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We’re happy to announce two updates to the AMICAL website. We have migrated the AMICAL 2015 profiles over to our site and recently launched and a system to manage AMICAL events. AMICAL profiles For AMICAL 2015 we created profiles for all attendees. We had done this for the previous two conferences as well. The profiles allowed attendees to put faces to names and helped them connect with each other long after the conferences were over. But this year our plan was to migrate the 2015 profiles over to the main AMICAL site, where they will serve as one of the components of a new AMICAL collaboration initiative. Although it’s early days yet, these profiles already provide useful information for several AMICAL members. We plan to expand their functionality to tie-in with AMICAL initiatives as well as to facilitate cross-institutional collaboration. The profiles currently include basic biographical information, but they are now fully integrated with the website. So as we expand the AMICAL site, more functionality will be added. It took us a little longer than I thought, but as of today the profiles have all been migrated and are now available on the AMICAL site. If you attended the AMICAL 2015 conference and are an AMICAL member, then your profile will be listed above. See something you’d like to change on you profile? Maybe to correct some information or add a better photo? Just log in to your AMICAL account. If you already created a username and password on the AMICAL 2015 site, you can now use those to log in to the AMICAL site. More in-depth details were emailed out to all account holders earlier today. If you’re an AMICAL member but don’t have an profile/account, I encourage you to create one. Just fill in this form and I’ll set you up. (The process is not automatic, because we have to verify that requests are coming from AMICAL members.) Having a profile will allow other AMICAL members to connect with you. A common question we field over at AMICAL HQ is, “Who is like me at other institutions?” It turns out that it’s helpful to find out how they do things at other institutions, but it’s hard to know who to ask. The AMICAL profiles can help answer such questions. We hope to make them even more useful and easier to use as time goes on. Privacy policy Since the AMICAL profiles are public, I wanted to take a moment and bring up the topic of privacy. Earlier this fall we put together a privacy policy that goes into detail about what kind of information we gather across all our platforms, as well as what we do with it. We’ve been linking to this policy from the emails we send to members, but I wanted to highlight it here as well. Although it’s not very exciting, we did try to make it simple to read. Have a look and let us know if you have any concerns about it. AMICAL events Last week we launched a system for displaying AMICAL events on the website. This will be the go-to place to find out about events that AMICAL is organising or sponsoring, including all upcoming webinars, workshops and our annual conference. Previously this information was only available in bits-and-pieces across AMICALconnect and emails that we sent out. No more! The event system integrates with the profiles, so it will be possible to see the events that an AMICAL members has attended. We haven’t populated the system with older events yet, but plan to do so. We will also be listing external events where AMICAL has significant participation, providing connections with global events around topics of interest to our programs areas. That’s all for now. Going forward we will keep uploading content from the old website and past activities, but we also look forward to next year’s events, program initiatives, as well as updates to the website and our other tools.

Thanks to support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, AMICAL will be sponsoring this Spring an event focusing on digital pedagogy, the thoughtful application of technology in teaching. Hosted at the American University in Cairo over 20-23 March 2016, it will be open to a number of local institutions but is principally targeting AMICAL members. This Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo is the first international version of the Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute, a professional development initiative from the creators of the journal Hybrid Pedagogy. It’s also one of several consortially-supported actions this year building momentum around one of AMICAL’s 2015-2018 strategic priorities: Curriculum-Integrated Digital Initiatives. Dr. Maha Bali, a faculty developer at AUC and editor to Hybrid Pedagogy, is leading this effort to bring the institute to Cairo. She’s also playing a key role in helping AMICAL organize itself around consortial goals related to digital pedagogy — about which we’ll be posting more here soon. Are you an AMICAL member interested in attending? An overview of the event is provided below, but see the announcement sent to the AMICAL representative at your institution for additional information, including funding possibilities. Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo - Overview The international Digital Pedagogy Lab (DPL) institute comes to Cairo, facilitated by some of the leading and most compelling voices in the field, pushing at the edges of critical digital pedagogy. AMICAL members are invited to join the institute and get involved in some intense and inspiring conversations about teaching and learning in the digital age. The learning community we create together will be welcoming to a wide range of skill levels and interests. Participants attending the entire event will choose one of two tracks and work collaboratively with a cohort in small peer-driven classes. Additional participants will join us for keynotes and drop-in workshops. At the end of the day on the 22nd, participants will have the opportunity to give brief lightning talks, pose lingering questions to the group, share example assignments, or briefly demo useful tools. Our hope is that this will help frame the discussions and activities that continue during the Unconference on the 23rd. Participants will work with an international team of faculty from the United States, Egypt, and Canada, including Jesse Stommel, Bonnie Stewart, Maha Bali, Sean Michael Morris, and Amy Collier. The unconference will be co-facilitated by David Joseph Wrisley of the American University of Beirut and Maha Bali of AUC. Tracks (1) Praxis. Facilitators: Amy Collier and Sean Michael Morris Pedagogy is praxis, the intersection between the philosophy and practice of teaching Pedagogy is praxis, the intersection between the philosophy and practice of teaching. It involves reflecting on and actively investigating the work of teaching and learning. In this track, we will explore philosophies of teaching, our own and others. We will think specifically about the ways our pedagogies are reflected in the specific choices we make as teachers. We will discuss and experiment with various technological tools from the chalkboard to moveable chairs, computers, mobile devices, social media platforms, and learning management systems. Individual sessions and workshops will focus on teaching philosophies, discernment practices for using digital tools in courses, emergent learning, digital composition, and discussions of the impact of the digital on traditional and critical pedagogies. (2) Networks.Facilitators: Bonnie Stewart and Jesse Stommel Networked learning, from blogs and Twitter to open courses and collaboration This track will focus on the nature of digital networks and network-building, from blogs and social media to open courses and collaboration. It will include discussions of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), rhizomatic learning, how influence and reputation circulate in professional learning networks, the social contracts of closed and networked spaces, and the intersections between networks and face-to-face learning environments. We’ll especially focus on Twitter as an experimental space for thinking about how networks are both responding to and creating the Internet as a learning environment. Individual sessions and workshops will introduce tools and hybrid approaches that can help build learning communities that extend beyond the bounds of the classroom. Participants will also explore the challenges, risks, and benefits of having learners collaborating openly on the web. Further information and questions For further information — or more details as the event draws nearer — subscribe to the DPL e-mail list, follow @digpedlab, and watch digitalpedagogylab.com/cairo. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Maha Bali bali@aucegypt.edu.

AMICAL is planning to organise several upcoming workshops for our members. The first of these will be a workshop delivered by Roger Schonfeld and Nancy Fried Foster of Ithaka S+R, a non-profit research service that helps the academic community navigate economic and technological change. The workshop will take place 22-23 January 2016, hosted by John Cabot University in Rome. About the facilitators Nancy has worked with many of our libraries already on participatory design and ethnographic methods for understanding the real behaviors of our user communities. AMICAL invited both her and Roger last year to give a webinar on tools and methods for understanding our library communities. We’re excited to be working with them once again, and we hope that many of you will be interested in participating in this workshop. We believe it will be of great use as you lead your libraries’ responses to the shifting environments of higher education, scholarly communications, and academic libraries. The workshop Like other academic libraries, AMICAL libraries face budget limitations and cutbacks while also managing shifts in teaching, learning, and communication technologies. In such an environment, it is risky and potentially costly to base plans and decisions on assumptions or guesswork. The alternative, and the topic of this 1.5 day workshop, is to use existing data, supplemented with locally gathered information, to identify needs, develop and select among possible solutions, and conduct ongoing assessment. The overarching theme of the workshop is Managing Change and the main topics will be Technology in Small College Libraries (e.g., library systems and infrastructure as well as digital collections such as ejournals and ebooks) and Library as Space (policy, purpose, and design). The workshop will include: An environmental scan drawn from Ithaka S+R survey and project data, to frame the workshop topics and provide a rationale for making evidence-based decisionsGroup discussion of strategies for incorporating evidence most effectively into institutional decision-making on workshop topicsTools to use in library planning and decision-makingGroup discussion of participants’ institution-level data, including what is useful and what is missingSession to begin formulating institutional plans for structuring evidence-based decision-making processes with regard to either space or technology issues Participants will benefit from this workshop by improving their ability to incorporate evidence into decision-making processes, in general, and by developing the first draft of a project plan for use at the home institution. The workshop will run for approximately ten hours delivered over two days. It will be limited to 14 participants, and applications to participate will be reviewed by the Ithaka and AMICAL organizers. Who should attend? Library directors and other staff from all AMICAL member institutions (Full, Affiliate & Network) are eligible to apply to participate. We recommend that the primary participant from an institution be the library director. If a second person attends, there may be a gain in how well the two can remember and implement what they learned when they get back to the home institution. It may be helpful if the second person work with library IT or facilities. Application instructions and financial support information were sent by email to all AMICAL representatives on Oct 21. If you have misplaced that email, contact us and we’ll send you the details again. For more information contact your local AMICAL representative. Key dates November 15: Deadline to applyNovember 20: Responses sent to applicants

From Fall 2014 through Spring 2015, in consultation with the Mellon Foundation and with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, I worked with Celeste Schenck (President, American University of Paris) to develop an $800,000 grant proposal to support AMICAL’s operations and programs from August 2015 through July 2018. I’m thrilled to announce that the proposal was accepted by the Foundation and was disbursed this summer to AUP as responsible party for the grant. This is a critical boost for AMICAL. The grant will allow us to continue, and in some cases expand, our most successful programs. It will give strategic emphasis to consortial activities supporting leadership development, information literacy, digital initiatives, and network-level collaboration. And it has enabled us to hire a Web Developer & Digital Strategist – Alex Armstrong, whom I’ll introduce below – who will tie those activities together with tools and resources that enable you, as AMICAL members, to engage effectively with them. AMICAL’s 2015-2018 Mellon grant: Leadership, digital initiatives and collaboration In drafting our grant proposal, we sought to support AMICAL members in navigating the rapidly changing environments of libraries, IT, scholarship, pedagogy, and higher education in general, while cultivating shared value that comes from our institutions’ international-American visions of liberal education. We also sought points of common purpose with the Mellon Foundation itself, to benefit from their broad-based expertise and to ensure that our own objectives could find financial support. The result was a plan that establishes four strategic priorities: 1. Leadership of Library and Information Services in Liberal Arts Environments Overview: AMICAL has finite resources to put towards professional development at 25 member institutions. We’re trying to help our institutions navigate the changes just described, but we must focus much of our support on leaders who are in a position to effect change locally, or to engage local colleagues in conversations, training or other actions that help move their organization forward. AMICAL’s professional development programs will therefore give particular focus to leadership skills, innovation, and change management among library and information services teams at AMICAL institutions. Related actions planned: Priority support in AMICAL’s Small Grant Program for participation in key externally-organized leadership seminars management-level training in key emerging areas of higher ed libraries and information services AMICAL-organized workshops on strategic planning and evidence-based decision making Facilitation of partnership with mentors - both within and outside of AMICAL 2. Information Literacy as a Liberal Art Working critically with information is a hallmark of liberal education, and part of the ‘brand’ and value of American universities. This is also one of several perfect spaces in which to cultivate collaboration between all of AMICAL’s target groups: librarians, faculty and technologists. AMICAL-organized face-to-face and online presentations, discussions and workshops related to information literacy Priority support in AMICAL’s Small Grant Program for professional development related to information literacy instruction Consortium-wide collaborative projects on assessment, data sharing, program development, faculty-librarian collaboration, curriculum integration and other issues related to information literacy instruction 3. Curriculum-Integrated Digital Initiatives Digital scholarship and pedagogy, as well as the curriculum-relevant curation of digital content, are increasingly considered as intrinsic to research, teaching, and libraries. This is another set of spaces perfect for collaboration between AMICAL’s target groups of librarians, faculty and technologists. AMICAL-organized face-to-face and online presentations, discussions and workshops related to digital scholarship/pedagogy/collectionsPriority support in AMICAL’s Small Grant Program for professional development or projects related to digital scholarship/pedagogy/collections 4. Growing the AMICAL Collaboration Network Only a small fraction of AMICAL staff and faculty are able to meet face to face at our conferences. A robust array of resources for online collaboration – and in particular a network for discovery of, and exchange with, colleagues – is absolutely essential for collaborative activity to grow across AMICAL. Build a coherent web presence for communicating about AMICAL’s programs, through a redesigned website with vastly improved architecture and design a blog, supported by an editorial strategy that uses AMICAL news and reflections from staff, members and invited guests to build shared vision and focus for AMICAL as a growing, dynamic organization coordinated social media activity to engage with members and other stakeholders Replace existing network structures (primarily AMICALconnect) with more flexible, easy to use tools for topical discussion among interest groups project or committee-based communication and sharing discovering and interacting with AMICAL peers according to teaching, research, and professional interests Explore ways in which AMICAL can showcase and link students and their work, through: sharing of learning and research-related objects such as student digital multimedia projects and digital scholarship projects in a consortial repository facilitating communication and collaboration amongst students who are leading AMICAL-funded projects How will AMICAL support the work in these areas? Organizationally and peer-to-peer, through the ongoing programs coordinated by our five standing committees: Professional Development Institutional Research & Assessment E-Resources OCLC Programs Information Literacy Financially, through our grant-funded programs: Annual AMICAL Conference AMICAL-organized topical workshops and webinars A new Small Grant Program (to be officially launched in November) that supports individual training or local projects in three areas: Professional development Emerging technologies and practice in libraries, teaching and learning Digital scholarship and digital collections Through communication and collaboration resources - spearheaded by our Web Developer and Digital Strategist Introducing AMICAL’s Web Developer & Digital Strategist: Alex Armstrong We have struggled for years with ambitions of developing a functional and robust array of resources for communication and collaboration among AMICAL members. Over the years, we managed to get the most essential program information to members via our website, and we created a basic collaboration network with AMICALconnect. However: there is an immense void of missing or inaccessible information about AMICAL’s programsAMICALconnect has turned out to be far less functional and used than we hopedwe were missing someone with the skills, and a solid understanding of AMICAL’s mission, to develop a coherent set of online resources for communication and collaboration – for existing needs, but in particular to support the goals laid out in our 2015-2018 grant proposal. Luckily, we connected with Alex Armstrong at the right moment. Alex worked previously at the American College of Greece, and has now struck out on his own as an independent consultant. AMICAL has contracted with Alex as Web Developer & Digital Strategist for the period of this Mellon grant, and I hope that we’ll be able to continue working with him going forward. Alex brings together the skills and understanding mentioned above (in spades!). He also brings along vision and methodology for organizing AMICAL’s digital resources in ways that will serve the strategic goals we’ve laid out for the coming years. He developed the AMICAL 2014 and AMICAL 2015 web sites, as well as the new AMICAL website that is under continuous development. Here are just a few of the things Alex has already helped with since starting his new AMICAL role this summer: Alex accompanied me and a team of AU Cairo/Beirut/Iraq colleagues to a summer institute on digital scholarship in liberal arts colleges. He and I are already working together to steer AMICAL support for a number of digital humanities and digital pedagogy projects that have spun off from that and from other discussions with AMICAL colleagues.As Provisional Chair of the E-Resources Committee, Alex has been consolidating existing data and looking for ways to streamline work on this program. Laying a foundation for growing but sustainable committee work in this area is important in its own right, since this program generates a significant part of AMICAL’s financial value to members. However another critical reason for involving Alex in E-resources this year is to investigate committee-level communication needs and to develop appropriate communication tools and processes.Alex has been reviewing all of AMICAL’s web-based resources for improvement. He has created the new AMICAL website, implemented a new helpdesk system, and begun planning and testing new discussion and project management platforms. In all kinds of ways, Alex has already proved himself to be an essential partner in developing and managing the consortium’s programs. He’s currently working on plans for rolling out several new communication tools that will replace AMICALconnect, so you’ll be hearing from him soon as he talks about these developments on AMICAL’s blog. If you want to talk to him about any of this, he can be reached at armstrong@amicalnet.org. Welcome, Alex! If you’ve read this far, I’m amazed and appreciative. I feel strongly that all of the above is important news for AMICAL, so thank you for giving it your time. Here’s to three great years of consortial collaboration ahead of us! Originally sent to AMICAL members as an email.

Technologists, librarians and faculty at AMICAL institutions: this is your conference. This is where you can work together with peers from other international American universities on the use of information and technology in teaching. This is where your institution’s IT staff can workshop together with your librarians and faculty, regardless of how far apart your local offices are. This is where you can reflect on issues and questions that are shared across our consortium – and are sometimes unique to our fundamentally international-American environments. And in 2016, you can do all this in Rome! A smaller, more interactive event at AUR It’s a great pleasure to announce that the next AMICAL Conference will be held May 12–14, 2016, at The American University of Rome. The AUR campus, located on the fabulous Janiculum Hill, offers a smaller and more intimate venue than we’ve typically had for the AMICAL Conference. We will be taking full advantage of that to create an environment conducive to smaller-group discussions and workshops. And with three days to work with, we will be running a smarter, tighter, and more interactive program this year. With fewer formal presentations, we’ll create more space for posters, technology showcases, workshops, discussions, and project-oriented meetings. Parallel sessions will allow smaller and focused groups to meet at the same time. And as usual, inspiring keynotes will kick off each of the main conference days. Share the news, and stay tuned! Visit the AMICAL 2016 Conference site and forward this announcement with other colleagues at your institution that may be interested. The major announcements about the conference will be sent to everyone on AMICALconnect, as well as those who sign up for the AMICAL Conference interest list. You can get the freshest news about the event, however, by following AMICAL’s social media channels below. Full information about the event will be posted to the Conference site by early December. Hope to see you in Rome!

I have two important bits of news to share on AMICAL governance. New Operational Guidelines First, AMICAL’s voting members have just approved a substantially revised version of our Operational Guidelines. The revised Operational Guidelines aim to streamline our organizational structures, re-energizing them through increased participation and engagement: Standing Committees are now associated with active consortial programs, focusing on small and agile committees while allowing all member categories to participate in their governance.Interest Groups have been differentiated from the committees, with participation open to all AMICAL colleagues.The efficient organization of elections for our Coordinating Committee officers has been one of our difficulties in the past. We’ve addressed this by simplifying both the election process and the distribution of Coordinating Committee roles. Special thanks go out to the other members of the Organizational Documents Revision Committee that joined me in working on this: Sania Battalova (formerly at American U. Central Asia)Cendrella Habre (Lebanese American U.)Elisabetta Morani (John Cabot U.)Ivana Stevanovic (American U. Kosovo). Thanks as well to all who voted, and for the confidence you expressed in the Committee’s work. Coordinating Committee elections Second, we launch today elections for our Coordinating Committee officers. Voting (Full Member) institutions are now charged with electing a group of four officers by 14 September. Their AMICAL Representatives will be getting voting instructions shortly. The new officers of the Coordinating Committee will then assign themselves roles (Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, and Member-at-Large). And as of 1 October, they will begin their terms, helping guide the consortium in the planning, steering and evaluation of its programs. Members have nominated a fine list of candidates, and regardless of who gets elected, we’ll have a great team.

I have an update to share with you regarding AMICAL’s web site — but I know it’s the middle of summer, and you’re reading this from your beach chair with eyes half-closed, so I’ll keep it short. Over the last few years, the internet termites have been slowly eating away at the structure of AMICAL’s web site. The old and weathered Drupal and PHP that held up our site were getting close to crumbling. At the same time, AMICAL has been making exciting plans for new programs supporting digital humanities, digital pedagogies, digital collections, and a more effective interinstitutional collaboration network for staff and faculty. Details about these initiatives will be shared in September, but all of them require us to rethink and redevelop AMICAL’s web site and platforms for communications, collaboration and content. Transitional web site Although this is just an initial step in redesigning our web resources, we are proud to launch today a new public web site at http://www.amicalnet.org. Alex Armstrong, who also created the 2014 and 2015 conference websites, is building the new site on a content management system (Statamic) that emphasizes flexible content and speedy development. The site has a fresh new look and feel. And although this is just a transitional website — a starting point for new web resources to be developed over the coming year — we’ve incorporated a few new features that we’d like to highlight here. Blog First, we’ve launched the AMICAL blog! You’ll find here news & commentary on AMICAL’s projects and activities, including announcements from AMICAL staff but also articles and photos by members and invited colleagues. Use the Share buttons at the bottom of each post to help us raise awareness about AMICAL. Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay in the loop. Community Under Community, we’ve grouped together all of the active AMICAL communication platforms and media channels. There are many ways to connect with your AMICAL colleagues; use this page to discover a few you didn’t know about! Do tell us which platforms you prefer, as we’ll be consolidating our communications over the coming year. Content updates Programs & initiativesOn our old site, many of our ongoing consortial activities were nowhere to be found, but most major activities are now listed under Programs & initiatives. CommitteesTo give you a basic way to contact committees, we’ve listed their members and linked to the committee contacts posted on AMICALconnect. Future plans. We’ll be expanding all of the site’s content in the fall. Content on its way The main piece of existing content not yet available on the new site is the archive of presentations from previous AMICAL conferences. We’ll be creating a new home for those over the coming months, so hang tight! In the meantime, if you’re looking for presentation slides from a previous conference, just ask us, and if we have a copy, we’ll send it. The best thing about the new site is that it’s not collapsing. The next best thing is that it’s a solid first step toward a more robust set of tools for connecting with AMICAL colleagues online. Everything new starts with a few rough spots, though, so if you notice anything wrong with the site, or have a request to include specific content or features, don’t hesitate to let us know. Enjoy your summer!

This was the fifth time I had attended the AMICAL Conference in the last seven years and it was every bit as enjoyable as all the others. I had always hoped to visit the American University in Bulgaria and was glad I had the chance to see the library and campus—a lovely setting for a meeting. Sofiya Katsarska and her wonderful library staff were such kind and generous hosts and I felt so welcome. And, of course, being with all of my AMICAL friends, old and new, was a joy.The sessions at this meeting gave me a much better understanding of information literacy in general and how it is implemented in particular places. As usual, part of what I learned came from formal presentations and part from informal conversations. Lori Townsend’s presentation focused me on threshold concepts in a way that I thought was really clear and well illustrated. (Didn’t you love the cat pictures?!) After-conversations were animated and illuminating. It is wonderful to have the chance to stand around afterwards with AMICAL colleagues and have epistemological conversations about the content of the program. In Sofia, I had a chance to talk to Anne-Marie Deitering about her work on curiosity, which is such an important part of the learning process but does not receive anything like the attention it deserves.The presentations and posters were also terrific. And I love the “un-conference” concept. I hope people participate more and more as they get used to that new format.Others who made the trip out to Rila Monastery were probably just as thrilled as I was to enter the library and see the books. This was a rare and deeply appreciated opportunity. Ivana, Jorge and I washed our faces in the water at the monastery, hoping to enhance our health and beauty. We’ll see how well it worked when we meet again!

This AMICAL 2015 workshop was on what CATs (Classroom Assessment Techniques) are and what they assess. Five exercises helped participants in getting better insight about how a particular CAT is used in the classroom. Examples and experiences were aimed at faculty, Information Literacy librarians and Instructional Technology specialists. Not many participants knew about CATs, 5-6 out of 21 (coming from 13 universities). In a highly interactive atmosphere, all participants got a chance to hear and learn more, getting really inspired by the facilitators’ input. The steps for CATs introduced planning, implementation and feedback as crucial parts of the process, with none to be missed. I will highlight notes on implementation, where communication was mentioned as the essential element. Students should be informed that this is not a test, not a graded assignment; it’s a quick and easy way to check if the direction of the lecture is appropriate for the desired learning outcomes, and whether it needs to be revised. (Note: CATs can also be part of the pre-lecture phase; the workshop focused on the in-class, or post-lecture CATs). Therefore, CATs should be used to help instructors to quickly “look into the head of the student” (Sosa, 2015) and correct the class pedagogy at the spot or via additional correspondence, if the reality check proves that students do not understand the content. Exercises both individual and group have helped participants in reflecting and getting insight into the idea and scope of CATs. Sally provided experience tips, encouraging the group with the note that first few CATs one does might not be as successful. In addition, all three facilitators shared the scope of CATs which should be used; stressing out that not too many CATs should be done in one course. While a single course might include doing muddiest point a few times, Word Journal should definitely be done once. The end of the workshop did bring the cats CATs closure… The workshop was based on the book by Thomas Angelo and Patricia Cross: Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers (2nd ed.) Image credits: Dimana Doneva & Asma Al-Kanan / See more

I had such a lovely time at the 2015 conference — THANK YOU all for inviting me and taking such awesome care of me. AMICAL really knows how to put on a conference (and how to party)! And Bulgaria is a gorgeous place to do so. I came away with so many nice connections, lovely conversations and ideas for teaching and learning. When Dimitris asked me to write a short blog post, I was initially nervous (not being a regular blogger), but it’s been really nice to reflect on my trip after the whirlwind of getting home and getting back into the day-to-day business of being an instruction librarian. One of my biggest takeaways from AMICAL finally clicked into place for me near the end of the conference. It reminded me that when you experience a transformative understanding, it’s not necessarily a strike of lightning, but the sun rising and slowly changing the entire landscape around you. Everything is the same but everything is also different. As time passes, you make new connections and experience a sense of wonder. And maybe also feel a bit stupid for not having “got it” before when it was right there in front of you all along. What connected the dots for me? Curiosity. Motivation. Affect. I was thinking about what I call the “Research process” threshold concept and the Framework calls the “Research as inquiry” frame — the one that boils down to “research is a process of inquiry that leads to the creation of new knowledge.” This one has always summed up so much for me about what we teach in higher education. But what starts this process of inquiry? And why do we persist through obstacles and fear? Curiosity. It’s a defining characteristic of the human species. Almost everyone is curious about something. I participated in Anne-Marie’s workshop and it reminded of this. And, perhaps more importantly, it gave me a tool to use in activating curiosity in my students. When we talk about engaging students and making learning fun, I now believe we are in large part talking about activating or satisfying their curiosity. Some of us are naturally curious about the kinds of things that school often deals in — ideas, abstractions, complex technical or theoretical arguments. Scholars love hearing about each other’s research and want to figure out how to solve this or that problem. I’m a naturally abstract kind of person — passionate about ideas, a bit detached from the real world sometimes. But our students? Motivation. This idea about curiosity was with me when Nancy gave her talk about researchers and their habits. She was talking about a very small group of folks — top researchers at elite institutions. They are the embodiment of the information literate person in academia. And I wondered, and asked, how does that look in the workplace? Nancy answered (thinking quickly on her feet) that it’s perhaps someone who is extremely motivated to find good information — to seek out reliable, authoritative sources and not settle for less. I think it was Elisabetta who pointed out that all of Nancy’s researchers were motivated and we could not say the same for all of our students. Which led me back to this idea of curiosity. I looked again at the Framework and the dispositions for the Research as Inquiry frame and one was “Values intellectual curiosity.” Yay! Someone (not me) thought to include curiosity! But as I thought about it some more, I was struck by the qualifier “intellectual.” Isn’t all curiosity intellectual? I hadn’t even questioned that word earlier, but after Anne-Marie’s workshop, which differentiated among types of curiosities, I recognized that I was subjecting students to my own bias in thinking that curiosity is something that some have and some don’t. But, to repeat myself, almost everyone is curious about something. Affect. I led a short workshop on literature reviews for incoming graduate students when I got home. After the workshop, a student approached me. She was an older student who had taken a few years off and was re-entering grad school to work on her dissertation. She said that she had been feeling really hesitant and filled with self-doubt. But after the workshop, she felt a renewed sense of confidence. It wasn’t any specific thing I talked about. It was that as the workshop progressed, she was reminded of the tools available to her, the help available to her, and that there are established ways to investigate and generate research questions. That she isn’t alone. She said, “I feel like I can do this.” I think that as academic librarians, technologists and faculty, we could do worse than to offer our students tools, both abstract and concrete, to support the exploration of their curiosity. We can remind them that they are curious by nature. Being “educated” can mean finding answers to some of their questions, finding that each answer leads to even more questions and that those questions and answers can help them find a place in the world. Motivation can rise from curiosity and once begun, generates its own momentum. We can help students get started by activating their curiosity or help them get going again when their momentum fades or they get stuck. And finally, this is as much about what our students are feeling as what they are thinking. This understanding gave me a new way to look at my students and I’m pretty sure it’s going to lead to new ideas about where I want our instruction program at UNM to go. Thanks AMICAL! If you want to read more about curiosity, I highly recommend Anne-Marie’s writing on the subject. Image credit: Dimana Doneva / See more