Library Instruction West 2018

California State University Channel Islands (CI), Ventura College (VC), Oxnard College (OC), and Moorpark College (MC) all list information literacy as one of their institutional student learning outcomes or general education outcomes. Students enter our regional institutions with varying levels of competency in information literacy (IL). Although the library is often the campus leader in specific information literacy instruction, it is incorporated across the curriculum. This presentation will discuss the creation of a Regional Information Literacy Summit to address IL and transfer student success. The one-day event was focused on allowing for collaboration across institutions to serve a common student outcome and increase transfer student success.
Our aim in creating such an event was to share resources and best practices, ways to infuse IL into the curricula, and methods for assessing effectiveness of IL instruction. The event is designed to include non-librarian teaching faculty in order to engage in meaningful discussions regarding how to incorporate information literacy concepts into assignments and syllabus, how to work collaboratively with librarians on your campus to support these learning outcomes, and to increase awareness of information literacy framework that can help support student success. By aligning efforts across the regional campuses, librarians and faculty can work towards the common goal of moving students to mastering more advanced information literacy concepts before they graduate.

Assignment-design consultations with librarians can be an easy sell for faculty members who have struggled to get the results they want out of student research assignments. But how do you convince first-time instructors to collaborate with librarians on research-based writing assignments before they’ve tested the waters on their own? In my university’s college writing program, graduate teaching assistants develop their own syllabi and assignments rather than teaching from a standardized syllabus. However, new GTAs are typically first-time instructors of college writing with limited experience in designing, teaching, and assessing research assignments for first-year students. While some new GTAs design appropriate assignments for novice researchers, others create assignments that are inadvertently designed in a way that sets students up for failure in meeting the instructor's expectations. In these situations, it is difficult to figure out how we as librarians can help students be as successful as possible in satisfying misaligned assignment parameters while also encouraging them to engage in critical information literacy concepts, all in a single one-shot session.

With these concerns in mind, I surveyed new GTAs at our institution as well as in other institutions’ college writing programs about their experiences with “teaching research” for the first time. Survey results were collected at the end of the Fall 2017, and GTAs were invited to participate in follow-up interviews in Spring 2018. In this session, I will share the preliminary results of my research and discuss how I am using what we learned about new GTAs’ experiences as first-time instructors to redesign a library instruction orientation session for new graduate teaching assistants in the Fall 2018 semester.

As two recent graduates, Jessica and Meredith have experience teaching library instruction classes before but never as capital “L” Librarians. In our presentation, we will chronicle the first year out of graduate school as instructional librarians, highlighting the struggles of shifting from student to teacher, the excitement of discovering our teaching styles, and overcoming imposter syndrome.

We will specifically touch on many of the issues faced by new instruction librarians, discussing the challenges and successes of our first year of professional librarianship. We will examine learning from our failures and not getting bogged down when instruction sessions turn out differently than we planned. Our presentation will tell the story of our careers, comparing and contrasting our experiences teaching at two different institutions.

What can we learn from drag kings and drag queens to help us grab student’s attention, deepen student engagement, and share our strong emotions towards information literacy? This session covers how drag in all its forms uses surprise, novelty, entertainment, and emotion to engage. Using “the six Ps of drag” as a framework for instruction you’ll find your instruction is more fun, more interactive, and more effective in getting your ideas heard and understood. Persona – everyone is interesting, but when instructing you need to amplify your awesome traits. Practice – drag queens and kings don’t just get up on stage without practicing their performance. Same with library instruction, to hone your craft, to work on making it better. Polish –you need to polish your performance to in an inch of its life, to be ready for anything unpredictable, to be able to handle students that are asleep, texting, and may even be actively rude. Performance – drag is performance, and aspects of instruction are performance. You get up in front of people, say things you want them to listen to, and enjoy themselves. Payoff – drag queens and kings get paid for performing. Your payoff is effective instruction, showing a passion. Passion – drag queens and kings have a passion for performing, for entertaining, for shocking. You should to for your library instruction. Personable – drag queens and kings can seem outsized, over the top, so glamorous, so frightening. But within all that there is their humanity.

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.

Objectives
Data-driven outreach is essential to ensure efficient curriculum-integrated instruction. Haphazard information literacy instruction is an inefficient use of everyone’s time. With a syllabus analysis study librarians can plan strategic, evidence-based instructional outreach and work with teaching faculty to integrate a scaffolded information literacy instruction program.
Methodology
This study examined 369 syllabi from three departments at a global university. The authors developed and normed a rubric based on ACRL’s 2015 Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to analyze the syllabi for information literacy learning outcomes. The rubric rated syllabi for the presence of these six themes using a three-indicator scale: not present, implied, or explicitly stated. Coding on these themes was completed using the qualitative software analysis tool NVivo, which allowed for a nuanced textual analysis. Interrater reliability was calculated from 25 randomly selected syllabi; Cohen’s kappa calculations for interrater reliability were .92, which indicates that the raters had a high level of agreement, and that the rubric is a reliable and valid instrument which can be used to replicate and scale the study.
Findings
The analysis revealed strategic opportunities for information literacy instruction, particularly among syllabi that contained “explicitly stated” information literacy learning outcomes on several dimensions of the rubric. This presentation will discuss the process of developing an analytic rubric, as well as best practices in gathering, organizing, and coding data in order to engage in qualitative research.

This brief talk will outline the creation process of a digital literacy workshop for a diverse group of learners from scratch. Librarians instructing in a community college setting often work with a diverse student body from different backgrounds and identities to levels of technology and research skills. To help students make the critical thinking leaps between textbook hypotheticals to relevant, real-life digital dilemmas, librarians can act as digital literacy educators and advocates. After teaching introductory library sessions to first year students, I noticed a variety in the skill, comfort, and knowledge of using a computer in an academic and work setting.

This inspired a home grown, made from scratch approach to create opportunities to practice these digital literacy skills. I developed an original, “choose your own adventure” activity to help students in our first-year experience seminar get a handle on using college wide resources and apply them to a hypothetical situation. For many students, this activity was the first time they used the college website to do exploratory research about academic programs, advising, transfer partnerships, and careers. The activity also aimed to incorporate information and media literacy skills like synthesizing information from a variety of formats and evaluating sources. In all, students met this digital literacy workshop with several different responses: from frustration and confusion to optimism and zeal. Attendees will walk away with a better understanding of digital literacy skills in community colleges, workshopping their instruction sessions, and teaching in an every-changing environment.

*This work is from a previous position as First Year Experience Librarian at Horry-Georgetown Technical College (Conway, SC, US)

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.

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.

Infographics, as one type of visual information, are becoming more and more prevalent online, especially on social media sites. Because of the prolific nature of these sites, and the fact that 86% of 18-29 year olds use at least one social media site (Pew Research Center, 2017), it’s important to know how well college students understand infographics. Exploring the findings of a pre- and post-questionnaire given to two journalism classes found that students do not independently evaluate infographics. However, by utilizing best practices when creating an infographic assignment, it is possible to teach students how to think critically about the infographics they come into contact with and create. Session participants will come away with approaches for introducing specific evaluative criteria for infographics as well as strategies for creating their own infographic assignments.

In 2016, three small Penn State University Commonwealth Campus libraries each obtained 20-30 Toshiba Chromebooks to enhance library instruction. These libraries have no dedicated IL instruction classroom, but light laptops allow librarians to bring hands-on instruction to the students and quickly get from power-up to research results during one-shot sessions. Use and assessment have been ongoing. Current survey results (n=185) indicate the vast majority of students found Chromebooks easy to use and approximately 1/3 of respondents had previous experience using them. When asked about their preferred technology for library instruction, students indicated a general preference for Chromebooks or other laptops over desktop computers and other devices. Open comments revealed that students found Chromebooks helpful tools for learning in their classroom. A few students expressed difficulty using the trackpad and scrolling, so it may be valuable to teach a few Chromebook gestures at the start of class. Chromebooks are “powerwashed,” a factory reset removing all local data, with a few keystrokes after each use.

Advantages of using Chromebooks for hands-on instruction include mobility and flexibility, sustained by long battery life. No laptop login and easy wi-fi connection decrease start-up time at the beginning of class. Additionally, the option to login with a personal Google account allows students to use familiar tools like Google Drive and Google Docs as part of their hands-on research activities.

Participants will learn about the procedures we use when introducing Chromebooks in the classroom, our successes and challenges overcome, and the results from our user experience survey.

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.

Credit-bearing courses that focus solely on information literacy seem to be the ideal model of “library” instruction as these courses provide more opportunities to scaffold learning and engage with concepts and ideas in more depth. Unfortunately, courses that only focus on information literacy often do so at the expense of vital frames of reference, creating inauthentic learning experiences in which students have to manufacture research questions and practice skills divorced from any disciplinary or personal context.

This presentation will discuss a case study of a first year seminar course taught by a librarian that focused on examining “morbid” curiosity about true crime. In this course, information literacy was contextualized as students solved problems and answered research questions that arose organically out of the shared class theme.

This session will advocate that situating information literacy into a larger disciplinary (or interdisciplinary) theme is a model that librarians should pursue in lieu of one-shot sessions or even credit-bearing information literacy environments that focus only on information literacy concepts and mechanics. Audience members will be given the opportunity to reflect on their local contexts to investigate possibilities for pursuing and adjusting this model and will also be given suggestions of how to discuss information literacy in more authentic, situated ways within their current instructional paradigms.

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.