Case Profile: Ellen Hampton Filgo

Abstract

Abstract Ellen Hampton Filgo, an academic librarian at Baylor University, conceptualizes her work as an embedded librarian as improvisational, like jazz, as her instructional help and interaction with students plays off the class discussion in which she participates through Twitter and blogs. This case study outlines how Filgo became a vital resource for class discussions and research on a weekly basis in a first-year university honors course exploring new media studies. ********** Ellen Hampton Filgo is the e-learning librarian in the reference and instruction department of Baylor University Libraries. Her work as an embedded librarian at Baylor reflects her interests in the instructional uses of social networking media and ways libraries can use and adapt Web 2.0 tools to improve access to online resources. Filgo's work as an embedded librarian began in Dr. Gardner Campbell's first-year honors seminar, From Memex to YouTube: Introduction to New Media Studies, a class designed to explore a diverse range of digital media through many different contextual lenses. Filgo and Campbell's collaborative partnership was initially inspired by Filgo's viewing of Dr. Monica Rankin's YouTube video chronicling her experimental use of Twitter as a learning tool in her University of Texas at Dallas history course as well as by Cole Camplese's use of Twitter in his educational technology courses. (1) Filgo, who thought Twitter could provide her with a unique opportunity to be an embedded librarian in a content area course, approached Dr. Campbell, who was the director of Baylor's Academy for Teaching and Learning, with the idea. Campbell wanted his students to construct and experience a personal cyberinfrastructure, a learning environment in which they would acquire crucial technical skills for their digital lives but also would engage in work that provides richly teachable moments ranging from multimodal writing to information science, knowledge management, bibliographic instruction, and social networking. Fascinating and important innovations would emerge as students are able to shape their own cognition, learning, expression, and reflection in a digital age, in a digital medium. Students would frame, curate, share, and direct their own 'engagement streams' throughout the learning environment. (2) The class blog (see figure 6) was the virtual centerpiece for students in the new media studies course. Because the course blog included RSS feeds for the course hashtag Tweets, student blogs, the course bookmarks via Delicious, and Filgo's course librarian blog, everyone was able to easily access each other's content and interact with that content in a variety of virtual media and applications like Google Reader and Tweet-Deck to organize and follow the information streams. Embedded Instruction and Help through Twitter Because students were using Twitter as a backchannel for class conversation during face-to-face meetings, Filgo needed a way to organize the Twitter communications as she followed and interacted with the class virtually from her office. Filgo's organizational strategy was to create groups that she could easily monitor and follow in TweetDeck, a free application that allows users to organize streams of Twitter users and hashtags. TweetChat is another tool one can use to track and participate in a specific hashtag discussion. [FIGURE 6 OMITTED] Filgo created groups for course hashtags #nmsf09 and #nms_fl0; she also created a group with the usernames of each class member. TweetDeck www.tweetdeck.com TweetChat http://tweetchat.com Since students were not accustomed to a librarian being an instructional partner in their college coursework, Campbell would remind students at the beginning of the class of Filgo's virtual presence; this opening Twitter greeting was also a cue to Filgo that discussion was beginning so that she was prepared and focused on interacting with students through the virtual discussion. …

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