Library Instruction West 2018

Choose your own adventure is an engaging and practical instructional method that can be mapped to learning outcomes in a variety of settings. This teaching tool uses active learning techniques and a creative writing narrative to increase and maintain student engagement. The problem-solving adventure format gives choice to students and emphasizes their agency, embracing elements of critical theory.

Librarians at California State University, Chico created choose your own adventure flip-books for use in teaching information literacy. The flip-books encourage students to think critically about research scenarios, make decisions during the research process, and evaluate informational choices. Using an iterative design process, the presenters have honed these tools to suit the educational and informational needs of students and are using them to teach the knowledge practices and skills put forth by the ACRL Framework.

This presentation will give attendees examples of how to implement this tool in the classroom, and will provide attendees with the opportunity to create a choose your own adventure flip-book based on one of the Frames. Attendees will leave this session with an understanding of how to design an adventure flip-book and how these can be used to support teaching information literacy.

After participating in an Engaging with the ACRL Framework workshop, two new instruction librarians were inspired to rework their library instruction in two distinct paths: one embedded in health education with a scaffolded curriculum, the other coordinating one-shot instruction within the social sciences and English composition. Armed with learner-centered pedagogy and backward design principles, the librarians navigated sometimes-bumpy roads to collaborate with faculty, integrate new activities, and ensure meaningful concept-based learning with students across a universe of disciplines. During this interactive session, the presenters will share their own experiences and discipline-specific approaches and coach attendees through breaking down key concepts of the Framework into manageable ideas that can be covered in a single instruction session or over multiple sessions, depending on participants’ instructional context.

The session will be structured as follows: Participants will identify a Frame they are interested in incorporating into their instruction. First, they will articulate desired results or learning outcomes of the instruction session(s) and the big ideas behind those outcomes. Next, participants will define acceptable evidence of students learning those outcomes and identify techniques by which that evidence can be gathered and assessed. The final step will ask participants to create learning activities and experiences that will facilitate student learning of the identified outcomes and integrate assessment. The end product will be a draft lesson plan which engages with the Framework in a meaningful way, from developing outcomes to designing activities.

What are we asking of students when we challenge them to create digital projects from archival or special collections? This paper investigates the rewards reaped and lessons learned from a semester-long course asking students to create a public-facing digital project around an under-researched and underrepresented archive or collection in order to confront issues of power and privilege. The course made use of hands on activities in collections, exposed students to issues of copyright and the postcustodial responsibilities collections have, as well as the biases we can pass along through metadata creation.
The practical outcome of this intensive partnership between faculty and librarian was the collection of deliberate approaches to teaching students in special collections, the incorporation of librarian and archivist expertise when partnering with faculty, and the purposeful approach taken when choosing and teaching a digital tool in the humanities.

In 2016 SLCC Library Services was able to develop a new information literacy assessment rubric to replace the AAC&U VALUE rubric for student ePortfolio assessment. This presentation will briefly review the creation process, results from the implementation of the new rubric, and opportunities resulting from this process. The newly created rubric is based upon the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.

There are a number of well-trodden paths for integrating library instruction to support traditional research papers, which often lend themselves to lessons exploring the research process and topics like authority and bias. Non-traditional research projects however, especially in discipline-level business and engineering classes, don’t often afford the same opportunities to integrate information literacy topics. Without an engaging way to frame the goals of an instruction session, lessons can easily devolve into pure database demonstration. This is unfortunate, since students who are deeper into their field of study are arguably in a better position to explore topics like information creation, ethical use, and scholarship as conversation.

This session will discuss a project to redesign an instruction session for an upper-division marketing research course, including strategies used to both improve classroom activities and introduce topics in information literacy. Originally, the lecture-heavy format of the session was unengaging and left little time for students to practice search skills, let alone for higher-level information literacy concepts to be explored. Through a collaboration between the business librarian and online learning librarian, the session was flipped and redesigned to incorporate more active learning and peer-teaching approaches. This provided students with a sense of agency as they independently learned search tools and techniques, while streamlining classroom flow and allowing for a deeper exploration of topics in business information literacy. Methods for ongoing assessment and indicators of success, such as follow-up research consultations, will also be discussed.

Dixie State University has had a standalone, required, credit based information literacy class for more than ten years. Faculty librarians and departmental faculty have noticed that students are not learning the research process and evaluation of information techniques at the time of need, therefore the students are not retaining the information. While working with the General Education (GE) Taskforce, tasked with the goal of campus wide GE reform, it was concluded that creating modules of information in both the Canvas (learning management software) and LibGuides would be an ideal way to provide ready to go lessons for faculty across disciplines. We will provide information about our planning process, methods for successfully working with faculty throughout the campus community, and the results of our spring 2018 beta test of this method. Resources are intended to be supplemented by librarian instruction or as standalone learning modules for faculty that are more experienced in teaching research skills. As development progresses, we will scaffold the research process and searching techniques to range from general education to senior capstone.

Traditionally, students wrote lengthy, research-laden term papers. Nowadays students are designing and presenting multi-modal projects using the latest technologies. They are still doing the research but creating videos and podcasts as final projects instead of term papers. Many classes now require students to interview people, classmates or others in the community, for their project. This interview format serves as a perfect opportunity to blend Library Instruction sessions with Outreach provided by Oral Historians from Special Collections. Using my expertise in instructional design and her expertise in oral history we designed a library instruction session centered on two ACRL Frameworks: Information Creation as Process and Scholarship as Conversation. Students are frequently subjected to interviews in the media but do they know how to create a “good” interview? Do they know how to draft appropriate open-ended questions? By researching, interviewing, and using the triangulation process students will develop the skills to recognize as well as to create good oral histories. They will be able to identify their role with collective memory as well as their agency as scholarly contributor instead of just consumer.

Librarians from four universities in Utah sought to modify instruction to baccalaureate nursing students based on information needs and behaviors of their recent nursing alumni. We surveyed hundreds of alumni across the state about topics related to information environment, information access, and specific resources used. We’re now using the evidence collected to inform our teaching. This session will describe our survey process, results, and plans for implementation of recommendations for authentic information literacy instruction. In addition, we will address how our results fit with current information literacy standards for nursing. We will suggest future directions for authentic nursing information literacy instruction and ways this research can be adapted to other disciplines.

Part of this session will be dedicated to a discussion with the group about improving information literacy instruction based on evidence. We will open up the conversation about the challenges and benefits of evidence-based library instruction. We’ll also discuss student-centered learning and discipline-specific literacy instruction and ways to implement them at your library.

Academic librarians face an ongoing challenge – introducing students to the vast amount of information available through research databases without forcing them to sit through boring, old-school lectures and demonstrations. So, how do we captivate our Millennial and Plural (post-Millennial) students’ interest, especially in short one-shot instruction sessions? Our answer – Speed Databasing.

A cross between online dating apps and speed dating events, Speed Databasing gives students a chance to “meet” multiple databases during one class session. Librarians act as matchmakers by creating clever personal-ad style profiles for each database, and by reminding students that connecting with a database requires going beyond “first impressions” (i.e. the basic search page). Whether students find the “perfect match” for a current assignment or their “soulmate” in a database they will use throughout their academic career, Speed Databasing is an engaging and memorable approach to library resource instruction.

During this interactive workshop, participants will join in an energetic round of Speed Databasing to experience the activity for themselves. The presenters will discuss their experiences creating and implementing this active learning exercise at their institutions, and provide feedback from other librarians who have implemented this activity. The presenters will also discuss a community of practice that is developing around this activity that will help participants by providing ongoing support and collateral materials after the workshop is over.

Does micro-credentialing enhance student learning? The invitation to develop a curriculum for chemistry majors and design an advanced chemical information skills badge resulted in greater student satisfaction and a fuller understanding of library resources as well as a more sustainable instruction program for the liaison librarian. The library had struggled with reaching junior and senior students majoring in the sciences, and students had learned about library resources and tools on an as needed basis. The science librarian partnered with chemistry faculty to build information skills into the curriculum throughout the first semester and extend that learning through a series of challenges delivered via the course management system during the second semester. Participants will learn about the process of developing a badge that incorporates information literacy and engages students in active learning.

Transfer learning is a critical concern within the library instruction classroom. As librarians, we want to do everything we can to make sure our students are taking something away from our learning environment, but what are some strategies that we can use to accomplish this? Taczak and Robertson (2016) suggest students can engage in transfer learning through reiterative reflection, stating “reflection encourages students to put what they are learning into practice while also serving as a way to set goals and move forward in their writing ability.” Librarians have the opportunity to practice reiterative reflection within their classrooms by adapting Writing Across Contexts practices (Yancey, Robertson, Taczak 2014). When implemented within the library instruction classroom, this pedagogical approach engages students in reflectively describing the process or skill they have learned, and then extending that skill into a new context. In this session the presenters will demonstrate the correlation between Writing Across Contexts and the library instruction classroom, specifically engaging with the idea of “teaching for transfer.” We will briefly discuss the theoretical implications of reflection and its interaction with metacognition and then offer some pragmatic examples of applying these concepts within the library instruction classroom. Session participants will have the opportunity to interactively practice reflection towards transfer through a short writing prompt, and discuss its application and implications in their own teaching contexts.

Instruction librarians want to know how effective their workshops and lessons are in order to show their value to the education process. We creatively use two inspirational instructional design approaches, combined with reflective teaching, to tell a compelling story of assessment that can demonstrate our value to our institutions. These practices help us focus our attention towards evaluation and learning. While there are many assessments that librarians and library programs can do, we can’t and shouldn’t be trying to do all of them in our one-shot classes. We will help participants construct adventurous lesson plans that capitalize on connecting outcomes, inventive learning activities and evaluation that works, and discuss how to innovate our programs by incorporating reflection into our process to quantify our work. After our presentation, participants will have practiced rewriting their learning outcomes into clear objectives that can be measured and created performance-based assessment to measure them.. With appropriate goals clearly stated, librarians can then gather data about student satisfaction, student learning and self evaluation that clearly illustrates our value to academic institutions. These methods help participants strengthen their case to their managers and administrators about reasonable returns on investments that a one-shot library instruction session can provide. This also helps instruction librarians focus their efforts on being effective and intentional.

Teaching students to understand different perspectives and be able to (and see the importance of) checking facts and corroborating viewpoints a, especially when dealing with controversial issues, including those centered around the environment and sustainable living, has never been so important. With an administration constantly butting heads with scientists on such basic issues as climate change and the desirable direction of energy production, students need to feel empowered to analyze, and understand conflict and sort through facts and opinions in order to form their own ideas. In this inter-active presentation, the audience will discover some ways of integrating instruction in bias, (word connotations), structure of argument, and perspective into information literacy lesson or course, focusing discussion around recent environmental conflicts including the Dakota pipeline, the Mauna Kea telescope project, and the Flint Water crisis.

Techniques for having students work in groups analyzing documents, media, and articles relating to an environmental conflict will be discussed, along with readings related to bias in news. The group approach fits with both a social constructivist and critical pedagogy approach to teaching. A list of sources relating to news bias will be provided, along with articles to read for background on environmental issues, including cultural perspectives. Connections between bias and language will be discussed; including how to derive clues form the authors author’s tone, to infer purpose. How to teach students the importance of finding corroborating evidence will also be discussed. The audience will be able to brainstorm their own ideas on information literacy, evaluating news, and environmental/sustainability topics.

Teaching a for-credit information literacy creates a unique opportunity to bring in activist art, social justice issues, and research skills. Taught by Librarian Faculty, this course follows the University approved general education learning outcomes. These outcomes ask students to focus on intellectual tools that develop skillsets to construct knowledge about a “Big Question.” This question asks “How does information literacy impact awareness of social justice issues?” By incorporating skills structured by the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, students examine artworks that deal with race, class, and gender, through the lens information literacy and visual literacy. In creating their own research questions around the works of art, students address how their questions fit into the “Big Question,” and do research to create a group presentation for a “signature assignment.” The assignment meets one of the general education outcomes which asks students to promote diversity and social justice while learning about injustice and oppression. This critical approach to information literacy pedagogy introduces students to social justice topics & activist art which create dialogues about issues faced by communities around the world. These conversations allow students to critically engage with these issues and become socially responsible consumers and producers of information. This twenty minute presentation will explore how critical information literacy can inform and inspire library instruction while showing the practical applications and challenges of adventures in socially responsible pedagogy.

As with many colleges and universities, academic program assessment has risen to the top of Auburn University's educational agenda. Departments across campus are adapting curricula to meet student learning outcomes, the first of which is information literacy (IL). To support this this learning outcome, subject specialist librarians are partnering with departments to scaffold IL instruction into each program. While the idea of systematically integrating IL into the curriculum is often met with enthusiasm by department administrators, the logistics of effecting such change can be challenging. Implementation requires buy-in and collaboration with course instructors, who may not be willing to sacrifice time normally devoted to content. As the Biological Sciences Librarian, I reviewed the revised curriculum and created a sample plan, which was approved by the program coordinator. Since then, I have successfully integrated IL into upper division classes, but the freshman core Biology course eluded me until recently. Freshman Biology is taught by two different instructors and differs in course content, so a “one-size-fits-all” approach was not an option. In this presentation, I will describe two successful strategies for getting a foot in the door, neither of which took away from class time. Though my IL sessions with students did not conform to my original plan and I violated several “rules of instruction” (e.g., instructors mush be present in class), this flexibility ultimately created an opening for more one-on-one interactions with students and more open, fruitful, and collaborative relationships with faculty.