Discover how tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) are ideal professional development tools for focusing on enhancing skills that build instructional confidence. This session introduces a practical approach to using interactive, story-driven scenarios to strengthen teaching techniques, classroom management, collaboration, and on-the-fly problem solving skills that directly enhance patron interactions. Attendees will take away ideas for running their own adaptable scenarios they can plug into existing training, as well as tips for helping staff reflect, apply what they practiced, and transfer those skills to their instruction and presentations. This session aims to inspire library staff to adopt game-based learning for continuous improvement, ensuring instruction librarians are creative, adaptable educators in any setting.
Date Recorded: 6/10/2026
Format: Archived YouTube Video
Presenters: Justin Harrison, Business Undergraduate Program Librarian and Tracey Rinehart, Instruction Coordinator and Business Graduate Programs Librarian / both of Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas)
Resources:
Hear success stories of how the School Care Team has helped libraries in Indiana strengthen their impact on youth, provide community support, and support library staff well-being. Attendees will learn about programs and training offered through these partnerships and how to bring them to their own libraries. Leave with research-based practical tools to foster personal and community well-being.
Playing board games can be a wonderful way to pass your time, but they can also be an engaging method of complementing traditional learning techniques. These games can be existing commercial or freely available games, as well as games developed specifically for a particular class. This webinar will focus on university education and how games can help teach concepts and theories that students discuss during lectures, as well as how game-based project work can help students to build research skills.
An overview of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and the Temporary Waiver and how you might be able to have your student debt gone sooner rather than later. This webinar will include information about both of these programs, the current landscape of student loans, and a variety of resources.
Effective staff development doesn’t have to involve expensive conferences, big-name presenters, or elaborate training software. Instead, libraries can support staff learning by providing regular opportunities for staff to explore new skills in a brain-friendly environment. In this session, participants will learn about key elements of effective learning design, how to make learning a priority, and how to identify which library problems require a training solution.
This presentation addresses customer service training by growing and nurturing empathy and empowering staff to navigate the gray areas in our policies. Using storytelling and group interaction, we will look at special and challenging situations such as code of conduct violations and difficult patrons. Discover how understanding our own implicit biases and not assuming the worst of our patrons can help you offer consistent customer service to everyone we serve.