The growth of interest in information literacy has increased the demand for library and information managers with good teaching skills. There always has been an association between good reference librarianship and some element of didactics, as many readers will know, but the sheer volume of the demand and the rising expectations for instruction have meant that library managers and those of us responsible for the education of librarians are now very concerned about the teaching of teaching skills. The goal of Teaching Technology is to provide useful techniques to help librarians create courses and workshops in technology.
In this volume Brandt has applied a learner‐centred approach taken from instructional systems design popularised by Romiszowski (though, oddly, there is no bibliography and very few references in the text). He introduces us to the simple ADDIE formula of five critical steps:
- 1.
(1) analysis;
- 2.
(2) design;
- 3.
(3) development;
- 4.
(4) implementation; and
- 5.
(5) evaluation.
The chapter on analysis focuses on the learner. It is as clear and concise as any introduction to different learning styles that you will find in the education literature, and I found the book worthwhile for this chapter alone. But there’s more. The chapter on design deals with the writing of learning objectives and how to use them in a constructive way. The chapter on development moves to a practical level in which the different methods of instruction and learning resources are matched with various types of learners, with the end result being a lesson plan. The fourth chapter on implementation discusses aspects of practical instruction such as presentation techniques, the use of teaching assistants and the use of educational technology, and it includes a brief section on problem students. The fifth chapter covers the important topic of evaluation.
It would have been enough to finish there, but Brandt has added three chapters on “building effective technology training programs”. They will be useful to all people teaching technology programmes for the first time, for they deal with practical matters such as budgeting, course scheduling and marketing. The book concludes with several samples of technology training materials from successful programmes.
I recommend this book to anyone involved with teaching information skills courses, including those not directly concerned with technology, though the examples are naturally very relevant to that subject.
