Facilitating Connected Learning PD for Library Professionals through Design Cycles
Channel: Connected Learning Alliance
Date: 2023-12-12

Libraries are centers for learning, with library professionals key to delivering programs, activities, and resources for their community. To facilitate learning in libraries, it is essential for library staff to participate in high quality professional development (PD). In this paper, we consider how PD using design cycles allows library staff to design ideas that incorporate connected learning principles. Findings indicate that design cycles are concrete mechanisms for centering patron needs and interests and activities and materials for the library. The design cycles highlighted assets for design, including community knowledge and librarian autonomy, as well as barriers to testing and implementation. Our study answers a call to reconsider existing models of library PD and extends current understandings of designing for CL by first applying the CL model to library staff, encouraging them to connect their own interests and building their capacity as learning brokers, before then taking an iterative approach to designing for CL in their library.