Sometimes it's good to say no...

... Many of us are guilty of saying 'yes' a lot at work; things sound great, we want to help, we can see how amazing something could be with our contribution. Our team (and many others) are incredibly guilty of saying yes at work, ending up with more work than we can ever possibly manage to complete, and then looking like we haven't put in any effort because we're trying to do too much.

Whilst Ned Potter's post 'Five Questions to ask yourself before you say yes' focuses specifically on professional development, in particular giving talks and presentations, the same advice can equally well be applied to other types of professional development and work-based scenarios. Definitely worth a read.

Staff development hour on Open Access

Open Access SDH Session on Prezi

At the end of the 23 Things for Professional Development course, I put together a Personal Development Plan (PDP) based on some of the things I'd learnt during the course and had decided I'd like to learn a bit more about. One of the actions was to prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi.

Well, today I delivered that session - so I'm pleased to say I've completed one of the goals I set myself! I devised the session with a colleague, and we used a mix of methods to deliver the session. This included some standard PowerPoint slides for basic repository info, a Prezi to show the process researchers go through when writing research (with some great Open Access videos embedded into it), and some quiz sections which we used Turning Point for (a voting system software the uni has), to try and make the whole thing a little more interactive.

It was all a pretty steep learning curve - this was my first "proper" Prezi. Also, although I'd used Turning Point before, this was the first time I'd used it to design the questions and see the process through from beginning to end. However, I was pretty excited about running the session because it was using new techniques (well, new to me), and I was interested to see if people would enjoy it. It was also great that it was a training session for library staff, so there were plenty of friendly faces. That helped a lot when I was being experimental.

I'm happy to say that the overall result was a pretty positive one. Although there was a slight technical hitch with the Prezi initially (it froze and wouldn't load), turning the PC off and back on again fixed that pretty quickly. Plus, it gave people a chance to feel a bit more relaxed and ask some initial questions.

After the session, the feedback indicated that the people who attended really enjoyed the mix of interactivity and talking, and felt that they learnt a lot about what open access was. In fact, the only negative comments were that people would have liked to learn more! Unfortunately, there's only so much you can fit into an hour long session. One other great outcome was that a colleague working on managing research data asked if she could use my research process diagram (the one that appears in the Prezi) for her work. So not only did the whole experience help me learn how to use Prezi and make for a more interesting staff development session, it also directly helped a colleague with her work.

We're booked in to run the session twice more at two different campuses, and I hope my other colleagues are as enthusiastic about, and enjoy the session as much as, my colleagues today.

If you're interested in what I put together, you can view the Prezi part of the presentation above. You might also learn a bit about the research process and how open access can help with it!

23 Things for Professional Development: Thing #17

It's been a while since I've had a chance to look at any of CPD23 Things past Thing 16, as I've been on holiday followed by returning to a very busy start of term at the end of September. I'm going to make an effort to do the remaining Things in the next week or so though. I'm starting with Thing 17 - Prezi and Slideshare.

Before this Thing, I hadn't ever used Prezi before. I'd heard of it, but didn't really fully understand it. Having just had a play with it, I definitely think it's something I could use. I really like the idea, and I found it simple and intuitve to use (well, at least when exploring the basics). I'm keen to try and create something with it properly, but feel that I would need to do a fair amount of planning first. I've definitely got some ideas I'd like to try out when things calm down a little though...

My favourite idea is to use a Prezi as part of a staff development hour session I'll be running early next term. I'll be trying to explain to library staff the process academics go through when trying to get research published. In Prezi, I could use a large picture or chart to show the complete life cycle of a piece of research (e.g. from inception - writing - trying to get it published - getting peer reviewed - publishing - adding it to open access). Zooming in on each of these areas would give more explanation about the associated issues and pitfalls, and how each area relates to open access and the repository.

Another thing I am thinking of trying is adapting my current PowerPoint slides explaining the repository to academics. In Prezi I could group each element together, rather than having a selection of 3 or 4 slides. E.g. all the "FAQs" could be one section, "what is open access and why is it good?" another section. I could easily incorporate videos into this section on the benefits of open access.

So, on to SlideShare. This I have used, but only to look at presentations that other people have pointed me towards. I've never really searched it, or considered adding any of my own presentations to it. However, I can definitely see how some of my presentations and slides on open access could be useful to other people trying to promote the benefits of open access - or even as a way of selling open access to others. Having a quick search for open access presentations on SlideShare, I can also definitely see how it would be useful if I was looking for ideas or inspiration for future presentations, and may well use it more for this in the future - when I need some new ideas for something!