Jonathan Hunt: My name is Jonathan Hunt. I'm the co-director of the Tracy Seeley Center for Teaching Excellence here at the University of San Francisco, along with my co-director Keely McBride. I'm here today with Penny Scott of Gleeson Library and Monika Hudson of the School of Management. They're going to talk a little bit about a collaboration that they've undertaken which has brought some great results for students and resulted in a paper presented at OBTS, which is the Teaching Society for Management Educators. I'll let Monika and Penny introduce themselves.
Penny Scott: I'm Penny Scott and I'm a reference librarian here at Gleeson Library and particularly, the librarian for the School of Management.
Monika Hudson: I'm Monika Hudson. I'm an assistant professor in the School of Management. As Penny and I started working together, I was in the Organizational Leadership and Communication Department, and now I'm in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Strategy.
Jonathan: Thank you so much, and thank you for joining us. Would you tell us first of all how your collaboration got started?
Monika: Well, it actually came about because I was teaching a course called Management and Organizational Dynamics to our undergraduates and specifically, what that is, is like a survey of the soft skills that business students need. One of the things that became pretty apparent to me is that while in that course, we're talking about the theory of motivation, theory of goal setting and achievement, that we needed to have something that helped the students understand how that actually plays out in real life.
Because many of our students are accounting students, they may be finance students and they already have an attitude about this particular class because it's not quantitative enough for them. I thought there had to be a better way to figure out how to embody this within the importance of this really and motivation and achievement and directing of soft skills for students who weren't otherwise looking at it.
That's the origins of the project. I was looking for different exercises and one of the things that became really clear is, of course, every single one of these students is going to be looking for a job post-graduation. One of the things that came up is, okay, how would you look for a job and once you found whatever that job is, how do you motivate yourself to really be interested in that job and not just a lump being told things too, but how could you help shape that job from an on an innovation entrepreneurial perspective because that's what excites many of our students.
Toward that end, I found an exercise that talked about job enrichment, et cetera, and it was really clear right up front when I tried to do it by myself the first time that I didn't know enough about how to really-- I knew sources to go to, but I didn't know how to make those sources interesting and work together and because Penny has always made herself so available to professors in our school, it was like a natural to go over and say to Penny, this is what I'm trying to do. Can you help me, can you come in to class and start talking about it?
Penny: Just to give a context for part of what I do, I do work with many professors with their research assignments. This was not an unusual request to either have the students come into the library and we would do a research session or sometimes I also visit the classrooms. That was something that I do quite a bit, but the thing that was different which we'll be talking about with our collaboration was that from the start of it, from Monika coming to me and saying, "Hey, I want to try to do this thing. How can I do this better?" We really evolved into increased involvement on both sides.
Monika had more involvement in the research part that I was teaching. She was influencing and learning from it and making suggestions. Then I was having more involvement with the assignment part of it. That's where this is a little different than some of other librarian-teacher experiences. I think Monika came to talk to me about it and I seem to remember like tea at the Twilight cafe or something like that. Anyway, so we were talking about what she was trying to do, what would be helpful. We both thought and took notes and all that stuff.
Then I can't remember what time of year that was, but the next time we were teaching the class, we decided to have a library session and collaborate on this. That first meeting, we were just talking about what did Monika want to accomplish with the class in terms of the concepts that she wanted the students to learn, and then what would be an appropriate research support for that. At that meeting we figured things out. I think that we had some ideas and again, I can't remember if that was the summer, maybe it was the summer.
Monika: Yes. I think the first time you came in, it might've been spring but it was more like an episodic. [crosstalk]
Penny: Yes. I would do my thing. You mean us?
Monika: No, you came into the class and then after that you were like, this needs to be more.
Penny: The thing that was really cool, it was this synergistic thing that we, Monika said, "Oh, I want to try to do this differently. How can I do it?" Then I said, "Oh, well, maybe you can try this, that, and the other thing." Then when we got together, it wasn't like we both went, "Oh, really? This is not going well," but we both almost became energized and were like, "Hey, what about this? What about that?" Here we were, we were both being energized to say, Hey, why don't we try this? Why don't we try that? Then the other one was receptive.
It was really this perfect situation where we had a basic, Monika had the basic exercise, I had my basic thing that I do with students, but then we were just like firing. We were making suggestions and then we were looking at the students and we had all these different feedback loops, right? We had a feedback loop going on with each other and then we incorporated feedback from the students.
At some point we would ask them, we had little ways of getting feedback, but at some point we actually had a reflection form. Students had to reflect on what their experience was, both in terms of the concept for the class and in terms of the research part. We were just constantly talking and noticing things and I guess you could say egging each other on, but you know what I mean? It was really exciting. It was very exciting.
Monika: Through an initial cut at it, I was talking about motivation and all the different theories. Then the first time I believe Penny came in and she did it in the classroom. She's like, you know what, this isn't working so well in the classroom because as I'm walking around the room, I can see that some folks are not necessarily on-task. It would be better if we actually did it in the library room.
The next time we came and did it over here, and as I was looking at it and figuring out what we needed to reiterate, what I needed to reiterate, it was like, no, I should have the students start working in a flipped way on putting the theory into place. Then Penny should be looking at how she's reinforcing it through the resources that she is suggesting. Penny was looking at in a real different way at that whole set of teaching instructions for before they did the exercise, when they were doing the exercise, and then after the exercise. She was like a co-instructor looking at this and the next time we did, it got better.
We also mutually figured out really the kind of video that we needed to use to be the lead-in on the exercise. I was using a McGraw Hill text that came with a whole set of videos. I was familiar with the video. She had seen the video I think elsewhere. The Pike's Place market. It was like, "Oh, this'll work." Initially I was showing it in the classroom and then it was like, no, that doesn't make any sense. Let's bring it over here and show it as the lead-in before the students actually do the work with Penny.
They had their own interactives that they create around the different motivational theories, goal setting, et cetera, so that it's not me telling them this, it's them figuring out how they're going to tell each other and demonstrate this and getting credit for it. Then they come over here, they see the video, then they work with Penny and she's taking them through a whole litany of, "You would normally go to Glassdoor, you would go to the website for the company but is that enough?" The whole critical literature look thing that we went through as part of the community learning experience evolved out.
Then Penny was like, "Well, I need to see what they're doing afterwards in terms of a demonstration of knowledge." That got built-in where she was part of the evaluation of their oral presentations of an enriched job. Then it was like, "Wait a minute, we actually probably need to be clearer about what they know before they come in here. Let's see if it's actually different. Not just they can talk but can they actually demonstrate different knowledge in terms of resources used?"
Now, I have to say but I was teaching this class every semester including summer so it gave me an opportunity. That's how it literally evolved because each time we did it, we could see different levels of engagement, different ability to take the knowledge from the session and demonstrate it. It went from a me lecture one session, then Penny comes in and does a demo and then they do a presentation to a, "No, you get the initial assignment, you have to demonstrate and incorporate these things yourself." We have the library experience, you have a week's time in between to enrich and start to apply what you've learned.
Then we have a demonstration and, "Okay folks it's not just me, it's me and her. Now we're going to be both looking at this and you have a pre and a post."
Penny: I think that all of what Monika described is really part of what was really so, I guess I would say, exciting and certainly made our experience, both of our experiences enhanced the teaching and also my teaching the resources. I believe the students too because as Monika described it, what we did in the beginning, there wasn't anything wrong with it, it was perfectly fine and acceptable but things were very compartmentalized.
Monika would teach the concepts in the classroom and the students would do whatever activities there, then they'd come into the library for this one-shot, "Okay, here are some resources." Then they'd go away and that would be it. This became this whole integrated thing because we even got to the point where you were talking about how different groups of students had to take one of the concepts, like expectancy theory and all that kind of stuff, and present on them. We started having them do that at the beginning of the library session.
The whole thing was this big warmup, everything was a warmup and also it just came together so beautifully because the students would do their presentations on the expectancy theory and all that kind of stuff, and then we would show the Pike's market video that really- [crosstalk]
Monika: Illustrated [unintelligible 00:13:53] 
Penny: -illustrated a lot of the concepts. All the stuff would happen in the library or sometimes we had to do it in the classroom because the library was booked, but in any case, it all happened. It was this great flow from, "Here's the concepts, okay, now here we are in the class." Then I would visit the classroom the subsequent week and they would do the oral presentations and give us the reflection forms. We would ask them pointed questions about the process, but the whole unit, I guess you would say, it was all very active and very lively. We were part of that and it was very exciting.
Monika: The thing that I would say that's very much to your point of collaboration is that I indicated that I was teaching three or four a lot. We got to see how it worked if it were in a two-hour, Tuesday, Thursday format, if it were in a four-hour, one-night format or in the summertime, it's two, four-hour days, and how we needed to then work with the concept across different teaching modalities because we had to do it in different timing settings.
It benefited from just that evolution and then we were fortunate enough to then take it to the Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference in Charleston. We made a proposal, the proposal got accepted to take it to a 45-minute teaching session. OBTC is unusual in that the folks who are there definitely are interested in pedagogy, but they're also interested in figuring out how do you enrich the exercise so that it can be used by more folks.
In our particular session, we had about 15 people there with us and we literally presented the-- They previously had at least a summary of the exercise and how it flowed, but we did a very brief synopsis and then really invited dialogue on how to make it even better. We got some amazing suggestions, including the fact that since one of the issues we're looking at was intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, one of the questions we asked the students is how would you make this job better and what are the rewards that you would associatedly give? Folks were like, "Well, you've got to make it clear that at least one of the suggestions they have isn't a reward but doesn't have a cost associated with it."
That is more drawing on intrinsic recognition and various other kinds of things which we looked at each other afterwards and we're like, "Duh." [laughs]
Penny: Because everybody was like, "But you'll give the raise." [crosstalk]
Monika: We got a lot of--
Penny: [unintelligible 00:17:01] forcefully, happy to reward employees, we give them money and stuff. There may not be a budget so how do you-- The point of that, I think, is that the collaboration actually also included our audience at the conference. We told them what we did and then we actually brought questions to them. We said, "What do you think about this?" We got some great feedback. In terms of the collaboration just from my own learning and all that, I attended this teaching and management conference with Monika so that-- I usually attend librarian conferences.
That even further enhanced our collaboration, what we were doing. I feel like myself as a librarian because I was actually at a conference with management educators and they were talking about what their issues were. That was really really interesting and important. We got great feedback from that group that we incorporated into the next semester because they taught it right before we left. Remember what they had at the summer class was right before we left and then we went to the conference. It was really cool.
Monika: We have put together a journal article to the top journal in library. They sent it back with a request for an RNR which Penny and I have never had a chance to follow up on. Specifically what they asked was that in the way we had submitted it, it had a blend of all of the empirical stuff because we had all this data and we had the story of the collaboration and they said, "How about--" This is really too painful.
[laughter]
Penny: "How about you pick one?
Monika: Right. Pick one subject and really focus in so it can be the collaboration story or it could be the empirical story. The challenge with the empirical story is that we don't have quant data, we really have much more qualitative perceptional data. We have some, "What resources do you use?" We can quantifiably say, "Okay." First I say, "I just go to the website." Now afterwards, I have a list of resources that I use but it's not quite the empirical way that I think that the journal is probably looking for. We really struggled with that.
We have a lot of narrative data that I could run through in Vivo if I have time to do that to see if there are some ways that we can look at narratives before they take the library session and narratives after they take the library session, but haven't had any time to deal with that.
The intent is to really talk about this because at least for me I feel as instructors we're way too quick to just think of the library and as the person who comes in and does some magic once and then people are, "Oh." Then that's the end. Whereas I think what we were able to achieve with this is just a real integrated evolution and thinking that in essence resulted in something that was and is very powerful.
When I say that or share what we have done with my fellows who teach this course, they're like, "Really?" I actually hadn't thought about covering it in that way which is why we're really clear. It does need to get into journal to think about it and for us to think about different ways that we could extrapolate it out to other courses and instruction and stuff like that.
Penny: The truth is that from the librarian perspective, this is a much stronger experience I think for me and the students because again, as Monika said, she said it in a nicer way. She said the librarian comes in and works their magic but the thing is is that those isolated experiences for students, there's nothing really to hang them on to. Me coming in and saying, "Hey, guys. This is really great database" or whatever. Some people hear that. Some students hear it and say, "Oh." The universal experience, everyone's going to look for a job. Everyone's going to learn how to find one.
Everyone's going to have to know how to analyze one to see if it suits them and everyone's going to have to prepare for an interview basically. It just put all the things that I would want to teach students into a context. That they would continue to be able to think about later. It wasn't just, "Okay. We had a library session now in our network." That's it. Now on to our next compartmentalized thing.
[00:22:21] [END OF AUDIO]


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