Category: Information Literacy

Denise Woetzel, Reference/Information Literacy Librarian at Reynolds Community College and Anita Tarbox, Librarian at Hermitage High School, collaborated on a presentation, High School to College Transition Initiatives: Making it a Reality, which they co-presented at the Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy in Savannah, GA. During their session, Denise and Anita discussed the various collaborative initiatives they are working on to better prepare high school students for college level research.

Denise also attended some awesome conference sessions on best methods, the latest technologies and other issues related to teaching, learning and assessing of students’ information literacy skills. Reynolds librarians will be exploring how some of these methods and new technologies can be adapted and incorporated into the curriculum. Sessions included:

• Collaborate to Educate: Designing Cross-Discipline Information Literacy Instruction for First-Year Students. Presenters Katt Starnes, Michael Saar, and Salena Parker from Lamar University discussed how a writing instructor, writing center tutor and librarian collaborated on an information literacy project for a first-year writing course.  Students worked in groups to learn a specific research skill and then created a video tutorial on that skill to teach their peers.
• Collaborating beyond the Campus: University Librarians in the K-12 Classroom. Presenters Lindy Scripps-Hoekstra, Gayle Schaub, and Susan Carson from Grand Valley State University discussed a collaboration between academic librarians, an education professor, public librarians, and a middle school teacher. In weekly workshops sixth-graders from a local middle school worked alongside university education major students to develop their information literacy skills with assistance from both librarians and an education professor. These sixth graders than develop a final presentation that was showcased in an exhibition event on the university campus.
• Involving Students in their Learning Processes: Practical Strategies for Learner-Centered Information Literacy Instruction. Presenter Kerry Creelman from the University of Houston facilitated an engaging workshop where participants explored various student-centered strategies and activities to incorporate into the classroom. Activities included reflective writing, discussion and small group exercises.
• Making it REAL: Teaching Information Literacy Skills through Situated Learning. Presenters Jon Pope, Kim Becnel, and Amanda from Appalachian State University discussed how writing instructors and a librarian collaborated on a research component of an undergraduate composition course. One of the research assignments for this course was a Rhetorical Exigence and Active Learning (REAL) project, in which students worked in small groups to identify a real-world local problem and conducted original research to produce a final written product. Students’ assignment journals were analyzed and a focus group was conducted to compare students’ level of motivation and engagement with both the traditional research essay and the REAL project. Results revealed that students were much more engaged with the REAL project.
• Rebooting a Technical Writing Course: Control Instructional Design, Alt Information Literacy, and Delete Non-Collaboration. Presenter Kelly Diamond and Gregg Thumm from Western Virginia University discussed how a librarian and technical writing instructor collaborated on developing a research component for online sections of a Technical Writing course.
• Revitalizing your Research Instruction: Applying the Engaging Constructivist Framework in the Library Instruction Classroom. Presenters Paul Vermette, Melissa Langridge, and Kayla Jaehn from Niagara University facilitated an engaging workshop where participants explored various strategies and activities to incorporate in the classroom such as icebreakers, pair and group activities, and free technology tools such as InstaGrok (create concept maps), Kahoot (create discussions, surveys, quizzes), and Linoit (sticky and photo sharing).
• Using What They Know to Teach Them What They Need to Know. Presenter Lucinda Ruch from Old Dominion University discussed how she uses social media in her classes to teach information literacy skills to students.