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Abstract: Hackathon X Olio: Co-creating a collective of library stories for teaching and learning
Chair: Rebecca Morris, University of Pittsburgh, Teaching Associate Professor
Short overview
In the hackathon style– creative, fast, and collaborative– participants will co-create an open education resource of library stories, mini-case studies, and problems ready for discussion, research, reflection, and integration into learning exercises in courses and professional development.
Introduction
Library science educators leverage story as part of pedagogy to replay and parse decision points, inject humor into tense moments, contextualize standards and guidelines, illustrate complex ecosystems, and more. They may weave into a lecture a recounting of a memorable reference request; point to lessons learned in conflict resolution when examining theories of management; and recall colleagues who helped manage a crisis to instill dispositions of collaboration.
The potential links across storytelling, teaching, and learning are bountiful– and potentially aligned to instruction of competencies and dispositions for library and information professionals. Among the possibilities are building human connections (Hughes, Oliveira, and Bickford 2022); fostering empathy as part of professional reflection (Baer 2019); sharpening recall of information (Kromka and Goodboy 2018); providing non-textual approaches to pedagogy (McDowell 2018); adding elements of embodiment to learning (Otrel-Cass 2024); and applying theory to practice (Harter, whose pedagogy was described in Baxstrom 2016).
Useful, poignant, and fitting as these narratives might feel, these “teaching stories” tend to be individual in nature, reflecting one lens, perhaps enriched for class by some borrowed or text-based professional cases, video clips, or interviews. What depth of perspectives, diversity of experiences, and richness of examples might be introduced if librarians, LIS faculty and researchers, and stakeholders brought their stories together? Might a gathering of such “storytellers” even generate, shape, or invent some new scenarios, cases, or problems to accompany the stories in use– or perhaps illuminate a need for different and more voices and experiences? But even among dedicated educators, who has the time, the inspiration, or a supportive structure for such an endeavor? Enter the hackathon.
A “hackathon” – a portmanteau of “hack” (as in a hacker using digital skills to overcome a barrier) and “marathon” (an endurance event) – is a focused, time-bound gathering of experts, thinkers, scientists, students, or others keen to solve a problem, build a prototype, accelerate innovation, cultivate a community, or address a societal issue (Garcia 2023; Remshagen and Huett 2023; Almeida and de Souza 2022; Longmeier, Dotson, and Armstrong 2021).
Competitive or collaborative, internal to an organization or open to broader participation, loosely mapped out or more rigidly planned, hackathons typically feature agendas of shared goal setting and affinity mapping, rapid problem solving and iterating, and a finish line for producing artifacts of the work– typically within an energetic and temporary environment. Example products might be an app or an action plan, sometimes with prizes attached.
We might contend that traditional storytelling has its own version of the hackathon– the olio. A collective of tellers in an olio come together not to code or design, but to delight or captivate an audience from one stage, story by story, revealing diversities of thought, experience, and perspective through the shared medium of storytelling. The performance line-up, much like the hackathon, might follow a tight list or a more spontaneous taking of turns. The outcomes range: a shared laugh, an old feeling made fresh, or a new understanding of oneself or the world attained through the language of storytelling.
It may be a bit of a stretch to compare creative output and potential impact of hackathons and olios, but this workshop aims to leverage the opportunity to gather invested, creative educators and librarians in one space for a (mini) “hackathon X olio.” By fusing the knowledge, bravery, and motivation of hackers and storytellers into the process of building a collective of library stories, participants will create, curate, and share an open educational resource (OER) for education and professional development and explore possibilities for future research or curricular projects inspired by this work.
Learning outcomes
-Co-create a collection of stories for integration in library and information science instruction
-Engage in discussions of opportunities for research drawing upon integration of stories and storytelling in LIS instruction and assessment
-Collaborate on plans to continue and share the products of the "hackathon X olio" as an open education resource
Timeline (to be shaped and finalized by participants on site)
10 minutes = Welcome; Formation of first round of working groups
30 minutes = Work cycle #1
8-10 minutes = Check in/facilitate opportunities to reform groups
30 minutes = Work cycle #2
10 minutes = Lightning reports and exit feedback to support future dissemination, development of instructional materials, and/or research projects
Alignment to Call for Proposals
This session will invite participants to take risks by:
-sharing and/or creating stories of library and information science practice
-contributing to a crowd-sourced learning resource
This session will encourage participants to question assumptions, for example:
-Are practices of collecting and sharing stories components of pedagogy that we might work to cultivate, strengthen, and study?
-Whose library stories or information worlds are not represented in the collection, and how might we incorporate those perspectives next?
This session will welcome participants to engage fully in the learning process by:
-Choosing what storytelling development structures to employ (e.g., using provided templates and prompts, or building freeform stories or mini-cases)
-Deciding what collaborative processes and groups to join
-Selecting what personal/professional stories to tell (or not)
-Prompting and engineering stories created via generative AI
Short overview
In the hackathon style– creative, fast, and collaborative– participants will co-create an open education resource of library stories, mini-case studies, and problems ready for discussion, research, reflection, and integration into learning exercises in courses and professional development.
Introduction
Library science educators leverage story as part of pedagogy to replay and parse decision points, inject humor into tense moments, contextualize standards and guidelines, illustrate complex ecosystems, and more. They may weave into a lecture a recounting of a memorable reference request; point to lessons learned in conflict resolution when examining theories of management; and recall colleagues who helped manage a crisis to instill dispositions of collaboration.
The potential links across storytelling, teaching, and learning are bountiful– and potentially aligned to instruction of competencies and dispositions for library and information professionals. Among the possibilities are building human connections (Hughes, Oliveira, and Bickford 2022); fostering empathy as part of professional reflection (Baer 2019); sharpening recall of information (Kromka and Goodboy 2018); providing non-textual approaches to pedagogy (McDowell 2018); adding elements of embodiment to learning (Otrel-Cass 2024); and applying theory to practice (Harter, whose pedagogy was described in Baxstrom 2016).
Useful, poignant, and fitting as these narratives might feel, these “teaching stories” tend to be individual in nature, reflecting one lens, perhaps enriched for class by some borrowed or text-based professional cases, video clips, or interviews. What depth of perspectives, diversity of experiences, and richness of examples might be introduced if librarians, LIS faculty and researchers, and stakeholders brought their stories together? Might a gathering of such “storytellers” even generate, shape, or invent some new scenarios, cases, or problems to accompany the stories in use– or perhaps illuminate a need for different and more voices and experiences? But even among dedicated educators, who has the time, the inspiration, or a supportive structure for such an endeavor? Enter the hackathon.
A “hackathon” – a portmanteau of “hack” (as in a hacker using digital skills to overcome a barrier) and “marathon” (an endurance event) – is a focused, time-bound gathering of experts, thinkers, scientists, students, or others keen to solve a problem, build a prototype, accelerate innovation, cultivate a community, or address a societal issue (Garcia 2023; Remshagen and Huett 2023; Almeida and de Souza 2022; Longmeier, Dotson, and Armstrong 2021).
Competitive or collaborative, internal to an organization or open to broader participation, loosely mapped out or more rigidly planned, hackathons typically feature agendas of shared goal setting and affinity mapping, rapid problem solving and iterating, and a finish line for producing artifacts of the work– typically within an energetic and temporary environment. Example products might be an app or an action plan, sometimes with prizes attached.
We might contend that traditional storytelling has its own version of the hackathon– the olio. A collective of tellers in an olio come together not to code or design, but to delight or captivate an audience from one stage, story by story, revealing diversities of thought, experience, and perspective through the shared medium of storytelling. The performance line-up, much like the hackathon, might follow a tight list or a more spontaneous taking of turns. The outcomes range: a shared laugh, an old feeling made fresh, or a new understanding of oneself or the world attained through the language of storytelling.
It may be a bit of a stretch to compare creative output and potential impact of hackathons and olios, but this workshop aims to leverage the opportunity to gather invested, creative educators and librarians in one space for a (mini) “hackathon X olio.” By fusing the knowledge, bravery, and motivation of hackers and storytellers into the process of building a collective of library stories, participants will create, curate, and share an open educational resource (OER) for education and professional development and explore possibilities for future research or curricular projects inspired by this work.
Learning outcomes
-Co-create a collection of stories for integration in library and information science instruction
-Engage in discussions of opportunities for research drawing upon integration of stories and storytelling in LIS instruction and assessment
-Collaborate on plans to continue and share the products of the "hackathon X olio" as an open education resource
Timeline (to be shaped and finalized by participants on site)
10 minutes = Welcome; Formation of first round of working groups
30 minutes = Work cycle #1
8-10 minutes = Check in/facilitate opportunities to reform groups
30 minutes = Work cycle #2
10 minutes = Lightning reports and exit feedback to support future dissemination, development of instructional materials, and/or research projects
Alignment to Call for Proposals
This session will invite participants to take risks by:
-sharing and/or creating stories of library and information science practice
-contributing to a crowd-sourced learning resource
This session will encourage participants to question assumptions, for example:
-Are practices of collecting and sharing stories components of pedagogy that we might work to cultivate, strengthen, and study?
-Whose library stories or information worlds are not represented in the collection, and how might we incorporate those perspectives next?
This session will welcome participants to engage fully in the learning process by:
-Choosing what storytelling development structures to employ (e.g., using provided templates and prompts, or building freeform stories or mini-cases)
-Deciding what collaborative processes and groups to join
-Selecting what personal/professional stories to tell (or not)
-Prompting and engineering stories created via generative AI