UTA Libraries Staff Present at 2021 CTLC Conference

Several staff members of the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries presented at the 2021 Cross Timbers Library Collaborative (CTLC) Conference on July 23.

Experiential Learning Librarian Milaun Murry, Undergraduate Success Librarian Alessia Cavazos, and Events & Outreach Specialist Stenila Simon presented a panel on how their team hosted virtual events during the pandemic. Web Developer Krystal Schenk and Editorial Services Coordinator Alexandra Pirkle presented on how they were able to empower their colleagues’ pandemic narratives via virtual blog training.

“Our staff consistently represent Maverick Country well at conferences near and far, and we are proud of their showing at CTLC,” said Rebecca Bichel, dean of UTA Libraries. “Thank you to our five scholar-staff who not only prioritize providing great service during the pandemic but also make the time to share what they have learned with their peers in the field.”

The annual CTLC conference was hosted virtually for the second time out of Denton, Texas due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All sessions were broadcast live, including a keynote from American Library Association President Patricia “Patty” Wong.

Murry, Cavazos, and Simon’s panel highlighted the challenges that their experiential learning team faced in the transition to a virtual environment.

“I wanted to be able to present different ideas to overcome some of the challenges that we faced while also demonstrating that most of the issues came from logistics rather than an inability to facilitate experiential learning in a virtual environment,” Murry said. “I am hoping that attendees walked away with a desire to add more active learning components into their hybrid/virtual lessons when they realized how simple it could be.”

For Cavazos, the goal was to emphasize how accomplishable the transition to virtual was, regardless of difficulty.

“Even though I often felt like I wasn’t sure if I was doing enough, the feedback from students, professors, and my colleagues proved that I was still providing opportunities for success for those around me (especially students)—which is always my goal at work,” she said.

Simon focused on the practical takeaways for attendees.

“We wanted to offer our perspective and showcase what we did as well as where we struggled, and what lessons we learned from this experience so others can gain some meaningful insight from our direct experience working through this transition,” she said.

None of the trio had presented at CTLC before. All were happy with how the panel went overall and felt the presentation played to their work in the Libraries generally.

“We have always made it our mission to ensure that we are sharing the resources and lessons that we’ve learned to enable other educators to incorporate more experiential learning opportunities into their courses and events,” Murry said. “Presenting this type of information at conferences both shows the Libraries’ dedication to continued progression in this area, despite the pandemic, but also how impactful the content can be in different forms.”

“Our goal as the Libraries is to support the university, and thereby our students, in advancing research, innovation, and excellence,” Cavazos said. “I think that across the board we were just really representative of the Libraries’ dedication to providing our campus community with support, care, and learning that they are looking for.”

Pirkle and Schenk presented on their transition from in-person blog training to fully virtual offerings after the Libraries staff moved to mostly remote work.

After the launch of the updated Libraries website in January 2020, the Libraries Marketing & Communications team facilitated several training sessions to on-board bloggers from the previous website.

“Prior to March 2020, our blog trainings were offered in-person, at set times and in set locations to accommodate a more hands-on training experience,” Schenk said. “This allowed us to answer questions in the moment, and provide real-time troubleshooting of any problems they encountered when logging into their accounts.”

Once working from home, Pirkle and Schenk noticed an influx of blog access requests from staff who had never or rarely blogged previously.

“We realized there was a need to facilitate our colleagues’ pandemic narratives—and quickly,” Pirkle said. “As a result, we quickly transitioned to a more customizable, flexible training option that was fully virtual and allowed us to onboard new bloggers as they requested access.”

This new virtual training model wasn’t without its pitfalls—in the early days of the pandemic, many didn’t have access to a webcam or didn’t automatically turn them on, and so getting feedback from what was once a live audience was difficult.

“It’s challenging to conduct a training in that void of silence and no faces,” Schenk said. “But we quickly worked through that, and once more staff received and felt comfortable turning their cameras on, this became less of a problem. We also learned to ask more explicitly for feedback, instead of expecting it.”

An important component of the training is that it is never recorded.

“Our goal is for staff to engage with us in this session and to have as many of their questions answered as possible through real-time instruction,” Schenk said. “We just don’t believe a recorded video can provide that same level of customer service to our colleagues."

Pirkle hopes these trainings will continue to evolve as the campus opens up for Fall 2021.

“We have plans to host more virtual trainings, as well as some in-person to accommodate different kinds of learners,” they said. “We also want to provide some additional writing workshops and refresher courses for those who are interested.”

Pirkle and Schenk's presentation can be found in the UTA Libraries ResearchCommons.

Supporting The University of Texas at Arlington and the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan region, UTA Libraries create transformational learning experiences by connecting people to first-class resources, empowering knowledge creation, exploring ideas and pursuing innovations in learning. The UTA FabLab offers all students access to cutting-edge technology for research in digital fabrication and data visualization. UTA Libraries Special Collections focuses on the history of Texas, Mexico and the Southwest, and includes one of the finest cartographical collections on Texas and the Gulf of Mexico in the world. The Libraries recently completed an $800,000 cold storage preservation vault for its collection of approximately 5 million photographic negatives. To learn more about UTA Libraries, please visit http://libraries.uta.edu.