Head Norris Medical Library Los Angeles, California
Objectives: Flipped classroom effects on learners have been studied extensively, but there is little research investigating the preparation time spent by academic librarians in flipped classrooms within the curriculum. Traditional librarian-led class sessions typically do not include pre-work or summative assessment, cornerstones of flipped classrooms. The trend of introducing flipped classes could present an increase in total time spent in instruction tasks and less time available for other librarian duties. The results of a survey of instructional librarians would aid in organizing and planning library workforces and managing expectations about being active partners in new emerging modalities of instruction.
Methods: Since there is no existing research on this topic, a new survey will be designed and launched to serve as an initial exploration, collecting a convenience sample of instructional librarians via librarian listservs. The survey will ask respondents to reflect on classes taught over a calendar year: how many traditional and flipped classes taught; how many classes taught using other modalities; how they apportion time between preparatory tasks, in-person presence in the classroom, and post-teaching tasks like grading/feedback; how their institutions count instruction time in various modalities; and open-ended questions to gather perceptions about whether counting pre- and post-instructional preparation time is a reasonable way to count/apportion work time. Responses will be analyzed using basic and descriptive statistics.
Results: This was a first attempt to define and capture preparation and post-instruction time for librarians providing instruction in lecture and flipped modes. Most class sessions taught by librarians are still done using traditional lecture format. Time spent to prepare for one-hour-long lecture sessions is relatively similar for all librarians, but preparation times for flipped classes of one hour are both longer and more variable. Overall, more time was spent on preparing for flipped classes, but not by a large amount. The time spent after both types of sessions was longer than expected. .
Conclusions: Pre- and post-instruction time is necessary for conducting quality instruction. Defining and tracking “invisible time” spent preparing and completing classroom instruction could help libraries better manage workloads by hiring enough staff, apportioning librarian time between tasks appropriately and managing expectations from faculty about being active partners in the curriculum as new models of instruction are adopted.
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