Presented by:
Mandy Mastrovita, Digital Projects Librarian, Digital Library of Georgia
Rachel Evans, Metadata Services and Special Collections Librarian, UGA Alexander Campbell King Law Library.
Abstract:
Homeschooling parents, students, and instructors across the state all know that connecting authentically with this underrepresented community can be tricky and that traditional outreach, promotion, and participation formats can present design and instruction challenges. So, in February 2023, librarians from the Digital Library of Georgia, in connection with members of the Firefly Homeschool Community, delivered a hybrid online webinar/workshop built to seek strategies to improve academic outcomes.
We have developed a case study from our most recent efforts and plan to discuss our timeline from brainstorming our initial event in February of 2023 to discovering and implementing future outreach ideas and presenting new instructional and learning opportunities using DLG and GALILEO resources within these increasingly popular nontraditional K-12 venues.
Takeaways will include lessons learned about building successful outreach and promotion mechanisms, assessing the variety of accessible instructional technologies purportedly built to support homeschooling, and responding to survey results we collected from the Georgia homeschool community at the beginning of 2023.
Our session closes with a description of further outreach plans we intend to pursue and an assessment of our strategies to communicate with this growing user group.