Scheduling and coordinating instruction sessions or workshops can be an absolute bear of a task.
- Getting daily email requests for workshops / sessions.
- Coordinating schedules. Who's available when, and for what session?
- Advertising and communicating workshops/sessions to your general community or to specific classes.
- Rinse and repeat.
Well, it's time to get inspired and rethink how you're coordinating and scheduling instruction.
Applicable to all library types.
Empower Users - Putting Instruction Bookings Online
Scheduling instruction sessions usually involves a lot of email. Emailing the teacher/faculty/stakeholder to schedule a time and internally emailing librarians to see who's available, and then hoping no one has a conflict. Or else, it's back to the drawing board!
Use LibCal's Room Bookings to take email out of the equation and allow users to book instruction sessions.
Benefits:
- 1. Transparency - Users can see when instructions sessions are available. Stop the back and forth emails suggesting dates & times.
- 2. Mediated Control - Let the users suggest a time, and with mediation, give yourself the final say.
- 3. Security - With Authentication, Private Statuses, and Domain restrictions, you control who has access to booking your instruction spaces.
- 4. Be Proactive - Customize your booking form to gather all the information you need before the session takes place.
- 5. Communicate Policies - Do sessions have to be booked 3 days in advance? Do you need 48 hours' cancellation notice? Enforce and communicate policies right from within the tool.
Step One: Setting Up Your Instruction Classroom for Online Booking
Group Setup:
In LibCal, navigate to Room Bookings and create a group for your classroom(s).
- Create a custom booking form so users can provide instruction request details, such as what they'd like covered during the session.
- Give your group a friendly URL to ensure easy findability.
- To control visibility, mark your Instruction Rooms as 'private' - only users with the direct URL will be able to access it.
Room Security Features:
- User Authentication - Route your group of rooms through Shibboleth/CAS/LDAP authentication so that only approved users can book that group of rooms, based upon their user affiliation.
- Mediation - If you want to moderate all incoming requests, enable Booking Mediation.
- Domain Check- If users have a dedicated email domain like @faculty.school.edu, you can limit bookings to that domain.
Room Setup & Availability:
- Adding Rooms - Add room information like pictures, technology available, capacity, and even seating.
- Room Availability - When are librarians available, and for how long?
Step Two: Scheduling a Session
Here's how instructors would schedule a session:
- Advertise your new booking system via your friendly URL
- Users select a date & time > fill out the form > Done!
- Note: They will receive a confirmation email that their booking has been received.
Step Three: Mediating a Request
If you've set up mediated bookings, approve/deny that request on a case-by-case basis:
- Is there a scheduling conflict? Change the time!
- Is the requested librarian not available? Change the date!
- Need to send a confirmation note? Use the email notes field!
- Need to record internal info? Internal notes are just the ticket!
- How often as Prof. Richards requested a class? Get detailed stats!