Information Literacy Commons^™

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Hero's Journey And The Research Process, Mariana Regalado, Helen Georgas, Matthew J. Burgess

Publications and Research

In Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the hero of the story embarks on an adventure and returns transformed, empowered, and enlightened. Two academic librarians and the research process itself were incorporated into the curriculum of an undergraduate composition course that was structured around the research and writing process as a hero’s journey. The experience, which was student/hero-centered, self-directed, self-defined, investigative, and exploratory, was transformative for the students and the librarians as well.

The Absence Of Public Libraries In Imperial China: An Alternative Interpretation Of Chinese Writing, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

The purpose of this article is to explore Chinese writing and its connection with libraries in Imperial China. From the perspective of analyzing Chinese writing and its cultural, social and political impact, this article attempts to deliver a tentative and speculative exploration concerning why public libraries did not automatically emerge from Chinese civilization. This article discusses how Chinese writing, characterized by the art form Calligraphy, was intimately associated with Chinese classical texts, knowledge classification, bibliographers and imperial libraries, and eventually with an elite culture empowered by the socio-political repertoire of scholar-officials. It particularly focuses on the discussion of how “public” …

Cooking On High With Early College & Dual-Enrollment Programs, Jolene Cole

Library Faculty Scholarship

A chapter from: The First-Year Experience Cookbook. The First-Year Experience Cookbook provides librarians with a series of innovative approaches to teaching and assessing information literacy skills during a student's first year. Featuring four chapters—Library Orientation, Library Instruction, Programs, and Assessment—and more than 60 practical, easy-to-implement recipes, this book compiles lessons and techniques for you to adapt, repurpose, and implement in your libraries.

Hidden Figures Class Museum Project, Amanda Benigni, Anna Smith

Museum Assignments

In the secondary English/Language Arts classroom, inquiry-based learning is most often adopted as a method for teaching literary analysis. But teachers too often overlook the fact that literary analysis is not the only means of facilitating inquiry-based learning. Research, particularly archival research, can provide students with yet another opportunity for inquiry and reflective thinking.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly (both the mass-market paperback and the Young Reader's Edition), is a text that is especially well-suited to teaching archival research skills to young learners, as it is itself the product of a rigorous, thoughtful, and purposeful research project conducted by …

From Prep To Delivery: Peer Instruction For First-Year Business Students, Teresa Williams

Scholarship and Professional Work

First-year students face many challenges in adjusting to university life, including making the most of the university library. Librarians are constantly addressing student misconceptions about libraries and locating information, and have been working hard to reach first-year students and create high-impact practices in student retention.

The First-Year Experience Cookbook provides librarians with a series of innovative approaches to teaching and assessing information literacy skills during a student’s first year. Featuring four chapters—Library Orientation, Library Instruction, Programs, and Assessment—and more than 60 practical, easy-to-implement recipes, this book compiles lessons and techniques for you to adapt, repurpose, and implement in your libraries. …

Academic Librarians’ Attitudes About Civic-Mindedness And Service Learning, Maureen Barry, Laura A. Lowe, Sarah E. Twill

University Libraries' Staff Publications

Although discourse on the civic engagement of libraries as institutions is plentiful, there has been little discussion of librarians as individuals. Librarianship is more than being a trustee of information. It includes responsibility for the common good. Libraries provide tools for education on social and political issues, but they can also collaborate in activities that improve well-being in their communities. Participating in service learning is one way that librarians on academic campuses can get involved. This study used a standardized scale to measure civic-mindedness among academic librarians and examine characteristics and activities, including service learning, related to variation in its …

Asking Questions In The Classroom: An Exploration Of Tools And Techniques Used In The Library Instruction Classroom, Sara Maurice Whitver, Leo S. Lo

Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

This study explores the tools and techniques used within the library instruction classroom to facilitate a conversation about teaching practices. Researchers focused on the questioning methods employed by librarians, specifically the number of questions asked by librarians and students. This study was comprised of classroom observations of a team of librarians working towards standardized learning outcomes; members of the team had the freedom to independently develop lesson plans and choose teaching approaches for each class. Observations measured the frequency of questions asked of and answered by librarians and students in library instruction sessions via oral discussion, worksheets, and polling. Researchers …

Book Review: Reading, Research, And Writing: Teaching Information Literacy With Process-Based Research Assignments, Ann Agee

Faculty and Staff Publications

Research papers are ubiquitous in college, as common for freshmen as they are for seniors. To support these assignments, librarians typically have been limited to “go-here-click-that” one-shot sessions. Frequently, the results are faculty who are unhappy with the quality of student papers and librarians who are frustrated that they cannot contribute more to student learning and success. Reading, Research, and Writing takes scholarship from psychology, education, library science, and rhetoric and communication and, in six concise chapters, demonstrates that focusing on the messy process of research, rather than its product, leads to better learning outcomes. To keep the spotlight firmly …

Taste Testing For Two: Using Formative And Summative Assessment, Elisa Acosta, Katherine Donaldson

Librarian Publications & Presentations

This activity was created to introduce first-year students to library resources they can use for their annotated bibliography assignment. In pairs, students are assigned a task card that requires them to find an information source. After finding a source meeting the criteria of their task card, the student teams input their answers into a Google Form. Formative assessment takes place during class, allowing the librarian to modify instruction on-the-spot based on the responses from the form.Summative assessment takes place at the end of the semester, when a rubric is applied to a sample of student responses from the activity. This …

Instructional Design: Toolkits For Paraprofessional Staff And Graduate Assistants, Lora Del Rio

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

After attending the 2012 ACRL Immersion Teacher Track Program in Burlington, Vermont, I had a greater understanding of how and why careful planning relates directly to student engagement and learning. Perhaps not quite as obvious is how instructional design (ID) corresponds to the confidence of an instructor. In order to meet the demands of our library instruction program, we rely on graduate teaching assistants and library paraprofessionals to teach the one-shot sessions requested by teaching faculty. However, these employees do not always come with teaching experience and they come from outside the library science discipline, so information literacy is many …

Developing Sustainable Partnerships To Advance Digital Equity, Jill Castek, Cindy Gibbon, Gloria Jacobs

Presentations and Publications

In the early 2000s, inequities surrounding affordable Internet access brought the digital divide into public consciousness. Over time, practitioners and researchers working to address this divide have revealed a persistent, wider gap that includes inequities in social support networks (DiMaggio & Hargittai, 2001). Jenkins et al. (2006) identified a participation gap in using and interacting with digital tools. Evolving conversations have produced a broader conceptualization of the issues through the lens of digital inclusion and digital equity (Siefer, 2016). Those on the wrong side of the digital divide need digital literacy training, access to technical support, and the applications and …

Rubrics As A Method For Assessing & Improving Library Instruction, Megan Hodge, Laura W. Gariepy, Jenny Stout

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Taken together, our team of instruction librarians provides course-integrated instruction for 70-80 sections of a sophomore-level research and writing course each semester. In order for the department to assess our instruction of this course consistently across librarians without detracting valuable time from the sessions themselves, an authentic learning exercise and rubric for scoring that exercise were developed and an IRB-approved study of the assessment results undertaken.

Using Phenomenography To Bridge The Gap Between Research And Practice: A Meta-Analysis Of Three Phenomenographic Studies, Nicole Johnston, A.M. Salaz

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Introduction

The findings of three recent phenomenographic studies conducted by a practitioner-researcher team (the information literacy experiences of English as a foreign language (EFL) students, how international branch campus faculty members experience the academic library and the open access experiences of faculty members in online education) are analysed to discover what practical implications were revealed from the categories of description that can be used in practice.

Method

Meta-analysis of the categories of description of three phenomenographic studies was conducted.

Analysis

Categories of description were analysed iteratively in order to identify which library services and processes could be informed by the …

Information Literacy And Institutional Effectiveness: A Longitudinal Analysis Of Performance Indicators Of Student Success, Miriam Laskin, Lucinda Zoe

Publications and Research

This article reports on an analysis of data that tracks close to 2000 students in an urban public community college over a five year period to gather baseline data on the potential impact of information literacy instruction on standard indicators of student success—retention, graduation rates, pass rates on required proficiency exams in math, reading, and writing, GPA and credits earned. The data show a statistically significant trend that favors the students who have taken information literacy workshops, showing a higher rate of success in every category than students who did not participate in our information literacy program.

La Prochaine Génération D’Employés : Une Étude Des Facteurs Influant La Décision Des Étudiants De Sexe Masculin De 18 À 30 Ans De Devenir Bibliothécaires Professionnels Aux États-Unis, Heidi Blackburn

Criss Library Faculty Publications

Une étude de cas fondée sur les données se penche sur les questions suivantes : 1) quels sont les facteurs sociaux, culturels, économiques et politiques qui motivent les hommes (18-30 ans) à devenir bibliothécaires professionnels aux États-Unis ; 2) dans quelle mesure la technologie a-t-elle motivé les hommes (18-30 ans) à devenir bibliothécaires professionnels et ; 3) quels sont les stéréotypes professionnels auxquels ils sont confrontés.

The Next Generation of Employees A Study on the Factors Influencing Male Students Ages 18-30 to Become Professional Librarians in the United States A case study addresses the questions 1) what social, cultural, economic, …

#Candy: Creating Categories To Introduce Search Strategies, Kayla Birt Flegal

Library Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Teaching Systematic Searching Methods To Public Health Graduate Students: Repeated Library Instruction Sessions Correlate With Better Assignment Scores, John Pell

Publications and Research

Objective – The objective of this study was to devise an assessment plan to determine if repeat attendance at two library instruction sessions is statistically associated with overall assignment scores or specific assignment qualities.

Methods – The author used SPSS to calculate correlations between attendance and assignment scores and cross tabulations between attendance and assignment item analysis scores.

Results – Repeat attendance at two library instruction sessions was statistically associated with higher overall assignment scores and higher scores on specific assignment sections. The effect is statistically significant.

Conclusion – Students who attended two library instruction sessions applied skills and concepts …

Patents Information Literacy Engineering Technology Session Materials, Margaret Phillips, Dave Zwicky

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

This file contains the following materials developed to support a patents information literacy session in the mechanical engineering technology undergraduate curricula: pre-class exercise, in-class exercise, lesson plan, and pre/post session assessments.

Integrating Data Information Literacy Into A Service- Learning Engineering Design Course, Margaret Phillips, Mohammad Jahanshahi

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Over the past several years increasing emphasis has been placed on the development of data information literacy (DIL) skills for engineering researchers to comply with funding requirements and to facilitate data sharing, reuse, and preservation. These efforts have been largely aimed at faculty members and graduate students, and to some extent undergraduate students in preparation for their roles as future researchers. However, little attention has been directed at developing DIL skills in undergraduate engineering students engaged in non-research activities, such as service-learning design projects that integrate instruction and community service. This work-in-progress paper reports on using service-learning pedagogy to integrate …

Beyond The One-Shot: Intensive Workshops As A Platform For Engaging The Library In Digital Humanities., Nicole Kong, Susan Powell

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This article explores how librarian participation as instructors in week-long intensive classes—a common workshop format in Digital Humanities (DH)—can advance a variety of library objectives, while also uniquely supporting the DH community. Intensive workshops fall between the one-shot session and credit course formats more commonly found in library instruction. Drawing on case studies from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) instruction at DH institutes at the University of California Berkeley and Purdue University, the authors explore the origins of librarian involvement, course topics, pedagogy, and library services. Based on their instruction experiences in the DH summer institutes and student surveys, the authors …