Loex 2002 Focuses on Information Literacy and the College Experience

Citation

Manuel, K. (2002), "Loex 2002 Focuses on Information Literacy and the College Experience", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 19 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2002.23919gac.003

Loex 2002 Focuses on Information Literacy and the College Experience

Loex 2002 Focuses on Information Literacy and the College Experience

Kate Manuel

"Integrating information literacy into the college experience" was the theme of the 30th National LOEX (Library Orientation Exchange) Conference held 10-11 May 2002 in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The featured, keynote, and dinner speakers – Mary Reichel, University Librarian, Appalachian State University; Dane Ward, Associate Dean for Public Services, Illinois State University; and Dan Ream, Head of Instruction and Outreach, Virginia Commonwealth University, respectively – set the conference's tone by highlighting such major issues as the centrality of teaching to modern academic librarianship, the importance of collaboration in implementing information literacy instruction, and non-librarians' views of information literacy. A total of 35 break out sessions offered attendees the opportunity to address more focused topics relating to students' experience of information literacy within higher education. Break out sessions discussed:

• •

  integration of information literacy into general education programs and learning communities;

• •

  strategies for teaching contemporary students, including use of streaming video;

• •

  strategies for integrating information competence into the learning outcomes of academic departments and for working with faculty in designing library research assignments;

• •

  various methods for teaching or promoting information literacy, such as evidence-based inquiry, problem-based learning, and interactive tutorials;

• •

  competency testing for students and examination of students' work samples;

• •

  maintaining and using program data; and

• •

  professional development for teaching librarians.

Centrality of teaching for academic librarians

In "Information literacy and the learning community: the centrality of teaching for academic librarians," featured speaker Mary Reichel emphasized that as librarians "we are teaching in all we do." Reichel noted that the "learning community" is a powerful concept – capturing the shift from teaching to learning, addressing various learning styles, treating learning as a process, and valuing both individual and collaborative experiences in learning – and a natural partnership for information literacy and libraries. Academic librarians themselves are prototypes of the "premiere learners" that learning communities seek to develop, modeling the values and behaviors students will need to be successful in learning communities, as well as skilled in creating learning communities for others' benefit. Learning communities have long existed in higher education in the form of honors programs, masters and doctoral degree cohorts, and similar groupings of students. Greater emphasis is now placed on being intentional in creating learning communities and on involving undergraduates in them.

The challenges of keeping up with information-related technologies such as 24/7 reference and full-text databases have forced librarians to become "premiere learners." Reichel suggested "with all of our technological applications, we've really been ahead of the curve for faculty." Because librarians have kept up with new technologies, as well as the content conveyed by those technologies, they are well placed to collaborate with faculty in creating learning environments. Librarians know how to work with students in these areas, and they can use technological change as a hook to persuade faculty of the value of collaboration. Plagiarism can be another hook for working with faculty.

"One of our challenges is having students realize that learning is not a 15 minute task," Reichel said; "it takes about 5,000 hours to learn a complex set of knowledge." Reichel emphasized that librarians need to talk about the impact of academic libraries on student learning and to articulate how information literacy is a powerful metaphor and method for students' learning to learn. The students comprising learning communities "may still be suffering from information underload," not getting access to the information they need because of their tendencies to work at the last minute and to assume that everything is on the Web. These students are capable multi-taskers and effective visual learners, but they tend not to know what librarians do, rely upon natural language rather than keyword or subject searches, and are amazed that there is a systematic way of looking for information. As Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Mind (Light, 2001) suggests, students need to engage with their coursework to learn effectively from it. Meaningful research experiences contribute to student engagement.

Information literacy meets the real world

Dinner speaker Dan Ream's "Information literacy meets the real world and the winner is …?" reminded librarians that not everyone is as fascinated with the information research process and information literacy as librarians are. "For most people information literacy is not fun … the majority of college students are not like us," Ream said. Rather than enjoying accessing, evaluating, and using information as activities in themselves, most college students value information literacy skills only in so far as these skills help to complete coursework and succeed on the job. This is what makes library instruction at the teachable moment and the point of need so powerful.

Ream suggested "library research feels like taxes to most people, who prefer to put it off until the last minute." Doing one's taxes is only palatable to the average person if s/he foresees getting a refund; similarly, people who envision getting some sort of "substantial pay-off" from their information research are more likely to conduct and value this research. Information literacy courses can be likened to tax preparation courses: not everyone will be interested in taking such a course, but those who are interested prefer to take the course in February or March, just before taxes are due. Many people would simply prefer to have a professional do their taxes for them, so too with information research. "Most people want answers, not information or instruction. People prefer to employ experts for certain things." Most people do not do taxes, or information research, often enough to feel comfortable and confident in doing them. People do not retain what they do not use, something true of taxes and information literacy. With taxes, each year brings changes to the forms and rules; similarly, research databases and information tools change continuously. While information literacy seeks to teach concepts, not the "intricate details," the mechanics of various search tools, "for the masses, it's the details that light their fire." Ream also analogized information literacy to the metric movement, suggesting "information literacy can face a similar fate from an indifferent majority."

To better understand what the "real world" thinks of information literacy, Ream conducted a series of informal interviews with 21 students from Virginia Commonwealth University and 11 people from a Richmond-area church. While not a systematic study, Ream's interviews yielded suggestive comments about how students define information literacy, whether they self-identify as information literate, how they learned their information literacy skills, and whether they value information literacy instruction, something Ream measured by asking whether they would prefer a $1.00 billion or a coupon for one hour of free information literacy instruction with a librarian. When asked to define information literacy, some respondents furnished librarian-esque definitions, while others replied "I've actually never heard the term before" or it is "something people learn, gain from reading literature," or it is "knowing information about literacy, being literate about literacy." Most students described themselves as information literate. They said they had learned information literacy skills by trial and error, from their peers, from teachers, and from parents. Only two mentioned the library: one said s/he learned these skills in high school but not from the librarians, while another said, "You want me to say that I went to the library." A total of 11 students opted to take the dollar, while ten chose the certificate for information literacy instruction. The difference in size between the two groups was smaller than Ream, or many in his audience, had expected and serves as a reminder that while everyone may not value information literacy instruction as much as librarians do, "there are a large number of students who really want to learn."

Evidence-based inquiry

"Bringing 'law and order' into the library: evidence-based inquiry in information literacy instruction at Wheelock College Library", by Esme DeVault, Ann Glannon, and Amanda Gluibizzi, described the library instruction component within a first-year English course. This component consists of three major interactions with students:

1. 1.

   a full class period (80 minutes) of instruction within the English course;

2. 2.

   another 80 minutes outside of class in laboratory sessions for which students sign up; and

3. 3.

   a culminating exercise, counting for 10 percent of the course grade in this four-credit course.

Librarians open the first session with a clip from the television show, "Law and Order." This clip both serves as a hook, drawing students into the session by "blow[ing] away their vision of what will happen in a library research session," and creates a metaphor for research as a process. Students view the clip after having been instructed to ask:

• •

  What information do the people in it have?

• •

  What information do they still need?

• •

  What resources could they use to find the needed information?

Students brainstorm answers to these questions based upon the clip, and their answers are input into Inspiration software, a concept-mapping program. A fourth step, evaluating evidence, is also introduced. These four steps demonstrated from the clip are the same four steps used with students throughout their subsequent library research. The use of Inspiration software is particularly effective because Wheelock uses concept mapping widely, for example in teaching students to create lesson plans in education courses, and because the software automatically creates outlines from diagrams.

Librarians move from the four steps of the research process as illustrated by the "Law and Order" clip to mini-bibliographies with theses questions that are to create "crises situations" for the students – for example, five citations whose relevance to the question "Is Alice Walker considered a feminist writer?" students are to judge. Students learn more by confronting the complexities of "difficult" situations, and it is better for them to become frustrated in the library, which serves as a "safety zone" because people are there to help, than in their dorm rooms on their own. Citations are introduced here to students as a way to follow "trails of evidence" of prior research. The culminating assignment is introduced in the second instruction session, and students are then given approximately one week to complete it. It is a scaffolded performance task, and students are encouraged to revise it after its initial grading, although few opt to do this.

Evolution of a first-year experience assignment

In "Is this assignment really necessary? The evolution of a first-year experience library research assignment," Carolyn Frenger discussed the changes over the past five years in a library assignment for a course at George Washington University (GWU). The assignment originated in Fall 1997 with the goal of introducing students to library resources through their Freshman Advising Workshop (FAW), a nine-week, one-credit course required of all Arts and Sciences students in their first semester at GWU. FAW also introduces students to time management skills, selecting a major, and living away from home.

In 1997, the assignment asked students to find two book citations and two article citations for a given topic, and the library taught course-related sessions for the more than 50 FAW sections during the first three weeks of Fall semester. This heavy teaching load and the assignment's inefficacy persuaded librarians to retool both the assignment and library instruction for 1998. In 1998, a freelance contractor was hired to teach all FAW library instruction sessions, but lack of time for revision meant that the 1997 assignment was reused in 1998. Librarians learned that one person could not teach all the FAW sessions and that the library assignment needed to become "a real research assignment." In 1999, the assignment highlighted five research tasks:

1. 1.

   locating books;

2. 2.

   locating magazine and journal articles;

3. 3.

   locating newspaper articles;

4. 4.

   locating information on the Web; and

5. 5.

   ordering a book from another of the schools in GWU's consortium.

A total of 26 hands-on, drop-in workshops were planned in place of course-related instruction, as were two one-hour drop-in clinics per week. Fall 1999 showed that if instruction were not mandatory, students would not attend. The assignment was retooled again for Fall 2000, with a requirement that students locate a refereed journal article using a scholarly index. A Web site was created for the assignment, and there were twice weekly, drop-in sessions during weeks two through seven of the semester. These instruction sessions were made more interactive, and prizes were given to encourage students to attend. After Fall 2000, an online survey was administered to a random sampling of FAW students. One-third of the 227 students to whom surveys were sent responded. Fall 2000 taught librarians that print indexes could not stand up to the wear-and-tear of this assignment, topics should be vetted against the local collection before being assigned, students will not attend optional instruction, and the assignment was too lengthy. For 2001, the assignment was shortened, asking students only to find books, citations from article databases, citations from newspaper databases, and books from another consortium library, and online instruction was implemented in place of in-person instruction (http://www.gwu.edu/gelman/instruc/ course/faw.html). Problems from 2001 included the online instructions not being visually engaging for students and failure to screen the research topics given to students.

Some broad lessons learned from this five-year revision process are that:

• •

  you need to be flexible;

• •

  you need to know who your allies are and use those relationships effectively;

• •

  you need to keep in touch with collaborators;

• •

  you need to know your audience;

• •

  you should not try to teach too much;

• •

  you should ask lots of questions;

• •

  you should know your library's collections, especially their limitations;

• •

  you should use the Internet creatively; and

• •

  you should make your Web-site user friendly.

Information literacy and library orientation

"Weaving information literacy into library orientation: the 'passport' experience for first-year undergraduates at The Claremont Colleges" by Gale Burrow, Carrie Marsh, and Kimberly Franklin described an orientation activity for first-year students that is in addition to formal library instruction received through first-year seminars. Beginning students find the libraries at Claremont, which is comprised of five undergraduate institutions and two graduate institutions spread over 14 city blocks, "somewhat intimidating." The orientation activity seeks to help students become familiar with all four library buildings on the Claremont campus and to foster some basic library skills.

Library staff were surveyed to establish ten tasks that all students should be able to perform within their first month of college. This survey identified the following ten tasks:

1. 1.

   checking out and renewing books;

2. 2.

   accessing the library Web site;

3. 3.

   obtaining a copy card and using the library's photocopying services;

4. 4.

   accessing course reserves;

5. 5.

   using the online catalog;

6. 6.

   meeting and talking with at least one librarian/subject specialist;

7. 7.

   retrieving a book and a journal from the "main" library;

8. 8.

   becoming aware of resources and services such as interlibrary loan and special collections;

9. 9.

   being aware of and visiting all four campus libraries; and

10. 10.

    activating their college IDs so that they can be used as library cards.

To foster these skills, Passport to The Libraries of The Claremont Colleges, a 4-inch by 6-inch, 20-page, self-paced booklet with activities was produced. Passport is introduced to first-year students at their orientation sessions, and some faculty require their students to complete Passport. Once students complete their Passport booklets, they place them in a "travel trunk" prominently displayed in the main library, thereby becoming eligible for prizes in a drawing held at a party at the end of the Passport project. Passport was introduced in Fall 2000. Librarians have tracked students' participation and completion rates, as well as conducted student focus groups, to gauge Passport's effectiveness. A total of 60 students completed Passport in 2000 and 370 students (one-quarter of the student body) in 2001. Librarians are currently looking at publicity for Passport, especially ways of reaching students other than through orientation, as part of their goal of "building relationships with students" as soon as they arrive on campus.

Nationwide survey of first-year experience courses

In "Just how integrated are we? Data from a Nationwide survey of first-year experience (FYE) courses," Colleen Boff of Bowling Green reported on a survey sent to directors of FYE courses asking about the integration of library instruction into their courses. A 15-question, Web-based survey (available at http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/ infosrv/cboff/fyelibrarysurvey.html) was sent to 721 schools. Five questions asked about an institution's FYE course generally, while ten asked specifically about the course's library component. A total of 52 percent (368 out of 721) of the institutions surveyed responded: 199 of these schools were private and 166 were public; 31 rank as highly selective institutions, 199 as moderately selective, and 129 as minimally selective; 382 were four-year institutions and 84 were two-year.

Survey responses revealed that librarians were lead instructors for courses at 55 of the schools; 86 percent included a library component, while 14 percent did not. The library component was required at 67 percent of the schools having a library component, and optional at the remaining 33 percent. A total of 45 percent devoted only one hour of in-class time to the library component, while only 2 percent devoted 12 or more hours of in-class time. At 44 percent of institutions, the library component made up 1-5 percent of the course's curriculum; in only 1 percent of institutions did the library component make up more than 25 percent of the curriculum. Librarians are involved in developing the library component of the FYE course at 80 percent of these institutions and are involved in teaching the library component at 84 percent of institutions. However 22 percent reported that non-librarians teaching the library components received no training from librarians. When asked what the library instruction component covers, 82 percent of respondents mentioned article databases; 81 percent the library catalog; 78 percent Web searching; 78 percent a library tour; 66 percent a research assignment; 36 percent Web evaluation; 27 percent a scavenger hunt; and 21 percent other topics, including citing sources; reserve materials; e-mail and attachments; and spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and word processing. Of the institutions, 39 percent report that they have not assessed local satisfaction with the library component of the course. At institutions where satisfaction has been assessed, 21 percent were very satisfied while 32 percent were very dissatisfied. Student learning has not been assessed at 55 percent of institutions.

Problem-based learning

Alexius Smith Macklin and Michael Fosmire's "Problem-based learning to the rescue: faculty collaborations that work!" described how to get started with problem-based learning (PBL) and some successful applications of PBL at Purdue. PBL is characterized by problems that are ill-structured, thereby resembling real world situations; teachers' functioning as models and coaches who provide scaffolds for learners; enhanced transfer of knowledge through use of multiple tasks and problem contexts; and active engagement with real problems and collaboration. PBL has commonalities with information literacy that make them effective partners: both employ critical thinking skills to determine what information needs, fact finding skills, evaluation skills, and organizational skills in presenting data.

Macklin and Fosmire advise beginning by conducting needs assessments, reviewing syllabi, and becoming familiar with disciplinary literature from the courses with which one works on PBL. Designing effective PBL is not an easy process, as it can take more than 20 hours to generate and test potential problems. To write effective problem statements for PBL, one should:

1. 1.

   Find a situation that has a set of phenomena or data in need of an explanation.

2. 2.

   Identify four to five learning outcomes that will result from solving the problem.

3. 3.

   Re-write the problem as a problem statement for the learning experience. Often this involves creating a hypothetical situation in which the problem is to be solved, as well as stakeholders with vested interest in the problem.

4. 4.

   List the skills or life experiences that students will bring to solving the problem.

5. 5.

   Test the problem statement to ensure that it requires critical thought and explanation. Avoid subjectivity. Good problems often have solutions that are products of some type.

Library instruction for PBL often takes the form of introductions to problem solving, not demonstrations of specific resources. Students are encouraged to approach the problem using the KND method, asking themselves what do they already know (K) about the problem's domain, what do they need (N) to find out, and what do they need to do (D) to solve the problem. Once a problem has been used effectively once or twice, the course instructor can probably use the problem with her/his class effectively without any library instruction. Students work in groups of three to six in solving the problem. While obviously suited to ethics classes, PBL can take the form of "what if" questions in historical contexts. If the class is large, one problem can still be used, with different groups of students being given different stakeholder roles in relation to the problem. Rubrics are used to evaluate students' responses to the problems.

Evaluation indicates that students find PBL a congenial teaching and learning method. Out of the 65 students in one course, 57 responded to a survey, with 68 percent reporting that their problem solving skills had improved as a result of PBL, 84 percent saying they could apply these skills elsewhere, 77 percent claiming they were better able to find and select information, and 63 percent saying they could evaluate information more effectively.

LOEX was, as usual, a stimulating conference with various approaches to library instruction being shared in formal presentations and informal discussions among attendees.

Reference

Light, R.J. (2001), Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Kate Manuel (kmanuel@lib.nmsu.edu) is Instruction Coordinator, New Mexico State University, Zuhl Library, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA.