Credit-bearing info lit?

ACRLog blogger StevenB responds to Bill Badke's article "Ten reasons to teach information literacy for credit."

I'm with Steven on this. In my experience teaching a credit-bearing IL course in the past, it wasn't worth the time we put into it. It didn't reach very many people as an elective course. And it certainly didn't prove anything to faculty about the importance of information literacy. In fact, some professors figured they didn't have to worry about IL because our course was available to students.

Articles on Active Learning

"Simple ways to add active learning to your library instruction" provides practical tips for adding active learning to your class. I think I'm going to try the Group Search idea in an upcoming class. Has anyone tried this? One student is the Navigator and leads or steers the group. The second student is the Helmsperson, s/he does the searching on behalf of the group. A third student is the Recorder and fills out a worksheet (I guess I have to design the worksheet, huh). And the fourth student is the Reporter and does a short presentation to the class. I'll let you know how it turns out.

"Making the most of the one-shot you got" presents the Direct-Instruction Teaching Model. Jeff Lyles has also written about this model, so it must be a good idea. The only confusing part of this model is that the author of the article states that it's teacher-centric. But he also says that it has active learning components built in. To me, it seems to be a good balance between a teacher-centered classroom and a student-centered one.

Constructivist or Behaviorist?

Here are two videos - one demonstrating a constructivist approach to library instruction and the other showing a behaviorist approach.

What's the role of the librarian in each video? What are the students doing? How is the librarian presenting the concepts? Do you think students learned more with the constructivist or the behaviorist approach?

Standards and Guidelines

Are you all aware of these?

Guidelines for Instruction Programs in Academic Libraries
Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators

No Faux Calls Here!

Had a nice chat with some friends at Bethany College (the one in West Virginia) this morning. We talked about marketing reference and info lit, ref desk or no ref desk, motivating student employees, and teaching. Even though we're in different parts of the country and at institutions of different sizes, we face similar challenges, like:

How do we attract the faculty to incorporate info lit into their courses? That's a hard one, but librarians at Santa Clara University have put together a useful page about ILI for use in a faculty workshop.

How exactly do we work active learning and constructivist learning theories into our one-shots? Read this article for great ideas.

Reference traffic has slowed down. What do we do - how do we use our time wisely and reach out to library users? Here are some ideas.

We also discussed the impact and frustrations of relationship building. Getting to know your faculty is probably still the best way to get info lit into individual courses and the curriculum in general, but it takes a long time. The pay off is usually worth it though.

Jeff Liles at Conference

Jeff Liles, education professor at St. John Fischer College, gave an amazing presentation at ALA Annual. His title for the session was "You can lead a dog to the fridge but can you make him think?" Here's what I took away from the session:

What we believe about learning guides how we view learners and teachers and guides how we teach. If we don't know learning theory, how do we figure out what to teach and how to teach it? If we teach the way we learn best, how many students are not reached? We need to be cognizant of different learning styles and learn different ways to teach to reach a wider audience.

We can be instructional leaders on campus if we're good at teaching. When we have more substantive interactions with students in our one-shot library sessions than professors have with the students all semester, professors may see us in a different light. They may seek us out as partners.

Some attendees of the session mentioned faculty apathy during class and asked how to deal with this. I've finally figured this out. I lay out my expectations in the email exchanges with professors as we're negotiating class dates and learning outcomes. I invite professors to ask questions, participate, and I give them a heads up that I'll give students time to clarify assignment requirements. It's a good way to catch folks who just want you to babysit.

A subject-centered approach is better than a student-centered one. Why? Becuase then you put yourself on the level of the student and learn about the subject together. It changes the dynamic.

The nature of the experience matters. An educative experience will cause students to want to come back. A miseducative experience will make them never want to come back.

The session reinforced many things I already know about teaching and learning in a library setting. It helped to reinvigorate me. Thanks Jeff!

LOEX 2008

Here's a link to LOEX sessions with links to presentation materials.

I think we should do a Lesson Study when to figure out the best way to teach federated searching. The session "Library Instruction and Student Engagement in the Age of Google" was an affirmation of the stuff I'm already doing in class. There's a class that I might try the blog idea from "Research 2.0: Research Blogs as Windows of Opportunity." And "Working within the System: Integrating Information Literacy Into a Research University Curriculum" gave me hope that someday we'll be able to build something more than a series of one-shot classes on my campus.

Lots of great sessions at this conference. Plus, they feed you.