Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing The Research Process Improves The Product: Results Of A Faculty-­Librarian Collaboration, Divonna M. Stebick, Janelle L. Wertzberger, Margaret E. Flora, Joseph W. Miller

Janelle Wertzberger

When an education professor and a reference librarian sought to improve the quality of undergraduate student research, their partnership led to a new focus on assessing the research process in addition to the product. In this study, we reflect on our collaborative experience introducing information literacy as the foundation for undergraduate teacher education research. We examine the outcomes of this collaboration, focusing on the assessment of the process. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that direct instruction supporting effective research strategies positively impacted student projects. Our data also suggest that undergraduate students benefit from not only sound research strategies, …

Info Lit 2.0 Or Deja Vu?, Patricia Anne Iannuzzi

Communications in Information Literacy

In 1999, ACRL convened a national task force to draft Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. ACRL has recently launched a revision to those standards. The original standards were influential because they helped advance a national need in higher education at the time: a shift to outcomes based learning. Fourteen years later, information literacy stands alongside oral and written communication, critical thinking and ethical reasoning as learning outcomes broadly acknowledged as needing to be integrated, with disciplinary content, into the curriculum. This author believes that, in contrast to the first process, the current recommendations for revision are focused on …

Refreshing Information Literacy: Learning From Recent British Information Literacy Models, Justine Martin

Communications in Information Literacy

Models play an important role in helping practitioners implement and promote information literacy. Over time models can lose relevance with the advances in technology, society, and learning theory. Practitioners and scholars often call for adaptations or transformations of these frameworks to articulate the learning needs in information literacy development. This study analyzes four recently published models from the United Kingdom. The initial findings were presented in a report for an ACRL taskforce reviewing the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. This article presents complementary, yet distinct findings from the same dataset that focus on reoccurring themes for information literacy …

A Threshold Concepts Approach To The Standards Revision, Amy R. Hofer, Korey Brunetti, Lori Townsend

Communications in Information Literacy

This article describes how threshold concepts can inform the revision of ACRL's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.

Integrating Information Into The Engineering Design Process, Michael Fosmire, David Radcliffe

Purdue University Press Books

Engineering design is a fundamental problem-solving model used by the discipline. Effective problem-solving requires the ability to find and incorporate quality information sources. To teach courses in this area effectively, educators need to understand the information needs of engineers and engineering students and their information gathering habits. This book provides essential guidance for engineering faculty and librarians wishing to better integrate information competencies into their curricular offerings. The treatment of the subject matter is pragmatic, accessible, and engaging. Rather than focusing on specific resources or interfaces, the book adopts a process-driven approach that outlasts changing information technologies.

After several chapters …

Mobile Information Literacy: Supporting Students’ Research And Information Needs In A Mobile World, Stefanie Havelka

Publications and Research

Mobile devices have changed everyday life and they have had a great impact in higher education. This article describes a pilot project in which an academic librarian at Lehman College, City University of New York, taught information literacy exclusively via mobile devices. The concept of mobile information literacy is also reviewed, and its role in current and future teaching practices is evaluated. Lessons learned from this project tell us that mobile information literacy, albeit in its infancy, could play an essential part in students’ learning, and therefore academic librarians could incorporate it as part of their practice.

Creating, Sharing And Reusing Learning Objects To Enhance Information Literacy, Philip Russell, Gerard Ryder, Gillian Kerins, Margaret Phelan

Articles

From June 2010 until the present, a suite of online reusable learning objects (RLOs) has been created by staff at the Technological University Dublin (ITT Dublin) library covering a range of information literacy (IL) competencies. These RLOs have helped to facilitate student transition from second to third level, advance IL and enrich the student learning experience. The purpose of this paper is to outline the development of these RLOs and how the resources have been shared, reused and repurposed to enhance IL progression. A review of recent literature explores some of the key issues around the creation of digital learning …

Creating, Sharing And Reusing Learning Objects To Enhance Information Literacy, Philip Russell

Philip Russell

From June 2010 until the present, a suite of online reusable learning objects (RLOs) has been created by staff at the Institute of Technology Tallaght (ITT Dublin) library covering a range of information literacy (IL) competencies. These RLOs have helped to facilitate student transition from second to third level, advance IL and enrich the student learning experience. The purpose of this paper is to outline the development of these RLOs and how the resources have been shared, reused and repurposed to enhance IL progression. A review of recent literature explores some of the key issues around the creation of digital …

Humor As A Tool For Addressing The Affective Domain During Information Literacy Instruction, Joshua Vossler, John Watts

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

Gaining and maintaining student attention during information literacy instruction can be a challenge. To address this challenge, entertainment value, as well as instructional efficacy, ought to be factored into assessment and design of instructional materials. Information literacy instruction should be as much about building bridges with students as it is about imparting useful information and skills. Entertaining while educating (edutaining), promotes student attention and helps build a positive learning environment. In this interactive session, attendees will participate in a practical approach to producing creative and entertaining content for information literacy instruction.

Tilting Toward Millennials: Updating Online Information Literacy Instruction For Post-Modern Learners, Rebecca Befus, Joshua Neds-Fox

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

This session will describe the challenge of reinventing a graphically outdated and content heavy online information literacy tutorial and tilting it toward a millennial audience. You will learn how we reinvented substantive content from an instructional design perspective and be provided general suggestions for creating quality content. In addition, you will learn specific design strategies, focusing on innovative web design trends, collaboration with public services librarians, and using cost-effective resources to create successful virtual learning environments. You will also view results from a study performed on the tutorial and learn how the results have influenced updates.

Reaching Out To Transfer Students: Usc Upstate's Foundation In Information Literacy, Andrew Kearns, Chris Vidas

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

How do you "catch" transfer students to ensure that they receive timely instruction in information literacy? What kind of intervention will be compatible with library staff and budgetary considerations? What kind of outreach is likely to gain support of the institution? This presentation will describe USC Upstate's Foundation in Information Literacy (FIL), an "inventory" administered through the admissions process. We will describe how we created FIL, how we marketed it, what kinds of follow-up we have designed for students who take it, and the results of the pilot administrations in Spring and Fall 2010. We will also address the future …

Libguides, Videos, And Screencasting: Technologies To Enhance And Promote Digital Wisdom In Information Literacy Instruction, Rafia Mirza, Jody Bailey

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

n this workshop, we will discuss how the information revolution affects teaching information literacy -- specifically, students' need for digital wisdom. Today, students are usually aware of what technology can do for them socially but do not know how to produce and critically assess digital knowledge in their scholarship. Demonstrating the production of digital objects will help promote digital wisdom in the classroom by making the process transparent. To this end, we will demonstrate the following:

- A LibGuide that is interactive, welcoming, personal, and helpful and that will focus on how to teach students or faculty about video editing. …

Evidence-Based Practice, Information Literacy, And Graduate Inquiry: A Collaborative Learning And Teaching Experience, Rosemary Green, Mary Corcoran

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

This session addresses the alliance between information literacy and evidence-based practice (EBP) - the process of applying clinically relevant research to patient care. The context of the discussion is an occupational therapy (OT) research course co-taught by a graduate librarian and an OT faculty member. The course was literature-based, evidence-based, and inquiry-based; students engaged in problem-based activities related to occupation, mobility, and accessibility. We describe our strategies for embedding and modeling information literacy as a natural function of the course; provide examples of class activities and studentsí multimedia projects; and invite participants to explore their own understandings of practice supported …

Library Instruction Credibility: How Do We Establish It? How Do We Publicize It?, Frances A. May, Yunfei Du

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

What I would like to propose is not a presentation but a strategy session. Over the ten years I have spent as an instruction librarian, I have come to realize that what we need is quantitative data showing the benefits that students derive from library instruction. It needs to be gathered and published in non-library forums, such as educational or subject specific journals. Once the benefits are publicized and understood by educators and faculty, we may be able to move beyond the fifty minute, one shot instruction session, and make an information literate society a reality.

To do this, we …

Muchos Mentores En Iowa: The Pedagogy Of Student To Student Mentoring In Information Literacy, Julia Bauder, Beth Bohstedt, Phillip Jones

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

At Grinnell College we believe that students can be the best teachers and that lasting learning also happens outside of the classroom. The Grinnell College Libraries' peer mentoring program is rooted in these beliefs. Our program has two components: advanced research help provided by reference assistants (RAs) at the reference desk; and basic information service provided by all students working at our public service desks. Throughout this presentation, attendees will be challenged to consider if peer information service is appropriate for their libraries and to articulate initial steps to explore and implement such a service.

Teaching With Worldcat Local: What's Different?, Margaret G. Grotti, Karen Sobel

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

This presentation discusses a recent study examining how WorldCat Local impacts library instruction. WorldCat Local is a library catalog discovery layer offered by OCLC. It has proven popular with academic libraries since its initial launch in 2008. This system is not merely a more flexible catalog interface, however; rather, it provides users with simplified search capabilities and access to multiple types of resources such as articles drawn from databases as well as catalog records drawn from an OPAC. Thus, WorldCat Local can be characterized as a meta-search system. Meta-search systems have long been at the center of a debate in …

Bridging The Gaps: Transliteracy As Effective Pedagogy, Lane Wilkinson

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

'Transliteracy' is a topic that is quickly spreading around the library world. However, there is little agreement about what, exactly, transliteracy is. This presentation will situate transliteracy within the context of library instruction as an enhanced approach to information literacy. Students are surprisingly information literate as they make effortless cognitive shifts between Facebook and e-mail, smart-phones and desktops, or text-messaging and speaking. Yet, they often hit a wall with library databases, indexes, or other research tools. Transliteracy addresses this issue pedagogically by emphasizing and harnessing the cognitive processes underlying preexisting media and information use. The presentation will begin with an …

Singing The Praises Of Il: The Case Of A Required Credit-Bearing Il Music Course, Paul J. Neff

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

This presentation will focus on Music 228 -- the required credit-bearing discipline-specific information literacy course for undergraduate music students at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta in Camrose, Alberta, Canada. Augustana students in both the Bachelor of Arts (Music) and Bachelor of Music degrees are required to take this course (preferably in their 2nd year of study) to graduate. This presentation will include discussion of the course structure, example assignments and practical advice. Commentary will be offered regarding the course components including, but not limited to: understanding information, using the library catalogue, interdisciplinary and subject specific database searching, …

The Teaching Librarian's Toolkit, Amy Harris Houk, Jenny Dale

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

Engaging students is critical to maximizing the effectiveness of information literacy sessions. But when you're faced with heavy teaching loads, back-to-back sessions, and balancing your other professional responsibilities, it can seem that there's never enough time to develop effective, engaging, and creative classroom activities. Enter the Teaching Librarian's Toolkit - flexible, modular activities that can be mixed and matched to align with student learning outcomes and enhance your information literacy sessions. In this interactive workshop, you'll participate in sample activities, share your strategies, and develop a sample lesson plan to use or adapt in your teaching.

Rigging For Rigor: Guiding Classroom Faculty Toward Richer Research Assignments With The Research Guidance Rubric, Pete Coco, Hazel Mcclure

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

Proceeding from Project Information Literacy's recent report documenting student needs being left unmet by many research assignment prompts, two librarians developed a tool for faculty to self-assess their assignment prompts. The Research Guidance Rubric (RGR) functions both as a self-evaluation tool for faculty and as a "conversation-starter" between the disciplinary expertise of professors and the information literacy expertise of liaison librarians. We'll discuss assignment collaborations as we plumb the questions that premise the RGR: what makes a collaboration successful and how can librarian-created tools move the conversation on research assignments toward better student outcomes?

Formative Assessment: Transforming Education In The Library, Teague Orblych, Michelle Kathleen Dunaway

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

How can librarians provide effective research instruction to groups of students with widely varying information competencies? How can we engage students in the process of creating library instruction that responds to their individual learning needs? This presentation will demonstrate the process of using assessment-elicited evidence of students' information literacy skills to tailor each instruction session based on the information proficiencies of the students in each instruction session. Using formative assessment in one-shot library instruction sessions makes information literacy instruction significantly more practical for students, and therefore improves students' learning.

Pirate Maps, Tattoos, And Flus: Using A Problem-Based Format To Teach Information Literacy Skills, Emily Buzicky, Kerri Shaffer Carter

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2011

This workshop will introduce attendees to the basics of problem-based learning (PBL). Participants will have the opportunity to create a lesson plan for a PBL session while working in a PBL environment. The workshop will focus on creating learning objectives, creating PBL prompts, facilitating discussion, and leading a de-briefing session. PBL activities complement information literacy sessions because they ask the student to actively demonstrate competencies, and allow the instructor to act as a "guide on the side."

Review: The Information Literacy Game (In Gaming And Gamification Part Ii), Kelly Giles

Libraries

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The Relationship Between Generic And Situated Il Approaches: The Dreyfus Model Of Skill Acquisition In Formal Information Literacy Learning Environments, Part Ii, Robert Farrell

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This is the second of two papers discussing the application of Berkeley phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus’ five-stage model of skill acquisition to information literacy (IL) theory and practice. This second paper will consider in detail how Dreyfus’ model might be used by academic librarians to scaffold information literacy learning opportunities that foster students’ development of information behaviors characteristic of experts within various disciplinary contexts. The article draws on several of the models mentioned in the previous article as well as representative works in the IL field that have put forward instructional activities and pedagogical strategies both for teaching generic IL skills …

Information Literacy For Teaching And Learning: A Course For Teacher Practitioners., Sara Bushong, Colleen T. Boff

Colleen T. Boff, Ed.D.

Teachers are faced not only with standards-based instructional design daily, but with the shortage of certified school library media specialists within their districts. Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning, a graduate level course, was created, in part, to empower teachers with the knowledge, skills and abilities to embed information literacy within classroom learning experiences. In addition, the skills mastered and activities explored in this course logically transfer to research projects assigned in future graduate courses. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Creating The Il Course In A University Setting, Catherine Cardwell, Colleen T. Boff

Colleen T. Boff, Ed.D.

This book chapter offers suggestions for how to develop a stand alone information literacy course. It takes into account all of the levels of curriculum review at the campus level as well as practical matters such as staffing, course delivery options and budgeting.

Teaching Information Literacy Skills To Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Collaborative Approach, Suzanne Zentz, Kimberly Whalen

Kimberly J. Whalen

Background

An expectation of baccalaureate nursing education is to prepare nurses to implement evidenced-based practice (EBP). This expectation extends far beyond a basic understanding of the research process. BSN prepared nurses must be able to effectively and efficiently identify, analyze, and synthesize evidence (AACN, 2008). The acquisition of information literacy skills is foundational to the development of EBP.

Implementation

The study took place at a College of Nursing within a mid-sized, faith-based university located in the Midwest. Historically, students enrolled in their senior level undergraduate nursing research/EBP course underwent one library instruction session with the nursing librarian to reinforce search …

Teaching Information Literacy Skills To Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Collaborative Approach, Suzanne E. Zentz, Kimberly J. Whalen

Nursing and Health Professions Faculty Presentations

Background An expectation of baccalaureate nursing education is to prepare nurses to implement evidenced-based practice (EBP). This expectation extends far beyond a basic understanding of the research process. BSN prepared nurses must be able to effectively and efficiently identify, analyze, and synthesize evidence (AACN, 2008). The acquisition of information literacy skills is foundational to the development of EBP. Implementation The study took place at a College of Nursing within a mid-sized, faith-based university located in the Midwest. Historically, students enrolled in their senior level undergraduate nursing research/EBP course underwent one library instruction session with the nursing librarian to reinforce search …

Tapping Into The Skills Of School Librarians, Audrey Church

Education & Human Services Faculty Publications

The article focuses on the role of school librarians in evaluating the teacher's effectiveness. It states that librarians has knowledge about various areas other than library including information literacy, media literacy and digital literacy. It further presents various scenarios that can be used for analyzing the performance of librarians including formal observation, self-evaluation and portfolio.

Why Some Students Continue To Value Individual, Face-To-Face Research Consultations In A Technology-Rich World, Trina J. Magi, Patricia E. Mardeusz

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

For decades, academic librarians have provided individual research consultations for students. There is little information, however, about why students schedule consultations, the kinds of assistance students feel are provided by librarians during consultations, and what students find valuable about face-to-face consultations, even with the availability of online research help. This exploratory, qualitative study of individual research consultations at the University of Vermont gathered students’ views on these questions. The findings will help librarians better understand how individual consultations serve students and what role consultations should play in the mix of reference services offered.