GSLIS Adjunct Associate Professor Yoo-Seong Song has been named a 2014 Instructor of the Year by the Web-based Information Science Education (WISE) Consortium. Song was nominated by a student for his excellent instruction last fall in the course Applied Business Research: Competitive Intelligence & Knowledge Management (LIS 590AC).
Co-founded by GSLIS Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Programs Linda Smith, WISE is a partnership between sixteen schools with the shared goal of providing a collaborative, cost-effective distance education model that will increase the quality, access, and diversity of online education opportunities in library and information science. Member institutions use advanced technology as a means to enrich LIS education and foster relationships among students, faculty, and universities, through course sharing and cooperative pedagogical training.
Song shared his teaching philosophy with WISE in a statement of best practices:
The main objective of my teaching is to help students acquire relevant and practical skills which can be applied to diverse real-world settings. I find experiential learning as a key to fulfilling this goal, as students should not be passive listeners of lectures but must become active engagement partners to share knowledge and create solutions together. Online teaching presents excellent opportunities for experiential learning. Online sessions make connecting experts around the world possible, and I make efforts to invite information professionals from diverse settings to participate in class projects online. The online environment offers a great opportunity where students can interact with one another in a professional manner to meet the common goal, and online teaching also helped me become a better instructor using the latest technologies.