Have you ever felt that your library instruction sessions just go in one ear and out the other, or that you’re connecting to only a fraction of the students in your instructional programs?
Drawing on the literatures of adult education and of teaching skills, Engaging Diverse Learners: Teaching Strategies for Academic Librarians presents a wide range of methods to improve how you teach. Coauthors Mark Aaron Polger and Scott Sheidlower argue that in order to grab–and hold onto—students’ attention, instructors must get their interest right from the beginning. The techniques they suggest explain how to take into consideration the range of different learning styles students may have, how to accommodate students with different English language skills or abilities, and how to successfully work with individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds or from different technologically adapted generations. The sections for each group address the key questions of identification (who are they?); how members of that group tend to react to libraries, librarians, and education; and how educational theories of that time affected students’ learning in that generation.
