As instructors, we would love to believe that our carefully rehearsed lectures and meticulously planned activities are 100% effective 100% of the time. But sometimes, especially in library instruction, our best laid plans can go terribly awry. I can think of more than one class where, despite the fact that the same lesson worked last week, this group meets me with blank stares and I know that after my class, they will quickly abandon my advice about resources and return to the comforting glow of Google. Figuring out what students want and how they want to learn can be a key component in effective library instruction. But how do we find that out? And if we find out, how can we make it work for us and for them?
These recent articles discuss some of the ways in which students may want to learn information literacy concepts or strategies we can use to make these lessons stick.
Tiffeni J. Fontno and Dianne N. Brown, College & Research Libraries News 76.2 – 2015
The concept of the learning center is one that is based around task-based group work that requires little instructor intervention. The learning center grew from elementary school instruction as ways to get students engaged in particular tasks at particular stations while teachers facilitate and direct the activity. When brought into the information literacy classroom, this became different activity stations that asked students at that station to research a topic in a particular set of resources – finding books at one station, articles at another – and then putting suggested resources on index cards on the front whiteboard. Instead of a lecture, these students were able to get real, hands-on experience finding resources in a low-stakes learning environment. While this is a prep-heavy class for the instructor, feedback from both faculty and students was extremely positive.
Jo Ann Murphy, Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research 9.1 – 2014
This qualitative focus group study included 14 second, third, and fourth year university students from the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts programs. These were students who were familiar with using library resources and were asked to describe the processes that they used to learn how to conduct research in the library environment. Though 13 of the 14 students had attended some kind of formal library workshop in the past, the discussion from the students suggested that their methodologies for conducting research were largely gathered from self-directed trial and error learning. When they were stuck and needed help, they turned to their instructors, peers in their classes, family, and friends. Rarely if ever did they turn to librarians. As a suggestion for more effective information literacy training, Murphy suggests that more embedded instruction and frequent instruction may be able to reach these students who are not currently looking for formal information literacy training.
