Innovating Peer Research Programs Together

This presentation provides details about two distinctive and unique peer learning programs at Gettysburg College and Millersville University. It also highlights how our collaboration sparked new initiatives to advance each of our peer research programs

Should We Flip the Script?: A Literature Review of Deficit-Based Perspectives on First-Year Undergraduate Students’ Information Literacy

This mixed method systematic review considers recent literature on the information literacy (IL) skills of first-year undergraduate students. The review uncovers the following themes: faculty and librarians perceive first-year students as lacking IL skills; students have varying perceptions of their IL skills; assessment studies yield conflicting findings on first-year students\u27 IL; communication between high school and college librarians is challenging; and some IL researchers emphasise and leverage first-year students\u27 prior knowledge and experience in IL instruction. These themes emerge from extensive searches in four research databases for scholarly and professional articles written in English within the past ten years. With the exception of a few articles, studies reviewed consistently express their findings in terms of students’ gaps or deficits. We question whether this is the most productive basis for developing effective IL programs. Instead, we call for further investigation of students’ existing knowledge and skills as a basis for implementing constructivist and strengths-based pedagogies

Should we flip the script?

This mixed method systematic review considers recent literature on the information literacy (IL) skills of first-year undergraduate students. The review uncovers the following themes: faculty and librarians perceive first-year students as lacking IL skills; students have varying perceptions of their IL skills; assessment studies yield conflicting findings on first-year students' IL; communication between high school and college librarians is challenging; and some IL researchers emphasise and leverage first-year students' prior knowledge and experience in IL instruction. These themes emerge from extensive searches in four research databases for scholarly and professional articles written in English within the past ten years. With the exception of a few articles, studies reviewed consistently express their findings in terms of students’ gaps or deficits. We question whether this is the most productive basis for developing effective IL programs. Instead, we call for further investigation of students’ existing knowledge and skills as a basis for implementing constructivist and strengths-based pedagogies

On their own terms: First-year student interviews about everyday life research can help librarians flip the deficit script

The purpose of this study is to investigate how first-year students conduct everyday life research and how, if possible, their everyday research skills can inform information literacy instruction in higher education. Very few studies in information literacy emphasize existing knowledge that students bring with them to college; instead, the emphasis tends to fall on deficits in students’ academic research skills. Strengths-based approaches or asset-based approaches as found in the literature of psychology and education provide a basis for exploring this direction in information literacy education. Our research used a phenomenographic methodology, interviewing 40 first-year students from two large universities, a medium-sized university and a community college. This qualitative study suggests that first-year students are capable of using information purposefully to learn or research interests that have sparked their curiosities. They are also capable of reflecting on the ways that their investigations fulfilled their purposes, resulted in unexpected outcomes or made them consider their issue in a new light. These existing capacities provide promising starting points for strengths-based approaches to information literacy instruction

Borrow Globally, Recycle Locally: Repurposing Genius Ideas to Meet Your Goals at Your Institution

As soon as we saw it, we fell in love with the North Carolina State University Libraries’ amazing “Mobile Scavenger Hunt.” It represents the perfect application of mobile technology (iPod Touch devices networked with the Evernote content sharing system) to engage students while they learn about NCSU’s wealth of library resources. But NCSU is a very large institution (34,000+ students) with a reputation for cutting-edge library initiatives. How could we make their program work at a smaller institution like ours (\u3c 5,000 students)? By working really hard, refusing to take ourselves too seriously, and being willing to try things out before they were completely perfected, we were able to treat our first-year seminar students to “Library vs. Wild,” a fast-paced, active-learning game in which students work together to explore the far reaches of the information wilderness. We’ll share how we adapted NCSU’s game to work for our library, our learning outcomes, and our personality

Take Course Content, Sauté it with Blogs and Sprinkle it with Information Literacy

Learn how we collaborated with faculty members for different blogging assignments that targeted general audiences. In one class, the focus was to teach students how to find copyright-friendly multimedia and cite scholarly research, which was to be accessed by a global audience. In the other class, the emphasis was to help students find reliable, free resources and cite them using a blogging citation style. As a number of students, who self-publish, increases, discover how we met the challenge of teaching students how to find, use, and cite information for life-long learning and effective communication in their local and global communities