Evaluating the TLP!

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm in the process of writing my evaluation of the Teach-Library Program from a students perspective. It's challenging to do this...While the program experience for me has been great - valuable, focused, tangible (in terms of project results) - I hope it is the same for the next person who comes along to fill this role.

I don't know why, but for some reason, I think my situation was different when I applied for this position. Coming into the LIS program, I knew that I wanted to combine my skills as an instructional designer with those of a librarian. When this position was posted and I saw that I would be working w/ Beth, receive free tution and a small stipend for only 20 hours a week - wow! - it was a no-brainer!

Even though the project is not over yet and I still have lots of work to do until the end of April, here are some of my thoughts for the next student coming into this internship....

1. Be flexible and keep your eyes open - you never know where a project might take you, how it can impact your portfolio or what networking connections you may make....so be open to new challenges and try everything you can
2. Look for connections - I had to work a little bit harder to align my courses with the practical aspects of my job, but it can be done! I created a distance education collection of resources from my 615 course and am using my 636 course to redo the Distance Education Services home page
3. Don't be afraid to speak up - if the project isn't going as planned or things seem to be moving in a direction that isn't benefiting your learning experience, it's okay to say so
4. Use what you know - everyone comes into a job or school with experience of some kind...so use it!
5. Have fun and get to know others in the library - I have to admit, I have had a ton of fun, but I have not done a very good job of getting to know others in the library - oops! So I'm going to try and work on that this last half of the year

So those are my words of (self-proclaimed) wisdom thus far...I plan on putting them into my formal evaluation but I thought I would put them here more informally. Trying to get my thoughts around what I need to say and how I'm going to say it...as I said above...is going to be challenging!

Cheers,

A