Breakout Sessions (Alphabetical By Title)

Click here for breakout session materials

 

Applying Learning Data to Enhance Instruction: A Case Study
Cathy Palmer, UC Irvine Libraries

Although librarians acknowledge the importance of evaluating the results of their teaching, assessing what students have learned from library instruction and deciding how to use the results continues to challenge us.  Lack of expertise in assessment, concern about how to address negative feedback, and simple lack of time are but three of the reasons that librarians avoid tackling this essential task.  The Instruction program at UC Irvine met these challenges and others when the decision was made in 2000 to implement a student evaluation of the library research skills instruction sessions provided in support of a large lower division writing course.  Our experience designing an evaluation instrument, interpreting the results, and using the information gained will serve as a valuable and viable model for libraries still struggling to implement assessment of student learning outcomes on a wide scale.

In this presentation, I will share the UC Irvine Libraries’ experience designing and implementing an assessment method for the library research skills sessions we teach as part of the University’s first-year composition course.  I will share the philosophy and methodology used to design the evaluation instrument we use.  I will summarize the results of the evaluations and illustrate how we used them to enhance both the content and delivery of this instruction we provide.  I will review how the results of the evaluations have changed over time in response to our efforts to improve the instruction sessions.  I will stress the importance of using the feedback gained from evaluations to achieve improvement in individual teaching performance as well as programmatic relevance.

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Ask an Interesting Question: Insights from a Reflective Survey of Senior Biology students
Don MacMillan, University of Calgary

As part of an ongoing process to assess the Information Literacy program at the University of Calgary, senior biology students were surveyed to find out what resources they actually used, and how their research habits evolved over the course of their studies. The survey asked students to reflect on their research process and the various tools they used at different stages, such as Google Scholar, Biological Abstracts, Web of Science and PubMed. The survey also asked about learning, how strategies had changed and how students learned about new tools. One of the most interesting questions asked students what they wish they had known earlier – data from this will be directly relevant to adjusting first-year courses, and may be very useful in working with Biology faculty to develop further sessions in between first and fourth year.
As informative as the survey was to both librarians and teaching faculty, it was also clear that the survey benefited the students. The student responses showed that the survey questions encouraged students to value their information skills, to assess their own processes, and to see where they might need further development.

The presentation will include questions and responses from the survey and a demonstration of the FAST survey tool that was used to gather the data. Participants will then share ‘interesting questions’ from their own surveys and discuss how to use assessment to prompt reflection.

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“Better than Average”: Information Literacy Skill Levels, Self-Estimates of Performance, and Library Anxiety
Melissa Gross, Florida State University
Don Latham, Florida State University

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Building Campus-wide Information Literacy Programs
Lynn D. Lampert, California State University, Northridge
Catherine Marley Haras, California State University, Los Angeles
Dorothy Warner, Rider University
John Buschman, Rider University

The reality of building a campus-wide information literacy program may vary from institution to institution but working programs all share important similarities. Librarians from California State University System campuses (Northridge and Los Angeles) - and Rider University will discuss their approaches and successes at both garnering support for and developing campus-wide information literacy programs that incorporate information literacy student learning outcomes into required General Education programming. The session will focus on how active service on university-wide curriculum, assessment and general education committees directly impacted and informed their libraries and campus information literacy programs and pedagogies. The presenters will demonstrate how their successful curricular models, assessment efforts and overall approaches engage campus stakeholders in terms of (re)defining definitions and understanding of information literacy, and raising campus awareness about how information literacy curriculum programming strengthens the life-long learning goals inherent in undergraduate General Education programming. The following processes and strategies that promote campus discussions and the integration of such curricular integration into new and revised required curriculum will be examined: the development of higher cognitive level information literacy goals and objectives that coordinate with disciplinary and campus assessment goals, curriculum mapping strategies and other assessment efforts, and discipline based approaches to developing classroom and online learning models (LMS, tutorials, distance curriculum delivery etc) that incorporate approved campus information literacy student learning outcomes. A discussion of how their successes will impact the management and delivery of their library instruction programs in terms of increased demand and larger class sizes will also be examined.

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Campus Collaboration to Build a Series of Information Competency Workshops
Nancy Getty, Glendale Community College
Deborah Moore, Glendale Community College Library

Over the past seven years Glendale Community College has developed a series of nine workshops that address the core competencies for information literacy at the College. This workshop program constitutes a unique model for delivering information competency instruction and could be adapted to any institutional setting. We have had many inquiries about how the program was developed and how it functions.  We will present a session that includes a brief overview of the program, discusses the elements and collaboration important to its evolution, presents current quantitative research that indicates our level of success, and offers strategies to apply this approach to any library setting.

Since the program began in 1999, there has been constant collaboration between library and instructional faculty both on a personal level as well as through participation on relevant campus committees.  As a result, information competency instruction is becoming deeply integrated into the curricula of various ESL, English, and other courses on campus.

As this program has evolved over several years, change has been constant and essential.  We will conclude the session with a group activity that encourages participants to contemplate changes they might effect in their own instruction programs and how this model for information competency instruction might be applied to their own institutions.

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Cloning Ourselves: One Librarian's Experience
Judith A. Downie, California State University, San Marcos

As information literacy instruction becomes increasingly integrated throughout the curriculum, the demands on librarians have increased. This breakout presents two virtual instructional technologies to maximize contact with, and learning by, students in response to workload and location limitations. This breakout demonstrates using MediaSite technology as one means to accommodate increased demands. In addition, survey technologies such as SurveyMonkey provide a means to collect evaluative and assessment data using online technology.

Such technology serves as a ‘clone’ of the librarian and extends instructional outreach and support. Impetus for such adoption can be driven by librarian or student needs. For librarians, such technologies:

Student-focused aspects addressed through the use of virtual technologies:

Discussion includes the promises and pitfalls as revealed in discussion of benefits through collaborative participation of technologists, faculty and librarian colleagues as well as limitations.

Early data collection from student and faculty respondents will be presented to inform and solicit discussion on further use of these and alternative applications by the attendees.

A summary of the literature to date on optimizing the student/instructor interaction using this type of virtual instruction tool will be provided.  

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A Collaborative Voyage To Improve Students’ Career Information Literacy
Angela Farrar, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Lateka Grays, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Diane Vanderpol, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Librarians, a member of the Hotel College faculty, and a member of the Career Services staff at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas collaborated in the design, implementation and evaluation of a non-traditional research assignment asking students to demonstrate real world information literacy skills.

Session attendees will explore the process by which the traditional librarian-teaching faculty member collaboration grew into a richer project involving a non-traditional partnering. Attendees will be guided through a discussion on levels of collaboration and an audit of potential non-traditional partner opportunities at their own institutions.

Attendees will examine the product of this partnership: an assignment that asks students to generate informed questions to ask in a job interview. The assignment was designed to be useable in larger classes where a classic “term paper” style research assignment might be unrealistic to effectively administer and grade. After a session with the librarians on conducting research, students enrolled in a course on professional development within the hospitality industry are required to develop questions that they might ask of an interviewer that demonstrate the company- and industry-specific knowledge they gleaned via their research. Students are motivated by the idea of positioning themselves favorably in an interview in a way that a traditional term paper on a company or an industry fails to motivate. Attendees will brainstorm ways a similar approach (assigning the development of informed questions) might be used in different settings.

The presentation will close by describing the personal and professional benefits of collaboration for those involved.

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A Community Without Walls—Testing the Waters
Lydia Jackson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Julia Hansen, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

In a world where so many students have turned to the web for fast, “good enough” answers, how can librarians work together to respond?  Academic librarians can stimulate better collaboration with school librarians in both information literacy and collection development efforts. The presenters will discuss the challenges an academic library faced in a collaborative project with local middle and high school librarians.  We will also demonstrate why this project was important, analyze what was learned, and discuss future plans to address anomalies identified in programs geared to enhance the information literacy skills of students at all levels.

Although many academic librarians may be ambivalent or hesitant about working collaboratively with school librarians to promote information literacy skills, we believe there are benefits to this collaboration.  The presenters will describe their efforts to establish such a partnership.  We added new partners to our collaboration. We will share our experience in working with student teachers from our University who are teaching information literacy skills to the students in our community.  Building teams and developing mentoring relationships can be a difficult challenge.  Differing academic calendars and daily schedules, access to technology, and travel restrictions are just a few of the factors affecting a positive collaboration among area librarians.

The project was funded with support from the State Library under a program promoting a “community resource without walls.”  The presenters value this concept and continue to be eager to learn how other librarians have approached or established these relationships.  Our experience has enabled us to identify critical components or successful collaboration between school and academic librarians and we look forward to extending this knowledge through lively discussion with conference attendees.
  

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Crossing Boundaries: Facing the Challenges of Library Instruction and Research from Evolving Interdisciplinary Topics
Justin Harrison, University of Guelph

This session will address the rise in interdisciplinary programs and research on university campuses, their impact on libraries, and discuss some ways of dealing with the complexities involved in helping students try to access information from across multiple departmental lines. Increasingly, as new fields and perspectives emerge from the strengths of other disciplines, instruction and reference librarians are faced with the often tricky challenge of educating students on how best to find research on their new and emerging topics. And this challenge is not going away—new programs and fields of research are burgeoning across university campuses everywhere as scholars seek understanding of topics that are often too broad for one academic discipline to cover alone, such as climate change, child poverty, or the global AIDS pandemic.
           
Because academic disciplines often develop their own unique languages and methodologies, communication between disciplines is limited. Research often rests in departmental silos with little or no conversation between them, posing daunting challenges for the researcher who is trying to find common ground within the various literatures. To meet this challenge, librarians must consider strategies beyond the traditional ones we have developed over time with already-existing disciplines. An openness to new, different, and unconventional approaches and methodology is essential in being able to deliver meaningful information literacy to the student doing interdisciplinary research. Librarians must be ready to meet this challenge. This session will provide some approaches, techniques, and perspectives to consider when addressing interdisciplinary study.

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Developing a GamePlan: Libraries & Campus Athletic Departments
Bill Kelm, Willamette University
Diane Mizrachi, UCLA
Julie Tharp, Arizona State University
Marc Mason, Arizona State University 

At a number of academic libraries, librarians have begun partnering with Athletic Departments to deliver information literacy to freshman athletes. This breakout session will present three different endeavors designed to meet the needs of the incoming student athlete. 
UCLA’s College Library has recently expanded collaboration with their athletic department from an annual one-shot for incoming football players to an ongoing partnership integrating library instruction and awareness into the freshman football and basketball teams’ total academic experience.
Arizona State University faced two challenges: help student-athletes learn to use the Library's resources, and train their tutors and mentors. Every ASU freshman athlete takes a one-credit Life Skills course, and working in collaboration with the Office of Student Athlete Development, the Instruction team had the unprecedented opportunity to help design the curriculum for a library-focused unit that would not only teach the athletes and their "academic coaches" about the available resources, but also require the students to write a reflective essay on the experience of searching for relevant information in a library resource.
At Willamette University, the librarians have worked with the Athletic Department to create a program called “GamePlan”. The program, which now includes football, crew, basketball, soccer and volleyball teams, is in its third year. Each Fall semester is treated as an “information challenge”, broken up into seven different 20-minute sessions. The sessions, held in the evenings, are focused on individual topics with explicit objectives.

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Discovering Buried Treasure: Teaching Strategies for the Aging Population
Susan M. Frey, Indiana State University
Juliet Kerico, Indiana State University

Traditionally community engagement for academic libraries translates as outreach to the academic community. But what are the possibilities when an academic library extends outreach to people not normally defined as university stakeholders? At Indiana State University (ISU), we learned that extending outreach to an untapped population can reap unexpected gains. For the past two years ISU instruction librarians have traveled to a local retirement community to teach computer skills as part of ISU’s Bites & Bytes program. The initial goal of the program was to benefit the community-at-large by providing these adult learners with therapeutic activity and a social outlet. We soon realized that we had to learn to teach to a new population of learners, and because of this our new students were teaching us as much – if not more – than we were teaching them. We adopted teaching techniques that addressed their unique learning styles and incorporated these newly acquired techniques into our upper division library instruction classes. And realizing that this outreach program could offer our university students opportunity for growth, we then partnered with faculty to open up Bites & Bytes as a field site for students enrolled in a freshman social work course. In this presentation we will trace the evolution of a library community outreach initiative that grew to become part of the university curriculum, review pedagogical approaches that work with elder adult learners, and relate how some of these approaches can be employed to teach students.

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Exciting, new Information Literacy outreach efforts to international students
John Hickok, California State University Fullerton

Universities across the U.S. are seeing incredible growth in the enrollments of international/ESL (English as a Second Language) students.  But often, these students arrive with limited library/Information Literacy skills, and reaching out to them is a challenge—they may feel self-conscience with speaking English or may be overwhelmed by the library’s unfamiliarity, and therefore avoid taking advantage of library assistance or training.  Because of this, the library at one California State University has launched several exciting, new outreach efforts to international students. 

A first effort is “going to them, rather than waiting for them to come,” by directly visiting student cultural clubs (e.g., Taiwan Students Association, Thai Club, etc.)  These visits are not conventional instruction sessions, but lively multimedia presentations (popcorn included!) of photos and characteristics of their home university libraries (obtained by this presenter), with comparisons & contrasts to Cal State’s library.

A second effort is thinking beyond the borders—actually networking with overseas university libraries where many of the international/ESL students are arriving from.  Through cross-cultural librarian-to-librarian exchanges and information-sharing, instruction for international students is being better customized.

A third effort is special online library guides—specifically designed for students of each foreign country.  Located on each are customized links related to their home country, as well as resources the library has on their country. 
All these efforts, and much more, will be explained in this presentation, with live links and handouts provided.  This will be of interest to all librarians with international/ESL student populations.

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First-year Composition and the Writing-Research Gap
Elizabeth Birmingham, North Dakota State University
Molly R. Flaspohler, Concordia College

Annmarie Singh’s 2005 article “A Report on Faculty Perceptions of Students’ Information Literacy Competencies in Journalism and Mass Communication Programs:  The ACEJMC Survey” showed that faculty in her sample believed many of their undergraduate students did not meet ACRL’s information literacy standards.  However, most of these faculty members reported improvement in their students’ research competencies following instruction.  We present the results of a study that extends Singh’s work in two useful ways: 1) it isolates teacher perceptions of first-year student skills; and 2) it describes the effectiveness of employing a variety of pedagogical strategies to teach students about the research process.

This project surveyed English teachers at three institutions, a private liberal arts college, a public liberal arts college, and a land grant university, concerning their perceptions of their students’ information literacy skills.  While Singh’s survey focused exclusively on teacher perceptions of student skills, we also asked teachers about the variety of strategies they used to introduce and reinforce information literacy competency in their classrooms.  These strategies ranged from assigning a research project with little classroom or library support, to using ten or more research-related activities to build on a project.  We found that teachers who employed a variety of strategies for teaching information literacy competency were significantly more satisfied with their students’ abilities to successfully complete researched projects.  In this session, we will report on the results of our study and engage our audience in a conversation about how these results might shape collaborations between librarians and first-year writing programs.

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A Game-Based Multimedia Approach to Library Orientation
Nancy O’Hanlon, The Ohio State University
Karen Diaz, The Ohio State University
Fred Roecker, The Ohio State University

How can 6,000 new Ohio State University students and their families become familiar with a major research library system before they begin their first day of classes? Simple. They play the Libraries’ interactive multimedia games distributed to all incoming freshmen.

The Libraries’ Instruction Office, in collaboration with the University Office of First Year Experience, created an innovative series of casual, interactive online games to orient the thousands of incoming freshmen to the University Libraries, resources, people, and basic library skills. A survey of first-quarter freshmen perceptions helped to determine what new students want to know about the Libraries.

By completing interactive crossword, multiple guess, jigsaw puzzles, and drag-and-drop matching games, students become familiar with library terminology, library locations, unique services, study spaces, available databases, borrowing options, and call numbers. They also can view short movies from librarians, VIPs, and students who describe their experiences with the Libraries. The games use Flash, Captivate, and other software to create this casual introduction and positive welcome to the University Libraries. 

A demonstration of the final library orientation product will be given. Additionally, the presentation will address why the game format was chosen, share baseline data from the 2006 library perceptions survey of new freshmen, and discuss the design and development process. Presenters will relate how consultation with faculty experts, the University’s First Year Experience Office, and user testing influenced the project, as well as the pedagogical implications of using casual games to facilitate learning.

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From Guest Lecturer to Assignment Consultant: Exploring New Roles for the Teaching Librarian and Alternative Models of Information Literacy Integration
Kathleen Gallagher, University of California, Berkeley

For many academic libraries, the library instruction session (or sessions), whether delivered on demand or integrated into strategically targeted courses, is still the cornerstone, the basic unit, of our information literacy programs. Within these programs the instructional role of the librarian often remains limited to that of “guest lecturer.” By rethinking this role and repositioning ourselves as consultants in assignment design, librarians can contribute to an array of deliverables more closely aligned with course goals and sharply honed to improve learning outcomes.

With examples drawn from a multi-disciplinary selection of courses, this session will focus on the process and products of assignment consultancy in the context of the presenter’s experience with UC Berkeley’s Mellon funded project, “Library/Faculty Fellows for Undergraduate Research.” Conceived as part of the University’s effort to incorporate more research-based learning across the undergraduate curriculum, the Mellon Project also represents an alternative model of information literacy integration that, while not entirely without precedent, has received little attention in the literature.

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How passion and perseverance steered the course towards a university’s Information Literacy Framework
Jacqui Weetman DaCosta, College of New Jersey Library

This paper will outline how an Information Literacy Framework evolved out of research which was undertaken at a British university. This research facilitated the raising of awareness about the topic.  From that basis, an Information Literacy Framework was designed which went through the due process of the university’s committees’ approval in order to become established as a document to inform curriculum development.

The research was first undertaken to obtain academic staff perceptions of information literacy and to ascertain how skills relating to information and research were being incorporated into student learning. The main findings were that, whilst the skills were highly valued by staff, there were lower levels of activity in terms of incorporating them into teaching, learning and assessment.

Having raised academic staff awareness about information literacy, it was decided to develop an Information Literacy Framework.  The framework was discussed within the university library and the opinions of ‘critical friends’ from amongst the academic staff also influenced the development. The final version of the framework was designed to match the style of a course or module template as this was a format which was well known to academic staff. 

The Information Literacy Framework was then taken to each of the Faculty Learning and Teaching Committees for approval.  Finally, the framework was approved by the University Learning and Teaching Committee in May 2006. The framework was promoted in a variety of ways but the greatest push was given through its inclusion in the university’s new Program Developer’s Handbook.

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How to Embed a Librarian
Leslie Foutch, Vanderbilt University
Dr. Brian Griffith, Vanderbilt University

Librarians were embedded in two Vanderbilt University courses in 2006.  The largest undergraduate program is Human and Organization Development at the Peabody College of Education and Human Development.  As part of an integrated approach, the librarians proposed an “embedded librarian” for a freshmen course of 107 students.  A librarian audited a course.  As a member of the class, she was informed about the assignments. She scheduled optional workshops that were tailored to the students needs.

At the Owen Graduate School of Management, an embedded librarian worked with 65 undergraduate students from a variety of non-business majors at Vanderbilt.  They participated in the intensive 4-week “Accelerator” summer program.  The purpose of embedding a librarian was to instill business information fluency and to stress the value of information in academic and real-world situations.

Highlighting their experiences, the embedded librarians and a course professor will present their observations and discuss expected outcomes. They will give advice for those who want to institute this program in their own institutions. 

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Keeping Up With the YouTube Generation: Collaborating with Student Video Bloggers to Enhance Library Instruction
Susan Ariew, University of South Florida

Undergraduates can make significant contributions as members of multimedia production teams for academic libraries. In this case, at USF Tampa Library, an undergraduate “YouTube video blogger” worked with library faculty and graduate students to create an information literacy video, “Databases!” The video was used as part of the USF instruction program during the fall 2006 semester. In addition to an information literacy video, the video team also created a humorous rap video that included an anti-anti-plagiarism theme and highlighted USF library services. The video, entitled “The Chronicles of Libraria,” is currently available at the YouTube Web site. This presentation would share with attendees how the videos were created and the extent to which student ideas, technology skills, and creativity made it work. It will also include our research about how the videos were used as part of the instructional program and the undergraduate student reactions to the videos. Presenters would share the videos along with a video presentation by the undergraduate who edited and created the videos for the USF library as a community service project. Discussions with attendees would include the rationale for including students in the production of multimedia applications as well as the need for librarians to learn more about the latest tools for creating them.

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Library Instruction on the Go: Podcasting at the Kresge Library
Jennifer Lammers Zimmer, University of Michigan
Sally Ziph, University of Michigan

Business school students today want to plug in, download and go. That’s where podcasting comes in as a non-traditional medium/delivery to enhance student learning. The University of Michigan Kresge Dash Podcast Series developed by Digital Services Librarian Jennifer Zimmer and the Kresge Librarians delivers a substantial sound & visual “bite” of information: see http://www.bus.umich.edu/KresgeLibrary/help/podcast.htm

The scripts are edited to follow the Kresge Dash Podcast format (introduction, overview, content, recap, and conclusion.) The voice track is recorded, then screen shots and other images are added at appropriate chapter marks. Music and the logo for the series are added at the beginning and end of each Podcast to provide uniformity and branding. An Apple MacBook Pro and Plantronics headphone/microphone set are used to record the Podcasts. We have just edited our first video podcast as of this writing. More are in the works in time for the Conference.The episodes are “enhanced” podcasts, i.e., combining voice, images, video and links to websites, which can be played on an Ipod, or by using iTunes and QuickTime on the student’s computer.

In this Breakout Session, Jennifer will discuss how she created the podcasts—including what equipment she used, alternative equipment possibilities for other libraries, real world feasibility and costs, scriptwriting, video, mp3 players, problems and solutions, and future projects. Kresge Librarian Sally Ziph (fellow scriptwriter and Instruction Librarian videotaped for the podcasts) will discuss the results of student surveys of the podcast and Dash Series as tool(s) for learning about business resources at Kresge Library.

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Maiden Voyage: A Library and Faculty Development Center Partnership to Promote Information Literacy
Stephanie Smith. Northern Kentucky University
Mary Chesnut, Northern Kentucky University

Incorporating information literacy skills and competencies into the curriculum requires collaborative partnerships with the library faculty and the academic faculty with whom they work.  At Northern Kentucky University’s Steely Library, a non-tenure track faculty position was created to serve in a dual role as a member of the Information Literacy faculty in the library and a member of the faculty in the University’s Professional and Organizational Development Center (POD).  This dual role allows for the librarian to gain valuable insight to faculty needs while serving as a faculty member of the POD.  Giving teaching faculty the opportunity to encounter the concept of information literacy in a variety of contexts, allows them to become more interested and open to exploring how it can enhance their teaching and student learning.  Areas in which the library can enhance faculty understanding and incorporation of the library’s information literacy curriculum are more easily recognized with the librarian embedded into the POD.  Targeted and specific information literacy tools such as tutorials, web pages, and blackboard courses are developed and promoted via the POD.  The library's information literacy initiatives are marketed via the POD, therefore increasing the library presence among academic faculty.  As a member of the library’s Information Literacy and Instruction Team, the librarian is able to report findings from POD activities and use this information to increase the success of the library’s information literacy and instruction programs.  This presentation will outline the strategies of this collaborative partnership and describe how it has impacted the integration of information literacy skills into the curriculum.

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The Marketing and Instruction of New Tools for Libraries: LibX a Case Study
Kyrille Goldbeck, Virginia Tech

With the ubiquity and familiarity of Google and similar resources, users are turning to search engines rather than to the library to find information.  By using LibX (http://libx.org), libraries now have a free tool they can offer that instantly connects their users to the library’s resources, no matter where the user is on the web.  Once a resource is offered by a library, librarians must become familiar with what it is and how to use it.  In order to support the new tool, librarians should develop promotional strategies that will further encourage the use of the tool.  Additionally, they must find effective and efficient ways to offer instruction sessions and materials.  By studying a variety of marketing techniques and instruction formats used by libraries, educational institutions, and small businesses, this session will focus on how one can determine the best methods to inform and instruct users on how to use the library’s tools and services.  I will introduce LibX and show what has been done to promote this tool, as well as discuss some of the instruction methods and user studies that have been incorporated. 

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Navigating the Information Needs of Online and Remote Students
Anne Marie Secord, National University
Barbara Stillwell, National University
Robin Lockerby, National University

National is a non-traditional university that provides higher education to working adults in an accelerated (one-month) format.  It is projected that by the end of 2007 over half of the 22,000 FTE students will be taking classes online.

To meet this change in student demographics, the Library changed its service model and now provides all library instruction online via voice and video over the internet or as web-based interactive tutorials.  The move to synchronous training over the Internet has called on us to develop new pedagogical approaches to our instruction to encourage active learning and HOTS (higher order thinking skills).  Through the process, faculty have been surveyed for their perceptions of student competencies for skills they see as critical to success in their programs.  The content from the library instruction list of over 25 classes serves as the baseline for developing parallel multimedia tutorials and just-in-time training aids. 

This presentation focuses on three aspects of this new service model: Collaborating with faculty to better integrate information literacy into the curriculum; exploring online pedagogies and assessment; and redesigning library presence to better meet student needs.  Participants will be able to view a demonstration of the online class sessions.

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“Next slide, please”: An analysis and conversation on the uses and misuses of Microsoft PowerPoint at library instruction conferences
David Brier, University of Hawaii at Manoa             
Vicky Lebbin, University of Hawaii at Manoa          

At professional library conferences, the standard method for making a presentation is to talk about a list of points organized into Microsoft PowerPoint slides projected up on the wall. Critics of PowerPoint have argued that it induces stupidity, turns everyone into bores, wastes time, and degrades the quality and credibility of communication. Yet, PowerPoint remains the primary tool for communicating ideas among librarians specializing in instruction.

Instruction librarians have an ongoing concern on understanding and using technology to enhance student learning. This presentation, however, flips that focus and concentrates on how technology is used to enhance and impede librarian learning. Drawing on a variety of academics and presentation consultants, it introduces the major ideas and discussions on the strengths and limitations of PowerPoint presentation software. Through the use of content analysis, it examines and describes the PowerPoint presentations delivered at library instruction conferences such as LOEX, LOEX-of-the-West, and WILU. Some questions raised will be:

The program invites all those who use PowerPoint and others concerned with communicating effectively to consider the question: “To what extent, if any, is PowerPoint the right tool for my presentation?” Ideally, participants will improve their skills with this useful but confounding technology and thereby improve their instructional and conference presentation skills.

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Quarantined: The Fletcher Library Game Project
Tammy Allgood, Arizona State University
Bee Gallegos, Arizona State University
Karen Grondin, Arizona State University

More than a tutorial, Quarantined: Axl Wise and the Information Outbreak is a fully interactive single-player game environment that simulates the complex processes of selecting, using, evaluating and synthesizing multiple sources of information within a library setting. A variety of information sources such as databases, the online catalog, the web, librarians, professors and peers are employed to solve the mystery in this game. 

The game is an educational adventure game with puzzle and action elements.  Players try to save the world from a deadly outbreak while developing information literacy skills as they explore the college campus game world, avoid contagious students and professors to remain virus free and avoid VOA (Virus Outbreak Agency) officers. 

The puzzles they encounter require them to make decisions about what information resources to choose and how to combine them to discover the cause of and cure for the virus.  Players interact with characters to ask and answer questions that will provide them with clues needed to discover the cause for this fatal contagion.

This presentation will cover the process the Fletcher Library Game Project went through to create this computer game, and the key decisions and lessons learned leading to the successful completion of the project. Members of the Fletcher Library Game Project will also discuss the success of the game in teaching library skills to Lower Division students. The live demonstration will give audience members a sneak peak at this innovative learning tool in action. 

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Sailing Off the Map: Managing Organizational Change in the Library Instruction Environment
Wendy Holliday, University of Southern Utah
Kristen Bullard, University of Tennessee at Knoxville

The theme of this conference, uncharted waters, can evoke the disconcerting nature of uncertainty.  As instruction librarians face challenges in a landscape of change, how can we navigate our institution’s organizational culture to be a strategic asset rather than a barrier to change? 

This session will present case studies on organizational change from two instruction programs, Utah State University (USU) and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK).   In our case studies, we analyze artifacts of culture, including program goals and planning documents, and interviews with stakeholders to determine the organization’s dominant culture and its views and expectations about change.  We then use this understanding of each culture to explore the best ways to initiate change, especially with respect to the creation of a collaborative instructional improvement environment across campus.  This combination of insider and outsider perspectives allowed us to analyze both organizational cultures and create strategies for managing change. 

The case studies will provide the foundation for a practical discussion of organizational change with session participants. We will suggest strategies for analyzing any organizational culture and using this analysis strategically. We will also describe how conducting explicit discussions about organizational culture can serve as an agent of change, both within the library and across campus.  By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

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Setting Sail without a Map: Creative Collabotation for a Multi-Disciplinary Conference
Kathryn Venditti, Ashland University
Judith Williams, Ashland University

The Art of the Picture Book Conference was launched in May 2006 in Ashland, Ohio.  The two-day event drew a total of 158 attendees, featured award-winning authors/ illustrators as keynote speakers, and offered 35 sessions, selected from a total of 45 proposal submissions.  By involving co-curricular programs and community partners, such as other departments on campus, the university bookstore, local public libraries and school districts, and regional museums, the conference offered a variety of techniques to develop and enhance literacy in children.  Presentation opportunities allowed our university students a venue to showcase their comprehensive information abilities.  Crossover into various disciplines created wide interest and networking opportunities, and increased library visibility across campus.  Learn how we navigated these murky waters without a map and realized the benefits of venturing beyond the protected waters of the academic library.

This session will provide insight into general conference planning skills, such as timelines, schedules, delegation of duties, cross-disciplinary communication, and backup plans.  These skills are applicable to workshops and smaller events as well.  We will also focus on the unexpected challenges and rewarding opportunities of working closely with university colleagues and with partners outside of the library and academia.  Participants will be invited to share their own experiences with conference/workshop planning, and will have an opportunity to brainstorm ideas for new collaborative partnerships on their campuses and within their communities.  Timelines and checklists of tasks for successful conference planning will be provided.

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Taking Immersion Home
Karen Michaelsen, Seattle Central Community College Library
Kelley McHenry, Seattle Central Community College Library
Esther Sunde, South Seattle Community College Library

 “I just can’t get faculty interested in information literacy” - sound familiar?  We used to say this too. At a regional ACRL Immersion program, the Seattle Community College District librarians asked themselves how they could get faculty more involved with information literacy on their campuses. One way to do it: Take Immersion home.

Engaging faculty in developing information literacy programs is a common concern among librarians.  Our program was the result of a year of planning, development, and implementation that is now bearing fruit.  In a three-college district with over 27,000 students and only a dozen librarians, faculty across the district are taking notice of information literacy and revising their curricula to give students opportunities to seek and use information in a variety of contexts. We believe that other college and university programs will find our process and program adaptable to their own faculty.

The goals for the program were to:

The three-day program offered engaging and playful activities designed to support the curriculum projects that faculty proposed when they registered. Faculty who completed projects within three weeks of the program—and 29 of them did—received a $200 stipend. Our program has helped build critical mass for continuing to integrate information literacy outcomes in our college curriculum.

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Teaching in a Tea House
Esther Grassian, UCLA College Library
Catherine Marley Haras, California State University, Los Angeles
Billy Pashaie, East Los Angeles College

Librarians have made laudable efforts in developing information literacy instruction (ILI) programs, and in working with K-12 and public libraries, leveraging efforts to prepare students for college and university-level work, supporting lifelong learning. However, up to now few may have asked key questions across libraries of all types regarding a broader, more sequential approach to lifelong information literacy.

LILi, a group of librarians from a spectrum of California libraries (university, college, community college, school, government, public and special libraries), is investigating IL definitions, standards and instruction in California. LILi began by mounting an online survey and promoting it to over 13,000 California libraries of all types. A quick review of initial responses revealed surprises, including this: librarians are teaching in a tea house! Other interesting findings are bound to surface as LILi analyzes this ILI snapshot and begins to…

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From Traditional Library Instruction to Collaborative Instruction: Charting the Course toward Evidence-Based Practice
Pamela M. Corley, University of Southern California
Julie Tilson, University of Southern California

This presentation will explore how a library’s academic liaison program led to a strong teaching partnership within an academic division.  The goal of the liaison program is to provide an essential link between the University of Southern California’s Norris Medical Library and the University’s academic communities.  This goal was achieved when a research support librarian teamed up with a professor of physical therapy to develop a curriculum for physical therapy students.

The objective of this teaching alliance was for first-year doctor of physical therapy students to learn basic skills for Evidence Based Practice.  The collaboration combined the librarian's expertise in database searching, library instruction, and information literacy with the subject knowledge of the physical therapist. 

In developing the learning experience the professor of physical therapy requested assistance through the liaison program.  Her requests, however, did not fit within traditional teaching methods used by the liaison.  The librarian and the professor were able to maintain and enrich the interdisciplinary partnership through flexibility, communication, and cooperation. The collaborators will share how they overcame obstacles, learned to speak each other's language, and quelled colleagues’ concerns that they were abandoning traditional teaching methods.

The conceptual basis of the instructional model will be illustrated with specific teaching examples.  A student-centered outcome measure to assess the efficacy of the teaching model will be presented.

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Understanding Undergraduates: What Does Phenomenography Tell Us about Learners
Clarence Maybee, Colgate University

It has been ten years since Christine Bruce's (1997) Seven Faces of Information Literacy was published, sharing the results of her phenomenographic research project revealing how librarians and other higher educators understood information literacy. Bruce's research impacted the way we think about information literacy by providing us with an expanded definition derived from people's experience. Applied to undergraduate students, phenomenography provides a powerful tool for understanding how students experience information literacy. The results of the presenter's two research projects verifies what some of us may have realized intuitively –that often there is a gap between the student approach to finding and evaluating information and their actual goals, e.g., making a convincing argument, learning more about the topic, etc. Knowing how students understand information literacy provides instructional librarians with important tools for designing pedagogy aimed at getting undergraduates to move beyond the gap by applying an integrated approach to using information. The presenter will provide a brief overview of phenomenographic research as applied to information literacy, describe phenomenographic methodology and discuss the results of the research projects conducted to examine the ways that undergraduate students understand information use. Attendees should expect to leave the session with a new understanding of:

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What Do Nursing and Classics Have in Common? Innovative Library Assignments Embedded in Blackboard
Marcia Poggione, Xavier University  
Michelle Early, Xavier University  

Xavier University librarians take advantage of two new Blackboard features, Expo Directory and Team Site, to assist faculty in designing a graduate nursing course and an undergraduate classics course. The graduate nursing course, Healthcare Informatics, used Expo Directory, the e-portfolio feature in Blackboard, to display documents demonstrating a student’s technology and information fluency skills. Individual and group consultation sessions, online instructions and two library instruction sessions were provided. An evidence-based practice tutorial featuring a PICO analysis was created and imbedded in the Blackboard course as an advanced library assignment that utilized critical thinking. An online survey of faculty who used the tutorial evaluated its effectiveness as a library assignment and provided suggestions for improvement and enhancement. The undergraduate classics course, Classical Civilization: from Romulus to Octavian, needed a way to respond to the University’s initiative to incorporate team based, problem solving assignments that used new and existing technologies and simulated a global work environment.  In place of a traditional research paper students used Team Site, the wiki feature in Blackboard, to create multimedia, web-based projects.  A rubric was developed for students to evaluate the wikis created by each group.  A specific time table was established that incorporated the increasing skill sets and knowledge needed to complete the project. Short, topic-specific bibliographic instruction sessions covering research strategies, citation style, wiki creation, graphic choice and integration were presented each week during class time.  In addition, Blackboard was used as a platform for online help guides on research skills and citation styles.

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