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Ryan P. Randall

Instruction & Outreach Librarian at the College of Western Idaho ∴ Literary, media & cultural studies ∴ Web Editor at In the Library with the Lead Pipe ∴ Sous les pavés, la plage ∴ We are, as always, stubborn, stoked, and petrified - GY!BE

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Link ( Open Access) :
WorldCat / College & Research Libraries

This study specifically considers whether online information literacy instruction in an otherwise face-to-face course is effective in helping students achieve desired learning outcomes. (p. 286)

At Oakland University, they have library instruction integrated into every section of Writing 160: Composition II. Presumably this comes after Composition I, and is required by all students. Is this how we’d want to target our in-depth research, to something like English 102 here? Do they do any outreach/basic instruction for a Composition I at OU, something analogous to our CWID 101?

They offer hybrid format: one hour of face-to-face instruction with an online module; also parallel of virtual lessons for online-only classes

Focus on liaison roles for full-time meant that part-time taught all WRT 160 info lit sessions, which overloaded part-time folks, quickly needed to reassess strategy

Question for present study, updated from 2005 since online instruction conditions of possibility very different from now:

Does the delivery format of information literacy instruction in face-to-face course sections affect attainment of student learning outcomes? (p. 287)

Reference Dewald 199 study of effective online learning objects for information literacy learning: internet gives unique opportunities for knowledge acquisition when coupled with sound instruction pedagogy

Blummer developed a three-tiered hierarchy for librarians to consider when evaluating effectiveness of online learning objects

Clark and Mayer cite the ability to provide immediate feedback as an essential best practice in e-learning instructional design,23 and studies on the use of feedback in online library instruction have illustrated that in-lesson feedback encourages students to engage in and deepen their learning. (p. 289)

For instance, Lindsay, Cummings, and Johnson examined the impact of placing online learning objects at various points in the research process where students fail or encounter difficulty. They found that, by locating resources in the context of these various library services, the use of the library’s online learning resources increased.31 So, as the use of course management systems has grown, “point-of-need” more often means embedded within the LMS. (p. 290)

So, possibly produce embeddable instruction in smaller bits, asking instructors to place them not at all a single point, but rather that they are put closest to “point of need” within the course? How would this work for CWID or ENG 102? Would we break it more into CWID = intro to library as a resource & ENG 102 = focus on research & critical info lit?

Mention limitations of pre- and posttests, of multiple choice, and true-or-false questions, but unclear to me whether authors are suggesting approaches that would be preferable or sort of implying that more approaches need to be developed. They do clearly value figuring out ways to assess affective dimension of learning1 and suggest that using multiple years of assessment data is better than just using one. (p. 290-291)

Members of the Committee on Instruction:

met with faculty from the Writing and Rhetoric Department to reexamine the goals for WRT 160 library instruction from the writing department’s standpoint. Taking these needs into account, COI then held a series of meetings with all the librarians to reevaluate and reestablish the library’s goals and objectives for the WRT 160 classes. In the course of these meetings, the library faculty identified two goals for WRT 160 library instruction aimed at building students’ research and critical thinking skills: 1) students will learn the importance of using an effective search strategy; and 2) students will gain an understanding of the value of resource evaluation. Under each of these goals, the faculty then defined comprehensive yet realistic student learning outcomes around which the WRT 160 library content would be built (see appendix A for the full list of student learning outcomes).” (p. 291)

Interesting way of phrasing the two broad goals. Neither specifically mentions the library or search process, focusing instead on search as a strategy (does this iterate? is it taught as contextual? I’ll have look at Ye Olde Appendixe) and on resource evaluation.

Split some of their content modules, deciding which were better done in-person & which done face-to-face:

Content Module Delivery Method
Effective keyword brainstorming face-to-face
Best practices for database searches face-to-face
How to read, interpret, and evaluate database results face-to-face
How to access books and articles that you find face-to-face
Types of information sources and their uses online via LMS
Evaluating resources online via LMS
Finding specific items (“known item searching”) online via LMS

Interesting. I’d expect all of these except for “how to access books and articles that you find,” which I’d have imagined would be done online. Or do they sort of introduce that via the known item search, then go further in depth during the face-to-face session, where they can talk more about it with whatever sources students actually find? I’d want to make a video for students for each, so they can be reminded.

They now share a library instruction outline for face-to-face things to standardize content while allowing for different approaches to delivery, which we already do.

They had been spending two hours face-to-face with each WRT 160 section! We sometimes just get 30 minutes! No wonder ours occasionally feel rushed & shallow.

Of significant note is the fact that, where once the librarians required students to complete the online library content before their classes came to the library for the face-to-face session, this curricular overhaul allowed the librarians to complete in-class instruction and then direct students to the LMS at the end of the session. This switch has improved understanding of the process and has increased completion rates. (p. 292)

So do they now meet first, then have sort of follow-up homework? Is the “homework” automatically evaluated by the LMS (quiz or similar)? (Oh, according to p. 293, they can retake the final exam online, so I guess that’s a sort of automatic evaluation.) What explains the increased completion rate? Is it affective (students feel more invested in or more comfortable with material after associating it with a human)? Is it something about the scaffolding of material? By how much did the completion rate increase?

Finally, accompanying these changes was a wholly new approach to the assessment of WRT 160 library instruction. Instead of the long-standing pre-/posttest approach, the overhaul team developed a new library final exam with questions that directly correlate exam performance to student learning outcome attainment (see appendix B for alignment chart). At the end of the first year of implementation, curricular revisions were considered for every SLO with low attainment (which the team defined as fewer than 80 percent correct answers), resulting in some instructional changes and/or the clarification of some exam questions. (p. 292)

Seems really pragmatic and useful! It doesn’t necessarily isolate the library instruction as having been the variable that “effected” the change between before & after, but I’m not certain that is really necessary, since even pre-/posttest has the flaw of possibly just familiarizing test-takers with questions rather than truly ascribing the change to the instruction delivered. I also really appreciate the iterative nature of this approach to assessing whether instruction is working for the students.

They’ve found use of quotation marks in a search to be an especially troublesome concept for students, both before this instructional overhaul and during it. (p. 294)

Discuss 2015 ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, saying that the online instructional model can be more thorough & more exploratory than might be possible in traditional face-to-face instruction. (p. 296-7)

Ends by emphasizing role of librarian’s “pivotal role as the instructional designer” of information literacy instruction, i.e. warding off interpretation of the study as suggesting that librarians can somehow just make any ‘ol online modules and call it a day. (p. 297)

Appendix A

They don’t use CRAAP. Instead their evaluations are:

authority, currency, relevancy, accuracy, objectivity, and appropriateness to their level of research (298)

How do they discuss/present “objectivity”? To me, there’s a big difference between discussing whether a source performs objectivity (e.g. as a marker of genre/discourse, or as aspirational, recognizing that bias is omnipresent but attempting to minimize its effects on this piece of writing) and whether something is objective. How much of this question of objectivity gets handed over to the WRT instructor? Did the writing instructors request “objectivity” or was this a librarian-led component of evaluation?

  1. Here they refer to Schroeder and Cahoy’s definition, which is apparently and individual’s “attitudes, emotions, interests, motivation, self-efficacy, and values.”