Spending the
afternoon at the Grad Club yesterday with a bunch of first-term
students got me thinking about what my first week here was like, what
my
first semester was like and ways that both could've been better.
1. Have a “Destressor” at the end of the first week of classes
This way, each semester's new students can get to know people in other
terms immediately. (The lack of connection between different
terms was a major issue for a lot of people in my cohort.) A
first-week Destressor would also nicely bookend with the one Student
Council holds at the end of semester. Student Council does have a
pizza party for new students early in term but this only introduces
new students to members of student council, who, although they are all
nice people, don't represent even 10% of the students in the
department. It also is a bit of a contrived situation (or it was
last semester) with the Student Council lined up in front of the room
but not really interacting with the first-termers and instead, although
I'm sure this wasn't their intention, it was like a line was
symbolically drawn right off the bat.
2. Have a students-only message board
This would mean that information can be exchanged easily and
past topics of conversation are accessible to all. I know the
Student Council is working to set-up a Sharepoint site but
unfortunately, it will be under the umbrella of the Department and
housed on their intranet site therefore making it inaccessible to
incoming students (until they get their user name and password) and
graduating students six months after they leave the program. To
my mind, a much better solution would be a more public forum (although still limited to potential students or alumni) where
anyone interested in the program can join and find out about the
current events, issues and people who are here.
3. Have a Repository For Student Writing
A few of us are working to start a journal for student writing but we
want it to have a focus on the “best of the best” student
writing. But there's also a lot of work being done just below
this level that would be of benefit for others to see. It seems
like a
shame that once an assignment is graded and handed back, these papers
go in a
drawer having been seen by only two sets of eyes – the student's and
the professor's.
4. Run Relevant Student Programs
A lot of the things I've done or
been involved in – the Lunch Bucket Speaker Series, the Freedom to Read
Event, the Student Journal, Quinn's Movie Series, etc. –
are the types of things I expected the Student Council to be doing when
I got here. Not to be too disparaing but things like bake sales, candy-grams and semi-formals seem
more like the work of a high school student council then the work that
should be done by the student council in a Graduate Program.
5. Make Better Use of Technology
That was basically my entire last post
so I won't rehash but it covers everything from the types of technology
we have (or don't have) access to to having all lecture notes online to
teaching students about cutting-edge technology in their first term and
not letting them avoid it by not taking technology courses after
505.
6. Release Class Lists Two Semesters In Advance
Okay, that last suggestion was pretty basic so here's an extra one. As far as I know, the Department knows what courses they're tentatively offering up to a year in advance. So why do they only release the courses for the upcoming semester and at that, only late in term? For myself, it would've been very helpful to know what was being offered in Fall 2006 as I was selected my Summer 2006 courses as I could've been a lot more strategic in which courses I picked. I know the Department is worried that students will get their hopes set on a class than it will be cancelled or whatever but isn't that what the words “tentative course list” mean?
.
To be fair, here are five things that are really good about this program:
1. The Peer Mentorship program
was awesome for me (although this really
depends – some people had horrible or literally no experiences out of
it. Trying to match people based on background, area of interest
or even geographic location rather than random assignment would improve
things)
2. The Professional Mentorship program is also very useful.
3. Someone told me that Western offers a lot more electives than most
other LIS programs. I haven't done the comparison so don't know
for sure but if true, that's very helpful. (Maybe I'll do an
independent study next semester comparing different aspects of the
various LIS programs across Canada. I think that would be really
interesting!)
4. Some people don't like the fact that FIMS has three intakes of
students per year (again, does anywhere else do this or are they all
September starts?) but I really like how it keeps things moving and
fresh.
5. Although I'm not planning to take advantage of it myself, the Co-op program
can be really useful, especially for anyone who doesn't have previous
library experience.
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