[494] in ad-lib
OPAC Training Report for 5/1/95
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rae Jean Wiggins)
Mon May 1 17:38:12 1995
To: opac-lib@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 01 May 1995 17:37:45 EDT
From: Rae Jean Wiggins <raewig@MIT.EDU>
Reporting from the field: Margret Lippert and Rae Jean Wiggins with
Linda Martinez sitting in.
Despite the Monday morning rain and 9:00 a.m. time slot, Margret
and I had 5 (out of 8 who signed up) people in attendance. We
knew about 1 of the 3 who didn't show.
We pretty much followed the new Training Guide. We didn't have people
sign on until after the Title Keyword section. I asked everyone to
circle in close to the big monitor so they could see the demo. This
got them away from their keyboards (temptation) and seemed to create
an intimate, small-group, yet structured feel to the session.
After the Title Keyword section (which included modify/change limits)
we got everyone signed on and let them practice everything we'd gone
through up to that point. Trainees had about 15 - 20 minutes to
practice. This took us up to around 10:05'ish.
Then we asked everyone to circle up around the monitor again to demo
the rest of the commands in the Training Guide. We added Thesis
searching since it's working fine now. This took us up to around
11:45. It wouldn't have taken that long, but we ran into a major
glitch in Series searching on se=lecture notes in mathematics. (You
probably saw the messages about this from Linda and Grant.) Anyway,
that took up alot of time.
The last 15 minutes were devoted to more hands-on practice. I think
without the series glitch they would have had 20 - 25 minutes. I
really think the demo first, then freeform hands-on practice, followed
by final demo, then more hands-on format worked very well.
Margret: Further thoughts on our session?
Rae Jean
----------
Rae Jean N. Wiggins, Reference Librarian
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dewey and Humanities Libraries Tel: (617) 253-0787
Bldg. E53-100 Net: raewig@mit.edu
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 Fax: (617) 253-0642
