In a Research-Writing Frame of Mind

Librarians have been coordinating with composition instructors to offer information literacy instruction in composition classrooms long enough that it can no longer be considered a new trend, but rather a standard feature of many information literacy programs. Sometimes this collaboration comes in the form of a one-shot, sometimes the librarian is embedded, and sometimes the librarian is a co-instructor. Information literacy and composition are often intertwined in higher education; recently, the professional organizations associated with writing programs and with information literacy programs have developed documents to define the characteristics, habits and dispositions of successful students. The documents, the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing and the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, lay out frames that describe students who write and manage information well. The publication of these two Frameworks provides an opportunity for practitioners to examine the relationship between writing and information literacy, what writing instructors often refer to as research-writing skills. Intended for librarians and composition instructors, this book chapter examines how teachers of writing and research skills can enhance their understanding of the two Frameworks as being similar and linked with one another, and by doing so become more effective teachers. This chapter makes the intersections of information-using and writing that exist implicitly in practice explicit for students as it explores ways to better integrate writing and research instruction in composition and information literacy classrooms. It does so by looking at how the intersections between the Frameworks inform writing and library instruction pedagogy providing examples of writing and information-using assignments based on the Frameworks

In a Research-Writing Frame of Mind

Librarians have been coordinating with composition instructors to offer information literacy instruction in composition classrooms long enough that it can no longer be considered a new trend, but rather a standard feature of many information literacy programs. Sometimes this collaboration comes in the form of a one-shot, sometimes the librarian is embedded, and sometimes the librarian is a co-instructor. Information literacy and composition are often intertwined in higher education; recently, the professional organizations associated with writing programs and with information literacy programs have developed documents to define the characteristics, habits and dispositions of successful students. The documents, the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing and the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, lay out frames that describe students who write and manage information well. The publication of these two Frameworks provides an opportunity for practitioners to examine the relationship between writing and information literacy, what writing instructors often refer to as research-writing skills. Intended for librarians and composition instructors, this book chapter examines how teachers of writing and research skills can enhance their understanding of the two Frameworks as being similar and linked with one another, and by doing so become more effective teachers. This chapter makes the intersections of information-using and writing that exist implicitly in practice explicit for students as it explores ways to better integrate writing and research instruction in composition and information literacy classrooms. It does so by looking at how the intersections between the Frameworks inform writing and library instruction pedagogy providing examples of writing and information-using assignments based on the Frameworks

Communities of Information: Information Literacy and Discourse Community Instruction in First Year Writing Courses

The artifacts of discourse (print texts, recordings, Web documents, etc.) are information, and as such fall under the umbrellas of both discourse communities and information literacy. Since the product of a discourse community is information, and in a first-year writing course students are both learning how to navigate and to join discourse communities, students should be taught about discourse communities and information as linked ideas. We reframe the idea of discourse communities as information communities that share aspects of both John Swales’s definition of discourse communities and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. By presenting these ideas as intertwined, not only do students learn about the features of different types of communication in a given field, they begin to think of the artifacts of that communication and how it is organized, shared, and created. In this chapter we give examples of how to explicitly draw together some of Swales’s characteristics of a discourse community and the Framework. In addition to tying together concepts from information literacy and discourse communities, we provide examples of assignments that can be used in the composition classroom

First Generation Success: Mixed-Methods Information Literacy Skills Assessment for First Year Writing Students

As universities seek to improve retention and graduation rates, more attention is being paid to populations that are statistically less likely to persist, such as first-generation students. Engaging with a campus-wide initiative targeting first-generation college students, librarians at a research university were awarded a grant to study the information literacy skills of this special population and to develop intervention strategies to help retain students. Partnering with the English department and a campus provisional admission program, librarians developed and taught special sections of the first year composition course, ENGL 104. These sections were designed to seamlessly embed information literacy concepts into the traditional ENGL 104 curriculum and to thoroughly assess the impact of this approach. This study was designed using a mixed-methods approach to better understand the information literacy knowledge and skills of first-generation students and to evaluate the impact of embedding information literacy into a course required for their degree plans

Be Our Guest: Engaging Graduate Students through Specialized Outreach Events

In an effort to reach out to graduate students at a large research university, the Performance Studies Librarian and the Graduate Studies Librarian at Texas A&M University Libraries partnered to develop the pilot study, Dinner with Your Librarian program, wherein those librarians took a number of graduate students out to dinner. The primary goals of this program were to establish a rapport with the students and to assess their current knowledge of resources in the library. Additionally, the librarians wanted to forge a connection with the graduate advisors in order to encourage future collaborations between the graduate students and their liaison librarians

Mining Writing Center Data for Information Literacy Practices

● Purpose ○ Collaborations between writing centers and libraries create opportunities for providing information literacy intervention for students doing researched writing. This case study gathered data from writing center logs to uncover if and how information literacy activity was occurring during consultations. ● Methodology ○ A representative sample of writing center logs recorded between September of 2013 and May 2014 were mined for frequencies of library and information literacy terms. Transaction logs were coded and analyzed according to the frames in the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. ● Findings ○ Information literacy is discussed in only 13% of consultations. Referrals to librarians accounted for less than 1% of all transactions. Students most commonly asked for assistance in formatting citations, but deeper information literacy conversations did occur that provide opportunities for engagement with the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. ● Research limitations/implications ○ Transactions were examined from one university. Although findings cannot be generalized, the results were applicable to local services, and this study provides a model useful for libraries and writing centers. ● Practical implications ○ This study provides ample direction for future collaborations that will take advantage of the intersections of information literacy and writing instruction to improve student research skills. ● Originality/value ○ While much has been written about partnerships between libraries and writing centers, this study uniquely demonstrates a model for data sharing across institutional boundaries and how one library mined existing data from a writing center

Librarians as Teachers: Effecting Change in Composition Instruction

This study assessed student research papers using a rubric to determine the information literacy skills of students in introductory composition classes. Librarians taught a pilot composition course that infused information literacy (IL) into the traditional English curriculum. The students' IL skills were compared to those of undergraduates enrolled in a traditional composition class, who received only a one-shot library instruction session. Students in the information literacy composition course scored better than their counterparts in six of seven IL skill categories. Results support greater integration of information literacy and composition curricula as a path forward for student success

Uncovering the information literacy skills of first-generation and provisionally admitted students

Librarians have experimented with a variety of instructional models, from one-shots to tutorials to semester-long information literacy courses, to increase the impact of information literacy instruction. This study assessed the information literacy gains of students who participated in the pilot of a new instructional model, in which librarians developed and taught a first-year composition course aimed at first-generation, provisionally-admitted college students. This project demonstrated that this model improved students' performance on a standardized information literacy assessment in comparison with students who received instruction in the form of a one-shot instruction session. The study also explored the information literacy knowledge and skills of students targeted by this approach, including first-year students, first-generation students, and provisionally-admitted students

Surface and Subtext: Literature, Research, Writing (Pilot Edition)

PDF of pilot edition of ENGL 203 OE

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead