Effective Time Management for Library Staff - 2008 (online learning course)

(An Infopeople Online Learning Course)
February 5 - March 17, 2008

Do you ever leave work stressed because your "to-do" list isn't even half finished?

Managing time is a key element in your on-the-job success. No matter what your position, the strength of your time management skills and habits affects both your daily performance and your personal wellbeing.

In this course you will design a plan that will help you react and adapt to the constantly changing rhythms and tempos of your life. You will practice your new skills and receive coaching to meet your specific needs so that you will be better able to:

• Identify what is the most important
• Anticipate problems and overcome obstacles
• Find hidden shortcuts in every project
• Resolve conflicts when other people's goals compete with yours
• Stop procrastinating

Workshop Description: This six-week online learning course will help you improve your skills in managing your time on a daily basis as well as your long-term projects. You will learn strategies and techniques to control how you spend your time, stop time-wasting behaviors, and get the most important things done efficiently and effectively.

Through readings, online discussion and chat, structured exercises, and writing assignments you will learn how to create and modify a flexible time management system based on your unique expectations, thinking style, and temperament. The course will utilize library-specific situations and examples in the readings and exercises.

Outcomes: By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

1. Analyze their time management problems and sort them into three categories: technical, environmental and psychological
2. Design a customized time management system that deals with the three categories of problems
3. Create a customized time management review and evaluation process
4. Demonstrate strategies for diagnosing and solving problems that they expect to arise subsequent to the course

Preliminary Course Outline:

• Module One: Overview of effective time management
  • Welcome
  • Planning for success
  • Categorizing your time management problems
• Module Two: Validating your time management self assessment
  • Using time logs
  • Analyzing your time logs
• Module Three: Discovering Your Strengths
  • Determining your personal style, preferences and needs
  • Developing your personal mission statement and goals
• Module Four: Time Management Essentials
  • Choosing and prioritizing your activities
  • Exploring time management tools
• Module Five: Developing your customized plan and overall process
  • Designing your customized plan
  • Streamlining your overall process
• Module Six: Your journey towards satisfaction
  • Troubleshooting your plan and overall process
  • Maintaining your motivation
  • Additional resources

Online Learning Details:
This six-week course will be taught online using the web. When you register, you will receive a registration confirmation that will include the URL to get to the course, as well as a username and password.

Every student proceeds through the online learning modules at his or her own pace. Students should expect to commit to spending a minimum of 2 to 3 hours per week on this course in order to be successful. You can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night. However, you will be expected to log in to the course each week to do that week's assignment. We ask that you log in sometime during the first week of the course to begin the course work.

Your instructor will be available for limited consultation support for two weeks after the official end date of a course, and the course material will stay up for an additional two weeks after that, to give those who have fallen behind time to work independently on the course. However, you will be expected to accomplish the majority of the course in synchronization with your peers during the first six weeks.

Who Should Take This Course: Anyone who wants to improve his or her time management skills

Prerequisites:
This course is taught over the web. You must:

• Have an Internet connection and Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher.
• Be able to save Microsoft Word .doc or Adobe .pdf files to your computer and print them out. (For .doc files, a free Word Viewer is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en. Search for "Word Viewer." For .pdf files, a free Adobe Acrobat Reader is available at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html).
• Be comfortable navigating on the web and navigating back and forward on a website that uses frames.

To be most successful in this course you should be willing to share information with your colleagues and be willing to spend time reading and participating in the weekly discussion boards.

System Requirements: The online learning product that Infopeople uses is called Angel. The following are minimum system requirements for using Angel. You will need access to a computer that has at least these specifications to participate in an online course:

• Windows:
  • Internet Explorer 6.0 and above, Netscape 7.1 and above, or Firefox 1.5 and above
• Macintosh:
  • Mozilla 1.4 and above (which is the same engine as Netscape 7.1), Safari 2.0 and above, or Firefox 1.5 and above
  • OS X and above (OS 9 will NOT work with our online learning product)

If you are not comfortable with any of the above, please consider taking this course with a colleague who does meet these requirements.

Fee: $75 for those in the California library community and $150 for those out-of-state.

Course Start: This 6-week-long online learning course starts on February 5, 2008.