Building a Sustainable 2.0 Community for Lifelong Learning and Professional Development by Elaine Hall

Don’t miss this article about “23 Things for SLIS Students & Alumni” that Elaine Hall wrote for AlkiWashington Library Association Journal. Elaine Hall is a Washington Library Association (WLA) member and a MLIS graduate student at San Jose State University. She lives in Arlington, Washington and is pursuing interests in academic libraries, emerging technologies, information literacy, and research.

Hall, E. (2013, November). Building a sustainable 2.0 community for lifelong learning and professional development. Alki. Washington Library Association Journal, 29(3), 22-23. Retrieved from http://www.wla.org/assets/Alki/alki%20november%2013%20-%20final.pdf

The students and alumni of San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) have developed a Learning 2.0 pro-gram, “23 Things for SLIS Students and Alumni: Essentials for Success,” to build alliance among students and alumni for lifelong learning and professional development. Hosted by SLISConnect, SLIS’s student and alumni association, this program is unique in that it is created for SLIS students and alumni by students and alumni, fosters solidarity as well as asynchronous learning, offers digital badges as rewards for module completion, and involves more than thirty-five student and alumni volunteers. With three target audiences–new students, current students, and new LIS professionals–the modules presented in this program offer a mix of technologies, resources, and tools for social networking, time management, presentation development, career development, research, and more. Other library or LIS schools can also build a collaborative and sustainable Learning 2.0 program as a way to engage the community on multiple levels and foster lifelong learning.