Education Commons^™

In The Loop: One Librarian's Experiences Teaching Within First-Year Learning Communities, Nancy Frazier

Nancy Frazier

Unique as snowflakes, learning communities are formed in countless ways. Some are designed specifically for first-year students, while others offer combined or clustered upper-level courses. Most involve at least two linked courses, and some add residential and social components. Many address core general education and basic skills requirements. Learning communities differ in design, yet they are similar in striving to enhance students' academic and social growth. First-year learning communities foster experiences that have been linked to academic success and retention. They also offer unique opportunities for librarians interested in collaborating with departmental faculty and enhancing teaching skills. This article will …

You’Re Doing More Than You Think: Acknowledging The Small Victories In Assessing Digital Literacy Instruction, Rick A. Stoddart

Rick A Stoddart

The Learning Commons As A Locus For Information Literacy, Sharon Weiner, Tomalee Doan, Hal Kirkwood

Hal P Kirkwood Jr

Many institutions of higher education are designing spaces to facilitate learning. Libraries have created information or learning commons to support this activity. This article draws from the literature and best practices to explore this new direction. Academic libraries have focused on student learning and the teaching of skills and strategies that develop information literacy competency. Although there is an assumption that learning commons facilitate student learning, there is a need to more closely connect this new environment with information literacy and pedagogy and to demonstrate its merits in enhancing learning. A basic premise is that each learning commons that is …

Helping College Students Climb Onto The Lifelong Learning Scaffold And Grapple With Real Life Skills, Debbie Morrow

Debbie Morrow

College students today must “learn how to learn” – the content of their college courses will only scratch the surface of what they’ll need to know in the years following graduation, and the ocean of information is wide and deep. Teaching of information literacy skills is ideally closely tied to disciplinary and professional standards, curricular goals, course objectives, and assignment requirements. And ideally librarians can be partners with disciplinary faculty in strategically introducing IL skills into key courses and assignments at selected points in a curriculum. This session will explore a particularly fortuitous convergence of needs and opportunities leading to …

Supplementing A Librarian's Information Literacy Toolkit With Textbooks: A Scan Of Basic Communication Course Texts, Melissa Kozel-Gain, Rick A. Stoddart

Rick A Stoddart

This inquiry subjectively examines selected basic communication textbooks for information literacy concepts from the communication discipline point of view. Librarians can build on these concepts in library skills instruction sessions for first-year communication students. This analysis reveals that communication textbook authors are addressing information literacy concepts and standards with content, exercises, examples, and, most importantly, context; and the authors are often utilizing their own discipline-specific terminology to do so. Because finding, using, and evaluating information is a cornerstone of communication education and because the most successful information literacy efforts result from learning its tenets in a variety of contexts, librarians …

Take A Deep Breath: On Not Losing The Turtle In The Technology, Marilyn R. Pukkila

Marilyn R. Pukkila

Understanding media messages and selecting worthwhile sources of information require the ability to analyze and deconstruct messages.