Webinars!

Welp, I'm not even sure we're supposed to write this week, but it kind of feels wrong not to.  So, I'll do a brief reflection of the webinar experience up til this point.  I've tagged one-shot workshop here too because I realized that a webinar really is a type of one-shot workshop, perhaps even more challenging due to the lack of face-to-face time.  Anyway...

Can't believe that was our last "assignment!"  I have to put assignment in quotation marks because again, it's a really practical thing that I am so glad to have had the opportunity to do.  Because we worked in groups of 4 this time (instead of partners for the book club and workshop), the task was different and more complicated.  Further, being able to speak on a topic for 20-30 minutes instead of being able to have full on discussions and activities as one would in a workshop made doing a webinar definitely a new experience. 

Two things I'll say with authority: 
1) it was so nice to have time to work on this in class.  Even though my group didn't actually do a lot of our research there, we did create our work plan AND got to know one another better during that time.  It was really helpful to have a chance to talk with people with whom I would be interacting in a professional space.
2) I was so glad to have watched another webinar before my group did ours.  I added some slides about the webinar basics, take-aways, and saw some of the technical issues that could and did arise for other groups.  This helped me know solutions to some of these and also helped me see what to avoid.

Overall, I think our webinar went very well.  We got good feedback, with the trends showing that people thought we did a good job and were very prepared.  They also seemed to learn a lot about a topic about which they didn't originally know very much.   Our participants would have liked to see more images in our slides (I agree) and they also had trouble with the sound (apparently we sounded like chipmunks at times).  These would both be things I would fix in the future (adding more images to the slides and investigating sound issues prior to the webinar).  Our group worked very well together and it seems the webinar was a success.

It's also been great watching other webinars!  People have overall done a great job and I've learned a lot about interesting topics.  I saw the webinar on teens in the library on Friday morning and learned about a group I'd never thought to include in libraries- young professionals.  The Saturday morning webinar on visually impaired patrons was also very interesting.  Today's webinar on limited English speaking patrons was a great topic too!  People have done a swell job of being prepared and knowledgeable about their topics which has made the webinars go smoothly.  It seems that the only real negative has been the technical stuff, even getting into some of the webinars.  Unfortunately this is a large barrier because it is a big part of the webinar experience.  The content can be great but if people can't access it, hear the presenters, etc., they can't get the content.  Luckily, I've been able to see and hear all of the webinars I've attended which is great.  It's been wonderful to hear my peers be so professional and have knowledge on such interesting and important topics.  Yay to everyone!