Education Commons^™

Creating Community Engagement In An Information-Literacy, Three-Credit Course: An Experiment At Idaho State University, Spencer Jardine

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

At Idaho State University the general education program includes an information literacy objective. Students complete courses that fulfill an information-literacy requirement. The library’s three-credit course has been taught since 2013. This presentation outlines how a community of student engagement has been fostered in this course by the presenter. The presentation will include ideas on how to create active learning that focuses on information-literacy development and discussion, including formative assessment, classroom assessment techniques, and effective communication with students.

Specifically, this presentation will report on the efforts to engage students with knowledge surveys, Quizizz/Kahoot! quizzes, breakout room discussions, and interrupted lectures in …

Navigating The Online Tutorial Frontier: From Design To Deployment & Beyond, Samantha Harlow, Rachel Olsen, Natalie Haber, Renae Watson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

As we all have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, online teaching is a vital part of creating an open future of learning environments in higher education. Asynchronous online information literacy tutorials can engage and support online and face-to-face library users, and the planning and design process can take many forms. Librarians do not have to be instructional designers, have funding, or be accessibility experts to create engaging, online research tutorials. In this session, a panel of academic and online learning librarians from across the country will discuss creating tutorials with a variety of tools, budgets, and timelines. H5P, LibWizard, Articulate, …

Getting Active During Covid-19: Incorporating Experiential Learning In Online Instruction, John Siegel

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Like other academic libraries, librarians at a regional comprehensive university had to switch from in-person to online synchronous information literacy sessions due to COVID-19. The Coordinator of Information Literacy has served as psychology librarian for over two years and worked with faculty to incorporate library instruction in all sections of the required research methods and senior seminar courses. Active learning was a central component of these in-person sessions, which included database searching and an exercise for students to understand the difference between primary/empirical and secondary/review literature. He quickly discovered that the small group activities did not readily lend themselves to …

Fighting Fake News And Biases With Cognitive Psychology, Marlee Givens, Seth Porter, Karen Viars, Liz Holdsworth

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Fake news, faulty data, and questionable research outputs: how do we find the truth when so much information is uncertain? Part of this problem is cognitive biases in our decision-making process. The mind will create a durable narrative around knowns and ignore unknowns. Scholar Daniel Kahneman (2012) refers to this phenomenon as, "What you see is all there is" or WYSIATI. Another common heuristic, the "availability cascade," causes the mind to prefer immediate examples that come to mind over more reliable information that is less easily recalled. These biases limit the accuracy of the information that people understand, as well …

Using Active Learning Strategies In Calculus To Improve Student Learning And Influence Mathematics Department Cultural Change, Melissa A. Dagley, Michele Gill, Erin Saitta, Brian Moore, Jacquelyn Chini, Xin Li

Proceedings of the Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching and Learning Conference (2017-2019)

An interdisciplinary team of physics, education, math and chemistry faculty developed MATH-GAINS (Growing as Adaptive INstructors) creating an ecosystem where mathematics faculty persistently and sustainably apply active learning strategies in their teaching of calculus courses. As a result of implementation, MATH-GAI NS proposed to positively affect the wide-spread adaptation of active learning strategies by department faculty as well as student learning, retention and graduation of over 900 students annually. The objective of this paper is to provide details on how the project was conceived and implemented; instruments, research methodologies and active learning strategies used; and examples of faculty projects and …

Developing Blended Learning In Library Instruction To Cultivate Research And Critical Thinking Skills In The Undergraduate Student Population, Bernadette López-Fitzsimmons

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

The ever-evolving digital resources in multiple types and formats have introduced numerous opportunities for enhanced teaching-and-learning environments focused on student–driven activities. Many of these strategies have already been implemented at educational institutions throughout the world.

This presentation will demonstrate how blended learning pedagogies in a library’s one-shot and for-credit courses cultivate research and critical thinking skills. The presenter will discuss how to customize library instruction for diverse student populations who have a complex history of multiple learning styles and varying literacy levels.

The presenter will describe several strategies that activate prior knowledge so that building new knowledge is seamlessly organic. …

The Information Literacy “Flipped Classroom” – A Lesson Planning Lab, Madeline Cohen, Alison Lehner-Quam, Robin Wright

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

This workshop will introduce participants to the “flipped classroom” and provide them with hands-on experience planning a library session that uses this new approach. In the flipped classroom, lectures are replaced with pre-class assignments, usually in the form of videos or online tutorials. Class time can then be used for active learning exercises that deepen students’ knowledge of the material.

Participants will be asked to complete a pre-assignment, which can be finished just prior to the session. Workshop leaders will begin by reviewing the flipped classroom and describing the flipped lessons they have used at their academic library (15 minutes). …

Clay Modeling Of The Musculoskeletal System: Does Active Learning Increase Retention And Comprehension, Kelly Massey

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

The focus of a Structural Kinesiology course is a detailed study into the musculoskeletal system and joint action. The course contains a lot of memorization: skeletal muscle origin, insertions, innervations and muscle/joint actions but there is also an applied component for the content. Group study has been incorporated into the course to increase knowledge retention and comprehension however group interaction has been seen to be minimal. Two studies have looked at group construction of skeletal muscle models using clay during class time in assisting with the active learning of muscle origin, insertion and actions (Cruz-Espaillat et al., 2010 & Waters …

Assessing The Effects Of A Teaching Course On Biology Graduate Student Teaching Assistants, Caralyn B. Zehnder

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Research was conducted to measure changes in knowledge and perceptions of teaching and learning by biology graduate students enrolled in a Teaching Techniques course at Georgia College. Results show that graduate students exhibited gains in their knowledge of assessment and active learning pedagogies and saw some changes in how they viewed the role of the teacher in the classroom. This research demonstrates that a semester-long teaching course affects graduate students learning and attitudes toward teaching.

Complex Adaptive Systems And Quantitative Reasoning In An Interdisciplinary Stem Mathematics Classroom, Robert L. Mayes, Kania Greer

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

In this presentation we will share outcomes from the Real STEM project, which provides professional development for rural teachers in the Georgia Coastal Plains supporting implementation of interdisciplinary STEM courses as well as STEM modules in mathematics and science courses. Real STEM includes a number of innovative student-active strategies for teaching including: Understanding by Design (UbD) approaches to teaching for understanding, problem-based learning (PBL), place-based education (PBE), complex adaptive systems (CAS) thinking, and quantitative reasoning (QR). QR is the mathematical underpinning of the projects. The projects are ongoing so we will report our results on impact on teacher practice and …

The Power Of Animations In Stem Courses, Adrian Heinz, Xin Xu

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

We demonstrate educational web-based animations to facilitate teaching and learning in STEM courses. These animations were developed by IT students who closely worked with the researchers and faculty. The animations are later used in the classroom to explain specific concepts to students of STEM disciplines such as chemistry, biology and mathematics. The interactive nature of the animations allows students to become active participants of the learning process. In order to measure their value as a teaching and learning tool, pre and post survey data was collected and analyzed.

The Banyan Tree [Volume 7, Number 2], Alan Altany

Banyan Tree (2006-2013)

No abstract provided.

Redesigning And Undergraduate Engineering Course, Elise Barrella

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

The presentation will consist of two parts: (1) description of the introductory engineering course and the experience of using a backwards design approach to create a more learner-centered and active course and (2) group discussion of simple, successful techniques for creating a more learner-centered course. The course was redesigned as part of a preparatory teaching program for graduate students.

A Medley Of Successful Active-Learning Methods, Sarah Formica

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This workshop will present a medley of active-learning methods that have been implemented successfully in both introductory and upper-level physics courses. The participants will engage in methods that include Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT), clicker questions, whiteboard activities, and virtual experiments. The workshop will be designed very much like a class that employs these methods, with a pre-workshop online assignment that is due “Just in Time” before the workshop, and whiteboard activities and clicker questions associated with the active-learning methods. The participants will work in teams to develop some JiTT assignments, clicker questions, and whiteboard activities that they could use in their …

Methodology And/Or Technology: Making Difference In Improving Students' Problem Solving Skills, Zdeslav Hrepic, Katherine Lodder, Kimberly Shaw

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Wirelessly networked, in-class computing opens a wide array of possibilities for active instructional methodologies (Hrepic, Rebello, & Zollman, 2009). Earlier studies showed a substantial potential that the pen input computers combined with interactive software like DyKnow (www.dyknow.com) may have in facilitating students’ problem solving ability. The session has two goals. The first one is to demonstrate the instructor-student classroom interaction dynamics enabled or facilitated by DyKnow software and pen-input computers. The second one is to present selected research findings associated with student learning while using this technology. The most recent of our studies was to isolate the effect of the …

A Medley Of Successful Active-Learning Methods, Sarah Formica

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This workshop will present a medley of active-learning methods that have been implemented successfully in physics courses. The participants will engage in methods that include Just-in-Time Teaching, clicker questions, whiteboard activities, and virtual experiments. The workshop goal is to show how these active-learning methods can be applied in a STEM classroom to increase students’ conceptual understanding and problem solving skills.

The Banyan Tree [Volume 6, Number 1], Center For Teaching, Learning & Scholarship

Banyan Tree (2006-2013)

No abstract provided.

The Clicker Project: Pros And Cons Of Active Learning Techniques In The Library Classroom, Melissa Dennis

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

See presentation description.