Intentionality and Transparency as Pedagogical Techniques in the Information Literacy Classroom

When you build a lesson plan for a class session, how do you decide on its content and activities? What if you started to peel back the curtain a bit and let students in on some of your thinking and intentions? Recent research from The Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has shown that students benefit when teachers articulate the thought processes behind instructional decisions and goals with them. This relatively small intervention, traditionally applied to assignment design, has shown to have a big impact. How can the results of research on transparent teaching practices benefit the professional practice of instruction librarians, even when leading a one-shot session? This session will explore the research behind transparent teaching, consider the assumptions that underlie it, and provide practical ways to implement it

Framing Information Literacy: The Importance of Setting the Stage

Do students learn more when information literacy instruction is provided in-person by a librarian, mediated by their course instructor using a librarian-created tutorial, or self-paced using a tutorial? This presentation will focus on assessment results from a multi-sectioned college course targeting first-year students that explored this question and revealed an unexpected answer. Use the results, which are applicable to any instructional setting, to plan your next information literacy session

What Do You See? Image Searching for Research Topic Selection and Development

Research tells us that students struggle most when they are starting their research projects and are trying to define research questions. Encouraging students to start with an image search helps them visualize the context of their topics and provides a rich environment for brainstorming keywords to begin an academic exploration. Find out how this technique for visual information-gathering can transform students\u27 approaches to research, and learn how to integrate it into your classes

The Writing is on the Wall: Using Padlet for Whole-Class Engagement

Many of us define success in the classroom by the quality and quantity of student participation, but despite our best efforts, there are substantial barriers in place that discourage students outside of the vocal minority from getting more involved in our classes. This paper describes the use of a graffiti wall as found on Padlet (padlet.com) to overcome some of the challenges involved in class participation in order to encourage whole-class collaboration and engagement