Program - Session Descriptions
Session 1:
Using Institutional Assessment to Track Information Literacy Competencies: From the First Year Through Writing Intensive
Kari Weaver, Lynne Rhodes – University of South Carolina-Aiken
High impact educational practices have the potential to substantially impact the student experience, but how do we know if students are meeting the intended learning outcomes? This issue becomes particularly salient when discussing information literacy as it is everywhere and nowhere – both throughout the curriculum and without a singular academic home. Learn how one institution has taken cross campus portfolio assessments used for other purposes to measure the impact of information literacy competencies throughout a student’s education by assessing work produced in first year seminars, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, and collaborative assignments and projects. Sample rubrics used to assess the student work, findings, and future directions for the assessment will be discussed.
Mining the Archives, Exhibiting the Past: Helping Students Engage and Display Primary Sources
Jonathan Helmke, Becky Canovan, Brian Hallstoos – University of Dubuque
How do you get students interested in using primary sources from your institution’s archives, especially in a 1st or 2nd year course? What are some creative ways to expose students to these important documents with a limited staff? This presentation will focus on the collaboration between the College Archivist, the history liaison librarian, and a professor at the University of Dubuque and how they creatively integrated the use of primary sources from the archives in a history class. In this class, the students design and install an exhibit that explores a topic with related items in the archives. The items include photographs, memorabilia, and text documents (yearbooks, newspapers, memos, etc.) The library staff and the faculty member conducted four sessions with the class. The first session introduced students to the idea of primary sources and using them to tell a story. The second session included a tour of the archives and guidance on using primary and secondary sources and how to create an effective exhibit. During the third session students worked with the primary and secondary resources to identify relevant information for the exhibit. The library worked with the students to install the exhibit during the final session. During this presentation, student, librarian, and faculty feedback will be shared concerning the design and implementation process and the exhibit itself.
Applying the Rubric: Demonstrate Student Success and Increase Campus Engagement with Authentic Assessment
Jennifer Sams, Margaret Phillips – Michigan Technological University
During this session participants will learn about the process librarians and instructors went through to assess information literacy in a first-year, writing-intensive course. In 2011, Michigan Technological University adopted information literacy as a university-wide undergraduate student learning goal. As a result, Instruction & Learning librarians at Tech have been collaborating closely with the instructors of a newly redesigned Composition course in order to meaningfully integrate information literacy components into the class. The result has been a flipped classroom approach, with students first completing online modules teaching basic information literacy skills, followed by an in-class, problem-based learning exercise focused on evaluating resources, accompanied by an integrated course assignment. After piloting these new components during the spring semester of 2013, librarians and instructors applied a modified version of the LEAP Information Literacy Value rubric to students’ final digital writing portfolios in order to assess the impact of the integrated information literacy elements on student success. This session will explore this process of authentic rubric assessment from beginning to its current state and participants will be able to adapt lessons learned for use at their own institutions. Some key aspects that will be covered include: how the LEAP rubric was modified to fit the needs of both a writing-intensive course and a largely STEM focused institution; strategies used to engage instructors in the norming and assessment process; and how results from this assessment process are planned to be used to demonstrate the value of information literacy integration and its impact on student success across campus. Learning Outcomes: 1. Participants will be able to adapt a rubric and assessment process in a writing-intensive course in order to create an assessment tool that addresses the unique needs of their institution. 2. Participants will leave with strategies for using the information literacy assessment process as a tool to create new opportunities for information literacy outreach across campus and increase faculty engagement in order to better support student success.
Reflective Learning in Undergraduate Information Literacy Classes
Amanda Graves, Paige Knotts, Katherine Adams, Carl Hess, Kristen Schuster – University of Missouri Columbia
This discussion will address the restructuring of the current undergraduate information literacy course at the University of Missouri. In its existing form, the course provides students with the opportunity to engage with and evaluate information in a variety of contexts related to an academic setting. To refine the curriculum’s focus on student learning outcomes, we are incorporating a formalized reflective learning component. Reflective learning enhances students’ information seeking, management, and evaluation skills, as well as contributing to overall critical thinking skills. In addition to discussing effective development and implementation, we will explore literature which supports these curriculum planning decisions. Using examples from the proposed course changes we will address the following learning outcomes: Demonstrate how to develop and implement curriculum and learning tools for reflective learning in an information literacy course. Demonstrate how reflective learning helps students cope with information anxiety in academic library settings. Understand how encouraging reflective learning promotes responsible research and overall academic success.
Information Literacy and the Administration Gap (ROUNDTABLE)
Amanda Folk – University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
In the article “Why Information Literacy is Invisible,” William Badke identifies “the university administration gap” as a barrier to wider institutional adoption of information literacy initiatives. Badke believes that information literacy is not a priority for most administrators, because it is an “alien” concept. Aligning information literacy initiatives with the priorities of the campus administration can help librarians to be more successful and overcome this gap. The roundtable discussion leader will provide a brief example of how she was able to bridge the administration gap in order to implement a research award for undergraduate students enrolled in a common intellectual experience course. Using the High-Impact Educational Practices as a framework, roundtable participants will individually and collectively brainstorm strategies to make the adoption of information literacy initiatives appealing to campus administration, as well as identifying potential partners.
Session 2:
Moving Beyond the Research Paper: Guided Inquiry and Information Literacy Through Project-based Learning
Rhonda Huisman – Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
This session will define Project-Based Learning (PBL), including the methodology, structure, resources, and ideas for collaboration between teachers, faculty and librarians. Project-Based Learning provides for unique, effective, and authentic classroom experience for students at all levels (K-12 and higher education). There is a strong research component in PBL units, which gives librarians the opportunity to engage in deeper and interconnected andragogy, including the integration of information literacy skills and standards. The curricular restructuring and adaptation of this type of instructional process involves extensive planning, collaboration, and training, but students report a higher level of understanding, deeper acquisition of knowledge, and personal investment when involved in PBL. “When PBL was properly implemented, it often produced dramatic achievement gains and deep conceptual understanding” (Summers & Dickinson, 2012. p.84). Librarians are integral in providing the resources and supporting the research needs of both students and teachers when developing a PBL unit that is challenging and engaging for the students, emphasizing critical thinking, information literacy skills, and reflection, but not so challenging that the learning process is halted or derailed by group dynamics, planning, or assessment measures (Wurdinger, Harr, Hugg, & Bezon, 2007). This session will describe the presenter's experience in collaborating with K-12 schools in creating a librarian track for the local PBL institute, and will offer tips on collaborating with K-12 and academic faculty to incorporate project-based learning/inquiry strategies and learning experiences, as well as "lessons learned" in the planning and implementation stages.
You’ve Got to Live and Learn: Libraries, Learning Communities, and High-impact Practices
Jenny Dale – University of North Carolina at Greensboro
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) drew heavily from the high-impact practices described in the AAC&U’s LEAP report when developing and implementing its current strategic plan. The UNCG University Libraries were involved in this implementation process, and have collaborated closely with other Academic and Student Affairs divisions to contribute to a number of strategic initiatives that align closely with high-impact educational practices. This interactive presentation will focus on the Libraries’ work with campus learning communities throughout the planning, implementation, and evaluation stages. The University’s strategic plan calls for all first-time first-year students to be engaged in learning or living-learning communities by 2014. This presentation will outline the Libraries’ involvement from the beginning of the current learning communities initiative and will provide several case studies that serve as models of our collaboration with these communities. Our engagement ranges from participation in co-curricular events to providing information literacy sessions for learning community courses to twice-weekly office hours in one of our most established communities. In all of our efforts, information literacy is a focus, and some of our strongest relationships with learning communities are built on providing information literacy support, both in the classroom and beyond. Participants will leave this session with concrete ideas for engaging with learning communities and other campus initiatives that blend the academic with the co-curricular. The success of learning communities on our campus generally, and of the Libraries’ involvement more specifically, will also be discussed.
Chaos, Madness and 1st-years Run Amuck: The Library Scavenger Hunt and Why We’d Do It Again in a Heartbeat
Becky Canovan, Katelyn Wolff – University of Dubuque
New student orientation can be overwhelming for both staff and students. The sheer number of students involved and the vast amount of information they must try to remember can be daunting. However, learning about a campus library’s space and services during orientation will impact students throughout their college career. Session attendees will learn how a librarian and a soon-to-be librarian at the University of Dubuque’s Charles C. Myers Library, used a memorable, high-energy activity to engage over 400 students to teach library basics. Working in groups, first-year students collaborated and interpreted situational clues to complete a scavenger hunt throughout the library, introducing them to library staff as well as the physical space. The end result was a lot of running, laughing, headaches, chaos, and most importantly learning. The large scale program, spanning 27 sessions over three days, required assistance from the library staff to man the course. However, the student-focused design allowed the librarians to draw on the library experience of student mentors who ultimately introduced new students to the library, leaving the instruction team to explain the activity and wrap up each session. The knowledge gained and skills introduced to students were then reinforced a few weeks later in a follow up session using a homegrown library infomercial and information literacy assessment. The presenters will explain the planning process and execution, why they chose a common student-driven learning experience, and the ways it has impacted students. The session will also include suggestions on how attendees can implement the activity themselves and why the presenters would do it all over again.
A Transferable Model for Information Literacy Integration and Assessment in Large Undergraduate Programs
Brian Winterman, Sarah Keesom, Jakki Petzold – Indiana University
Indiana University Libraries received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Teagle Foundation to develop and implement a model for information literacy integration and assessment in the Biology undergraduate program. The primary goals are to develop learning outcomes, model exercises, and assessment tools to teach and assess information literacy sequentially throughout the program. The funding helped establish a team of biology graduate students to carry out the work of development and implementation. This team, called SEA Scholars (Science Education Assessment Scholars), is already being trained in science pedagogy, information literacy, and student learning assessment, and they will be working with courses in the program starting in the fall of 2013. SEA Scholars will gather and analyze data, document the implementation process, and share this model of integration and assessment with other STEM programs and beyond. By starting with information literacy standards, this model should be adaptable to other undergraduate programs. By employing graduate students as the team of leaders in curricular change, this model should also be sustainable, a major concern to large departments. The presenters, including one librarian and two SEA Scholars, will share details of the project, an overview of the integration and assessment model, and some preliminary findings.
The Library’s Role in First-Year Experiences (ROUNDTABLE)
Jennifer Wright, Amanda Hardin – Western Kentucky University
This roundtable discussion will focus on what librarians can and are doing in first-year experience programs, from library tours to multi-session instruction. Please come ready to talk about what your library is doing, what plans you have for the future, and what else you would like to see done.
Keynote
Dr. Judy Ouimet, Assistant Vice Provost for Curricular Development & Assessment at Indiana University
Judy will engage us in a conversation about campus-level assessment and how it can be enriched by librarians’ work and their partnerships with faculty and campus groups. Her powerpoint slides are available here.
Session 3:
Learning History by Doing History: A Sample Assignment for Incorporating Archival Research into History Coursework
Craig Kinnear, Alison Stankrauff – Indiana University South Bend
University archives offer history instructors the materials and staff to develop high-impact assignments. The co-presenters of this session — Archivist Alison Stankrauff and History Professor Craig Kinnear at Indiana University South Bend—offer a sample assignment that incorporates archival research into history coursework in a simple and manageable way. We arranged for students in H106, an introduction to modern U.S. History, to visit the university Archives and study a topic in local history. Before the semester, we worked together to find three local history topics documented in IUSB’s Archives. For each topic, we selected ten to fifteen representative documents for “mini-collections.” Students used these mini-collections to experience handling real sources in the archives. The assignment exemplifies Professor Kinnear’s primary course goal: to introduce first-year students to history with what historians do, not just the topics historians study. This assignment integrated multiple high-impact practices, helping first-year students practice original research, develop (topic-centered) learning communities, and learn to see writing as a process. Students analyzed sources, crafted a thesis, organized evidence, presented their findings as a historical essay, and incorporated feedback. In this session, we will briefly introduce this “Doing History” assignment, giving special attention to the role of the archive in designing this kind of assignment. We emphasize that this assignment is small and self-contained. As such, any institution could use it, but this assignment is ideal for smaller institutions with limited funding and staffing that hope to increase the library’s – and archives’ - role in undergraduate instruction.
Top Tier: Targeting Specific Courses in a Program for Tiered IL Instruction
Jeff Henry, Ashley Ireland, Rebecca Richardson – Murray State University
This presentation will demonstrate the process of setting up a tiered set of instruction sessions tailored to particular departments that the library or a particular librarian serves. This includes identifying the targeted courses and placing desired learning outcomes/objectives on those classes. The hope is to eliminate as much cross coverage of instruction sessions as possible. This plan allows us to deliver focused instruction sessions to target audiences in a graduated manner, so that students begin learning IL in their first year courses and then with subsequent instruction are fully prepared for research required in their capstone courses. This should theoretically maximize effectiveness and efficiency of instruction sessions provided by the library. In the case of our institution, such a plan would also allow us to add to a larger body of data to be used in evaluating library services, and providing tangible outcomes of library services to the university.
Scaling Up, Not Spreading Thin: Using Hybrid Online/Offline Instruction to Meet Common Intellectual Experience Needs
Ilana Barnes, Mary Dugan, Hal Kirkwood – Purdue University
A major strategic initiative of Purdue University is to meet head-on the critical issues on today's campus. Student learning, retention and completion rates are among the top concerns. To meet these challenges, Purdue is adopting a university-wide core curriculum (a Common Intellectual Experience) including an information literacy requirement. Additionally, to address student success issues Purdue has created "Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation" (IMPACT). IMPACT has been a successful collaborative effort of several Purdue departments. Since its inception, library faculty have taken a leadership role in mentoring the instructors to engage students more fully in their own learning. In the spring 2013 semester, librarians in the Parrish Library for Management and Economics were accepted as participants into the IMPACT program with the challenge of transforming a business information literacy course from a 40-student, computer-lab class into multiple sections of a hybrid/flip, 70 student, non-computer lab setting. As this presentation is before redesign implementation, the focus will be on the redesign process including assessable learning outcomes, integration of online tools and management of a hybrid/flip class. Librarians will describe the key integration of online tools with new methods of teaching. New learning experiences for students help solve scalability issues as well as assess student success. This approach fosters a more learner-centered and technology-enabled approach to information literacy in a discipline.
What We Talk about When We Talk about Retention (ROUNDTABLE)
Jenny Dale – University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Until recently, it was easy enough to think of student retention as an administrative problem. In the past few years, however, it has become increasingly clear that retention is everyone’s problem in higher education institutions. At the University of North Carolina (UNC), a state system of 17 public universities, the funding model has recently undergone a significant change: while it was once based on enrollment change, it is now based on student performance, including success, retention, and persistence to graduation. In light of this change, UNC system schools have put even more emphasis on programs that promote student success, focusing particularly on those high-impact educational practices identified in the AAC&U’s LEAP report. This roundtable discussion will focus on possibilities for library involvement in these initiatives, with a particular interest in how we can measure our success. Can we answer one of the essential questions posed in ACRL’s 2010 Value of Academic Libraries report: “How does the library contribute to student retention and graduation rates?” This roundtable discussion will seek possible answers to this question through conversations about major retention issues, how libraries can be involved in increasing retention, and how we might assess the library’s impact on student retention rates.
Session 4:
Librarians as Consultants: The Convergence of Information Literacy, Data Literacy and Scholarly Communication in Undergraduate Research
Lisa Zilinski, David Scherer, Clarence Maybee – Purdue University
Undergraduate research has been identified as a high impact educational practice by the LEAP Report. At Purdue we support undergraduate research through various library-driven initiatives such as information literacy (IL), data literacy (DL) and scholarly communication (SC). Although these initiatives can be utilized to support undergraduate research individually, librarians are beginning to recognize a need to provide a service model that offers a more complementary/holistic approach that better utilizes the full capability of these initiatives. This was illustrated in the March 2013, ARCL Committee on Research and the Scholarly Environment White Paper, “Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy”. The paper discussed these intersections and the evolving environment in academic libraries, as well as explored the “economics of the distribution of scholarship, digital literacies, and our changing roles.” One theme throughout the white paper was librarians involved as consultants, guiding faculty in engaging undergraduate students in systematic investigation, research, and dissemination. This breakout session will address the concept of librarians as consultants drawing from IL, DL, and SC to support undergraduate research. This panel will address how undergraduate research is currently supported through these initiatives, and propose how a complementary/holistic approach could be developed into a new library-based service model. Given the intersection of these concepts, attendees from diverse backgrounds, expertise, and roles will be given an opportunity to share experiences and ideas surrounding this intersection, and to provide concept proofs of these three core areas as curricular or co-curricular learning. For more information about the ACRL White Paper, please visit http://acrl.ala.org/intersections
All Majors Welcome: Library Internships and Career Development
Heidi Gauder, Katy Kelly, Colleen Hoelscher – University of Dayton
The academic library can play a crucial role in experiential learning, particularly through student internships. This library is one of the larger units on campus to employ student workers and we spend many hours training them to handle questions at service desks, assist with cataloging functions, help digitize materials, and a variety of other tasks. In 2011, we built on that idea of student workers and partnered with the University Honors Program to offer customized experiential learning through paid internships. These internships allowed us to spend additional time with students in preparation for their chosen careers or graduate school, helped facilitate additional research skills for the remaining undergraduate years, and even provided the opportunity for students explore their religion in more meaningful ways. Librarians work one-on-one with students from a variety of disciplines and these experiences are customized to student interests, with the library setting acting as a real world laboratory for skills training within the undergraduates’ disciplines or career interests. At the end of this session, participants will be able to do the following: describe the resources needed in order to build, measure and assess for an effective internship program; and articulate how a library internship program can provide necessary skills for careers outside the library world.
Teaching Information Literacy Skills with the Common Read Experience
Kate Ganski – University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Teaching information literacy skills as part of a “one-shot” library orientation is a daunting task. Incorporating the Common Read Experience into a “one-shot” library session seems virtually impossible. This session reports a case study on teaching information literacy skills with the Common Read Experience as part of summer library orientation sessions at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. The objectives of the project were to introduce incoming, at-risk freshmen to the library and connect our instruction to the Common Read Experience. Applying the pedagogical principles of high expectations, student-centered learning, and peer-to-peer learning, a two session summer orientation was turned into a hands-on library research project exploring topics from the Common Read Experience selection. The outcomes of the orientation sessions were fun and rewarding. Students presented their research at the end of session two; presentations were evaluated using an instructor designed rubric. In this session attendees will learn how we designed the workshops, assessed student learning, and improved the concept based on teacher and student feedback in order to envision incorporating the Common Read Experience into their own curriculum and improve student learning experiences.
Creating and Communicating: Library Involvement in a Student Research Poster Symposium
Susan Anderson, Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne
The Library’s role in the planning and hosting of the 2013 16th annual Student Research and Creative Endeavor Symposium demonstrated the impact of the library in the institution’s educational practices and celebration of student achievement, even outside the classroom. For the first time, librarians were active on the planning committee for the symposium. Along with this change, the Symposium changed format from oral presentations to posters in 2013 and was held in the Learning Commons in the Library for the first time. The poster symposium fulfilled Learning Commons objectives of highlighting student achievement and modeling successful academic behavior as well as fostering collaboration with campus partners. Librarians are frequently involved with students at the beginning stages of research—helping students formulate the right questions, find the best resources and critically evaluate the sources. The symposium was a unique opportunity to work with students on ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards Four and Five, competencies which represent the final stages of the research process. ACRL Standard Four addresses using, organizing and articulating information to support the needs of the intended audience. The information literacy translation of these efforts include critical thinking, literacies variously defined as media literacy, transliteracy, or visual literacy and discussion and translation of results to accommodate the audience level. ACRL Standard Five’s emphasis on understanding of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding information use and access meshes with stages of poster preparation and presentation from IRB approval to citations, bibliographies or permissions for use of images or other copyrighted materials. The inclusion of students’ posters in Opus, the campus open-access repository, was also an opportunity to make students aware of open access repositories and the university’s support of and benefits from the local repository. As a practical matter, the inclusion of student works in Opus also provide permanent links for resumes and school or job applications and highlight the importance of managing and tracking one’s body of scholarly work from the beginning. Based on the very positive reviews, we will grow our work with student participants and faculty on interdisciplinary poster preparation workshops, incorporating poster presentations as a class assignment and creating learning and assessment activities for the audience and participants. Learning objectives: 1. Participants will be able to articulate the connection of activities such as an undergraduate research poster symposium to library and institutional missions as well as AAC&U LEAP and other IL initiatives 2. Participants will be able to identify and share opportunities for campus collaboration on high impact educational practices which involve the library as an institutional academic partner.
Teaching the Discovery Layer: The Impact of OneSearch on Student Success and Information Literacy
Sara Wilhoite-Mathews, Lisa Jarrell, Brenda Yates Habich – Ball State University
Yes, you too can use a discovery tool in one-shot research instruction sessions and workshops. Discovery tools are quickly becoming the academic Google for libraries and have prominently situated themselves into the information literacy process that librarians are expected to teach. Information literacy does positively shape a student’s success and discovery tools can play a role in teaching information literacy skills to students at varying levels. So, what are we supposed to do with these discovery tools? How do librarians include these tools into an already busy instruction session? Would they be better left alone like the random salad fork to only be used on “special” occasions? Three librarians will share their experiences with the recent implementation of Summon, named OneSearch, on their campus. They will include ways they are currently using OneSearch in the required writing courses and how they are intentionally teaching information literacy using the discovery layer. They will include what has worked for them and what hasn’t worked as well. And last, they will share their goals for the future of OneSearch on campus. This session will describe a variety of strategies for integrating discovery tools into information literacy sessions for both undergraduate and graduate students. It will also present strategies for managing or continuing to manage customization and integration of discovery tools.