Information Literacy in West Virginia

Jennifer Sias and I are presenting our talk on the creation and development of this information literacy blog at an In-Service Training Day at West Virginia University Libraries today. We hope to register some additional bloggers and pose a question or two to get things going.

Here are two to begin: How do we know when learning has happened; how do we know when teaching has occurred? Reactions, examples?

ATTENTION! The Information Literacy in West Virginia blog is moving to: http://informationliteracywv.edublogs.org/

Jennifer Sias and Carroll Wilkinson originally developed this blog as a way to communicate back and forth and to experiment with Web 2.0 technologies that impact information literacy. They’ve learned a lot through trial, error and triumph! And now, they are ready to let others play in their sandbox, which is the impetus for their move to http://informationliteracywv.edublogs.org/

Visit us there, please! Join us! And, join the conversation, won’t you?

http://informationliteracywv.edublogs.org/

Anne Marie Casey and Lana Ivanitskaya of Central Michigan University developed an instrument which measures Information Age competencies including basic and advanced search skills, understanding scholarly sources, critical judgment of secondary sources material, and understanding of plagiarism. It is an interactive online assessment and feedback application entitled: Research Readiness Self Assessment. They published an article about the creation and testing of this instrument in the Journal of Library Administration Vol 41 No.1/2 2004, pp167-183.

In addition, according to their explanation, “ RRSA captures subjective beliefs and self reported attitudes that are essential to critical thinking and lifelong learning in a variety of subject areas.” They also say “the instrument is adaptable to multiple disciplines and it communicates expectations, provides feedback on skills levels, motivates students to use academic libraries, and warns them against excessive reliance on the public access Internet without consistently examining the quality indicators of the information they find.”

Letting students test themselves on what they actually know about academic research seems so sensible. Librarians and faculty at WVU have expressed interest in this instrument and we are looking into it further with the possible help of the Faculty Senate Library Committee.

As part of the ongoing Information Literacy Initiative of the WVU Libraries http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/faculty/initiative.html in the fall, 2008 semester I began an e-series of short weekly bulletins on topics of possible interest to teachers. Basically it is a current awareness service by another name. So far the bulletins cover Wikipedia as a source for student learning, the challenge of information literacy, and information literacy learning outcomes across the disciplines. Please click the following link to explore their content.

http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/instruction/bulletins/

The series did not just happen after I chose the subjects and wrote the content. I worked with several people to set up an electronic announcement that everyone on campus in Morgantown would receive. From the beginning we planned to archive the bulletins on our webpage so that other readers could explore them any time they wished. We also set up an RSS feed so interested faculty could get an email message every time a new one came out. The critical staff included: WVU Libraries’ Development Representative Monte Maxwell and one of our Professional Technologists, Mike Bond in the Libraries’ Systems Department. Monte has contacts in the University News Services and they too were critical to getting the information out through our weekly ENEWS service.

It’s all too new for assessment yet. But we project continuation of topics in the second semester. Blogosphere are welcome to give feedback as the series develops.

Jennifer Nutefall and Deborah Gaspar of George Washington University presented a four hour course entitled: “Assessment of Information Literacy: Implementation Strategies” at the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association (MAC/MLA) Annual Meeting in Morgantown West Virginia on October 20, 2008. Jennifer is the Instruction Coordinator and Deborah is an Instructional Librarian at Gelman Library of George Washington University. http://www.gwu.edu/gelman/ The course was based on their field experience and publication.

From the beginning of the course, participants were asked to answer questions such as: Why assess? What is assessment? What are some misconceptions and preconceptions about assessment? How can we define assessment? What are the different types of assessment? Very soon we were having an interesting discussion just volunteering our answers. The class numbered about eighteen librarians from hospital, academic medical centers, and various other venues.

The facilitators emphasized that assessment tells the story of your success as a teacher. They pointed out that it can be qualitative or quantitative and each approach can be effective in different ways. Overall they noted that assessment can improve teaching, determine what students learned, and at the same time garner additional institutional resources because of success. (At GW, they were given four more instructional librarians by showing their success and effectiveness in research teaching!)

Nutefall and Gaspar distinguished between formative and summative assessment methods and demonstrated several formative methods in their teaching of us. Techniques included: brainstorming and setting of learning outcomes. We practiced these during the class. Then additional techniques were introduced. They included peer review of teaching through observation and feedback, use of a pedagogy review group, teaching portfolios, and other reflections that allowed a “reality check” during the progression of a course.

Nutefall and Gaspar also addressed programmatic assessment through the application of self reflection forms for observed librarians. They emphasized that assessment of student learning should be kept separate from assessment of good teaching by librarians. In their view it is not a good idea to try to do both forms of assessment at the same time. One interesting teaching technique they demonstrated was called “Transfer and Apply.” It’s an in-class assessment strategy which provides students with an opportunity to internalize learning as they consider other applications. Students are asked: how will you use what you learned today in another setting? Their answers can help instructors gauge how well the students are really understanding the content.

The instructors gave us numerous handouts including an information literacy assessment bibliography and examples of other assessment techniques. The class was stimulating and encouraging. As I filled out my course evaluation, I wondered if we might invite them to be speakers at an ACRL chapter or WVLA academic section meeting sometime in the future. Hmmmmm…..

Upward Bound classes this summer were a learning opportunity for me. To interest high school students in research, could I make effective lesson plans? Could I keep them interested? These were some of the many questions that I had going in to the experience of working with seventeen fifteen and sixteen year olds on issues of information literacy in the summer of 2008. For me, seven class hours were scheduled in June and July and that was not much time. But I wanted to make the most of it. The truth is seven hours is much longer than I have with many college students. So this was a challenge and a luxury at the same time.

These students came from our county (Monongalia) and neighboring counties including Taylor and Preston for summer enrichment that encourages eventual enrollment in college. They were participants in the Federal TRIO Program which is an educational opportunity outreach program designed to motivate and support students from disadvantaged backgrounds. TRIO includes six outreach and support programs targeted to serve and assist low-income, first-generation college students, and students with disabilities to progress through the academic pipeline from middle school to postbaccalaureate programs.

The unifying themes for learning throughout the curriculum for the Upward Bound students were food and water. With other instructors, participants studied Biology, French, Spanish, Math, Financial Peace of Mind, Interviewing and Writing in addition to their information literacy classes. Several field trips around the state took place. They included a trip to Davis and Elkins College for the UB Summer Olympics, a trip with Adventure West Virginia to Blackwater Falls and Dolly Sods, and a High Ropes course near campus.

The required book for the summer was Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. We did not focus on the book in my classes but I did ask the students about it and they said it was “dense but interesting.” I did show them how to find a book review in case that would be helpful for discussions with other instructors.

We met at 2-3pm MWF for three weeks in one of Armstrong Hall’s computer labs. Each student had a fully equipped workstation and their parents or guardians provided waivers so that they could have open access to the full Internet.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes that I set for my seventeen 2008 Upward Bound high school students were:

• · Discover that research can actually be fun if you are curious to know more about your subject.

• · Understand information anxiety and know at least three remedies for it.

• · Achieve awareness of the existence of the invisible web and become familiar with at least three databases (after learning what a database is.)

• · Know how to ask and write questions.

• · Identify reliable sources of both electronic and printed sources of information.

• · Recognize an information need and satisfy it with credible findings.

• · Present information in an ethical manner and understand the idea of a “paper trail.”

Lesson Plans

First class- Getting to Know You; Getting to Know Me; Curiosity and You; Let’s Talk about Computers; Do you have flash drives? Exercise: What do we mean by information skills? What are the key skills that relate to finding and understanding information? For that matter, what is information? EXERCISE: hand out cards with terms on them and discuss to see whether what was named was some form of information.

Second class – Curiosity Inventory at beginning of class. What curiosity feels like. Wanting to know something…solving an information problem. Asking a question. Writing a question. Exercises practiced these abilities.

Third class-The Big 6 Model for Research; steps of research. Putting them to work on food and consumer purchases. Divide into teams of three for in-class project.

Fourth class-Food and consumer research continues in groups.

Fifth class-Evaluating and Synthesizing

Sixth class-Doing research on Dolly Sods and Blackwater Falls (two places the students would visit.) My hope for this lesson was that in the interviewing and writing part of the program the students would have a way to use their research findings. I still want to find out whether this worked out.

Seventh and final class-Presenting the findings of your research to each other. Cognitive mapping.

These are the non-proprietary Internet sites that I recommended to the students during the course:

http://highschoolace.com/ace/ace.cfm

http://www.ipl.org/

http://morgantown.lib.wv.us/links.html#reference

http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/

http://medlineplus.gov

My reasoning was that they could get to these after their access to the many academic databases at WVU was no longer available to them.

Conclusions

Add pictures here

A learning outcome for me was that I had fun coaching the students. I learned I could do it! They were fifteen and sixteen years of age and I have begun my sixth decade. That’s quite an age span. But with improvisation and a will to capture their imaginations, I believe we connected.

One of the most fun and successful research exercises was image searching for Dolly Sods and Blackwater Falls. They located photos of various views of both places and numerous maps that they thought were quite cool and also potentially useful for the trip they were planning to take as part of the program.

Only thirteen of the original seventeen students actually participated in the program in the end. They began in discussions during the first information literacy class with the idea that research was boring to them and just something to get over when it was assigned. None of the students had ever had the chance to choose their own subject based on personal curiosity. When they got the chance to work on something they were actually interested in, they really enjoyed it. I made use of the BIG6 Model for solving an information problem and we focused on task definition, information seeking strategies, and use of information for most of the time we had together.

One regret I have is that there was no formal evaluation of the students’ performance or learning in information literacy skills worked into the larger program. The program director apologized for this and said next year they will include information literacy learning in their program assessment. As we plan for the future, I intend to guide us in the direction of a credible assessment instrument so that we can measure student learning effectively.

All in all I may have learned more than the students through this teaching experience. They were so responsive to having fun with guided, coached research and they inspired me.

I posted this earlier today on my own blog, but since it relates to information literacy, I think the post has relevance here, too.

http://stockard02.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/the-injustice-of-underfunding-justice-talking/

Last night I felt as though someone had sucker punched me. I mean, I really had the wind knocked out of me. I found out that one of my favorite websites and favorite radio program, Justice Talking, ceased production June 30, 2008. For years I have promoted this program and its companion website.

http://communities.justicetalking.org/blogs/jt/archive/2008/05/30/justice-talking-says-farewell.aspx

Obviously, I’ve been a little behind on visiting the site lately, but last night I was met with this rude awakening when I went to the site to look for a program related to an upcoming information literacy session.

Justice Talking, as I’ve told so many classes at Marshall University, in my mind is like an online version of The CQ Researcher. Like The CQ Researcher, my FAVORITE REFERENCE SOURCE OF ALL TIMES, Justice Talking takes on the hottest topics of our times, issues that are controversial, complicated and thought-provoking, and provides in-depth, reasoned coverage. Topics of Justice Talking shows, which used to air weekly prior to its June 2008 demise, ranged from the freedom of religion to the US economy to college admissions to health care to election reform. Like the CQ Researcher, Justice Talking dealt with MAJOR CONTROVERSIAL topics, including abortion, gun control, euthanasia and more. And its host, producers, writers did so in a reasoned, balanced manner.

Often, a show would include background on the topic at hand with research, facts and figures to back up the overview. Margot Adler, the thoughtful host, would moderate a debate that included at least two well informed individuals, often more (experts you might say) who had different points of view. And in many cases, audience members were invited to ask questions of the guests and could push them to back up their claims with a sound argument and research.

This was fantastic to listen to – Tuesday nights in my area on WVWV FM 89.9 (West Virginia Public Radio). However, as I pointed out to my students, one could simply visit their companion website to listen to past programs and read about the issue, the guests and their credentials. Also, each program listed on the site came with a sort of bibliography on the right – other websites and books and articles one could turn to for more information. I mean, how awesome is that???? I know that Justice Talking often was promoted to high school students, especially through its other site: Justice Learning. However, I found the breadth of the topics and the quality of the discussion to be spot-on for our undergraduate students.

Produced by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Justice Talking was a national treasure. According to their website, they simply could not secure the funding needed to continue. I wish, somehow, I had known about this before it was too late. I don’t know that one individual could have done enough to save this tremendous program and service, but I wish we could have tried. I would like to find out more about the story behind the story. Did Annenberg cut the funding? If so, why? I think I need to write Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, whom I have come to admire after seeing her quite a bit in the past year on The Bill Moyers Journal, another fantastic, thought-provoking program.

I have much more to say about this, but now I must head home so that I can watch another kind of debate this evening. I’ll simply end by saying that the loss of Justice Talking and the service it provided is a huge loss for Information Literacy; it is a huge loss for our country, its citizens and this democracy!  ~Jennifer Sias

Today is October 3 and it has been many weeks since I posted here. Jennifer and I met this week at Lakeview while she was in town for the WVNET conference. We talked about development of this blog and our plans for a presentation at the WVLA Conference in December, 2008 at the Greenbrier.

This post will serve to get me back into the swing of blogging (I hope.) There is a great deal to catch up with and it includes:
-six information literacy classes this summer on the WVU campus with 17 Upward Bound high
school students;
-continuation of the advancement of the Information Literacy Initiative on campus
-initiation of a current awareness bulletin series on issues of information literacy and teaching
through WVU’s ENEWS service;
-an October 1 Faculty Development Session (attended by 23!) called “Teaching
Discipline-Specific Information Literacy Principles to Strengthen Student Research Results;”
-preparations for four class sessions for family members attending the Fall Family Weekend at
WVU October 17-19;
-adaptation of an information literacy tutorial entitled Searchpath for use at WVU;
-news of the progress on campus of our Plagiarism Avoidance tutorial

If I am able to pass along just a bit of information on each of the topics above, surely it will get me back into the swing of this blog’s purpose. The purpose is: to serve as a continuing education outlet for Jennifer and me, to encourage us to share our projects and initiatives with each other, and eventually to open the blog up to the other interested librarians in the state of West Virginia.

Sam and the Sources

We just produced a new video! Fashioned after the Common Craft videos, “Sam and the Sources” is a short video dealing with source options. Sam has been assigned to write a ten-page research paper, and in this video he considers what sources might be useful given his instructor’s research requirements. This video is a production of the DLT, Digital Learning Team, at Marshall University.  (DLT = Jennifer Sias, Floyd Csir and Sabrina Thomas.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eswTZW8enE0

Take a look at KCTools – Four Basic Phases of the Research Process:

• I wonder
• I find
• I evaluate
• I share

http://www.ala.org/aaslTemplate.cfm?Section=k12students&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=21725