On Thursday April 10, 2014 over 200 attendees joined together for a thoughtful and educational webcast on The Future of Librarianship: A Blended Perspective by Amanda Hovious. Hovious shared how she moved from a career in librarianship to her active pursuit of a masters degree in instructional design and technology. One of her sources of inspiration for deciding to shift the direction of her career was Bell and Shank’s 2004 article on Blended Librarianship.
During her presentation, Hovious shared her perspective on why it was increasingly important for librarians to integrate design skills into their work. During a question and answer period, Hovious talked about topics as wide ranging as learning styles, tips for librarians who want to add instructional design skills and advice on how to keep up with a new flood of educational technology resources such as apps. Hovious invited attendees to continue the conversation at blog, Designer Librarian. More recently, Hovious added a blog post in which she responds to questions submitted to the chat during the webcast.
Attendees were invited to earn a Blended Librarians Participant Badge, and over 60 of them redeemed a Credly credit for their badge.