Don't Cancel That Class!

I heard from a colleague about an initiative that is being done at ECU by the Dean of Students' office called "Don't Cancel that Class!" It is a webpage that has some offerings for 1-hour classes where professors cannot be present. Faculty give the Dean of Students' office two weeks' notice in order to have a professional staff member cover their class. They have a listing of offerings available from units like the counseling center, disability support, campus police, student health, and more. Quite honestly, the list is really well done and has a lot of important content, but some of the topics sound kind of punitive in nature (Code of Conduct, sexual harassment, etc).

You may have heard about the fake classes being offered at UNC Chapel Hill for athletes. This scandal has led to a larger emphasis on professors in seated classes not canceling their class if they are going to be away at a conference or have another reason to be absent. This has made room for greater involvement of student affairs and support units in academics by having guest speakers. Not only ECU is creating these Don't Cancel that Class listings--if you do a Google search you will see that many other colleges and universities are doing it, too. I think it is a wonderful idea, and I am really excited about trying to get the library on the list.

I am creating a listing to send to the Dean of Students for inclusion. Although we are not going to list library instruction explicitly, we will offer some of the following:

• Video editing
• Audio editing
• 3D printing 
• Copyright/plagiarism for students
• Designing a scholarly poster
• RefWorks/citation management
• Special Collections session
• From technostress to techno joy
• Email etiquette
• Library tour with iPad

Some other possibilities I am working on, but are not yet set in stone are:

• Mini-Human Library: see my blog post about this. It would be like a non-romantic speed dating where the students were both the human books and the attendees.
• Film viewing: show a 30 minute video, such as the history of the university, and then facilitate a discussion. 
• Facilitated Lynda.com tranings: like the idea above, we could show bits and pieces of a Lynda.com training and walk students through a training session step-by-step.

Does your institution have a Don't Cancel that Class website? Is this something your library could cultivate or become part of? I'd love to hear from anyone who has tried it with success, or with a failure.