INFORMATION LITERACY IN THE WILD
Edited by Kristin Fontichiaro
Foreword by Jeffrey MacKie-Mason
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Special thanks to our classmate Kristel Wieneke for designing the book cover.
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For our Mentors
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Jeffrey MacKie-Mason
The View From the Front of the Room
Kristin Fontichiaro
PART I: INFORMATION LITERACY IN THE WILD
Database-a-phobia
Kyle Tecmire
Primary Sources and the Inquiry Process in the Museum
Laura Gibbons
Guidance in the Information Jungle
Joanna Price
Iterative Instruction
Katy Mahraj
PART II: INFORMATION LITERACY IN PUBLIC LIBRARIES
Early Literacy and Reading Readiness in Public Libraries
Kathryn McMahon
How to Tame a Bird Unit
Caroline Mossing
Walking the Walk
Kristel Wieneke
PART III: INFORMATION LITERACY IN K-12 CLASSROOMS
“It has to be true. It was just cut-and-pasted!” Information Seeking and Evaluation in the AIC Simulation
Mariah Cherem
The Importance of Information Literacy in a Middle School Setting
Elizabeth A. Mines
“It's Just German”: How We Can Change Attitudes About Information Literacy in a World Language Context
Caroline Nagle
The Dreaded Bird Unit
Joshua Skodack
Confessions of a Pre-Service Social Studies Teacher: The Dichotomy Between Research Process and Content
Curtis Lee
PART IV: INFORMATION LITERACY IN K-12 SCHOOL LIBRARIES
Hook
John Cole
From Black and White to Gray: Addressing Information Literacy Skills in Web Evaluation
Kara Fribley
Assessing the Need for Assessment
Emily Johnson
PART V: INFORMATION LITERACY IN COLLEGE CLASSROOMS
Lessons in Visual Literacy
Brianne Rhoades and Mary Braun
Synthesize This!
JJ Pionke
Looking at the Information Needs of Pre-Service Teachers
Ander Erickson
PART VI: INFORMATION LITERACY IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES
The Importance of Academic Library K-12 Outreach
Natalie Mulder
Creating Successful Collaboration between K-12 Educators and Academic Libraries
Mallorie Colvin
Journey or Destination? Process vs. Product in Undergraduate Information Literacy
Kimberly Miller
The Known Unknown: How a Map Can Lead the Way for New Researchers and New Librarians Alike
Kelly Davenport
SCVNGR for Information Literacy Instruction
Meggan Frost and Jill Morningstar
Pull It Apart: Discovering Information Literacy with Technology
Peter Timmons
What's the Keystroke Command for Information Literacy? Getting from Tech Skills to Thinking Skills
Andrea Neuhoff
Becoming a Literate Information Literacy Instructor
Alissa Talley-Pixley
When Technology Fails
Sarah LeMire
FOREWORD
This year marks the sixteenth year of the School of Information (SI), an interdisciplinary school in which our students, staff, and faculty believe in the mission of helping "people use information and technology to build a better world" (http://si.umich.edu/aboutsi/history-and-mission). Even in these few years we have experienced a monumental change in how we serve the world: technologies have developed, information has exploded, and people now carry massive computing power in their back pockets.
Librarians have historically been on the front lines of making those connections. Our school was built upon the long tradition of the School of Information and Library Science, and approximately 25% of our master's students select Library and Information Science as their specialization today. At SI, we hold fast to the ideals upon which librarianship was founded, but we do not rest on the achievements of the past. For example, instruction is the new librarian frontier, and we are delighted that SI now offers two courses focusing explicitly on teaching and learning in information-rich environments. We encourage the future librarians in our midst to think boldly about how they can leverage those ideals to best serve patrons and students and to put patron needs -- not library traditions -- at the forefront of their practice.
This book presents work by the students of SI 641, "Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning". This course was developed with the core belief that students should be active participants in their own learning. In addition to field experiences, students were invited to vote on guest speakers, request changes in the syllabus to better meet their needs, use class time to test-drive a project, and push back on classic theory and practice. Many of the students in the class are future librarians, but in the following pages, you will also meet their colleagues from the School of Education, where the course is cross-listed as EDCURINS 575. The class's diversity contributed to new understandings and realizations as the students mashed up their divergent backgrounds, experiences, aspirations, and influences, both in libraries and "in the wild." They examined teaching, learning, information resources, and strategies from multiple angles. Their findings lend a fresh perspective to the existing body of literature.
At SI, we believe that our work should result in impact. We hope you will learn something that affects the way you do your job, and help our students have more impact by sharing this with others. If something here surprises, delights, or spurs you to change, please share that with us at informationliteracyinthewild@umich.edu.
I want to acknowledge our terrific students, who wrote the book you are about to read. But I also want to acknowledge Kristin Fontichiaro, their professor, who joined our full-time faculty just last year. Kristin is an influential leader in the field of information literacy, and has already made a deep impact on our curriculum and our students. She inspired and supported them in this venture.
Jeffrey MacKie-Mason
Dean, School of Information
University of Michigan
December 2011
INTRODUCTION: THE VIEW FROM THE FRONT OF THE ROOM
They barely fit. The class was supposed to have eight students, all future librarians. Now there are twenty-eight. An education PhD student, another in Educational Studies. Some future teen librarians; others who see academic libraries as their future. School librarians. And what about those secondary Pre-service teachers? What do these folks all have in common? How do I respectfully and robustly challenge such a diverse group? And they barely fit in our classroom, which we have already changed twice as class enrollment unexpectedly tripled in the days leading up to the first day of class.
I will say this again and again in the early days of SI 641 / EDCURINS 575: Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning: there is so much diversity, and how will we tackle the concepts when we come from such different places?
When I had taken on this class a few months prior, I knew it needed to break the molds of its past. For many years, it had been considered useful for school librarians only; indeed, the course remains the official teaching methods course for those seeking the teaching endorsement in school librarianship. A course redesign a few years prior had formally articulated that the course was suitable for all kinds of librarians and information specialists, and for two years, the course, while remaining small in enrollment and primarily taken by school library students, had shifted focus from the practicalities of teaching in K-12 environments to a more theoretical focus on academic libraries. The course needed to fall somewhere in the middle. To teach well, librarians would need the theoretical underpinnings both of information literacy and of educational practice, but they would also need to see how those theories are applied in the practice of good teaching and, more importantly, robust learning for their future students.
Theory wasn't enough. One needs only walk through a third grade classroom or academic library learning commons to see that students are, as a whole, not implementing librarian-taught lessons. Theory doesn't matter if it does not (or cannot) change practice. Why did we have so many students sitting politely through database instruction, only to open Facebook and do an open Web search as soon as the librarian's eyes were turned? Why were so many college papers citing introductory sources or documents of questionable authority? And, as long as we're being honest, did we have confidence that their teachers had a strong-enough command of information resources of varying levels of authority and synthesis versus merely reporting information?
Surely, a class of eight students, if seminar discussion were coupled with extensive field experience, could begin to crack the code. We are fortunate here at the School of Information to have students who are highly motivated, experienced working in the field, and deeply interested in the future of libraries and librarians. I envisioned the class, cozily sitting around a conference table, sipping lattes, debating readings, and sharing findings from their field experiences. I envisioned us collectively authoring an eBook, carefully crafting our pieces, our brows furrowed in the most academic of ways. The kind of seminar that you see in hazy footage as filmmakers remember the Goode Olde Days of Oxford. Studious. With fewer than a dozen students, completely possible.
Fast forward to the first day of class. Remember? It's crowded. I'm doing the math: 28 field experience placements, not 8. No more Oxford seminar. And yet, the code still needed to be cracked, the conversations had, and the alternatives explored. And this is exactly the diverse group needed to start decoding.
Thanks to the tenacity of the students whose voices you will read, we dove in anyway. We compensated for the large class size when some students sought out their own field placements, took regular advantage of office hours when they needed or wanted individual feedback, and engaged in small group conversations in lieu of the imagined conference table chatter. Some shared their experiences in class regularly; others used their weekly "prof letters" to me to share their insight about their readings, our class discussions, and individual field placements. These in-class activities, coupled with a Diigo social bookmarking group, which allowed any student to share a resource with the rest of the class, slowly but surely developed our assessment of the instructional landscape. It was a bit noisy, but it was working (and there were even a few lattes, coupled with a rather large quantity of Twizzlers and hurried lunches).
Field experiences for this course spanned multiple settings and multiple patron groups. School libraries, secondary classrooms, public library storytimes and activities for adults, and the campus language center. Classes in psychology, education, communications, and English (online!). Online simulations and hands-on teaching in a campus museum.
Despite the diversity of placements, each student had three field requirements. First, they were to spend twenty hours in 'observation': watching a mentor teach, helping the mentor plan for teaching, perhaps co-teaching, or simply working on the many clerical tasks all teachers engage in when preparing for learning. Secondly, they had to teach two face-to-face classes, either the same class twice (with the benefit of being able to revise and rethink for the repeated session) or two distinct sessions (with the benefit of getting more planning practice and artifacts for their employment portfolio). Finally, in partnership with a mentor, they were to think about digital teaching and learning, and create an online learning module. Some created pathfinders, instructional materials for parents and teachers, learning modules, narrated PowerPoints, an information literacy online assessment, a scavenger hunt app, and more.
The essays in this chapter span those experiences. Some, like Katy Mahraj's "Iterative Instruction" or Ander Ericsson's "Looking at the Information Needs of Pre-Service Teachers," look systemically at information literacy issues. Others, like Kara Fribley's "From Black and White to Gray: Addressing Information Literacy Skills in Web Evaluation" or John Cole's "Hook," unpack small moments of a lesson. Two essays look at nefarious low-level "bird units": one from the perspective of a physics classroom (Joshua Skodack), and another from a public library perspective (Caroline Mossing). Some use humor, like Kyle Tecmire's "Database-a-phobia," and others, like Emily Johnson's essay on school librarians and assessment or Curtis Lee's call to action in social studies classroom, are intensely serious. Lady Gaga makes a guest appearance in JJ Pionke's essay on teaching synthesis, a counterpoint to Kathryn McMahon and Kristel Wieneke's essays of the power of storytime and early literacy activities in children's rooms of public libraries. The stories are authentic, unvarnished, and real.
As I write this, the last day of the semester has sunset, and soon this band of adventurers will disperse, but in each essay, the author leaves behind a message they felt would resonate with other future or practicing librarians or educators. My takeaway? Trust your hunches. Adult learners have rich past experiences that enhance their new learning. Diversity of perspective and employment enhances rather than detracts. For those lessons, and for the delight of exploring with such a thoughtful group of learners, I am deeply grateful.
Kristin Fontichiaro is a clinical assistant professor and coordinator of the school library media program at the University of Michigan School of Information. Her work focuses on quality instructional design relating to informational resources and technology. Contact: font@umich.edu.
PART I:
INFORMATION LITERACY IN THE WILD
DATABASE-A-PHOBIA: THE SILENT SEARCH KILLER
SIGNS, SYMPTOMS, AND WAYS TO COPE
Kyle Tecmire
Have you ever found yourself saying, “just Google the answer” in regards to finding any type of information? Do you find yourself thinking that Google, Bing, or Yahoo is the only credible way to find information? Does the word ‘database’ send a chill down your spine? If so, you probably are suffering from a relatively new search-threatening condition called database-a-phobia. Database-a-phobia is a condition that threatens the integrity of information searches, and results in the missing of credible and pertinent information and information sources caused by the avoidance of information databases.
There is no doubt that in today’s world the growth of the Internet has provided an information base that was previously inaccessible to the populous. Adding the advances in search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo to this has made finding and access information seemingly effortless. However as a result of these advances, most individuals miss out on a vast array of intriguing and credible resources. By relying solely on search engines, information seekers overlook or remain ignorant to the wealth of information offered by information databases. In this chapter, I will look to outline the signs and symptoms of this condition, as well as what a person can do to overcome it.
SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS
The large majority of people living with database-a-phobia live their whole lives without realizing they suffer from the disorder. Most rely on search engines like Google to find and fill their information needs, never realizing how much they’re missing. Up until six months ago, I myself was one of these people. I believed that all the information I needed could be found on Google and that, thanks to the research paper I did in 11th grade American Literature, I would be able to “tell” which sites/sources on the internet were credible simply by looking at them. This theory was disproven after I found out that Wikipedia was a less credible source, one in which users provided the information. I went through my entire college career like this: finding and using sources from Google, and actively avoiding anything that was deemed a “database”. The thought of having to identify the right database, use the right keywords, and spend more then 10 seconds looking for the right information quickly deterred me from ever pursuing the use of databases for resources.
No one can argue that search engines such as Google have made finding almost anything on the Internet a non-concern. Simply typing in a certain keyword, question, or phrase will result in a plethora of results and resources, making searching the Internet a breeze. This is all fine and well when the researcher is looking for the best sales on TVs, shoes, or for a certain recipe. However, when looking for credible sources or scholarly articles, Google doesn’t quite do the trick. In this department, finding and searching the right database will result in much more targeted, applicable, and creditable resources.
THE ROAD TO RECOVERY
After admitting to myself that I suffered from this condition, I set out to find ways to cope with it as to avoid another Wikipedia citation incident. However, when I Googled database-a-phobia, I found nothing that could help me. That’s when I knew I had to fight this on my own. It took me six months but I can proudly say I have my database-a-phobia under control, and I look forward to helping others suffering from this condition. To do this, I have devised a three-step process to help guide those suffering from this condition to rich, successful-search-filled lives.
STEP ONE: ACCEPTANCE
The first thing a person must do to overcome database-a-phobia is to accept the fact that search engines including Google, Bing, and Yahoo aren’t the only portals to information online. Although they pop-up everywhere and are easily accessible, they are not the sole access point for information. One suffering from database-a-phobia must accept the fact that using a proper database, although not as convenient, can yield a wealth of validated and credible sources. For example, imagine that a student is looking for a scholarly article on a topic such as, “How to differentiate instruction in middle school studies." Searching Google would bring up a lot of results, but they might be a mix of anecdotal and scholarly resources. However, if the student were to look into a university or school's collection of databases, they could search specific keywords such as “differentiated instruction”, “middle school”, and “social studies” and arrive with multiple articles that both address the topic and are considered credible sources. This search may take more time, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.
One must also accept that although search engines are seemingly the easiest and quickest search resources, they not only yield sources that are credible but also a large amount of non-credible sources as well. Therefore, despite their quick and targeted search results, sifting through the results to find credible sources adds to the overall research time and leaves little room for the citing of those non-credible sources. Search engines can serve as a good preliminary search for keywords or references to credible resources, but they may not be the primarily or final method of search for scholarly or specialty work.
STEP TWO: EDUCATION
Once a person suffering from database-a-phobia has completed their acceptance phase, the next step is to get educated on what they’re unfamiliar with: databases. A database, unlike most Internet search engines, requires precise and tactical use in order to yield the full results one desires. If you search Google for the phrase “how to search a database” you will receive about 1.58 million sources regarding how to search a database properly. However, as mentioned earlier, some of these results may not be credible sources and even more are opinion pieces. What we can gather from this search, however, is that many people struggle with using databases.
The best way to locate proper databases as well as learn how to search them is by asking someone who’s trained to use them. Librarians, media specialists, and fellow researchers are great people to ask for assistance. Don’t try to learn the proper use of databases on your own or “on the fly”, as this will result in a major relapse into your previous state of database-a-phobia. Also keep in mind that this is not a quickly learned skill. Searching a database for information requires a lot of patience and time but can be sped up through reaching out to a professional, such as a librarian. As a pre-service teacher myself, I have found that contacting a librarian for help has made my database use much smoother, quicker, and much less frustrating, thus helping me cope with my database-a-phobia.
STEP THREE: PRACTICE
Like anything else, learning to maximize the effectiveness of a database takes time. Learning effective keywords and search criteria takes practice; and just when you think you’ve mastered database searching, you use a new database and have to relearn it all again. This is an important point to note: individual databases don’t contain every resource ever created; they are limited in their range and therefore you may need to utilize additional databases. However, once you have built up a fair amount of database schema, you will be able to transfer what you’ve learned from one database to another making the learning curve much smaller.
Learning to live with database-a-phobia is a day-to-day battle. With bigger, faster search engines appearing everyday it makes it hard for database-a-phobes to not be tempted to revert back to their search engine ways. That is why it is vital to a person dealing with database-a-phobia to remember the reasons they have to overcome their fear of databases: 1) Databases offer a wide array of academically credible sources, and 2) Databases can filter out non-credible sources as to avoid any potential for poor or weak citations.
To those of you suffering from database-a-phobia I say: “The effort is worth the reward.” Stay vigilant in your pursuit for credible and valid sources, and never compromise your academic morals for fast yet spotty sources.
Kyle Tecmire is a pre-service teacher who is currently getting his Masters degree in Secondary Education at the University of Michigan. Upon graduating from the University of Michigan, Kyle hopes to obtain a teaching position in middle school social studies or high school economics. When he is not in school, Kyle can be found skateboarding, snowboarding, or spending time with his two incredible nephews, Jackson and Carson.
PRIMARY SOURCES AND THE INQUIRY PROCESS IN THE MUSEUM
Laura Gibbons
Before an internship and ensuing position with the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, my content knowledge surrounding learning with objects and primary sources in general was limited to what was being discussed in my graduate courses in Educational Studies. To be sure, my content knowledge in this area was lacking. In about a dozen classes at the University of Michigan School of Education I hadn’t so much as heard the term ‘primary source’ and certainly not as it relates to my chosen field of museum education.
But within the first month of a course entitled Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning at the UM School of Information I could put a name to the instructional strategies I had witnessed and facilitated at the museum. The educational approach taken by the museum isn’t a technique based on fun and sometimes silly questioning amongst fossilized skeletons, as I had once thought – although those aspects are certainly captured in the approach – but a researched, informed navigation of historical and prehistorical objects used as spring boards for provocative engagement and interpretive thought.
The Museum of Natural History sits on a corner of Geddes Avenue busy with foot traffic, perhaps equally supplied by University students and surrounding K-12 schools who visit frequently with their classes. During the museum’s Learn it! Do it! days, these K-12 groups explore activities and learning stations surrounding a central theme that are manned by docents trained to engage students in the museum’s subjects by way of inquiry. The museum’s Education Director, Kira Berman, facilitates docent training using a similar model. At times, docents are asked to think of a particular instance when a lesson or experience resonated strongly with them. What was unique about that lesson? Whether it involved physical movement, a self-guided discovery, or employed the use of prior knowledge and a past experience, most docents will agree that, in their own experience and those of the students they reach, an exploratory approach and the emphasis of connectivity of subject matter to students’ own lives creates a lifelong impression of successful learning (Beck and Cable 1998). Docents learn quickly how to aid in visiting students’ interpretation of the museum’s objects.
These are the foundational concepts of constructivism, a model that John Dewey upheld for its success in leading students to hypothesize, explore, reflect, and make meaning of the information to which they are exposed, There seems to be a natural merger of the concepts that comprise constructivism and the inquiry process; a student-led approach to education by design employs an inquiry-driven philosophy (Dewey 1939). I used this approach to the design of learning experiences as a basis for my work as I created activities and materials used to supplement the museum’s educational program. Furthermore, recognizing that prior knowledge is a key component of constructivism, I targeted the creation of pre- and post-visit activities and materials for K-12 classes planning a trip to the museum as an objective of this work.
This piece of curriculum development is important to the museum’s educational mission and relates to a comment that Kira made to a group of docents training for their first year at the museum: she emphasized that visiting students should never feel as though they had “flunked the museum”. Students should feel successful as they weave in and out of exhibits, past the Giant Clam and around the resident Mastodons. In order to experience this success, students should feel knowledgeable enough to grasp concepts they are exposed to at the museum. There is no better way to prepare them for this success than to provide them with prior knowledge about the content they will encounter.
After preparing materials for these educational events, I was provided the opportunity to facilitate one of the activities I had created. Dinosaur Discovery Day is an open event, free to the public, which includes ten to fifteen learning stations and activities introducing visitors to all things dinosaurian. For several hours I engaged participants in an interdisciplinary lesson on the paleontological process of assigning names to dinosaurs. I was fortunate in teaching for such a long period of time at once, reassessing my approach as needed and gaining experience in tailoring the lesson towards an array of audiences with different needs and levels of prior knowledge. Most participants I taught were familiar with the dinosaur names I used as examples before the lesson began, and I purposely began the activity using students’ most popular favorite dinosaurs: Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus rex. Because of this high-interest beginning to the activity, students were actively engaged and excited to learn about some of their favorite dinosaurs. How did these dinosaurs get their names? I inquired aloud to the group. Many were spot on in their answers: after the dinosaurs’ features! If I encountered a group with little prior knowledge or reserved engagement, I encouraged students to explore the objects involved in our lesson, a Stegosaurus plate and Tyrannosaurus rex tooth, to scaffold their thinking and provide physical evidence of these dinosaurs’ features.
I led students in an activity in which they took the place of the first paleontologists to find the bones of these three dinosaurs. What did they notice first about the skeletons? What were the dinosaurs’ prominent features? We went on to assign names based on the Greek and Latin roots for the dinosaurs’ unique traits: Stego, meaning plated; Tri and Cera, meaning three and horned; and so on. Students then drew their own imagined dinosaur and gave it a name using the same method. Building an activity based on student interests and prior knowledge, as I did to give the activity a constructivist basis, played a large role in the success of this lesson. The creative conclusion – as students imagined their own dinosaur – and exploratory nature of the process itself – as students took on the role of paleontologist and searched for the root words to describe their dinosaur – allowed the inquiry-based nature of the activity to resonate with students.
Referencing the foundational concepts of an inquiry-based approach to education and the constructivist philosophy has proven to be a key piece of the puzzle in the creation of curriculum materials and in the practice of teaching (Stripling 2003). The museum environment, paired with the advantage of prior knowledge from an experience, general interest, or a formal lesson, is poised to approach inquiry-based education with resulting success. The objects and groupings of objects found in the museum, when used as primary sources in constructivist- and inquiry- based activities, elicit questioning and critical thinking that can help students interpret, analyze and critique, infer, tell stories, and draw conclusions about the broader concepts relative to the primary sources.
The takeaway for educators, whether in a museum or library setting or using primary sources in the formal classroom, combines the demonstrated success of the inquiry model with the ease of generalization across content areas to produce a knowledgeable and engaged student capable of making meaning and synthesizing evidence resulting in a broad conceptual grasp.
Laura Gibbons is a Public Programs Assistant at the UM Museum of Natural History and a candidate for her Master’s degree in Educational Studies at the UM School of Education. Her education philosophy is grounded in John Dewey’s view of experience and education and their simultaneity, and she designs interdisciplinary programs and curriculum based on this principle.
REFERENCES
Beck, Larry and Ted T. Cable. 1998. Interpretation for the 21st Century: Fifteen Guiding Principles for Interpreting Nature and Culture. Urbana, IL: Sagamore Publishing Inc.
Dewey, John. 1939. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.
Stripling, Barbara K. 2003. “Inquiry-Based Learning.” In Curriculum Connections through the Library, edited by Barbara K. Stripling and Sandra Hughes-Hassell, 3-39. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
GUIDANCE IN THE INFORMATION JUNGLE
Joanna Price
It's a jungle out there. Information comes at us from all directions, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on our phones, our screens, and our TVs. How do we bushwhack through it all? Our palms get sweaty just thinking about it.
So let's start at the very beginning, what is perhaps the most important anxiety-provoking aspect "information literacy" (IL) itself. "IL" is a professional term for librarians, but meaningless for everyone else. Explaining how the words “information” and “literacy” relate to something they can understand is more time consuming than using a different phrase. That phrase I suggest is: “problem solving with information.” See, don't you feel better already?
Take library work, for example. Let's say you need to cite a source. The problem you face is figuring out what data you need about the source and how that data should be formatted. Finding the answers to those questions can be done with Google or by asking a librarian or friend. Then you apply the information by creating the citation and solving your problem.
But not all information problems have to do with things that occur in the library. It turns out that IL is sort of about everything. There is nothing in the world, it seems, that doesn’t involve searching for and applying relevant information. And the thing about real life is that it’s ambiguous, and patrons come across many information problems in their lives. Some of them are academic—like recognizing themes in a literary work or determining which information is necessary to solve the word problem they’re working on. Some impact real life: in an economic recession, your patron has been laid off and is wondering if there is governmental support for families like his. There are big information problems and small ones. When you want to change your tire, you need to find information (What tread do I need? Snow tire or all-season? How long will I keep the car?) and then apply it. Or when you want to bake a pecan pie for Thanksgiving, you need to find the recipe, buy the ingredients, and follow the directions. Any problem that involves searching for information is a problem librarians want to help their patrons learn how to solve. When you know how to solve problems through finding information and applying it, that's information literacy.
But until then? Our pulses race.
Today, we have more information being produced than any individual will ever consume in his or her lifetime. So you end up with this other Terry Gilliam-esque fear of simply disappearing inside all the information and never finding your way out again. This may be more poignant than you’d think at first glance. If we assume a basic desire to be productive in this world, we can acknowledge one of the greatest blocks to that desire is anxiety, or fear of failure. One of the greatest causes of that anxiety is in trying to find and understand information. It only stands to reason that if you’re comfortable with any particular process, you’re more inclined to do that process.
So what can librarians do to ease the barrier of anxiety and help patrons move from little information to new knowledge? Maybe an answer comes from outside libraries. Through my placement at 826 Michigan, a non-profit that works to help kids understand the pleasure of reading and writing, I learned something very important about bridging the gap between potential and realization, particularly when it comes to anxiety. 826 doesn't just talk about stories: they employ them in powerful ways. A story, or a narrative, distracts the mind from anxiety. At a typical 826 session, kids would come into the workshop and be told that they were there for a tax workshop. A tax workshop? For children? Indeed, so it would seem, as the staff launches into how to fill out IRS forms. The anxiety level goes up as children are faced with something they understand to be a “grown up” activity -- an activity that even raises the anxiety of adults.
About two minutes into the tax spiel, a voice comes over the intercom. It’s the 826 Monster, and unless he gets stories right away, he’s going to be very angry. The staff instantly “freak out,” and confess that while they’re experts at tax forms, they don’t know a lot about telling stories! Could the kids come up with some stories to keep the 826 Monster from getting angry? Suddenly, the atmosphere in the room changes. Stories? Kids are really good at making up stories, and definitely better at stories than taxes! There is a sudden switch in the power dynamic—from something they know nothing about to something they’re experts in. But what captures them is that they are now a part of a story: there’s a monster who needs stories: feed him! Inside that narrative, they’re not too worried about how good at making up stories they are, they’re too involved in the story they’re in! Inside a story, we feel freer to act, less anxious.
This experience provokes important questions for librarians: How can we replicate this with our patrons in other instructional settings? How can we transform anxiety-laden instruction to delight-filled engagement? How do we create worlds of delight when learners have such a wide range of prior experiences? How do we plan something that can be scaled up or down to provide the appropriate level of challenge? Is it even something that is compatible with who we see ourselves or our institutions to be?
As a society, we are doing the best we can to respond to these questions with the systems that we have. We work to balance our own information needs with the larger needs of society. It's no easier for our students. As instructors, we have to teach that information literacy is not a question of turn-based combat. Every day is a new day in the information jungle, and there is no finish line. “That’s okay,” I can see myself reassuring my future students with a wink. “Welcome to the good fight. We're in this together.”
Joanna Price is a second-year student at the University of Michigan School of Information.
ITERATIVE INSTRUCTION
Katy Mahraj
PERSPECTIVE
Libraries cannot be effective without good instruction: the passion, ability, and resources to communicate information and build knowledge. Library instruction can be effective at generating long-lasting results (Daugherty and Russo 2011; Wang 2006), but developing the relevant, engaging, and innovative learning experiences that yield such outcomes is an ongoing challenge. The resources and services that libraries traditionally provide contend with increasingly more abundant and alluring alternatives. Daily life is now replete with competitors for information seeking and access, learning, leisure, and community. As information professionals, how do we respond to this environment? We must adopt an entrepreneurial stance.
There is a spectrum of potential approaches to entrepreneurship in libraries. At one end, we can transform our mindset and methods for strategic planning and decision-making. Moving deeper into the literal meaning of entrepreneurship, we may develop partnerships with businesses and even build our own spin-off ventures to generate revenue. In this chapter, I focus on the most widely applicable and foundational change: adopting an entrepreneurial mindset. To me, this means being rapidly responsive to our environment in innovative ways.
As a graduate student at the University of Michigan School of Information, I have engaged in an environment that places strong emphasis on user-centered, iterative design of systems and services. This approach can be applied to projects across multiple domains, including business, government, education, and health. The fundamental goal is to maintain responsiveness to environment. As a result, the systems and services designed through this strategy are likely to have high relevance, impact, and appeal for end users. This approach represents an entrepreneurial mindset because it requires ongoing contextual awareness for the purpose of agile, creative, outcome-driven design.
In this chapter, I explain how this strategy can be applied to libraries through developing a model of iterative instruction. This discussion is informed by reflections on the time I spent this semester observing and participating in instruction at the University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences Library. The Health Sciences Library serves as “a valued partner, fully integrated into the work of the university and providing leadership in knowledge management for education, research, patient care, and community outreach” (University of Michigan 2011). With liaison librarians assigned to the health system, research centers, medical school, and schools of nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, and public health, the Health Sciences Library provides instruction on diverse topics in several formats, including one-on-one consultations and workshops on database searching, citation management, grantsmanship, bioinformatics tools, and emerging technologies. My role this semester was to support the library’s work by developing a range of instructional materials, including screencasts, surveys, polls, slides, practice exercises, handouts, and a research guide, as well as co-teaching in-person sessions.
THEORETICAL MODEL
Figure 1 illustrates the process of iterative instruction. Each step has its own goal, questions, tools, and product. An instructional project begins with information gathering through which we research our users and environment, including competitors, to construct a rich understanding of the context, audience, requirements, and resources shaping our work. Next, we innovate or develop a creative approach to the project based on our research. When our design is ready, we launch the prototype with users to assess how the design performs. We return to the drawing board to iterate or rapidly construct an improved design using assessment data. If our first attempt struggled due to poor understanding of our users, we return to research. If our first attempt demonstrated a realistic understanding of the environment but poor design or implementation of design, we return to innovation. The process continues, time and again, until the project is perfected, and time and again beyond that because the world is always changing.
Figure 1: Theoretical Model.
RESEARCH
To create effective instruction, first we must test ourselves. This “test” consists of a series of questions that push us to explore our audience, context, and goals. Who is our audience? What are their perspectives and needs? What do they know and need to know? What do they think they know and need to know? What do we seek to achieve? What is feasible to achieve with the resources and time that we have? What emotions do we want to evoke? What relationships? What standards, guidelines, or other investments shape our purpose? These questions are just a few examples! To perform this environmental scan, we may use a series of tools, including self-reflection, surveys, questionnaires, observations, and informal conversations, as well as formal needs assessments if necessary. Every lesson, from the short-term and simple to long-term and complex, requires that this foundational research be conducted to some degree. Starting with research helps us to achieve relevance to our audience and surroundings.
At the end of this phase, we should be able to articulate an anticipatory set that hooks our audience into the learning experience. An anticipatory set is a brief activity at the start of instruction that helps students engage in the lesson and develop a “mental readiness” for upcoming material (Wessman n.d.). Our ability to prepare a thoughtful anticipatory set signals that we have understood our audience and developed the foundation for a meaningful learning experience.
There are as many ways to build a productive anticipatory set as there are learners. To provide an example from my own experience, I was fortunate this semester to observe a librarian provide a deeply memorable and engaging opening in which she focused on breaking down misconceptions and redefining the library for the audience. To paraphrase, she stated that the library is not just a place for collections and assistance on formal projects. The library also provides services free of charge (helpful for a medical context oriented toward billing), including support for informal projects and learning. She emphasized that if there is ever a time that the audience feels there must be a better way to find, manage, or share information – there is, and the library is the resource to help.
Conducting research at the start of a lesson is rarely appropriate. For example, asking “What would you like to learn today?” at the start of a workshop to set the lesson’s agenda telegraphs inadequate preparation to the audience, indicating that a thoughtfully prepared lesson is not likely to follow. Instruction should certainly begin by facilitating audience input and engagement and help to reveal unpredicted audience or environmental characteristics to the instructor. However, a well-planned anticipatory set represents progress beyond initial research. We know that our audience’s time is limited, and when an audience is dedicating time to participate in library instruction, we should give time in advance to understand their needs. When a satisfactory anticipatory set can be articulated, it is time to innovate.
INNOVATE
Now we are ready to design the learning experience, pushing ourselves beyond the traditional and customary methods of instruction to develop more engaging and effective approaches. I will not discuss instructional design in any detail in this chapter; my peers in other sections of this book have devoted attention to the topic, as have myriad illustrious works in the scholarly and professional literature. My contribution to these analyses will be to urge readers not to believe, consciously or unconsciously, that adult learners do not need, crave, and deserve creative instructional design. We do, desperately!
The vast majority of instruction that I have observed in public and academic libraries relies heavily on direct instruction. It’s lecture. After lecture. After lecture. There’s an epidemic of death by PowerPoint out there in the wild. Learning experiences for adult learners, from undergraduate students to seasoned practitioners, must be fueled by the same dedication to creativity that is applied in the best K-12 school environments.
ASSESS
It is difficult to assess our audience, especially when positioned as an “extra” in the curriculum with minimal time to teach everything there is to know about a resource, service, or skill. However, this difficulty does not diminish the importance of finding ways to involve assessment in our instruction. Without assessment, we cannot judge our impact on learning or achievement. We have taught into a black hole. Without assessment data, it is more difficult to iterate instructional design and much more difficult to make a case for our significance in a learning environment. The “sticky” value of our teaching – for example, whether it has translated into better research – is unknown.
The assessments we conduct gather the data we need to succeed in iterating, or improving, our work. There are multiple levels of information to mine via assessment (Grassian and Kaplowitz 2009). Assessment can focus on affective elements: whether students enjoyed the lesson, felt they learned from it, and felt the instruction was effective. Assessment can test whether students comprehend the material immediately following instruction and can apply the material to real-world scenarios. Assessment can focus on deeper, more long-term results such as whether students can transfer the knowledge to new tasks and settings and what impact the learning experience had on broader outcomes such as school and job performance.
Much too often, our assessments stop at the superficial level of affective response, sometimes due to time and resource constraints. For example, I have distributed surveys at the end of a session or later via email with questions about the clarity and usefulness of the lesson. Feedback gathered at that level is ineffective to understand or assert the meaningful impact of our instruction. We have not actually gathered data on whether the participants do understand or can use the material. We have no comprehensive measurements, whether qualitative or quantitative, on how the instruction is impacting the audience’s work.
ITERATE
At this point, it is time to decide our next steps based on our assessment data and make a commitment to growth. During this step, we reflect on data gathered during assessment to understand how well we researched our audience, how well we reflected that understanding in our design, and how effective our design was in achieving our objectives. We assess what areas of improvement our evaluation report or documentation highlights and define the resultant work we must perform as instructors. Do we need more information on our audience and environment? If so, we return to research. Do we need to improve our design or implementation of design? If so, we return to innovation.
During iteration, we also gather the resources needed to make change. For example, do we need more time, funding, manpower, leverage, skills, or technology? Iteration does not necessarily mean that we are modifying the same lesson for future use, though that certainly can be our focus. Rather, iteration means that we take the information gathered through our experience and plow that knowledge back into our understanding of our audience and instructional design moving forward. Above all, a commitment to iteration means a commitment to responsiveness, strategic thinking, and growth: the fundamental driving forces of an entrepreneurial mindset.
CONCLUSION
The model of iterative instruction that I present in this chapter represents a preliminary understanding of a complex dynamic that varies from one context to the next. I hope that these thoughts spark reflection and enthusiasm in readers who are also dedicated to improving their practice as teachers and learners. As I move forward, I will assess and iterate this model as well as my own instruction. I look forward to reflecting back on this chapter in future years to review how well I have understood my experiences, the environments around me, and the work of information literacy instruction at this point in my career. Onward!
Katy Mahraj is a second-year Master of Science in Information student specializing in library and information science at the University of Michigan School of Information and completing the graduate certificate in health informatics at the University of Michigan School of Information and School of Public Health. With a growing range of experiences in information science and health informatics, her work focuses on developing expertise in the fuller range of information needs, applications, and technologies in health care and health sciences. You can find more information about her and her work at http://katy-mahraj.appspot.com.
REFERENCES
Daugherty, Alice L., and Michael F. Russo. 2011. "An Assessment of the Lasting Effects of a Stand-Alone Information Literacy Course: The Students' Perspective." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 37(4): 319-326.
Grassian, Esther S., and Joan R. Kaplowitz. 2009. Information Literacy Instruction: Theory and Practice. 2nd ed. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
University of Michigan Taubman Health Sciences Library. 2011. “About the Library.” Last modified June 6. http://www.lib.umich.edu/taubman-health-sciences-library/about-library.
Wang, Rui. 2006. “The Lasting Impact of a Library Credit Course.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 6(1): 79-92.
Wessman, Leslie. n.d. “Madeline Hunter’s ITIP Model for Direct Instruction.” Accessed December 14, 2011. http://www.hope.edu/academic/education/wessman/2block/unit4/hunter2.htm.
INFORMATION LITERACY IN PUBLIC LIBRARIES
EARLY LITERACY AND READING READINESS IN PUBLIC LIBRARIES
Kathryn McMahon
The children’s departments of public libraries have always focused on literacy. The traditional idea of children’s library services is providing books, storytimes, and special programming, all while stressing reading and literacy. Recently, shifts in the economy, technology, and community needs have forced many libraries to modify their services. This has not affected the children’s department in the same way as the rest of the library, and many children’s departments remain places for books and storytimes. In order to remain relevant and stay connected to the needs of their patrons, children’s departments also need to modify their services to adjust to the changing needs from the community. Information literacy and even reading literacy are no longer just about books. It would make sense then, if libraries no longer provided early literacy resources that are strictly book-based. Additionally, other ideas have changed in how to best provide early literacy to children.
In the past few years, the Public Library Association and the Association for Library Service to Children joined to create the Every Child Ready to Read® @ your library® program. This program recognizes that libraries are limited in how much they can directly teach early literacy skills to children. It focuses on educating parents and caregivers on how to teach their children early literacy skills, with the assumption that this will benefit children even more than the library solely providing the instruction (American Library Association 2011). Although this is not a new idea, it has been expanding and has become important to include in all children’s departments. As library services shift, incorporating these concepts will help libraries better serve their patrons and stay relevant.
This semester I had the opportunity to observe and work at the Main Branch of the Farmington Community Library (FCL), a public library in Farmington Hills, Michigan. I spent my time in the Children’s Services Department, observing and helping with storytimes, and shadowing at the children’s reference desk. The FCL presents an excellent example of how libraries can provide a different form of early literacy resources to both children and their parents, while still maintaining excellent traditional services. While in the children’s department, it was immediately obvious the importance that FCL places on reading readiness and early literacy. Not only do they provide the standard services of storytimes and books, they also have some unique features.
The Smart Start Center is the most noticeable aspect of the Children’s Services Department’s early literacy offerings. The center consists of nine interactive stations located throughout the department. Each station is designed to teach children a skill necessary to be ready to read. The information sheet on Smart Start states that it is "a hands-on, interactive learning environment for children 6 years and under and their adult guests… Multiple areas of child development are addressed in this environment because these skills are interconnected in advancing a child toward being ready to learn to read" (Farmington Community Library Smart Start n.d.).
The skills taught at each station are presented in a fun and interactive way. The Hear It! station has thirty world instruments. The Match It! station contains a memory game where children match tiles. The Touch It! station has a large pin screen that children can play with and use to create molds of their hands or face. Say It! has a touch-screen computer that has exercises that teach phonemic awareness. At Read it!, a magnetized board allows children to put together pieces to create words. Play It! gives children the chance to make up and act out stories, complete with changeable scenery. Build It!, for children who are still crawling, is designed to look like a construction site and contains foam bricks for building and playing with. The Fill It! station shows beads falling and filling wheels, cups and funnels. Finally, the Find It! station is made up of a globe that lights up and also a map of Farmington Hills (Farmington Community Library Smart Start n.d.).
Though my time observing in the department was limited and not always during busy times, these stations always had children and parents at them. The children were clearly having a wonderful time interacting with these stations.
The information sheet available in the department describes what skills are developed at each station and how those skills fit in with the idea of early literacy. For example, the skill developed at Hear It! station is distinguishing between tones and sounds, which is “a building block to identifying the differences in letter and word sounds” (Farmington Community Library Smart Start n.d.). What originally looked like an area that is just there for kids to enjoy is explained as an educational tool. Without this explanation, parents would not know the actual benefits the library is providing.
The Smart Start program has dual instructional value. Not only does it help children get ready to read, but it also gives information and suggestions to adults who want to learn how to be knowledgeable, supportive parents. In addition to providing the activities and explanations at the various stations, the library also supplies handouts to supplement the stations. These handouts give some suggestions for activities parents can do at home with their children. They each start by stating “these simple activities can be performed at home using common household objects and minimum time commitment” (Farmington Community Library, Hear It! n.d.). In this way, FCL stresses that parents teaching early literacy skills at home is important but does not have to be time consuming, expensive, or difficult. They make it accessible for everyone.
Additionally, FCL provides other reading readiness and parenting pamphlets, not related to the Smart Start Center, throughout the department and during storytimes. These include pamphlets sponsored and distributed by Every Child Ready to Read®, and other national, state wide, or local programs. The have become an important destination for parents who wish to teach their children the fundamental skills for reading readiness. These pamphlets have been supplemented by evening parent events that introduce caregivers to literacy development strategies.
People’s opinion of libraries is changing and libraries are no longer solely about books. They are being rethought as community centers that provide information and entertainment that extends far beyond books. While traditional children’s services are still important to promoting early reading literacy, libraries can extend their services to include so much more. Following through on the ideas of Every Child Ready to Read® and starting innovative programs such as Farmington Community Library’s Smart Start are good ways to work towards extending these services.
On the Smart Start supplemental handouts, FCL states, “through its programming, collections, and special features, the Farmington Community Library reinforces the belief that the parent is the first and best teacher of the child” (Farmington Community Library Hear It! n.d.). This is something every library should consider. By working these ideas into their already existing services, public library children’s departments can remain relevant in their communities and provide better services to their youngest patrons as they take their first steps toward literacy.
Kathryn McMahon is a second year student at University of Michigan School of Information, specializing in Library and Information Science. Her career plan is to become a children’s librarian in a public library. She is currently a substitute librarian at the Canton Public Library in Canton, Michigan.
REFERENCES
American Library Association. 2011. "About: Every Child Ready to Read." Accessed December 13. http://www.everychildreadytoread.org/about.
Farmington Community Library. Hear It! Farmington Hills, MI: Farmington Community Library, n.d.
Farmington Community Library. Smart Start. Farmington Hills, MI: Farmington Community Library, n.d.
HOW TO TAME A BIRD UNIT
Caroline Mossing
In the course of my studies, I had the opportunity to do some observation at a local public library. I was sitting with my mentor, a part-time librarian in the children's department, at the reference desk when a parent and child, who appeared to be in second or third grade, came up to us with a school assignment in hand. The parent showed us the assignment sheet, which contained a list of Native American tribes from which to pick for the project. On the sheet were additional instructions as to what information the report should contain.
I looked up the call number we needed, and the parent and I (the child wandered off at this point) found the appropriate tomes and picked out a few on various tribes. The parent flipped through some to see if they contained the appropriate information (houses, diet, and location), while I looked through tables of contents in others. The parent walked away with books on a couple of different tribes that complied with the parameters of the assignment, and, I can only assume, soon began writing the report with her child. I reflected, as the patrons walked off, on the fact that I had just seen one of the "bird units" (Loertscher 2005) so often discussed in one of my current courses.
A "bird unit" is what we call a school assignment that requires little to no critical thinking skills to complete but results in a simplistic but usually attractive product. I wondered what I could've done to make the process we just went through a little more useful in the long term for that parent and her child. This writing is the result of that reflection.
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