Digital Commons Network^™

The Map Is Useless Unless You Know Where You Are: Information Literacy Pre-Assessment As A Tool For Understanding And Collaboration, Jason Ertz

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2009

The objective of this presentation is to provide librarians with a potential outline for beginning an information literacy assessment strategy, starting with pre-assessment. Librarians unsure about where to start when it comes to assessment will find that developing a pre-test can be a great way to start such a strategy collaborating with classroom faculty. Pre-assessment also is nonjudgmental pertaining to faculty’s teaching abilities and students’ learning making it an easier sell for collaboration or even initiating collaboration where none existed. If we can’t know where students end up after a class, at least we can get a sense of where …

Using Student Feedback To Improve Course Specific Libguides Content, Karen W. Brown

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2009

Librarians feel that LibGuides provide the opportunity to create user centered and intuitive research guides for students. However, relatively little feedback has been gathered from LibGuides’ intended audience. A LibGuides evaluation was conducted for upper level History courses during Fall 2008. The evaluation is an initial attempt to determine whether students found their course LibGuide useful, how many times during the semester a student accessed the LibGuide for his/her course, and ways in which course specific LibGuides content can be improved. Results of the evaluation will be shared along with a discussion and examples of how the results have impacted …

Wikipedia, Ipods, And Chickens: An Active Learning Exercise To Teach Evaluation Of Information, Latisha Reynolds, Anna Marie Johnson

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2009

Librarians at the University of Louisville developed an evaluation of information exercise that is completely interactive. Students learn evaluation skills by participating in a small-group exercise, after which, the groups teach their classmates what they have learned.

Each small-group is assigned a different publication to evaluate such as a book, a website, a scholarly article, magazine or newspaper. They also have questions to answer in order to evaluate each source. After they evaluate the sources, each group chooses a student to present the information in front of the class.

The librarian acts as a facilitator to guide the students and …

Ethos And Credibility : Collaborating To Develop Students’ Critical Information Literacy, Richard H. Hannon, April D. Cunningham

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2009

Librarians and professors know that students who search online believe they can identify good sources based on surface credibility. But students make bad decisions if they apply criteria out of alignment with academic values. This presentation outlines an innovative merger of traditional Rhetoric and Information Literacy to guide students’ research decisions. The collaboration between a librarian and a Composition instructor illustrates librarians’ central role in deepening students' academic values. Participants will take away a new approach to developing students’ evaluative skills that draws on the philosophical principles of “good reasons” and ethos.