Lifelong Education @ Desktop is pleased to announce the first recipient of the LE@Der Award, given to continuing education coordinators or LE@D course administrators who do an exemplary job of using LE@D courses with their constituency.

The award for Fall, 2007 goes to Debbie Dahlin and the Birmingham Public Library. Dr. Phil Turner presented the award in Birmingham on October 16, 2007.

BPL capitalizes on LE@D training programs for paraprofessionals

The Situation: Birmingham Public Library recognized a need to offer continuing education training programs to their paraprofessional staff. BPL is made up of 19 branches and a two-building central library campus with over 68 full-time librarians on staff and 71 full-time paraprofessionals.

Most of the paraprofessionals are long-term employees, having worked for the library system for ten to twenty years. Over the years, their jobs have changed dramatically and learning new skills was necessary to equip them for their jobs as they exist today.

Training that was convenient and could be taken as time permitted was needed for such a large number of staff, especially since the bulk of this group are public service staff and the majoriy of their time is spent directly helping patrons.

The Solution: Having heard Phil Turner, Vice Provost of Learning Enhancement at the University of North Texas, speak about the online learning courses called "Lifelong Education @ Desktop" or LE@D, the staff at Birmingham Public Library became interested in determining if online learning would work in a public llibrary environment. Since the need for additional paraprofessional training was already being discussed, the LE@D courses would provide the wide variety of training opportunities needed.

The courses were convenient to the user, budget friendly to the library, and allowed for blended learning among staff members. As part of a new LSTA Continuing Education Grant, funding was available for each paraprofessional to take at least eight of these online courses.

The Implementation: The program was designed so that three courses would be mandatory for every paraprofessional between February and September. Additionally, each person could choose another online LE@D course from other topics available through LE@D.

The courses were taken over a ten month period. In addition to the scheduled monthly courses, nine "on demand" courses could be taken at any time. Each On Demand course was assigned a facilitator from among the participating paraprofessionals to lead the group discussion about the course.

Blended learning occured on many levels. Staff learned new ideas online using a blend of text, videos, and audio interviews. The paraprofessional facilitators developed presentation skills, and in many cases, used the new echnologies learned online to summarize the courses for their colleagues. The facilitators also helped staff relate the information learned from the course to the work done at Birmingham Public Library.

Lessons Learned: Although there was a great deal of enthusiasm among the paraprofessionals for the program, the daily constraints of their jobs and spreading the courses over several months with many courses available to the staff was at times daunting to the paraprofessionals.

In hindsight, fewer courses should have been offered, with all of the ocurses being mandatory so that there wouldn't be so many choices for learners to make. Supervisors also needed to allot additional time for coursework.

An unexpected result has been the numerous requests from part-time paraprofessionals to participate in the program.

A gratifying outcome has been the variety and excellence of presentations given by facilitators to the rest of the BPL staff creating an environment of extended learning among staff who frequently are unable to attend professional conferences or formal courses.