Solo but Not Alone: Self-Directed Online Peer Education as a Way to Increase Professional Knowledge and Skills

摘要

Peer-to-peer instruction has the potential to allow physically distanced librarians to participate in professional development and network building at low or no cost. Databases represent a significant cost for libraries, and by utilizing databases as an educational assignment, librarians could increase their knowledge of and skills using databases while also growing their own instructional abilities. To test this assumption, underutilized databases were identified and assigned to librarians in the Northern California kpLibraries group. Librarians completed a pre-survey of self-reported database usage and confidence, and then were assigned a database. The librarians were tasked with developing a peer education session on their assigned database to be presented to the group. After the peer instruction sessions, librarians completed a post-survey. The self-reported frequency of use, relevance of search results, confidence in using the databases for finding information, and confidence in teaching the database to patrons all increased after the peer-to-peer instruction sessions. The post-survey results suggest that peer-to-peer instruction on an assigned database is possibly an effective method for librarians to share knowledge and improve skills even when not working in the same location.