access them?

·        Have you seen the staff library? It has games, lesson plans, interactive resources.

·        Did you know there are online resources to help with your lessons? (white board presentations and videos. Guardian teacher resources etc.)

·        We’re currently updating resources for tutorials, do you have any suggestions? 

·        Are your reading lists up to date?

·        Have a look at your subject book and journal sections. Are they outdated? What can we get rid of? What would you like added?

·        Do you know the new library team?

·        Are you happy using Moodle?

We created displays of books, leaflets, signs and put out all relevant resource guides. We interspersed all of this with plates of food- muffins, croissants, fruit, flapjack etc. And made tea and coffee on request. We hoped that this informal and relaxed atmosphere would encourage old and new staff to take leaflets, ask questions and take the time (of which they usually have very little) to look through and update their book sections.

I felt like the breakfast was a success in content but would have been better with a higher turn out. We will do it again, but it will need more promoting than just on the staff development time table. Those who did come were very responsive, said they enjoyed it and learnt more about what we did. I was pleased that we prepared leaflets and guides for them to take away. We were able to write a list of requests and ideas that came from the staff and we have been able to work on it over the summer.

Reflecting on this event has helped me to realise what was good about it and what could be improved on next time.