I first learnt about the Cephalonian method at a conference for librarians in higher education / university / college and research institutions* earlier this year. Jane and I have adapted it for use in our library induction sessions for our undergraduates and postgraduates this term (we've now done the bulk of them) and wanted to jot down our thoughts in case you were thinking of using the same approach.Why Cephalonia? Well, apparently tour guides originally devised it for running orientation sessions for their groups on the island; you can find out a little bit more on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalonian_method We're using it at a basic level, whereby we have prepared a mix of witty / random / sensible questions about the library services and facilities that we actually hand out to the students we are inducting, and get them to ask us the questions. We then answer the questions, and we have our own cards with the answers on in bullet-point form, in order to prompt us in case we forget anything. For example, one of the questions I have asked is 'What's in the cage?'. The answer is that we have 6,000 rare books in our caged area, dating from 15th-20th centuries..." and so on. Feedback from students so far has been very positive, because they feel more involved and the questions made them think about library services and facilities they hadn't thought about before.
We also introduced sign-up sheets for induction sessions this year, which were advertised by me at the Zoology and Neuroscience students' introductory talks, and reinforced in an email to the students on CamTools. They signed up on sheets provided by us on the Part II notice board and we asked for a maximum of ten people. I had told them we were trying to make it a bit more interesting and interactive for them, and that we would give them some additional help in the form of a new leaflet on how to interpret reading lists. Tours lasted around 20mins.
One main aim of all of this was to try to get as many students as possible into the library for a tour and subsequently using it. We also wanted to avoid just giving tours to one or two people at a time, which is hard on the voice and very repetitive. We also wanted a way of prompting us to tell them things that we sometimes forgot. The more students we induct in this way, the more information they are armed with. Hopefully we will then have less routine queries to deal with and can spend more time on helping people as and when they need it; helping them navigate online resources for example.
Pros:
- The induction sessions are more interactive and therefore a less passive experience for the students, and this makes it more interesting for us.
- Nobody has been too shy to ask a question, in fact they sometimes can't wait to ask theirs as they're keen to know the answer to what are sometimes odd questions!
- It's easier for us to remember everything that we need to tell the students, but I for one still forgot to mention things.
- We decided after the first session we did each, that numbering the questions so they were asked in a particular order helped the 'flow' of information from one topic to another - before that we allowed the students to ask us the questions randomly and we had to sift through our own answer cards then answer which interrupted the flow and flummoxed us sometimes! However I think with a larger group (such as the 20 or so postgraduates) the randomness works well, especially with the more witty questions.
- The sign-up sheets were really successful. We have inducted far more undergraduate students this year than ever before - around 100! They used to be just invited to present themselves in groups for a tour and not many ever did. I think making students commit to attending sessions in this way (although it's not mandatory) along with the promise of an interesting and informative time definitely helped. Other students often saw that a tour was going on and asked to join it.
- We still forgot to say certain things!
- You do still end up talking 'at' students a bit but I suppose this can't be helped - maybe we could offer more questions though to break topics up a bit?
- If only one person signs up for a tour and they can't do any other time this method doesn't really work (with smaller groups it still seems ok though) so you end up doing the traditional tour.
- We usually left demonstrating the online catalogue and how to access e-journals to the end of the session - some students had lectures to go to so may have missed out, but we do emphasise they're welcome to do this at any time.
- I might change some of my questions next year and put them in a different order to make it flow a bit better.
- We might just allocate morning sessions as they've proved most popular. We definitely couldn't have coped with doing as many as we actually offered.
- We might avoid having a couple of tours back-to-back as it leads to a lot of congestion once people have finished theirs and then want to register their cards for borrowing / ask questions, and then the next group arrives.
- We'll ask for a minimum of 5 people on the sessions, as well as a maximum of 10.
- Maybe incorporate the demo into the session proper.
Clair and Jane
*The Joint CILIP CofHE and UC&R Conference held at Exeter University in June 2010 http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/ucr/pages/joint-conference-2010.aspx
Photo credit: 'Kefalonia' by Dan Taylor, on Flickr.
