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LOEX 2006 PresentationsMoving Targets: Understanding Our Changing LandscapesChanging Needs of Our Users | Working with New Technologies & Environments | Making Assessment Useful | Coping with Ethical Issues | Keeping Up with Change Changing Needs of Our Users: Research & its Impact on Information Literacy(Alphabetically by title)Dancing with Problem-Based Learning: The Perfect Partner
Problem-based learning (PBL) is a pedagogy that requires critical thinking, problem solving, and information literacy skills. In short, PBL is a perfect partner for library instruction. But what is the best way to coordinate your efforts with those of faculty so that students get the maximum learning benefit? Look for the commonalities – the basic dance steps that everyone can follow. Both PBL and information literacy share in common the five objectives from the ACRL Information Literacy Standards. These objectives and their specific outcomes point to what students should be able to do: determine the kind and quantity of information needed (what do you know v. what you’d like to find out), access the necessary information, evaluate information, use information to accomplish a purpose (solve a real world problem), and access and use information ethically and legally. PBL has the potential to increase student retention of subject knowledge and information literacy skills through application by working with faculty on problem creation, determining roles (who leads, who follows), and providing the right level of research support for students. Activities that highlight "good" PBL problems and basic PBL principles that can be incorporated into one-shot instruction sessions will be demonstrated. Attendees will also have the opportunity to work in small groups on a real world problem. Effective Methods for Incorporating Problem-Based Learning into Library Instruction
User-centered instruction that capitalizes on the computer competencies of Generation Y, while engaging them in team-based, active learning activities is the foundation of the Roger Williams University library instruction program. These sessions mirror new and evolving pedagogies designed to minimize the lecture and maximize student involvement in their own learning. Citing examples from classroom experience, two instruction librarians will demonstrate how to create and effectively use problem or case-based classroom activities in required writing and speech classes in a mid-sized liberal arts university. The main points will be:
Finding Your Inner Gamer: Adapting Instruction for Digital Natives
This presentation investigates the rapidly growing appeal of digital gaming among students and what they learn while playing these games. While 65% of college students are gamers, creating digital games for library instruction may not be realistic. Yet by understanding the educational benefits and alluring aspects of video games, librarians can incorporate techniques into instruction that engage students. The presenters will detail the elements that play an important role in player engagement--goals/rules, challenges, control, fantasy—as well as the educational components that can be incorporated into and benefit library instruction. The presenters will also enumerate gamer demographics. One benefit of digital gaming to be explored is parallel processing, which enables gamers to interpret multiple elements at one time. Parallel processing allows them to live at “twitch speed.” Growing up with digital games and the Internet trains gamers to embrace the deluge of unfiltered information and efficiently interpret multidimensional images. This presentation concludes with suggestions for adapting gaming attributes to instruction. For example, most games require players to be a part of a story in the first person position. Use of this narrative stance in the classroom engages students to be an active player rather than a passive observer. By using innovative text, images, and multimedia, stories will help students comprehend the material by showing the connection between ideas and application. Hitting a Moving Target: Curriculum Mapping, Information Literacy & Academe
This session will define curriculum mapping: its history, techniques, and traditional applications. The presenters will share how the University of Tennessee (UT) Libraries uses curriculum mapping as a tool for departmental information literacy integration. UT Libraries is successful in integrating information literacy concepts and activities into many courses, with less success in science courses. Curriculum mapping gives the science librarians a place to start when approaching teaching faculty about library instruction. The "Changing Needs of Our Users" theme is reflected in the ever-changing curriculum that departments offer. Librarians constantly try to keep up with these pedagogical changes. By systematically analyzing the content or focus of the courses being offered, librarians can propose the best timing and placement for information literacy concepts across a course of study. Science courses in particular, with their emphasis on practical, lab-based work, often do not have an intuitive placement for information literacy. Curriculum mapping provides the framework for introducing these opportunities to science faculty in a meaningful way, with the least amount of compromise to the vision of their course. Benefits of curriculum mapping include: keeping services relevant, speaking departmental language, marketing to departments, and creating point-of-need information literacy learning opportunities. Presentation participants will learn about the basics of curriculum mapping, UT’s application of curriculum mapping in a science setting, strategies for dealing with resistant faculty members, and ways to apply these methods at their own institution. Is Google God? How do students look for information today?
Librarians aim to foster an information-literate population. At the same time, we have been grappling with rapidly developing technologies and their impact on how we reach our users. In order to truly reach our audience, we first must know our audience. How does today’s student decide where to look for information, in what format, and through which form of interaction? How do students evaluate the information they find? Gerri Foudy, Travis Johnson, and Neal Kaske, librarians at the University of Maryland, and Dan Wendling, a graduate student in the University’s College of Information Studies Program, set out to learn about students’ information-seeking behaviors from the students themselves. Funded by a research grant from the University of Maryland Libraries, a research study was developed, which used 240+ individual interviews and 12 focus group interviews (with 110 participants in total) to begin answering the following research questions:
Letting Go & Starting Over: Transforming an Information Literacy Tutorial
In 1995, an interactive, multimedia tutorial called CLUE was developed to assist in teaching basic information literacy skills to University of Wisconsin-Madison students enrolled in a general education course that is required for graduation. CLUE has been updated periodically over the years and by 2003, as the result of formal assessment, discussion among instruction librarians, and a review of Web statistics, it became clear that major revisions were needed. The presenters will share how this process of revision became a process of transformation. They will look at the pedagogical, technological, and administrative issues that emerged. They will also explore how the adoption of a new planning process unexpectedly forced us to rethink the objectives and to develop new structures and strategies for CLUE. Content demands resulting from emerging e-resources such as federated searching and Google Scholar led to major changes, not just in content, but in the entire structure of the tutorial. Getting students to “buy in” to the need to expand their information horizons to include resources in addition to Google has been an ongoing challenge. Two modules that address this affective issue head-on were developed. A new generation of tutorial-authoring tools (e.g. Macromedia’s Captivate) gave the librarians innovative design options, but also presented them with new problems. Finally, the assessment process for CLUE will be discussed along with what they learned from students and faculty alike. Lost in Translation? International Students & Non-English Information Literacy
The University of Pittsburgh has a substantial community of international students. The library has long been collaborating with the Office of International Students, which helps international students assimilate to university life, in order to provide them with information literacy training specific to their needs. Looking for innovation in addressing the changing needs of our users, librarians recently offered information literacy sessions in several languages to help alleviate stress experienced by international students due to their new environment and language skills so they can focus on addressing immediate research needs. Student demographics and availability of skilled librarians determine the choice of the target language. Four overall components are included in this service: identifying demographics of enrolled international students in order to select target languages, organizing and coordinating a team of librarians that can teach in these languages, developing supplementary materials in the target language, and assessing the impact of this service on student learning and their overall library experience. Surprisingly, international students continued to attend the non-English sessions along with the English sessions, refuting the notion that non-English sessions are counter productive to their acquiring English. Additionally, this service provided a great opportunity to market the library, specifically the East Asian collection. As a relatively new service, some of these components are still under development. Regardless, the service has been well received by the students and helped us open new doors to possibilities and build a positive relationship between the library and its international student community. Our Transition Mission: Reaching Out to the High School Community
For the past three years, librarians at Kent State University have worked with Ohio library media specialists and teachers to better understand how information literacy is incorporated into the K-12 curriculum. The outreach was undertaken with two objectives: 1) to more effectively work with high school students, and 2) to increase communication with high school educators so they can better prepare their students for college research. The presenters believe that collaborative initiatives launched by our Institute for Library Information Literacy Education (ILILE) and through a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant can serve as both models and resources for the 12-13 transitioning programming efforts of others. One of the projects is a student-focused web site, Transitioning to College: Helping You Succeed, featuring streaming videos, teaching tools, and a glossary of academic terms. ILILE also supported the construction of an instructional classroom designed for visits by high school students who "get their feet wet" through exposure to an academic library. This classroom serves as the centerpiece of Informed Transitions, Kent State University's outreach program to local high schools. TRAILS, a real-time web-based resource for assessing information literacy skills of high school students has also been developed and is currently being piloted. In addition to highlighting these initiatives, this session will engage participants in discussion about their own experiences with high school to college transitions, and will provide them with a checklist of ideas that can be used to lay the foundation for conversations with the K-12 community in their states. What Does First-Person Shooter Have to Do With Library Instruction?
Is your tutorial getting old? Does it really suit an audience of mostly Millennials? Librarians know that Millennials learn, read, and even play differently than librarians do. Librarians at George Washington University’s Gelman Library decided to bridge that gap by venturing beyond traditional point-click-read tutorials and jumping into gaming. As pedagogical techniques have evolved more and more to emphasize critical thinking and collaborative learning, the presenters determined that these valuable learning tools could be integrated into a gaming environment. This entailed reaching beyond the library to collaborate with a computer scientist and a graphic designer, and to consult with their main audience, the University Writing Program, in creating a Massively Multi-Player Online Game (MMOG) for teaching the research process. A lesson learned is that innovation takes time. In the year since the idea for this game took root, the presenters have researched and become versant in gaming principles and technologies. A game scenario and framework has been created from scratch, and, in keeping with the University Writing Program, the Library’s pedagogical goals have been clarified. A myriad of challenges from developing the game, including communicating across disciplines, to negotiating among the limits and promises of new technology, to redefining conceptions of information literacy, and to walking the line between fun and learning have been addressed but are still challenges. The presenters will share the why and how of creating a serious game for Millennials and how three librarians, and one gamer made this a reality. Zeroing in on Moving Targets: Strategies for Reaching Transient Teachers
From community colleges to research universities to private colleges, part-time, graduate student, and adjunct instructors are increasingly the norm. Approximately 50% of all graduate teaching assistants have full teaching responsibility for one or more courses and 40% of faculty appointments are part-time. Among those with the greatest need for library instruction are first-year students, yet these populations that are often transient in nature teach many first-year classes. Reaching these moving targets via traditional means can be difficult, as they may not have campus offices or phones. The University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign conducted a survey of those teaching first-year rhetoric classes to address communicating with this audience and incorporating library instruction into the courses they teach. This group consisted of both graduate teaching assistants and non-tenure-track instructors. The results of this survey provided numerous strategies for reaching this group and expanding the incorporation of library instruction into their courses. This session will emphasize the importance of opening the lines of communication with these groups and share strategies for doing so. The presenters will examine why library instruction is particularly important for these classes and look at some of the reasons there is such disparity in incorporating this instruction. Although responses to the survey provided many ideas and suggestions, the presenters will also examine broader studies and literature in the disciplines. Results of this session will help librarians working with graduate students or part-time faculty—or both—make library instruction a part of these courses. Working with New Technologies & EnvironmentsThe Begetting of Information Literacy Tutorials: Third-Wave Tutorials for the iPod Generation
Connecting with AIM: The Search for a Virtual Reference Niche
Convening an Emerging Technologies Working Group in an Academic Library
Grains of Learning: Learning Objects & Library Instruction
H-ITT Me With Your Best Stuff: Implementing Classroom Response Systems
How They Learn/How You Teach: Building Library Instruction Sessiosn for Multiple Learners
Impacts of Mobile Computing and Communication on Library Instruction
Let the Games Begin! Changing Our Instruction to Reach Millennials
Who Put That Column in the Middle of the Room? Designing Functional, Flexible, & Forgiving Spaces for Library Instruction
Making Assessment UsefulAssessing the Foundation
Assessment: Builds Strong Programs Eight Ways! It's Good for You!
Creating Avenues: Partnerships in a Changing Library Environment
Online Knowledge Surveys as a Means of Library Instruction Assessment
Coping with Ethical IssuesExploring the Librarian's Role in Promoting Academic Integrity on Campus
A Tutorial With a Twist: How Plagiarism Advances Library Instruction
Using Scenarios to Teach Undergraduates About Copyright, Fair Use, & Plagiarism
Keeping Up with ChangeCreativity & Personalization: Freshman Orientation for the Millennial Generation
Myspace & Facebook: Reaching Our Students with Their Technology of Choice
Research on the Road
Staying au courant: Resources for Instruction Librarians
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