This subject has been the hardest so far on my TL journey. I think this is probably due in very large part to the completely new nature of the content. Even when completing my first undergraduate courses, I had some familiarisation with the content because, after all, I had been to school and could remember at least a little of what it was like. Enough to make connections to the content I was being asked to learn. I think I have two key take-aways from this subject. One is a new understanding of reading and interpreting research documents. Understanding that sometimes that which is not published can be as significant as that which is. The design and execution, the methodology chosen and the paradigms underpinning the research available to practitioners carries so much meaning, has taken the researchers time and effort to think out and analyse. Yet it is in analysis of generalisability or transferrability that the true power of INF447 becomes apparent. One must first establish that the topic and content of a piece of research is relevant to the setting in which one works before any of the findings can be usable at all. It seems now that this should be obvious, but I don’t think I could have articulated it before. It is something that I may have noticed after the fact of reading it, but now will be one of the first things I establish deliberately.

The second key take-away will be the effect of the above on the students in my future library. Both as regards the new content and the need to establish relevance of information sought. I have always known that any new content presented to students must be located for them within their general schema of knowledge such that they may make their connections to their lives, to their existing knowledge and to other content presented. I did this naturally in developing my lessons but henceforth I shall make a deliberate point in every lesson of making clear what learning is expected of students and where that new information fits within existing knowledge.

This subject served to point out that information to be learned must be relevant and used in a meaningful way as a direct result of the teaching and learning activities. Looking back, I think this was one of a great many disservices to modern history that were played out in my high school education. Information was presented but its relevance and usefulness was not established and therefore the information was not retained. This must be a cautionary example.