Interactive SessionsBreak the Ice, Build the Momentum: Successful Strategies for Beginning a Library Instruction Session For information literacy instructors, a common teaching challenge is how to start a class effectively. Without previous exposure to learners, library instructors have little understanding of students' prior knowledge or research needs. At the same time, the reason for a librarian's involvement in a course at all is usually a mystery for students. The benefits of introductory learning activities, such as warm-ups, are pedagogically sound, but library instructors may be reluctant to incorporate these strategies into information literacy instruction due to limitations of time. Yet librarians still strive to design engaging information literacy sessions that result in meaningful and long-lasting learning opportunities. Considering the constraints of time and content-coverage that are inherent to librarian-led information literacy instruction, how can library instructors ensure the relevance of these warm-up activities to information literacy learning outcomes? What are strategies, rooted in educational theory, for successfully engaging students from the beginning of class? To answer these questions, the facilitators gathered data through surveys and focus groups from library instructors throughout the U.S. during the 2009-2010 academic year. This workshop will reveal the findings from that study, as well as address their implications for the practical application of incorporating warm-up activities into information literacy instruction. Attendees will learn new strategies for starting a class successfully and have the opportunity to practice designing their own activities. The facilitators will collect and review the activities in order to construct a set of pedagogically-proven strategies that can be shared amongst the LOEX community. From Pre-Defined Topics to Research Questions: An Inquiry-Based Approach to Knowledge In this interactive presentation, MSU librarians will replicate a library instruction session for first-year students. Audience members will participate in a Cephalonian Method icebreaker activity and use clickers to demonstrate the different ways both techniques can be used in the classroom. Participants will view a short (3-4 min.) video, develop critical questions, and construct keywords to begin finding answers. Instruction librarians will show how the answers are the basis of their thesis statements. Next, audience members will be divided into groups and directed to find information on the Web, the route a first-year student would naturally take. Then, groups will search for background information, scholarly articles, books, viewpoint essays, and general Web resources. A discussion will evolve about the myriad of limitations with using Web resources and the benefits of using parallel library resources such as online specialty encyclopedias, journal indexes, signed viewpoint articles, and the library catalog. Then instruction librarians will fully explore the benefits of using library resources to help students find authoritative, credible, and relevant sources in the academic library. The session ends with discussing what was discovered during the presentation, showing the customized course guide where all the library resources are organized, and giving a final clicker quiz to assess what was learned and what may still be unclear. Take away valuable tips and techniques from this session to use for your own information literacy instruction sessions! Interactive Learning with Clickers Skills/Knowledge: The skills that will be discussed in this presentation are how to use Clicker technology in the classroom. The presenter will give examples of how instructors use Clickers at Hunter College. She will also demonstrate how she successfully used Clickers in her Library 100 one-credit course. She will present research detailing how other colleges have used Clickers in the classroom and the effectiveness of active learning techniques. Then she will give a demonstration using Clickers, which will consist of a mock-class. The participants will be the students in this workshop, and the presenter will teach a session using a pre-test to determine how much information the participants learned from the session. Participant Outcomes: By the end of this session, participants will be able to: Participants: The intended audience for this presentation will be: The Learning Cycle: Why Library Instruction Fails to Stick and What We Can Do About It The Learning Cycle is a method of lesson planning based on sound educational research on how people learn. Central to this method is letting students invent the core concepts themselves - in their own words and through active experience - and then applying library terminology later, once students have made the ideas their own. In this interactive session, attendees will experience a Learning Cycle lesson in action. We will discuss the role of the librarian in meaningful learning experiences that require students to use higher level thinking skills to come up with the things they need to know themselves, empowering them to think for themselves in the future. This session will help every kind of library instructor, from the novice to the expert, develop lesson plans that have lasting effects on student acheivement. Student-centered and student-driven learning is the only way to foster authentic critical thinking and the only way to "make it stick."
Lecturing Isn't Learning: Liven Up Your Library Instruction with Active Learning Research suggests that lectures and inactive presentations alone are ineffective teaching strategies. Reportedly, transfer of learning is most effective when multiple learning styles are incorporated, especially if the topic is meaningful to participants and they have the opportunity to"do something" with the information. The workshop begin with a brief and concise overview of research supporting the use of active learning and basic instructional design techniques. Using peer-to-peer learning, participants will explore how library instruction has evolved and the impact on librarians and libraries who provide instruction services. Next, utilizing a template developed by the presenter, participants will be guided through selecting appropriate active learning strategies based on the training topic, audience and teaching environment. Samples and exercises draw from didactic or classroom style instruction. Online teaching strategies are not addressed in this workshop. Those most likely to benefit from this workshop are novice instruction librarians or those committed to improving their teaching skills. Librarians as Improvisers: An Improvisational Approach to Teaching Information Literacy Using an improvisational approach in the classroom, librarians can address their own predetermined objectives and also respond to unanticipated questions and concerns as they emerge. Lesson plans and learning outcomes are valuable components of information literacy instruction and assessment; however, they need not imply a rigid approach to teaching. Recent scholarship suggests that using techniques from improvisational theater engages students in their learning and facilitates a responsive and collaborative learning environment. Guided by experienced improvisational actors, participants in this workshop will learn principles of improvisation in a fun and lively setting, and explore ways to apply them to their teaching. Making Information Literacy Stick: Finding SUCCESs in Library Instruction Making Information Literacy Stick is an interactive workshop focused on making the ideas we present in the classroom unforgettable. Drawing from Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick (2007), I will present their formula for sticky ideas: SUCCESs (Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories). Many of these elements work well with prescriptions from the critical information literacy literature, honing in on the students' own experiences. In the spirit of this style of instruction, librarians will break themselves into groups of 5-10 so that they can share their personal experiences relevant to the formula's elements. In the hopes that the discussion extends beyond the conference, I plan to create a wiki so the instructional strategies developed in the workshop can be easily shared with, and built upon by, the larger community of librarians. Making the Case: Leading Information Literacy Programs to Success Are you and your colleagues trying to create, recreate, or rejuvenate your instruction program? This session presents a diagnostic and development tool for creating change that can be used to assess and strengthen your information literacy program. Participants will leave the workshop with a practical framework for assessing barriers and identifying areas for leadership focus. The last decade has seen substantial changes in curricula and pedagogy at colleges and universities. Increasing numbers of interdisciplinary programs, support for independent research opportunities for undergraduates, emphasis on active learning, the popularity of learning communities or seminar experiences, and the ubiquitous interest in incorporating technology into teaching have all had an impact on how information literacy is conceived, marketed, and delivered. As academic librarians take greater responsibility on our campuses to graduate information literate citizens, it becomes imperative that we build strong information literacy and user education programs. Unfortunately, information literacy programs can get "stuck" when they encounter barriers or lack of support in key areas. A diagnostic model for creating change that details five critical elements for aligning for success (vision, capabilities, incentives, resources, and an action plan) and the costs of each missing element (confusion, anxiety, resistance/restrain, frustration, and false starts, respectively) is a useful framework for identifying barriers and as a basis for generating new strategies to create change. "Wow-I Can Touch That?" Using Special Collections to Expand Information Literacy What happens when undergraduates get their hands on a nineteenth-century stereoscope, a first edition of _Tom Jones_, and 100-year-old student handbooks during an information literacy session? And what do these students learn through analyzing primary sources that can sharpen their responses to other kinds of scholarly evidence? To answer these questions, participants in this interactive workshop will recreate an instruction session developed by librarians at Grinnell College using surrogates of primary sources to prompt discussion of any source's audience, authorship, reliability, and purpose. This workshop will begin with an overview of how librarians at Grinnell, a small liberal arts institution, have successfully collaborated with disciplinary faculty to select materials and to plan information literacy sessions focused on examination and discussion of primary sources; we'll also share how these sessions have been integrated into a first-year seminar, an introductory history course, an upper-division education class, and a French literature seminar. Our specific objectives for this session are that participants will i) learn successful strategies for using rare books, manuscripts, and archival resources in information literacy sessions; ii) consider the advantages and disadvantages of digital facsimiles from databases such as ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and original texts; and iii) articulate ways their own college or university special collections might be used to expand information literacy instruction. Participants will also receive a list of questions for students to consider when using primary evidence. Writing and Refining Information Literacy Learning Outcomes One of the cornerstones of effective information literacy assessment is having clearly-defined student learning outcomes. Learning outcomes specify what learners will know or be able to do as a result of a learning activity. Institutions commonly require learning outcomes for all courses and national accrediting bodies often look for specific learning outcomes as one component of the review process. Most librarians have received little -or no- training in writing learning outcomes. This hands-on workshop will provide an overview of learning outcomes, their role in assessment, and practice in writing and refining them. Participants are encouraged to come with an instruction session, class, or program for which they want to write or refine learning outcomes. The workshop will briefly discuss the results of the ACRL Task Force on Academic Library Outcomes Assessment and the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. This presentation portion will also include some discussion of Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning and how to apply it to writing learning outcomes. Following the presentation, participants will have an opportunity to practice writing learning outcomes as a group and individually. After this workshop participants will be able to:
Breakout SessionsA Librarian and a Hashtag: Embedded Virtually in a Classroom via Twitter Tweeting in the classroom has started to take off, with some notable examples such as Monica Rankin's history class experiment at UT-Dallas and Cole W. Camplese's classroom backchannel at Penn State-University Park. Taking these experiments one step further, Dr. Gardner Campbell, Baylor University's Director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning and Associate Professor of Literature and Media in the Honors College, invited Ellen Filgo, Baylor Libraries' E-Learning Librarian to participate in his First Year Seminar's Twitter experiment by becoming the class' Twitter-based reference librarian. The students in Dr. Campbell's class were required to blog faithfully on the class readings and tweet their observations and notes during the class period. Filgo was visible in the class' Twitter stream, providing links and library resources related to the discussion, as well as in the class "motherblog" and syllabus wiki. By having a librarian virtually embedded in real-time in the class, the students were able to draw on a wider web of information both during and after the class discussion. The students' views of the library and library services also underwent a transformation as a result of this experiment. This presentation will highlight the librarian's experiences with the class, summarize best practices, and suggest opportunities for application within your own institution. - A Natural Partnership: Using Problem-Based Learning to Integrate Information Literacy into a Political Science Assignment Problem-based Learning (PBL) is a student-centered instructional strategy in which students collaboratively solve problems and reflect on their experiences. PBL provides an innovative format for integrating Information Literacy into course assignments. A Problem-based Learning activity in a Political Science course at Elmhurst College gave a librarian and a political science professor an opportunity to collaborate on an assignment which integrates problem-based learning information literacy instruction, based on ACRL Political Science Research Competency Guidelines, into the course assignment. Our presentation will describe our process of collaboration in developing the resulting assignment and instruction sessions, as well as some preliminary assessment information. A Picture is Worth 150 Words: Using Wordle in Library Instruction Tired of the "one minute paper" and other "quick and dirty" assessment tools? By using word clouds, students can demonstrate their grasp of library fundamentals and information literacy concepts in less than 10 minutes. Wordle [http://www.wordle.net] is an extremely user-friendly online tool that provides an active learning activity for students and allows librarians to rapidly evaluate what students recall from the instruction session. Use it for quick assessment of student comprehension of library jargon or compare the students' Wordle clouds with information literacy standards or the main points of your instruction. It's free, flexible, and looks great on a t-shirt. Ask This Librarian: Integrating Library Tools in the Online Learning Environment In order to reach learners where they already are, this project integrated LibGuides into two learning management systems using an embeddable widget. Moving the library resources into the students digital home - the LMS - rather than only providing resources within the library organization, we achieved a more user-centered service. Two disparate technologies were used: 1) LibGuides for creating the course guides, and 2) the widget, which is HMTL code that was added to an LMS (Moodle and JICS) and displayed in the course page. Course Guides (using LibGuides) were created for four pilot course partners. Guides were tailored for specific research assignments for each class and populated with library resources, websites and multimedia content. Faculty may select features to add to the widget for their course page in the LMS (either Moodle or JICS). Options include: Custom search boxes for books and selected databases; Ask-a-Librarian chat widget. Benefits of this project: Opportunity to share further ideas and discuss issues relating to technology, scalability, collaboration, and learning outcomes will be available throughout the session. Session participants will be encouraged to participate throughout the session. BiblioBouts: Online Social Gaming for Academic Research Skills Development Researchers at the School of Information of the University of Michigan are designing, developing, and evaluating BiblioBouts, an online game that helps students learn academic research skills. Players practice using online library research tools while they work on an in-class assignment and produce a high-quality bibliography, at the same time as they are competing against each other to win the game! While librarians are experts at helping students who want to learn about academic research, most students are reluctant participants because they want just-in-time personal assistance that is tailored to their unique information needs, and faculty are reluctant to cede class time. The BiblioBouts project enlists games to teach undergraduate students information literacy skills and concepts in the classroom. Social gaming reinforces principles of good learning, including getting results by trial and error, self-discovery, following hunches and reinforcement through repetition. BiblioBouts also incorporates collaborative problem solving and participation in a community of learning. The project aims to explore how games can be utilized to achieve information literacy goals and to yield open-source game software that libraries could use immediately to enhance their information literacy programs. The LOEX presentation will incorporate a live interactive demo of the game, as well as videos demonstrating gameplay. We will discuss challenges in situating the game into the classroom and integrating it into existing course syllabi. The presentation will describe how we have adapted the game in response to feedback from students and instructors during the pilot process. Blueprint for a Solid Information Literacy Foundation: Building a Program from the Ground Up Belmont University's information literacy plan includes three initiatives: 1) integrate information literacy into the curriculum; 2) enhance the educational environment in the library; and 3) strengthen collaboration on information literacy goals. The plan has produced an integrated General Education/information literacy curriculum, an inviting library study and research space, and collaboration on a course ranking scale that measures library resource needs. Liaison librarians work with department chairs to complete the scale, and the rankings are factored into the budget allocation formula for the upcoming fiscal year. This session will describe the process by which this program was developed, from its beginnings to the present, and expectations for future growth. Descriptions of the curricular components, sample lesson activities, and the course ranking scale will be provided. After attending this session, participants will be able to: Bolstering the Bridge to Instructional Improvement: Librarian Self-Assessment and Strategic Planning For Information Literacy Program Development How can a small academic library navigate the churning waters of limited resources and arrive in the land of information literacy instructional improvement? By building a bridge of assessment! This presentation will examine how a library instruction program can engineer assessment methods to bolster this path to instructional improvement. Drawing on my own experiences as Coordinator of Instruction at Indiana University Southeast, I'll discuss how I created a librarian self-assessment survey based on the ACRL Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators. The results of this survey provided structural supports for program assessment, growth, and development. Learning Outcomes: Bombard Them & They Will Come: Building Relationships Using a Multi-pronged Approach to Engage Students Google, our formidable competitor, requires us to be creative, proactive and strategic in designing services that integrate information competency into the curriculum. Faculty collaboration, library classes, freshmen orientation, club events, off-site reference and case competitions; these are the venues where Goizueta Business Librarians engage with students down the path towards using information intelligently for decision making and problem solving. At Goizueta, the most effective way to teach research skills is to collaborate with professors on group projects. What are the elements of a successful collaboration? Why are some professors open to collaboration and others are not? Our keystone program, Business Essentials, earned credit status in fall 2009. For more than six years, the library team has taught a series of classes to sharpen undergraduate business research skills. A contributing factor to gaining credit status was the extensive web of collaboration that the librarians created and nurtured over the years with faculty, students, career advisors and program staff. Learn some ideas for engaging student beyond the reference desk - everything from dunk-tank volunteer to tour guide in Turkey. Participants will experience a slice of the library activity for freshmen orientation when they research a potential joint venture between Delta and Starbucks. Groups will briefly discuss the kinds of information needed and where they would find that information to determine the viability of the venture. Challenges and issues encountered in this multi-prong approach to information literacy will be discussed. Please bring your best practices and lessons learned to share with the group. Bridging the Gap: Building a Community College--LIS School Partnership Many community college students begin their studies with the intention of ultimately continuing their education at a four-year school. However, students who enter community college with non-proficient information literacy (IL) skill levels often find it difficult if not impossible to make a successful transition. This presentation will describe a collaborative research project funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services that focuses on developing effective information literacy instruction for community college students with non-proficient IL skills and involves academic librarians at two community colleges and faculty from an ALA-accredited LIS school. The presentation will briefly describe the project itself and summarize the results to date, but will focus primarily on the role of collaboration in the project. It will be argued that the collaborative nature of this project can serve as a model for collaboration between academic libraries and LIS schools, as well as between community colleges and research universities. Building Bridges: Restructuring online library tutorials to span the generation gap and meet the needs of millennial students This session will discuss the learning characteristics of Millennial students, and how online library tutorials can produce successful information literacy learning outcomes for this unique generation. In 2009, we transformed "Searchpath", the 2003 PRIMO award-winning online library tutorial, into "ResearchPath," a dynamic audio, visual and kinesthetic experience with the Millennial user in mind. We will share the results of the research we conducted at Western Michigan University Libraries to measure the success of our intended learning outcomes, as well as the qualitative user feedback which we gathered. We will recommend strategies for others interested in developing online tutorials geared towards building bridges to the unique learning styles of Millennial learners. Creating Objectives Collaboratively: Actionable Goals across the Library System Imagine a room full of librarians and a blank, whiteboard. One librarian asks the group, "What do you want to teach students?" The librarians go beyond articulating instruction in the form of tools ("I teach the library catalog") to writing down ideas about real concepts ("I want students to be better information seekers") that students need to survive in an information-rich world. How do you know if students learned from your instruction? How can you articulate your goals and assessments together as a library staff? The challenge of creating successful, measurable objectives across a large library system can be difficult to implement. This presentation will focus on how relevant, actionable learning objectives and measurable outcomes were created collaboratively across campus. These objectives and assessments were created for a "Scholarly vs. Popular" instruction module, a concept commonly covered in library instruction. Information presented in this session will include a bibliography about objectives culled from the library literature and kindergarten-higher education research. It will also include findings from librarian interviews regarding how objectives can be created and what would be good methods to measure successful instruction in a "Scholarly vs. Popular" module. Enhancing the One-Shot Session: Using Pre-Class Online Tutorials to Build a Basic Information Literacy Foundation Librarians developed online tutorials explaining basic concepts of database searching, such as controlled terms, thesauri, and Boolean operators. Each tutorial is less than ten minutes in duration and concludes with a short quiz designed to assess the students' comprehension. Responses are saved for librarians to review. For instruction sessions in which a concept covered by a tutorial would need to be taught, librarians worked with faculty to encourage students to view particular tutorials. In-class content was adjusted based on student quiz responses. A post-quiz was administered to determine student comprehension of basic and advanced concepts. Finally, students were asked to complete an evaluation survey. This presentation will explain the methods used to design the tutorials, quizzes, evaluation, and classroom content. It will also review our lessons learned and the challenges faced in working with faculty and students to include use of tutorials prior to in-class sessions. Finally, the presenter will discuss how other libraries might use similar tutorials and strategies in their own instruction programs. Follow the Rubric Road: Assessing the Librarian Instructor As librarians assume ever greater instructional roles in higher education, ongoing assessment is vital for maximizing instructional quality. Rubrics as an assessment mechanism are commonly used to gauge the extent of learning outcomes in classes and library instructional sessions. Rubrics allow for standardization of application, ease of use, and provide an expandable framework for quantitative evaluations, yet their use in evaluating library instructors has neither been widely explored nor employed. This is a case study of the development of an instructor rubric at San Francisco State University, and will examine both theoretical and practical issues in the creation and application of rubrics to instructors. Education literature on rubrics is extensive, and in library literature rubrics have been examined closely for evaluating learning outcomes but not as assessment tools for instructors themselves. Instructional librarians often need both formative feedback and summative evaluation, and a thoughtfully designed rubric can accomplish both. Besides serving as educational frameworks, rubrics can advance pedagogical values or encourage innovations throughout a program. Rubrics serve to remind instructors of the essential goals of instruction, establishing a foundation for careful review. Rubrics are often valuable for generating quantitative data, but additionally serve to standardize evaluation categories. The advantages of analytic vs. holistic rubrics, their utility for introducing pedagogical innovation, and value for reviewing candidates for retention (and sometimes tenure) decisions will all be explored. The paper will provide a sample instructional evaluation rubric, and offer practical advice for rubric formulation and application, and their interpretation for retention decisions. From Lectures and Quizzes to Wikis and Blogs in the Library Classroom Three years ago, the required library instruction class at the American University in Cairo was full of dull lectures, multiple choice quizzes, and a required paper that rarely inspired student learning. Librarians set out to update the class, first by moving content out of Blackboard and into a collaborative wiki and then later by eliminating the weekly quizzes in favor of student blogging. Despite some challenges, the students reported that the blogs were a highlight of the now-interesting class. Come hear about the stumbling blocks, near-disasters, and ultimate success of this new approach to student learning. "Granting" Collaboration: Information Literacy for Faculty The initiative to form a working partnership with faculty began when the librarians in O'Kelly Library became acutely aware that our students' were not able to effectively access, evaluate and use information. After devoting years to marketing library services, teaching classes and acquiring new resources, there was little response from the faculty or students. We asked the question, "What has to happen for us to be able to infuse information literacy into the curriculum and make it important and meaningful?" This presentation is intended to show C. G. O'Kelly Library's efforts to embed information literacy into the curriculum by educating faculty to its relevance through the O'K Fellows Information Literacy Institute. We will explain why we decided to take the course of reaching out to collaborate with faculty, how we went about planning the program elements, what our experiences have been conducting the sessions, the outcomes so far, and what we expect the future holds. The emphasis of the presentation will be on the actual program and the outcomes so interested participants will come away with an understanding of the program's success and ideas that are replicable for their own libraries. We will include a website with handouts that can be downloaded including program agendas, assignment templates, lists of faculty readings, presentations by librarians on topics such as plagiarism and creating effective library assignments, and faculty surveys. How Do You Count That?: Statistical Reporting of Online Library Instruction Activities Until recent years, library instruction (LI) was usually conducted in face-to-face (F2F) settings. Statistical reporting of LI activities tends, therefore, to focus on measures relevant to F2F settings -- for example, the number of "sessions" (classes) and the number of "participants" (students). However, newer forms of LI conducted in the online realm (from librarians embedded in classes through courseware, to online library tutorials, to for-credit online library research courses, and beyond) may be difficult to count in traditional ways, with significant implications: the way librarians quantify their activities can affect everything from advocacy efforts to funding decisions to individual or departmental workloads. The authors will outline the issues related to reporting online LI activities, discuss how their institution has grappled with these issues, and reveal the results of an exploratory survey on this topic. It is hoped that this discussion and the exploratory survey will heighten awareness of the issues involved and lead to greater exploration of this topic in the future -- and perhaps eventually to solutions and standards that will help librarians to more accurately account for LI activities conducted in the online realm. Imagination, originality, and the ability to forge new connections between existing ideas and concepts are valued as never before in the digital age, yet the significance of creativity has been largely minimized in library instruction against an emphasis on critical thinking and strategic, orderly encounters with information. What might the evanescent power of creativity look like in library instruction? How do we use creativity when teaching, and how might it be harnessed to cultivate and enrich the student's relationship to the library? This session explores approaches to, and reasons for, enhancing creative intelligence behind and in front of the podium. First, it focuses on the characteristics of, and need for, creative library instruction. Foregrounding creativity as a function of, if not an antidote to, the dominant information literacy framework guiding most library instruction, it discusses the implications for broadening our definition of core IL skills to embrace creativity not as an exclusive talent but as an inherent skill in the engagement with information. It then examines the essential value of divergent thinking-thinking against rather than with our tools of the trade-for creative library teaching. Second, the session will guide the audience in a hands-on exploration of multiple concrete methods for actualizing students' creative capacities as they begin the research process. Participants will take part in a number of brief hands-on activities, including brainstorming exercises such as concept mapping and visual problem-solving, intended to deliver quick and thought-provoking results within the typical time constraints of the one-shot instruction setting. It's all in What You Ask: Techniques for Enhancing Reflection and Learning in an Online Course There are different ways to teach in an online course, but getting students, especially undergraduates, to reflect on what they are learning and how they might improve their learning strategies can be particularly challenging in the online environment. Recently, the presenters developed a new component for an existing online course to teach students specific techniques for detecting bias, a skill critical to their academic success, and one which is often difficult for students to understand and practice. Using self-assessment in the teaching module and reflective questioning in the assessment module, the authors were able to develop effective metacognitive prompts. Learning By Doing: Bridging Information Literacy Theory with Practice Addressing information literacy skills at the freshmen level can often result in frustration for everyone involved. Teaching the same content over and over becomes tedious for librarians and the sessions can seem irrelevant to freshmen. This presentation will detail how the presenter collaborated with the First Year Program coordinator at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown to revamp the program's library component into a set of online, self-paced information literacy modules tied to an assignment. The modules reach a large number of students without overwhelming librarians. Come see how scalable instruction can improve the freshmen library experience! Library Instruction in a new culture of teaching and learning As more information becomes available electronically and teaching and learning takes place literally anywhere, we are presented with opportunities to expand not only the types of instructional services we offer, but the contexts within which we frame those services. At the University of Michigan Library, we are building on our core values by deploying new strategies to innovate instruction. Examples include creating and redefining positions, and developing an instruction committee structure to guide us through the major questions facing us today. This session will explore these strategies and the leadership roles in developing and implementing the future of library instruction. Linking through LibGuides: Collaborating with Faculty through an Adaptable Teaching and Marketing Tool This presentation will demonstrate how LibGuides can be used as a winning teaching and marketing tool to promote collaboration between the library and academic departments that benefit from information literacy instruction. Two librarians with a diverse range of subject liaison responsibilities will illustrate how you can successfully market LibGuides across any and all disciplines and will present examples of LibGuides created as successful research guides and instruction tools. LOLcats and Celebrities and (Red Panda) Bears -- Oh, My! Getting - and keeping - students' attention during library instruction sessions is an increasingly Herculean task. We all know the best practices for teaching: be engaging, ask questions, provide opportunities for active learning. But what if those techniques just aren't enough? By experimenting wildly with the presentation of my library instruction sessions, I have found that a lot of teaching power lies within the unexpected. Often, topics with very little direct correlation to libraries make interesting and engaging platforms for teaching information literacy concepts. Some of the add-ons I have used in classes include: slideshows of LOLcat pictures to impart research lessons at the end of a session; a series of celebrity gossip pictures and stories to provide real-life examples of the principles of evaluating information; music videos and amusing clips from YouTube; and Toby, the Houston Zoo's red panda, who has become an unofficial library instruction mascot. In this session we'll talk about what makes teaching (and learning) fun, I'll show some zany examples from my instruction sessions, and we'll brainstorm how you can adapt these ideas to fit your own classes. Think outside the (search) box and get the creative juices flowing - no idea is too far-fetched for this session. NFORMATON LTERACY: Taking the "i" out of instruction Do you spend too much time behind the podium during your instruction sessions? This presentation will provide opportunities for learning and discussion on four activities designed to move you out among your students. You will learn how a courtroom-like environment with music, props, and costuming was created at Hood College for an ESL English class to guide students through the steps of brainstorming keywords, utilizing databases, and organizing information for an argument. A librarian from Goshen College will offer recommendations on planning a large-scale, themed, open-house; a timeline for completion; assessment of student learning; and post-event evaluation. The Coordinator of Information Literacy from Neumann University will discuss problem-based learning activities that drive student-centered learning experiences at Neumann and Utah State Universities. Simple changes will be discussed to shift the focus away from the podium and into the crowd. Lastly, you will learn about a successful Jeopardy-style game created at Johnson and Wales University in which students answer a series of challenging questions with clickers. How will you stack up against Johnson and Wales University students? Introduced through ACRL Immersion'09, five librarians from across the United States collaborate to present a discussion on stepping away from the podium in order to better engage students. Our different academic institutions allow for varied perspectives on library instruction: three liberal arts colleges, a state university, and a culinary arts institution. Our approaches are unique and nontraditional, and fundamentally share the same core goal: to establish an engaging, student-centered learning experience. Portrait of a Library Teaching Faculty: Enhancing and Evaluating Teaching through Peer Assessment Teaching is a strong component of many faculty librarian positions, and course related teaching is still a major mode of delivery for information literacy instruction. Teaching effectively under these circumstances is challenging, and assessing and evaluating this teaching is not easy. After a thoughtful development process, we instituted a peer review system for this teaching, and have been including information from these peer assessments in the annual evaluation and Promotion and Tenure Reviews of librarians for more than seven years. This has enhanced our assessment process, provided teaching feedback for librarians, and highlights the value placed on teaching. These reviews encourage thoughtful teaching on the part of librarians, as well as student learning through the strengthening of librarians' teaching abilities. An overview of these documents provides a strong portrait of a library teaching faculty. In this session, participants will consider formative and summative reviews, course related vs. credit course peer review, and the decision-making process of the Library Faculty Organization in the creation and implementation of guidelines for peer reviews of teaching. Best practices for creating guidelines and methodology will be discussed, including input and consultation with librarians, addressing concerns, encouraging other forms of assessment such as student and faculty assessment, and review by Library faculty, University Administration, and others such as an expert on peer assessment of teaching in an institutions'College of Education. Some suggestions for creating an effective process and following general recommendations for peer review of teaching in higher education will be shared along with some samples. Reinvigorating the library tour: Enhancing student engagement through library collections By design, the library tour is a typically passive exercise, but what if the tour could become an exercise to engage students in the physical library collections? This presentation describes how Miami University introduced a series of activities designed to encourage student interaction with library materials as a part of the typical library tour. Introducing a tactile element to the tours increased both library circulation and student recall of the collection, and anecdotal evidence suggests that students are undertaking more individual exploration. Examples and tips for implementation will be provided. Replacing Old Bridges with New — Stepping Up Student Learning by Rebuilding the Foundation with Faculty-Librarian Collaboration Your foundations are set - clear syllabus, collaborative assignments, scheduled library instructions, and excellent faculty-librarian communication - but what about demonstrated learning, updated technologies, and an infusion of instruction energy? Sometimes a librarian needs to partner with faculty to initiate a demolition and reengineering of the collaborative bridge. Our dilemma: Should we patch up an existing assignment or tackle a course reengineering? Using new girders of current learning theory, measurable learning outcomes, concept maps, just-in-time instructions, research consultations, and information literacy assessments, we rebuilt the class. Dig into the foundation with us and explore using these supports to help your collaborative bridges stand firm. As the "Builders", the presenters will describe the rebuilding process, demonstrate tools and techniques, provide sample classroom materials, solicit input, and lead discussion. As the "Designers", participants will consider this project for their own use, evaluate the tools for usability and scale, and interact with other designers in coordinated discussion. Science Information Literacy for Real Life We live in a time when science issues are increasingly pervasive in our lives, both private and public, while reliable sources of science information are increasingly difficult to locate and identify. Science information literacy provides the skills to sort through the mis- and disinformation without the necessity to develop expertise on the specific subject involved. These are skills useful both for college students just developing their critical thinking skills and for lifelong learners. The presenter has developed an hour-long class to teach these science information literacy skills. Students are introduced to the food chain of science communication-from peer-reviewed paper through to gadfly blogger. Using class exercises, they learn to distinguish each form of article, think about how and why they were written and consider their reliability. Through real-life examples, the students learn about both misunderstandings and deliberate distortion of scientific information and the social forces that promote their creation. Students are encouraged to consider their standards of evidence and expertise and to think critically about the science information sources they use. This session will walk attendees through the class script and materials, giving them the resources to personalize and teach the hour-long class. We will discuss student reactions to and evaluations of the content, as well as how to collaborate with faculty to incorporate the instruction into their classes. Spanning the University to Improve Information Literacy e-Instruction In Fall 2009, the interactive information literacy module "integrity Quickstart"(iQ) was introduced to first and second-year students at Miami University. iQ, which teaches information literacy and academic integrity concepts using the dynamic Flash-based presentation tool Prezi, is a companion to the existing eScholar, a more passive, in-depth tutorial. iQ was created through a unique campus collaboration between the Libraries, University IT and Student Affairs. This session will recount the creation and implementation of iQ, everything from scripting and storyboarding to grant support and dealing with differences of opinion involved with any collaboration. We will discuss how iQ and eScholar work together as part of a bibliographic information session and how campus partnerships can help foster institutional buy-in for academic integrity and information literacy. Step Away from the Podium! A Lesson Plan for Peer Learning Ready to revamp the way you teach the library catalog and general databases? Learn how to turn the typical lecture session on its head and ensure each class is different from the last. This versatile lesson can easily be sliced and diced into separate lessons. Attendees will be exposed to numerous attention-getting activities and a plan chock full of teaching moments. The combination of game-like activities, exploratory learning, and presentations will generate a buzz amongst your students. During the presentation, attendees may engage with the content by responding to online polls with their personal mobile devices or laptops. All lesson materials will be available to the attendees. Strengthen your teaching framework: Using self-assessment of instruction as a structural support What role does self-assessment play in improving your teaching? The University of Illinois Undergraduate Library shares their self-assessment rubric, based on the ACRL Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators. Such a tool provides an important framework for self-assessment and can significantly impact the instruction of librarians at multiple points in their careers. Hear how an instruction coordinator, an early career librarian, and a library school graduate assistant use self-assessment to reflect and improve their effectiveness as teacher librarians. Learn strategies for using self-assessment that can help you become a more effective teacher, too! Teaching Ourselves: Developing A Learning Community for Library Instructors The presentation will describe UC Berkeley's in-house Instructor Development Program, discussing the background to its establishment, challenges in implementation, successful events and programs, and evidence of its effectiveness. We will discuss how similar programs can be built at attendees' own institutions with little to no financial support. An instruction program is only as good as its staff, and yet professional development opportunities for library instructors, most of whom have no formal background in pedagogy, are often limited to attending conferences. While conferences and workshops can be effective, they are infrequent, expensive, and inconvenient for some. At Berkeley, there has been interest for many years in a program that would train and support new librarian instructors as well as those who are not so new to teaching but want to improve their skills. In Spring of 2009, the Instructor Development Program (IDP) was introduced to fill this role. The IDP program features a different instruction-centered theme every semester, with activities and events planned around the central theme. We will emphasize three aspects of the program: Telling the Story: using narratives to explain WHY information literacy education is important and get students invested in what we do When your instruction sessions seem to be on autopilot and your students' eyes begin to glaze over, telling a story can be an excellent way to reclaim their attention and capture that sought after, elusive goal: student buy-in. More often than not, our instruction sessions are focused on a particular project or a discrete set of skills, and we fail to impart to students the BIG PICTURE of what we do. Stories can bridge the gap between the practical skills we teach and our larger goal -helping students become informed information seekers and users- by offering students context. This session will discuss a presentation made to the incoming freshmen class at Knox College that introduced an online information literacy tutorial. The presentation included five stories (some humorous, others with serious consequences) and served as a contextual foundation for future library instruction sessions to build upon. The assigned online tutorial attempted to focus on the big picture -the BIG WHY- of information literacy in addition to introducing first year students to library resources. Session participants will leave knowing how to find, select and deliver stories that highlight a standard in information literacy (without mentioning you're teaching them an IL standard!). Technology Classroom Design: From Idea to Reality Many libraries have technology classrooms, however they are not always set up to facilitate information literacy instruction or the multiple learning styles of the students. Often librarians and their technicians are at odds over the best way to set-up and maintain the technology classrooms. This presentation will focus on creating a classroom design idea and going through the process of making that idea a reality. Tune up your instruction: transforming discipline-based instruction using active engagement Making the transition from lecture-based instruction delivery to an active, learner-centered model provides an excellent opportunity to blend creative ideas and new teaching strategies. Music students at Luther College are introduced to research in the discipline through learner-centered activities. You will experience elements of the Cephalonian method - music, color, and active engagement - as you participate in a component of the question-card sequence of the lesson plan. The presenter will discuss how teaching style, learning styles and pedagogy have played a role in reimagining the sessions as a place for active engagement. In looking at a selection of learning outcomes from the Music Library Association Information Literacy Instructional Objectives for Undergraduate Music Students, you will see how this model could be used successfully with research instruction for other subjects. This model has transformed student ownership and participation, as it allows authentic engagement with the material and establishes an open floor for additional questions and conversation with librarian as facilitator. A recently developed assessment instrument shows that learning objectives are being met. Bring your own discipline to the session - no previous musical knowledge is necessary! Universal Design for Information Literacy Our classrooms have students with a wide variety of learning styles, competencies, and profiles. Among these, an increasing number of students have AD/HD and/or learning disabilities and many students experience library anxiety. What methods can librarians incorporate into their teaching style to engage all students? Universal Design (UD), a concept initially developed to address inaccessibility in built environments, is being adapted for use in academic instruction. At Landmark College, a college for students with learning disabilities and/or ADHD, Research Services Librarians adapted the principles of UD to develop an approach to library instruction called Universal Design for Information Literacy (UDIL). We draw from literature on Universal Design for Instruction (UDI), effective teaching practices for students with learning differences, and our experience to present techniques for how librarians can apply UDI principles. We discuss the impact of students with learning disabilities and AD/HD in our libraries and ways to make information literacy more inclusive. We explore learning styles and the application of active learning and multimodal instruction to reduce library anxiety and other barriers. We introduce the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Universal Design for Instruction (UDI) and their applicability to a range of learning profiles. We discuss the relationship between these and current best practices in teaching information literacy. We share our experiences applying UDI principles in information literacy instruction at Landmark College. During the second part of our presentation we challenge the group to brainstorm how they can apply the principles of UDI in their libraries. Wiping out the Wipe-Out Effect: Reinforcing Information Literacy with Coordinated Instruction in ENG 101 and COM 103 The Wipe-out effect: where students seem to wipe their minds clean when they are done with the class. How to combat this effect? Three faculty members from the library and the departments of English and Communication have found that reinforcement is the key. This presentation focuses on the use of reinforcement as an effective teaching strategy in getting students to find and use quality literature in their speeches and papers. In the library sessions, reinforcement comes with the use of simulation exercises with discussion questions instead of demonstration and lecture. In English 101 and Communication 103, the reinforcement comes from assignments and exercises that build on what is taught in the library session and also by linking research skills taught in English with what is taught in Communication. We will share the in-library exercises, research packets done by students, and the out-of-class reinforcement exercises and discuss how librarians and classroom faculty can work together on reinforcement. Working together for students' success: Collaboration among faculty, the Library, and the Office of Learning Support Services The presenter will share a collaborative experience among English faculty, Office of Learning Support Services specialists and librarians at the University of Houston. The collaboration was an effort to integrate information literacy and study skills instruction into a gateway course for the literary studies concentration in the English major. The presentation will include an overview of the process, and include its inception, procedure, barriers, outcomes, and most importantly, a discussion on lessons learned. Participants will learn how three different units on campus worked together to set up instructional objectives, and how the class content was assembled and delivered. The presenter will also discuss the essential components of collaboration.
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