Kara Blizzard, University of Alberta
In March 2020, Kara Blizzard began two unexpected journeys: adapting her information literacy teaching practice for an online environment, and adopting the new-to-me practice of baking sourdough. Blizzard will describe ways these two journeys intersect and what they have taught her about teaching. For example, she will reflect on adapting her skills for different contexts, learning new techniques and taking risks, and bringing a new perspective back to a more familiar environment.
Jenni Jacobs, Texas Tech University
During the COVID-19 pandemic library workers became isolated not only from students and faculty/staff outside of the library but also those within the library. Working from home came with many benefits, but it also further isolated people from one another. During this presentation Jenni Jacobs will talk about how, at her previous position, she instituted a digital get-together for our library workers (both faculty and staff) to boost morale and keep communication open. Attendees should expect to learn about how they can adapt the technology she used to connect faculty and staff to their own libraries and own situations to help with boosting morale and continuing communication.
Ariana Varela, University of Southern California Libraries
In this presentation Ariana Varela will demonstrate how she utilizes critical pedagogy and inclusive design to create a collaborative activity for information literacy sessions. Her university is currently in a hybrid environment where a majority of the students attend classes in-person, but there is a remote option for those who aren’t feeling well or prefer to attend remotely. She have conducted most of the information literacy sessions in person. Since she does not know if or how many students will be attending the class remotely, Varela designed an activity that incorporates multiple modalities at the beginning so as not to have to redesign my presentation last minute. she utilizes the CRAAP framework for critically analyzing multiple source types. The framework asks students to consider the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of a source. She then locates multiple source types that relate to the class topic and ask the students to work in groups to analyze the sources using CRAAP on Google Jamboard. Jamboard allows for visual annotations of the sources and provides a means for the students to share their ideas with their classmates. She makes sure to include sources written by folks of color, and ones that discuss critical topics as they relate to the class.
Jingjing Wu & Cynthia Henry, Texas Tech University
The University’s Currently Enrolled Survey results show that students were looking for workshops on Python, Tableau, R, and other data manipulation, analysis, and presentation tools. The Carpentries offers outstanding continuing education and self-education opportunities for library workers. The Carpentries teaches workshops on the foundational skills to work effectively and reproducibly with data and code. Libraries are perfect places to teach these cross-disciplinary skills on campus. Jingjing Wu and Cynthia Henry attended Carpentries workshops on Python and R to develop competency in data processing and visualization. Later, they participated in instructor training to sharpen their teaching skills by learning Carpentries pedagogy. After months of preparation, they started to deliver Carpentries-style workshops on R and Tableau. During the sessions, we focused on live coding, hands-on experiences, and engaging attendees with classroom interactions and formative evaluations. We have kept updating our coursework to respond to this feedback. Surveys and evaluations from the participants have shown that they came from various academic backgrounds in natural sciences, engineering, social sciences, and humanities. These workshops enable the participants to get started with data manipulation, analysis, and visualization and connect data skills with their research projects in the real world. The workshops engage students and faculty to utilize their research data in a more comprehensive way and help build the skills that will enable them to take their research to the next level. Through these continuing education opportunities, these two librarians were able to develop skills themselves that allowed them to educate faculty and students in an area that was missing from the library.
Jess Hoffman, Brooklyn Public Library
In 2021 and 2022, the Brooklyn Public Library created and launched a continuing education course for library workers of all titles in New York State. The course focused on information literacy and instructional strategies so as both to hone students’ information literacy and to give students the tools and confidence to disseminate good information literacy skills to their patrons.
Instructing information professionals in information literacy and instruction provided unique opportunities as well as unique challenges. Jess Hoffman therefore has three main points of advice for anyone aiming to instruct information or education professionals in information literacy instruction.
• Help information professionals realize that they still have plenty to learn
• Manage goals and expectations
• Cater to diverse learners in varied situations instructing in different contexts
Cassandra Nieves, Northampton Community College, Monroe Campus
Since Fall 2020, Northampton Community College (NCC) librarians have seen a decline in the number of one-shot library instructions sessions being requested by faculty and the number of students seeking help with their research assignments. With the limited number of one-shot instruction requests, the librarians wanted to find a way to provide opportunities outside of the classroom setting for students to receive that same level of structured learning that one-shot instructions provide, and hopefully earn some extra credit from their professors in the process. As a team, they worked together to identify key research and information literacy concepts commonly taught. They broke the topics into manageable portions and created a series of research workshops to cover all the different topics. They also centered some workshops around the common assignments used across similar courses. When NCC switched to a 14-week semester, our initial hope was that the research workshops could help fill the gap of the week lost and help faculty who decided there was not enough time to dedicate to research during class time. They are constantly striving to offer information literacy instruction at the students' point of need, and the workshops opened another avenue for us. Some students found the librarians through their professors (and extra credit) while others found them on their own. They have seen some success with our research workshops but continue to grapple with logistics. They are learning what works and what needs to be adjusted moving forward, as well as routinely evaluating how to improve our offerings, including considering which topics might be better suited to a self-paced tutorial. They are optimistic that with the right adjustments going forward we will gain momentum.
