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An Online MLS Experience
By Laura Zusman, Customer Service Bibliographer
Going into my Master of Library Science (MLS) program, I didn’t quite know what to expect. My previous education had always been in a classroom, always surrounded by actual people. The presence of physical bodies around you offers a more defined experience - you can pick out the talkers, the quiet ones, the ones who probably aren’t really all that interested - and you can see and hear the class interacting as a whole. This new program, besides coming about five years after the last class I’d ever taken and coinciding with full-time work for the first time, was also going to be entirely online! Like the difference between my real social life and my online social life, I expected a whole new world.
Unsurprisingly, it was just that at first. There were no facial tics to learn from my professors, to clue me into whether we were understanding or not. There were no classmates with whom to discuss, question, and complain about class with as we walked out of the lecture hall. Every person in class, including the professor, was a name only. The hardest part at the start was not being able to gauge how I was doing – I turned in assignments and papers those first weeks without any response. I had no idea if I was on the right track, and it was a little unnerving.
Since those first few scary weeks, though, I’ve mostly adjusted to this unorthodox learning experience. It requires immense self-monitoring and balancing – there is no scheduled time to spend in the classroom, so my class time is as much or as little as I allow it. Participation is not just showing up everyday – it’s actually studying the readings and writing a composed, thoughtful discussion board piece. Although the lack of physical presence could lead one to believe that the requirements are lax, that not having a classroom full of people staring at you as you argue your point (or realize you don’t have a point) would make school that much easier, it’s in fact quite the opposite. I have to really think out what I am going to say: stream-of-consciousness isn’t allowed in writing as much as it is in speaking. It’s also still graduate school, the expectations are still high, and having the luxury of a course taken entirely from home in your pajamas means that you have to work extra hard to monitor your own progress and balance real-life with school.
That part is quite nice, though – my typical classroom experience nowadays is sitting comfortably in my room with a cat on my lap, watching a taped lecture or PowerPoint and drinking tea. Much different than a cold, crowded lecture hall, and one of the best parts of education-from-home. Another benefit to taking courses online is of course the fact that I can work full-time and not have to worry about commuting to class afterwards. Working with a few other people who do commute to class after work makes me truly thankful that I chose the program I did.
It’s also remarkable to me that I can still pick out the talkers in class – some people, mostly those going to school full-time, write the longest posts and comment on everyone else’s every single week. Sometimes I’ll check the discussion board after only a day or two and find thirty new posts have been written. After a while, you learn to pick out those students whose posts you find interesting or illuminating, and those who rehash what the readings said because that is technically what the professor has stated is required. Perhaps because I have been out of school for a while, working full-time for several years, I may subconsciously refuse to waste my time and my professor’s time with a simple rehash of the readings. I prefer to write about the material through the experiences I’ve had working in and with libraries.
And that’s the best thing about going through this program now, after I have worked in an academic library, and now at an academic book vendor. I know the ins and outs of library systems and functions, I understand the goals and tribulations of libraries, and that knowledge really helps in my day-to-day coursework. At YBP, I get to see everyday what’s happening in libraries, from the scramble to get on the e-train to dealing with the economic backlash of the last couple of years. It’s truly helping my learning experience, as I get to meld what I’ve learned from work with what I’m learning in books, and hopefully that’s exactly what will help me be successful in librarianship once I graduate. I look forward to it!
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