Strategies for Partnering with Faculty
to Teach Information Literacy

At the University of Maryland, we conduct basic information literacy instruction each year to about 8600 undergraduates enrolled in core courses such as freshman writing, plant biology, engineering design, first-year honors and colloquia, UNIV 100: The Student in the University, and professional writing. These seven courses each have many sections. Last year we taught 434 library classes for these core courses.

The key to success for such a large and complex endeavor has been for instruction librarians to adapt to new forms of collaboration with "faculty" who actually are a variety of types of instructors: full-time faculty, part-time adjunct faculty, graduate teaching assistants, undergraduate section leaders,and university staff. In addition, these courses with hundreds or thousands of students usually have a program director, with whom we must also collaborate. An essential element of our instruction has been true partnering with the faculty, including participating in curriculum design, mentoring and training the faculty and teaching assistants, getting involved with undergraduate activities outside the library environment, studying undergraduate reflective journal entries and evaluation forms, and other strategies.

In our presentation, we will describe the challenges we faced and the tactics and roles we developed for effective partnering with all the different types of faculty and program directors. These roles require skills that are not necessarily new, but which may be underdeveloped in instruction librarians: persuasiveness, flexibility, assertiveness, initiative, tenacity/perseverance, diplomacy, and strong rapport with undergraduates. We will offer strategies for improving librarians skills in these areas.

For more information, contact the presenters at:
libues@mail.umd.umd

PowerPoint Presentation:
Strategies for Partnering with Faculty to Teach Information Literacy
(11 slides)

Documents and Web sites featured in this presentation:

Presentation handout (2 page Word document)
• Facilitating Faculty-Librarian Communication (for the Professional Writing Program)
• Teaching with Technology Conference (at the University of Maryland)
• Creating Effective Library Assignments (for Faculty)
• Library Day (a library web page for ENGL 101: Freshman Writing Program)
• Pre-test for ENGL 101 (Freshman Writing Program)
• Post-test for ENGL 101 (Freshman Writing Program)
• Pre-Assessment Survey Sample taken from KNES 497
• Teacher Assessment Survey
• Best Practices in Library Instruction
• Recording daily Library Instructions Statistics (form)
• End-of-Semester Assessment
• Lilly Fellowship Application
• 1st Year Book (for all incoming Freshman in HONR 100, UNIV 100)
• Diamondback (UM campus) Newspaper
• University of Maryland Senate
• College Park Scholars

Presentation Photo Gallery:

Photo 1    Photo 2    Photo 3    Photo 4   
Photo 5    Photo 6    Photo 7    Photo 8   

Proceedings:
Strategies for Partnering with Faculty to Teach Information Literacy
(10 page document)

return to top