Library Instruction West 2018

What students know about research and what they need to know are not often well paired: previously low entry points into scholastic conversations change dramatically for students with the addition of tools that can mislead as much as they assist research behaviors. This session introduces two activities designed to motivate students by meeting their evolving needs around discovery and citation. Using teamwork, self-directed learning, and competitive play, students learn foundational research skills in casual, experience-driven environments.

The Discovery Puzzle uses student teams and the library’s discovery layer to solve bibliographic puzzles while introducing search engine exploration and close reading in library research. This activity abandons preconceptions about students’ electronic expertise and focuses on hands-on experience with the library’s gateway to academic research.

Similarly, while students are expected to be able to follow citation style guidelines, the widespread availability of citation generators makes it less important to teach students how to write citations from scratch and more important that they learn to read and edit them. In Citation Bowl, students again work in teams to correct challenging citations. As in a traditional college bowl, other teams can improve on errors, and steal points with their own correct answers.

During this interactive session, presenters will discuss the iterative design of these activities, their adoption in one-shot and credit-bearing environments, and the potential for competitive play to engage students in information literacy. Attendees will leave with the materials necessary for integrating these activities into their instruction plans.