Lydia Eato Harris
University of Washington
Teaching Philosophy
Teaching is a part of who I am. I enjoy presenting information, but enjoy even more engaging students of all types in the learning process. I believe I bring a high level of communication skills to my teaching efforts. I strive to present in a coherent, cogent manner, not just through lecturing but through discussion. One of my goals in teaching is to engage students in critical thinking. They need not accept the total subject area as presented, but should be questioning what answers the area provides as well as what the area does not address.
I have high standards for my postsecondary students. At this level, the students should be honing their oral and written communication skills, not developing them. They should be able to focus on a subject and have a sense of integrity about their work. I have these same standards for myself and hope the students can witness the process through my teaching as well as continue to develop their own standards of educational excellence. My students are active partners with me in the learning and educational experience and process. Together we can achieve much more than either alone.
My focus is digital sources and services, and I am interested in how library and information science education curricula may need to develop in order to train librarian and information specialists fluent and comfortable in digital environments. I am also interested in distance education in the library and information science field. After working with the dMLIS students during the Winter, I am more convinced than ever that a synchronous component enhances the distance educational medium. Having participated in a graduate level program with synchronous and asynchronous facets, I believe this approach engages the students more completely and actively. Rather than being individuals joined in an online social network, the synchronous component seems to encourage the development of a sense of community, thus contributing a more "real time" classroom feel to the experience.
I feel very comfortable with my teaching abilities at this time and seek to improve them through continued expansion of the subjects I am capable of teaching and continued experience in the distance medium.
Teaching Experience
I have had considerable experience in teaching. I still remember with a great sense of personal gratification teaching a 30-year old man to read when I was a tutor at the age of 16. Since that time, I have tutored students during the summers of high school and undergraduate college. I was a teaching assistant and instructor during the time I completed my Master's degree at Pennsylvania State University. I became an instructor and was eventually accepted as an assistant professor at Bloomsburg State [College] University, teaching life-span development, introduction to psychology, and child and adolescent development. I also conducted seminars for faculty, staff and students during my two years at Bloomsburg.
When I moved to Alaska, I was unable to obtain a teaching position, however I continued to develop my skills by teaching employment skills to the underemployed and teens. When I became a research assistant and project manager for the McDowell Group, I also taught classes on tourism to university students at the University of Alaska Southeast and employment skills to students enrolled in special programs through the native corporations. I have been a featured presenter at a number of conferences and programs.
During my first doctoral year, I served as a teaching assistant for the [undergraduate] Informatics program in Information System Design; Organizational, Societal and Global Perspectives on Information Systems; and, Individual Perspectives on Information Systems. I also served as a graduate assistant for the Library and Information Science Master's Program for Information Literacy.
My first teaching practicum was during Winter 2003 with Dr. Matt Saxton for dMLIS 520 - Information Sources and Services. Not having taught a graduate level course before and having graduated from a distance MLIS program, I was most interested in understanding and developing methods of facilitating the distance learning experience.
In Spring 2003, Dr. Joe Janes supervised my teaching practicum for developing the curriculum of An Introduction to Digital Reference which I then taught during the Summer 2003.
Currently I am teaching LIS 522, Collection Development, to a combination of day and evening students as an instructor at University of Washington.
Research Interests
At this time I believe the two core areas of focus for my research interests during my doctoral program are:
- Human information behavior; and,
- Information Sources and Services
The specialty area for my comprehensive exams is tentatively titled Activity Theory (AT) and Information Seeking in Context. I am interested in pursuing activity theory as the theoretical foundation for my future research work. Although AT has been fundamental to the work in collaborative computer-supported work, it has not been applied to the user studies which form the foundation of the information behavior field, and therefore, the basis of human-computer interaction work. I am interested in operationalizing AT to apply to user behavior of information seeking in various contexts.
Cognitive work analysis seems to have some relationship to activity theory and may provide a conceptual framework through which activity theory could be operationalized into research on human information behavior. I have not had an opportunity to explore this arena in depth, however feel it may be relevant to my future research efforts.
Information sources and services continue to be rich areas of research for me, with particular regard to digital reference. There seems to be a place where all of these subjects come together for me. Activity theory may be instrumental in understanding digital reference and focusing on activity as the unit of analysis may prove a valuable concept when considering the training and education of librarians and information specialists. In this vein, distance education, the development of trust in online social networks, and online communities also seem to mesh with the idea of library and science education.