Thanks for the comments!! I loved my class that taught Dialog - I loved Dialog and wish I could use it all the time for all searches!!

My comments about including technology in MLS training is not meant to say we should replace this class or alter this particular class by adding in additional tools. My suggestion is that additional classes should be offered that teach future librarians about the tools they’re going to be using once they get into their library.

I’m shocked as I teach classes to find how few recent grads know about the value of blogs written by their colleagues - they could learn so much more if they were just reading what actual professionals were writing.

I’ll stop ranting now I just wanted to make it clear that this particular class isn’t the one that needs to be replaced/adjusted.

I have read this too with great interest. I am a Drexel grad and also an Adjunct Faculty member. And YES..I teach that class that teaches Dialog. : )

I think Dialog serves as an excellent model for structured data. There is no better way to do so. Some students think it is useless (like learning geometry in grade school). Regardless, it is taught to serve as a model as it is perhaps the most basic of all search systems one may encounter. Blogs, wikis and whatnot are outside the scope of the class. Plus it is very difficult to squeeze the technical learning and the theoretical learning into 10 weeks.

Frankly, I think online learning (and teaching) is far more difficult than face-to-face learning. Written communication is so one-sided, it makes for so much misunderstanding between teachers and students. Believe me, it is frustrating for everyone, at times.

I have been in the industry for 12 years and I would agree, I have learned much more on the job (I have always worked on the corporate side). But my MLS certainly provided a good foundation.

zalen

I do agree that Drexel got you in the door - but that’s a pretty high door-fee to have to pay when you could have learned from someone in libraries - like me or many others instead …

I’m also a Drexel LIS student and had entered the environment with no library employment experience whatsoever — I had a corporate background. For the most part, I’ve had positive experiences at Drexel, particularly because of the online environment.

In fact, the one class I took in person consisted of primarily Power-Point presentations followed by practice in searching. This was 9 months after I had completed an undergrad (in my early 40s) where there were inspiring (in-person) small-group seminars that I still remember fondly. In fact, I’m still in touch with my undergrad faculty advisor and I’ve seen her speak at various functions in town.

After finishing the on-campus Drexel course, I decided to take an online course and loved it so much that I have enrolled in online courses since. After all, it is just as easy to read PowerPoint (or a lecture given in any format) in my house at any time of the day than have to drive to Philly after work, search for parking (or have to pay over $70 for a parking pass) and then drive an hour back home.

Drexel has given me my “union card” to walk into the door of libraries. I now have over a year’s pre-professional experience at 2 different institutions which I would not have been able to do without Drexel (or any other library school).

Then again, as I mentioned to Nicole in a post around a year ago, she is the kind of person who should be TEACHING these courses, not attending them.

Examples of not being prepared: Papers that had spelling and grammar errors that the Word spell checker caught, not reading directions for assignments and not writing clear sentences. Distance learning is not an excuse for poor writing.

Distance professors know about the difficulties of not seeing the students. The difficulty is present for both parties. When students were threatened with a major fire in their county, we were patient. When a student made no effort to contact the teacher or the administration for several weeks, we were not sympathetic. Students have given all sorts of reasons why they can’t do the assignments that would not be accepted if they were on the job. The boss would have fired them for non performance of duties. If you supervising someone who didn’t show up for two weeks, didn’t call and didn’t send you any messages what would you do?

I have had students who were well prepared and ill-prepared for the rigors of graduate school. In graduate school students are required to take charge of their own education. Faculty are there to guide you, not to hand-hold. In distance education we can not see the pensive or excited look in the students’ eyes. We have to rely on questions and feed back.
…
Some of the students act as though they are attending an elementary school where the teacher hands them all they need to know. In a graduate level course the student is responsible for his/her own learning.

In the class I dropped, the professor did not seem to think that our questions were reasonable for graduate students - but what distance professors have to understand is that we’re all learning how to learn without seeing body language or having easy access to the professor. This does mean students are ill-prepared for graduate education - it means that they’re ill-prepared for online learning - can who can blame us - the majority of us had never taken classes this way before.

One of the challenges of library school is that it is both a graduate school and a professional school. It combines the theoretical academic search with hands-on practical experience.

I have had students who were well prepared and ill-prepared for the rigors of graduate school. In graduate school students are required to take charge of their own education. Faculty are there to guide you, not to hand-hold. In distance education we can not see the pensive or excited look in the students’ eyes. We have to rely on questions and feed back. In all the classes some students need basic computer skills support. One semester I had a school server, that contained all my lectures, die. Once I was wondering why no students had sent me e-mail. I found that my school e-mail was going to never-neverland and yet no one got an error message. Students don’t realize some things are beyond the control of the teacher.

Personally I took the commitment to teach seriously. It was not something delegated to weekends and time off of my “real” job. If I was on line, I would answer student e-mail within 30 minutes. That was my job. If I was off line, I surely would answer within 30 hours, even if the answer was, “I’ll have to investigate and get back to you.” I acknowledged every paper that was turned in as fast as I could and graded them within 2 days. I held weekly chats for the students who wanted to attend.

The class that taught Dialog at Drexel is outdated. I have never used Dialog in my librarian job. I use hundreds of other data bases that are very connected to my personal research and the research I help others with.

Some of the students act as though they are attending an elementary school where the teacher hands them all they need to know. In a graduate level course the student is responsible for his/her own learning. When I was earning my 2nd masters and working on my dissertation, I did my best to write publishable papers for my classes. I published several papers that started as class assignments.

I give no written tests. The ultimate test is when a reader, a boss, or colleague comes to you with a question, will you know how to guide them to the answer?

As a group I find librarians know more about the storage, retrieval, and use of data and information than information systems people or computer scientists. Librarians know more about language and literature than English teachers. Librarians know more about administration and systems than MBAs and yet are still paid as if they were beginners.

I’ll disagree about the first class on reference. I found Dialog extremely useful, mainly because I’ve worked in special libraries. It helped me understand commercial databases. The second class was not as useful as it seemed a mishmash of topics.
I loved cataloging (what does that say about me?) and legal bibliography, human-computer interaction, systems analysis and ethics.

It works both ways–you really can’t classify one or the other as being more useful, IMO. Library school education should change however to require at least one semester of practical, meaningful experience. Until it does, however, MLIS students should take steps to gain the experience while in school.

I suppose, if I didn’t have a house, job, spouse with a job, etc, then going through a traditional MLIS would have been a somewhat better fit. As it was, I was mostly happy with my MLIS experience. Now if I can just find a library job…

I should point out that not all of my courses were great though. One course in particular, it is a core MLS course here at SLIS, is entitled the Organization and Representation of Knowledge and Information and dealt with, mostly theoretically, how to identify criteria for evaluating and improving ways to organize and represent information for future retrieval with an emphasis on ideas and concepts. Yuck! Although someone may have liked it, the reading was uninteresting and horrendous and the lectures were too theoretical.

It’s too bad that you’ve had the experience you did because library school should be and can be, at the right place, a good learning experience. I hope that you were at least able to learn enough to communicate with the librarians outside of the IT department.

The only class I wish had been face to face was cataloging. In person would have been better and their were some language issues with the teacher (english was his second language). We did actually catalog some materials–although he seemed arbitrary in his AACR2 usage.

All the classes were very useful and I learned a lot.

As for the professor, she (not he) left Drexel a couple of terms after the disastrous research class. And I was so glad to see her go. Having been raised by a teacher, married a teacher, and taught briefly myself, there are obvious do’s and don’ts for teachers. She drove me up a wall by frequently pointing out that we were graduate students, and we had to produce work of a higher quality. No kidding!

The assistant dean was my advisor, but I didn’t know to avoid her until partway through the term. She should never be teaching.

Lisa, I bet know who the worthless professor was - probably the one who told us we weren’t children and didn’t know how to use his computer - I dropped him after 2 weeks! And was warned to avoid the assistant dean - so I’m glad I did so.

One question - did you have library experience before starting at Drexel? If not - maybe that was the difference in our experiences … if so … then I’m happy you got something good out of it!!

Your assessment of the required courses is essentially the same as mine. Statistics was a joke, especially since it made no sense at all. Try teaching statistics to someone with a math learning disorder - it’s hell for both teacher and student. The research classes were part interesting and part worthless for me. The worthwhile section was taught by a wonderful professor who did NOT focus on Dialog. The worthless section was taught by another professor who is phenomenally bad, and accused several of us of plagiarism (completely baseless). The review of literature process was familiar to me, but the way the prof taught it was so convoluted and confusing that we were all lost.

Other classes ranged from frustrating to interesting, but I agree completely with your observation that none of the currently available tools such as blogs, wikis, etc. were discussed in any detail in the classes. Oh, and the class taught by the assistant dean was just a vehicle for her self-aggrandizement. She annoyed me highly.

So overall, I don’t regret spending the time and money to go to Drexel (ok, not much). Honestly, I don’t believe that there is sufficient consistency in MLIS programs to guarantee that the grass would be greener elsewhere. Some programs are making strides in a particular area, but in general there needs to be a curriculum overhaul. In the meantime, I’m learning more on the job than I did in school, and I’ll pursue whatever professional development I can grab. Thanks very much for posting this. It would be wonderful if the dean and assistant dean at Drexel’s iSchool would read this, but there’s a great difference between reading your well-written observations and actually having them act upon it!

Silly blogger, the OWL is the Ordinary Wizarding Level examination. Duh!!

Okay, sorry, I couldn’t help it….

I don’t come from a library background at all. I have never worked in a library, and therefore have the searching skills of a college graduate of history… Which are, let’s be honest, not too bad. I’m only in my 4th week of the on-campus program at Drexel, and I’m not finding any of these problems (yet, hopefully not!)

My problem isn’t with the curriculum at this point, because I simply don’t know enough of it. The problem is that, you can believe in training and work experience all you want, but when it comes down to it, a requirement for applying to a librarian position anywhere requires an MLIS. So I can sit here and think about how pointless all these classes are (which I don’t, at this point, and hope I never do) but in the end I still have to have my MLIS.

It was nice to read your review, and I’m going to keep my eye out for the sort of things that you mentioned.