Baby Steps and Giant Leaps towards Information Literacy

1
Baby Steps and Giant Leaps towards Information
Literacy

• Stephanie Davis-Kahl Catherine Palmer, UCI
  Libraries
• Elizabeth Losh, Writing Director, Humanities Core
  Course, UCI
• Ellen Strenski, Assistant Writing Director,
  Composition Program, UCI
• Southern California Instruction Librarians Spring
  Program
• May 9, 2003
• California State University, Long Beach

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Relationships/Partnerships, or "Our friends made
us do it!"

• UCI implemented a Lower-Division Writing
  requirement in 1982
• Two course sequences fulfilled the requirement
• Writing 39C curriculum integrated library
  orientation since 1986
• Humanities Core Course self-teaching "Discovery
  Tasks" incorporated into curriculum 1993
• Library assigned responsibility to support the
  development and maintenance of these programs
• Education Services Coordinator working with a
  committee or team, 1986-2001
• Dept. of Education and Outreach (EO) established
  July, 2001
• EOs mission is to integrate Information
  Literacy Competencies, as defined by ACRL and
  locally, throughout the Undergraduate Curriculum,
  beginning with lower-division courses.

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Rebuilding the Curriculum or "Talking the Talk"

• Our Challenges
• Articulate and highlight those competencies we
  were already teaching
• Integrate other important competencies into
  existing curricula
• Identify new opportunities to participate in
  curriculum development
• Our Goals
• Teach conceptual frameworks, not mechanical
  button pushing
• Incorporate active learning techniques into a 50
  minute one-shot lecture
• Our Partners
• Acted as consultants but did not dictate the
  final curriculum of the sessions
• Provided rich and immediate feedback on the
  proposed plan

4
Spreading the Word or "Walking the Walk"

• Challenge One Convince the Librarians
• Teaching Librarians helped set the educational
  goals for the sessions
• Librarians helped design the curriculum
• They all agreed to use a standard active learning
  technique in the sessions they taught
• Buzz Groups
• Materials Examination
• We modeled a session for them and encouraged them
  to practice teaching before the session

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Spreading the Word or "Walking the Walk"

• Challenge Two
• Convince the Writing 39C Instructors
• Reactions to Materials Examination was mixed
• "It was great for the students to see all of the
  different kinds of materials that the Library
  has"
• "The best use of the research skills orientation
  is for the students to work on their own topics
  with the librarians there to help them."
• Writing Program and EO share a common goal
  continuous improvement

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Library Discovery Tasks

• Program

Fall Quarter Gathering Background
Information Using ANTPAC to Look Up a Book Winter
Quarter Using Periodical Indexes to Find
Information from and about Journal Articles Using
Electric Journals to Find Information on a
Topic Spring Quarter Locating and Analyzing an
Article from JSTOR Putting it All Together Final
Project Documentary Research Paper
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Locate and Analyze an Article From JSTORLibrary
Discovery Task 5

• Problem
• This Discovery Task requires you to locate and
  analyze an assigned article from the JSTOR
  electronic journal collection. The assignment
  will ask you to read a scholarly journal article
  and to answer a series of questions about it. The
  article will be assigned to you. To prepare you
  for the next essay, your section leader may
  assign a different article than the one
  designated by his or her last name! This
  assignment can be completed without coming to the
  Library. However, it will be easier to access and
  print the information you need if you use the
  computers in the libraries or computer labs on
  campus.
• Objective
• This Discovery Task has three learning
  objectives. The first is to reinforce and build
  upon your experience with Discovery Task 4 from
  Winter Quarter which required you to use the
  JSTOR electronic journal collection. The second
  objective is to introduce you to the process of
  analyzing and evaluating a scholarly journal
  article. You will achieve this objective by
  answering a series of questions about the
  article. The third objective is to provide you
  with a list of articles that will enhance your
  understanding of the lecture topics.
• Task
• Students are given step by step instructions on
  how to locate an article in JSTOR and are also
  given the citation information for a specific
  article.

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Discovery Task 5, Continued

• Once you have located your article, read it
  carefully and answer the following questions.
• What information about the author(s) does the
  article provide?
• Summarize in a short paragraph the major points
  that the author covers in the article.
• What is the thesis of the article?
• List at least three major claims that the author
  makes to support the thesis.
• What type of evidence is used in support of
  claims (quotations, statistical information,
  visual materials, etc.)
• Is the evidence primarily from primary or
  secondary sources? Support your answer with
  examples.
• Name one or two "experts" mentioned in the
  article. Does the author agree or disagree with
  the experts he or she cites?
• What is the subject focus of the journal that the
  article is from?
• Who seems to be the audience for this argument?
• List six new vocabulary words that you learned
  with their definitions.
• Students must also complete an online quiz.

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Evaluation Strategies

• Feedback from Librarians
• end-of-year meeting
• preliminary meetings
• statistics on use of materials
• Samples of Student Writing
• Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program
  prize winners
• long-term study students

• Student Evaluations
• numerical evaluations
• written comments
• focus group feedback
• anecdotal comments
• Faculty Feedback
• surveys of instructors
• anecdotal comments
• Web Traffic

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Reinventing Undergraduate Education (a.k.a. The
Boyer Report, 1998)

• I. Make Research-Based Learning the Standard
• Undergraduate education in research universities
  requires renewed emphasis on a point strongly
  made by John Dewey almost a century ago learning
  is based on discovery guided by mentoring rather
  than on the transmission of information. Inherent
  in inquiry-based learning is an element of
  reciprocity faculty can learn from students as
  students are learning from faculty. (p.15)
• Involving Undergraduates in the Research Process
• Because of the unique character of a research
  university, the process of discovery is
  essentially a public one the results of research
  are, through both teaching and publication,
  offered publicly for critique, correction, and
  extension. Undergraduates need to become an
  active part of the audience for research. In a
  setting in which inquiry is prized, every course
  in an undergraduate curriculum should provide an
  opportunity for a student to succeed through
  discovery-based methods. (p. 17)

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National Scene

• Conference on College Composition and
  Communication (CCCC, part of the National Council
  of Teachers of English)
• http//www.ncte.org/cccc/index.shtml
• Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA)
• http//www.ilstu.edu/ddhesse/wpa/
• Arizona State University Writing Programs -
  Course Goals, Objectives Outcomes
• http//www.asu.edu/clas/english/writingprograms/te
  acherresources/wpgoals.htm

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Writing 39C Revisioning/Remodeling

• Catalog Description
• Guided practice in argumentation, logic and
  inquiry. Readings are selected from current
  nonfiction and from materials students select
  from the University Libraries. Research
  Strategies emphasized.
• Four Main Goals
• Rhetorical Knowledge Critical Thinking, Reading,
  Writing Processes Knowledge of Conventions
• Elements of research embedded into
• Critical Thinking, Reading, Writing Processes
  Knowledge of Conventions

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Writing 39C Library Orientation Survey

• Instructors asked to assign a weight (1-5) to
  items such as
• Brainstorm concepts for keywords to be used as
  search terms
• Understand how to use access points
• Evaluate research sources
• Asked for written comments to questions such as
• What specific information about the library
  itself do you feel your students must know?
• What was the single most valuable result of
  your classs library orientation this quarter?

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Preliminary Resultshttp//e3.uci.edu/faculty/stre
nski/librarysurvey.html

• Instructor
• Define research topic (1.3)
• Evaluate research sources (2.3)
• Understand WWW/Google (2.4)
• Brainstorm concepts for keywords (2.8)
• Interpret Google hits (2.9)
• Understand researchers' jargon (3.0)

• Librarian
• Understand strucuture, types, coverage of
  library DBs and online journal archives (4.8)
• Use common features of different DBs (apply
  search strategies) (4.7)
• Understand search strategies (Boolean,
  truncation, proximity, strings) (4.6)
• Use access points (e.g., author, keyword, LCSH)
  to find info (4.5)
• Locate actual sources identified in search of
  library DBs (4.4)
• Interpret results from search in library DBs
  (4.1)
• Know how to capture onscreen info (3.7)
• Determine info needs (3.5)
• Understand researchers' jargon (3.0)

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http//course.lib.uci.edu/ed/infolit/scil.ppt

• Contact Information
• Stephanie Davis-Kahl (sdaviska_at_uci.edu)
• Catherine Palmer (cpalmer_at_uci.edu)
• Ellen Strenski (strenski_at_uci.edu)
• Liz Losh (lizlosh_at_uci.edu)