6.1.1 Introduction

Teaching information literacy in higher education has many aspects to it, and in this chapter, we have decided to focus on the topics considered most important in our own development as IL teachers. We hope you find something useful here, too. This chapter is divided into three main sections, which in a way represent the three main stages of teaching, i.e., preparation, implementation, and assessment and evaluation. We also consider relevant external factors, such as the level of study, the size of the student group (and the institution itself), the amount of time allocated to IL teaching, and the level of integration into study programs.

First, preparing your information literacy teaching is more than coming up with good examples or explanations why plagiarism is negative for learning. It includes knowing your student group, i.e., their discipline and level of study, and also what your institution thinks about information literacy. More precisely, do the institutional strategic documents include rules or regulations that support information literacy? Do the learning outcomes for the session you teach comply with the learning outcomes of the overarching study program? And finally, is the faculty aware of what your library can offer and how you can contribute to the students’ overall course of study?

Second, implementing your teaching goals implies understanding how you can engage your students in the little time you have available. There are many teaching methods available to enhance student motivation, important for both satisfaction and performance, which in turn might make the lectures feel more interesting and instructive, and the active learning sessions more time-efficient. Presently, various forms of technologies gain ground in higher education, e.g., student response systems, videos, and MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses). These are readily adoptable for IL teaching.

Finally, assessing information literacy learning constitutes a challenge. We usually meet with the students only once, and further, we are rarely involved in their end of term exams. To get feedback on, and thereby know how to improve, the quality of our teaching, we should prepare course evaluation, both by students and our peers. Also, and more importantly, we should encourage in-course formative assessment, and last, but not least, long-term collaboration with faculty whereby learning outcomes connected with information literacy are integrated into the discipline-specific student work.

6.1.2 Administrative guidelines, or how to avoid starting at scratch

Have you ever been to IKEA and arrived home with a flat-packed new desk and set about to assemble it without bothering to even cast a glance at the instruction booklet? Or, and this is quite common, briefly looked at the instructions, found them confusing, and gone ahead without them, perhaps not having a 100% feeling of mastery over what you are doing? We are quite sure you have, or at least that you know someone who has. The result might of course be very good, but it also might end up a slight disaster. Luckily, in the latter case, acknowledging that you should have read and understood the instructions properly and thereby done things more efficiently, might influence the selection of strategy on how to proceed next time you come home from IKEA.

Reading administrative documents about teaching and learning can be a bit like this, and in the rush of things, it is probably not first on your list, either. However, taking the time to study institutional strategies, qualification frameworks and learning objectives properly might in fact facilitate the development, and improve the relevance, of your IL teaching.

Most countries have established a national framework for education, and for us IL teachers, knowing the implications of these frameworks for our teaching may prove golden in meetings with faculty and study administration, where integration of information literacy into study programs is on the table. In this book, we will not discuss the many individual national frameworks of qualifications, but rather use the overarching framework for the European Higher Education Area (EHEA, cf. Bologna Working Group, 2005) as point of reference. Although much is common across frameworks, we strongly advise you, after reading this book, to google the framework(s) that are relevant to your work.

When examining these frameworks, look for outcomes related to your institution's library services. Also, setting aside some time each term to study learning outcomes for the local study programs in which you are involved is fruitful, first and foremost because it facilitates setting learning outcomes for your own teaching, and thereby placing information literacy into a larger context. There is an oft-quoted citation from the famous (and fictional) Doctor Who, saying “A librarian who spends time writing well-formed learning outcomes might save the world from the Daleks”.¹ We advise you to be that librarian.

6.2.1 Constructive alignment, learning outcomes and objectives

To succeed in our teaching, in the sense of achieving good learning for the students, we need to think through how we arrange our teaching and the learning environment. Much of the didactic arrangements can normally be chosen by us, while some of the conditions for our teaching are out of our control. The conditions we are bound by when planning lessons and learning are framework factors such as time and place of the lesson, the preconditions of the teacher and the students, the learning goal or the intended learning outcome, whether teaching and learning methods are in accordance with the assessment method, and whether the content is tailored to the intended learning outcomes and to the students present in the lesson.

We generally recommend starting the planning of the teaching by setting the intended learning outcome of the lesson, e.g., “the students know and are able to identify the evaluation criterion ‘objectivity’ in source evaluation.” Next, thinking through what contents and learning activities this require, e.g., providing information and examples why this criterion is important, and challenge the students to evaluate a small variety of different sources, in class (or prior to the session), with this criterion in mind. Finally, we recommend finding forms of assessment that are relevant for determining whether the students have reached the intended learning outcomes, e.g., evaluate the students’ findings in class, or examine the list of references in their discipline-specific term paper. This way of planning teaching, where we start with the intended results of the students’ learning processes, and align teaching and assessment to the intended outcomes, is called constructive alignment (Biggs, 1999). The term constructive alignment itself points to a constructivist understanding of learning and to the alignment between intended outcome, teaching/learning activities, and assessment tasks (Biggs & Tang, 2011, p. 52). Constructive alignment is part of an outcomes-based approach to education, as opposed to an input-based approach. In the traditional input-based education, the focus lies on the resources that students have at their disposal and, in particular, on the curriculum and the content. In the currently internationally favored output-based education, the focus rather lies on the knowledge, skills, and competences that the students have acquired as a result of the teaching and learning. In this sense, output-based education has been a part of the focus-shift from teaching to learning, a shift sometimes characterized as a paradigm-shift (Barr & Tagg, 1995).

What, then, is a learning outcome? The term outcome could point to the subjective experience of the student of a teaching and learning process, as well as the more objectively measurable learning results. We will do well to keep both interpretations in mind, as both are important factors in education. However, in connection with constructive alignment, it is the meaning pointing to (more or less) objectively measurable learning results that is involved.

There are different categories of learning outcomes: knowledge, skills, and competences being the ones chosen in the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) (Bologna Working Group, 2005). Another learning outcome that is particularly relevant in connection with information literacy, is attitudes. We have argued in Chapter 5, Toward Academic Integrity and Critical Thinking, that information literacy teaching should inspire discussion of, and perhaps also acquisition of, certain norms and conventions. We can here remind ourselves of the ever-growing, international challenge of plagiarism, which in part points to a certain level of failure in our teaching, and in higher education in general, regarding acquisition of values such as accountability, honesty, and respect. In connection with constructive alignment, there is also a third meaning of the notion “learning outcome” that is of vital importance, besides the meaning “the objectively and externally measurable learning result of a learning process.” An intended learning outcome, as planned and anticipated by the teacher, is the same as the planned-for learning goal. (However, we can note that the two notions, “learning outcome” and “learning goal,” usually are considered part of different vocabularies, belonging to the two above-mentioned different approaches to teaching and education, where “learning goal” belongs to an input-based approach to education.) An intended learning outcome is then a possible result of an intended learning trajectory of a student, as planned by a teacher.

Intended learning outcomes are to be described in learning outcome statements, and these have a preferred specific form. An outcome statement must contain a learning activity that students need to perform in order to achieve the outcome. The statement thus needs a verb like “describe,” “explain,” “apply,” or the like, and an object (the content), e.g., “The student will be able to explain different solutions to a philosophical problem and analyze their strengths and weaknesses.” The contents given here can be more or less specific, depending on the intended outcome. However, we argue that particular competencies and skills should be the goal of information literacy teaching, rather than specific contents. In line with this, we recommend that the content is being described in relatively open categories, like in the example above, e.g., “explain the legal and ethical use of information resources” and “use basic principles to evaluate the relevance and quality of an information resource” (competencies), “cite sources in line with academic conventions,” and “retrieve literature from the library collections” (skills).²

Educational learning objectives and learning outcomes come in many forms and at different levels of complexity and specificity. These levels are described in a diversity of taxonomies, Bloom's revised taxonomy being one of the most commonly used (see Bloom et al., 1956; Krathwohl, 2002; Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1973). This taxonomy comprises three models used to classify learning outcomes in cognitive, affective, and sensory domains. For the purpose of teaching and learning in information literacy, the cognitive and affective domains are the relevant ones, and we give a quick overview of them both here.

The cognitive domain consists of six different levels of cognitive complexity (horizontally presented in Table 6.1). The taxonomy is cumulative, and this means that mastery of one level is considered a condition for mastery of the next, more complex level. In this way, remember is the least complex, while create is the most complex. When it comes to the knowledge objectives (vertically presented in Table 6.1), there is an increasing degree of abstraction, from factual knowledge as the least abstract, and metacognitive knowledge as the most abstract.

The verbs of the cognitive process dimension have the following meanings:

The concepts of the knowledge dimension have the following meanings:

We would like to stress that intended learning outcomes aimed at memorizing and reproducing are no less valuable than higher order ones. Indeed, as we saw in Section 3.1.5, remembering is an important precondition for understanding and higher order processing. If we have a particular interest in higher order thinking, this is connected to our students’ development of a critical and evaluative attitude. Retrieval of relevant knowledge from long-term memory is, together with, e.g., abilities to analyze, also a basis for being able to create something new. To promote higher order thinking is thus to promote both the critically appraising and the personal and creative side of learning, and what one might call the academic formation, or Academic Bildung (Solberg & Hansen, 2015; see also Chapter 5, Toward Academic Integrity and Critical Thinking), thus the kind of learning and education that it is particularly important to cultivate in higher education.

As a means to understand the students’ (lack of) engagement in IL teaching sessions, to understand the cyclic process the student is actually going through when working, and thereby to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of IL teaching, Keene, Colvin, and Sissons (2010) reviewed the various stages involved in the problem-solving information seeking process in light of Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive skills. They split the task into four stages, i.e., identification of information need, location and evaluation of information, review of information, and problem solution (see Fig. 6.1). When going into detail into the various activities involved in each stage, they revealed that both low-level and high-level cognitive skills were required, on every stage. This observation entailed a proposition whereby teachers should be aware of which cognitive skills are employed at the different moments of acquiring information literacy, and based on this, deliver instruction and activities proven effective for the given stage (for detailed examples, see Keene et al., 2010).

However, it is not only the cognitive domain that is relevant for reaching intended learning outcomes in information literacy. IL is, after all, a normative field. Turning to the affective domain, Bloom’s second model should be considered relevant for information literacy teaching. It consists of the following five levels:

This list of the meanings of the notions on each of the levels of the affective domain may make us realize that without stating intended affective learning outcomes, we really have little control over the value acquisition and thus the formation of the students.

After having specified the learning outcomes of our teaching session(s), we must create the learning environment where the learning activities can be performed. The learning activities help students construct their own learning, i.e., learning by what they do. Assessment will then be about how well the students achieve the intended outcomes, and in an aligned design, we use assessment tasks that address the same verbs as did the learning outcome statement.

The advantage of constructive alignment as an approach to teaching is the consistency throughout the learning experience for the student. When intended learning outcomes, learning activities and assessment are all driving the learning processes in the same direction, the teaching is likely to be more effective. “All components in the system address the same agenda and support each other. The students are entrapped in this web of consistency, optimizing the likelihood that they will engage the appropriate learning activities…” (Biggs & Tang, 2011, p. 54).

However, critics have argued that an outcome-based approach to education, and constructive alignment in particular, easily can become a straightjacket for teaching and learning (Andersen, 2010; Imsen, 2009; McKernan, 2010). Predefined outcomes can hinder the free and autonomous development of both teacher and student, and it could turn teaching and learning into instrumental and strategic processes rather than possibilities for academic and personal growth. We argue that goals of learning processes in research institutions should be open for continuous negotiation between systemic and societal expectations, teacher and student (cf. discussion in Prøitz, 2014). Further, in our interactions we should also be open for the unexpected, for that which we have not planned, and could not plan. This is perhaps particularly important to be prepared for in more dialog-favored teaching settings, where the heterogeneity and individualities within the student group are more easily exposed, through facilitated interaction with peers and teacher. For instance, a session on academic integrity for PhD students, where intended focus is on the advantages of correct source use for learning, might easily evolve into a discussion on where to draw the lines for correct versus incorrect use of sources, and whereby discipline-specific differences are revealed.

In sum, when working with constructive alignment, we must keep in mind that the intended outcomes are preliminary, that they should be open to negotiation and that we therefore should keep the contents as open as possible. Intended learning outcomes should serve as guidelines and starting points for teaching and learning processes, so that we know what we deviate from when we do.

6.2.2 Dealing with the variety of students

Libraries in higher education have two main user groups, i.e., students and faculty. When it comes to the first group, it might feel natural to us to focus on the young students fresh out of high school, who meet the world of academia for the first time. However, as indicated throughout this book, the acquisition of information literacy does not stop here, but is a continuous process that students are dealing with until the day they are conferred their doctorate. In addition, there is the growing group of adult students embarking on continuing and further education, who typically have years of professional experience on their CV, and who now need to reacquaint themselves with the basics of information literacy.

In this section, we discuss how to best meet the variety of student groups in the information literacy setting. If experience varies from one group to another, internal motivation constitutes a second differentiating factor. Therefore, to provide teaching that meets the needs and expectations of our students, we must identify with them and understand the given situation in which they find themselves.

6.2.3 How to make our teaching visible and attractive?

As mentioned in Chapter 2, Information Literacy: The What and How, a major challenge for many teachers of information literacy is the little time allocated to their teaching. Ideally, IL should be a full-term course, preferably with credits, so that students see the course as equally valuable as other induction courses. This would enable students to progress step by step into the important issues of academic formation, it would be easier to assess their needs to start with, and easier to measure the progress they make throughout the semester. Further, the IL teacher would have a perception of the students’ knowledge prior to and after IL teaching sessions, and thus make it easier to adjust her teaching as the students increase their understanding.

This scenario is however quite rarely the case, and what we need to do, is to make sure IL teaching session(s) are set at a time where students are receptive for learning. If you have the chance, briefly meeting with the students throughout the semester, either online or face-to-face, is ideal in that different themes can be brought up when most relevant. For instance, knowledge about learning strategies should come early in the first semester of university study, so that students can structure and carry out their studies with the best techniques in mind. Also an initial reflection on the purpose and dynamics in academia might be useful for students fresh out of upper secondary school. Searching and citing literature, on the other hand, should come just before starting a written assignment (but not too long before, otherwise it might be hard to see the relevance, and you run the risk of the students engaging less). If you cannot schedule more than one meeting with the students, ask faculty or study administration well in advance if you can have 5 minutes at a general introductory meeting in the beginning of the semester. Here, you can prepare the students for the teaching session to come, and you can point to material they should consult prior to meeting with you. Nowadays, there are many free, good quality, online resources that are suitable for such individual study, e.g., Academic Information Seeking (www.coursera.org) and iKomp (www.ikomp.no).

As for doctoral students, where (compulsory) courses are fewer, the library should encourage participation during the first year, before they are too deep into the writing and publication race. They should further be encouraged to take other library courses, when relevant in their work process. Many libraries currently offer courses on publishing and data management, but PhD students—who, as we have seen, avoid spending time on things considered not immediately relevant—are not necessarily up-to-date about the variety of library offers (cf. Fleming-May & Yuro, 2009). In addition to promoting your offer directly to PhD students, and via student administration, we encourage you to check whether there are places where the supervisors meet as a group, e.g., seminars on doctoral supervision, and if there are, check whether you—or others—can inform the supervisors about the relevance of the library support services.

Dialog with faculty and study administration is vital for IL teaching to be at its most effective. While faculty can implement IL skills and competencies into their own teaching and assignments, study administration can influence integration of information literacy into formal requirements on all levels of education, from BA to PhD. There seems to be an agreement, especially among policy-makers, that “information literacy involve[s] much more than just library skills” (Saunders, 2008, p. 100), and we see in fact that initiatives are taken to introduce information literacy relevant themes even before the first semester, either as a prep course or integrated in courses in upper secondary school, to facilitate the transition to higher education (see, e.g., McPhail, 2015; Talikka, 2006). But all this does not necessarily imply that local faculty and administration at universities know what IL contains, or how it can help the student learning process—and, in the end, the institution’s reputation and position.

We believe raising awareness of the scope of IL is part of the library’s job. This is challenging, but with patience and with a firm belief in the quality and importance of the library’s IL teaching, integration is possible (for an example of integration and positive impact of library teaching on student writing, see Booth, Lowe, Tagge & Stone, 2015). The library must get out of the library (cf. Reeves, Nishimuta, McMillan, & Godin, 2004), and should further approach faculty and administration (and students) on different levels, simultaneously. The library direction regularly meets with deans and other decision-makers, and the IL teachers are in the position to contact faculty and departmental study administration. It is wise to always be ready to offer your services, and if they do not buy your product immediately, the circumstances being lack of time or lack of interest, do not lose hope, but concentrate on what can be done in the given situation. Revise your expectations and perspectives, continue working on the quality and relevance of your teaching, read up on relevant research or administrative documents, and examine student feedback, all to have well-founded arguments for the importance of information literacy in your next meeting with faculty and/or study administration. If faculty seems to have a hard time grasping the essence of the subject, focus on those who do and invite them to collaborate, either in teaching, internal workshops, or conference papers—all for both parts to receive valuable input on one’s thoughts and actions. Faculty talk to each other, and in our experience, with time, more and more individual teachers take interest and invite the library to present their offer.

Even though some researchers, for instance Webber and Johnston (2000), advocate IL as a separate discipline, most will argue that IL skills are better taught integrated in the curriculum of the various disciplines. According to Smith (2003), “embedding information skills within a disciplinary framework establishes context, meaning, and relevance for learners.” Furthermore, she writes that “the approach to seeking and using information, are dependent on the structures and processes of a specific discipline” and that different disciplines have different resources and methods. Another reason for embedding IL teaching into subject-specific courses is that it increases the sense of relevance, importance, and thereby the status of information literacy among students. Cochrane (2006, p. 110) found that students felt “academic rather than library staff should be responsible for the delivery of IL”, but we believe that a faculty–library collaboration is still favorable in that the library can add the meta perspective whereby IL is more easily seen as an overarching part of academic practice. Collaboration could also be expanded to include peer inquiry specialists, i.e., students trained in important aspects of information literacy by the library, available to less experienced peers. These trained students can serve a dual function: support other students within the discipline in times of need, and form a more easily navigable bridge between the latter and the library teaching personnel (see, e.g., Salomon, Glassman, & Lee, 2016).

Thus, as we perceive it, proper integration with subject courses is a better solution than creating separate full-term IL courses, since it supports the presumption that IL is linked to all disciplines in academia. This demands quite a bit more from faculty, who needs to be aware about how they teach and how they integrate elements of IL in their day-to-day lecturing or teaching, but here the library can be of service. It is also essential that it is made explicit that students will be evaluated not only on how they master the subject at the exam but also on their choice of and use of sources (for more details on assessment, see Section 6.4).

With the above-mentioned challenges in mind, it seems that a crucial trait in IL teachers must be flexibility, strong perseverance, and a clear grasp of pedagogical teaching methods. As librarians, we will always be second to faculty, and rightly so. Very few of us, at least those of us working in larger institutions, will get the chance to follow student groups from their induction course until their finished degree. Thus we must work hard on being noticed and visible, and make our mark when we can. Pedagogic knowledge and didactic skills are therefore essential among IL teachers. Even though some library schools may offer courses in pedagogy or related topics, quite a few librarians have little or no pedagogical education. This means that librarians are very often self-taught when it comes to teaching methods and will most likely build their teaching on their own experiences. We cannot sit, however, and wait for library schools to increase elements of pedagogy in library training. Rather, we should team up with our colleagues and discuss teaching in light of research, current trends, and requirements. Together, IL teacher groups have years of various experiences and a multitude of competencies and skills, and bringing these together, creating an including and inspiring environment for teacher development, individual and as a team, we can progress and thereby present our teaching to faculty and students with confidence in what we are doing (for inspiration, we advise you to consult the blog Hand in Hand, run by Partners in Teaching, Learning and Assessment, Clarion University, https://handinhandclarion.wordpress.com/).

A warning, though, in the end: When working on developing your teaching and integrating it into study programs, make sure you continuously map the human resources available at the library. If you see that the amount of teaching demanded does not match with the people you have available, think alternatively. Which aspects are most important to teach? Which student groups could be put together? Which information could be provided by the faculty and not by the library? Which information can be put in an online resource?

In the next section, we turn to the hows and whys in implementation of IL teaching.

6.3.1 Lecturing

In Chapter 3, Things We Know About How Learning Happens, we saw that the evidence in favor of adopting teaching approaches that aim for conceptual change through supporting students' active sense making seems solid. And in this book, we argue that student-centered, active and collaborative teaching methods are likely to be sensible ways of implementing these approaches. We have also seen how easily we can walk into the trap of deluging students with information, overburdening their limited working memories and impeding learning.

As mentioned in the preceding section, as IL teachers, we sometimes work under less than ideal conditions. We often contribute to courses with IL sessions that are less than perfectly integrated, and are often unable to communicate with student groups properly to prepare them for a given teaching session. Many of our contributions are in large enrollment introductory courses, where the plenary auditorium lecture is the usual modus operandi. Consequently, we may not always be able to properly set the stage for implementing our preferred teaching approach in the way we want to, and sometimes the plenary auditorium lecture is the only option available to us. And even when we are fortunate enough to exert more influence on the conditions for our own teaching, there is usually a need to spend at least some of our teaching time simply informing or explaining.

Lecturing is often caricatured as teacher-centered, one-way information transmission from an expert teacher to passively receptive students. Given that we sometimes are more or less bound to using the lecture, how can we make the most of it? How can we adapt it to better fit our conceptions of teaching and learning in the service of helping students become information literate? In this section we offer our suggestions for making the most out of teaching situations that call for lecturing.

6.3.2 Flipping the IL Classroom for active learning

As repeatedly mentioned, IL teachers often have only a few sessions of limited teaching time with any group of students. Given the dimensions of our discipline and our eagerness to share as much of it as we possibly can, we are often tempted to stuff those sessions uncomfortably full, risking information overload in our students. In Chapter 3, Things We Know About How Learning Happens, we warned against giving in to this temptation, on the grounds of universal cognitive limitations. We also saw, in Section 3.4.2, that teaching for active learning is very likely to be more effective than traditional lecturing (but see Section 6.3.1 for our advice on lecturing effectively).

Still, it is probably true all the same, that just any kind of activity will not automatically provide better learning than a good lecture. And if some students are overconfident, uninterested, and at the same time unfamiliar with some of the concepts we rely on when teaching, then hoping that they will happily engage in our IL activities right off the bat may be hoping for too much.

How, then, can we prepare the ground for effective learning activities? How can we sow seeds of engagement and prime the concepts students need in order to participate meaningfully in in-class activities? One possible way to meet these challenges is to structure teaching according to the model that has come to be known as the inverted or flipped classroom. Under the flipped classroom model, the teacher-centered, expository, “information-transmission teaching” (Abeysekera & Dawson, 2015, p. 3), is moved out of, and prior to the classroom session, in order to make room for more student-centered, active learning activities in the classroom session itself. Arguably, then, a marked advantage of the flipped classroom model is that it allows us to combine traditional didactic approaches to teaching (i.e., lecturing) with student-centered, active learning approaches.

Moving the information-transmission part of the teaching out of the classroom usually means transferring it to video. Some teachers rely on other media, but video lectures are by far the most common. A video could be anything from a simple set of PowerPoint slides with added narration, to a live image of the teacher with audio and visual aids such as a whiteboard or digital note-taking using a tablet or a smart board, or, if equipment and support is available, a studio production using green screen. Teachers flipping their classrooms use very different approaches, and it certainly seems possible to create videos that do the job well enough without investing in expensive equipment or software.

While the main goal of the flipped classroom structure is to free up time in the session for a different kind of learning experience, moving the lecture, the first exposure to new material, out of the classroom session arguably has a number of other advantages. First, we find that lecturing on video tends to discipline us, the teachers, to rethink the structure and content of our message, usually resulting in fewer digressions, more to-the-point exposition, and a better portioning of the points we want to make. All of this leads to lecture segments that are both clearer and shorter than a live lecture would usually be. This in turn helps prevent overburdened working memories (cf. Section 3.1.3) and lapses in sustained attention (cf. Section 3.1.2) in our students. Second, and related to the first point, viewing lectures on video allows students a kind of control that may be unavailable in a live lecture setting. Being able to pause, rewind or jump ahead, or to view when and where it is most convenient, may help students more easily encode the concepts we want them to learn. (On the other hand, a frequent complaint about lectures on video is that there is no way to ask questions and have them answered then and there.) Third, viewing video prior to practicing recall and application in the classroom session allows a little bit of time to pass between different occasions of engaging with the material. And if the videos are accompanied by brief comprehension check type quizzes, either embedded in the video or behind a link nearby, this in effect provides a form of distributed practice, which we know supports retention (see Chapter 4, Learning Strategies).

Arguably, though, the real advantages of the flipped classroom model are the consequences of introducing more active learning into the teaching session (Jensen, Kummer, & d M Godoy, 2015). In fact, while it seems most studies comparing courses using the flipped classroom model to those using traditional, lecture-based teaching find higher student achievement in the flipped condition (e.g., Anderson & Brennan, 2015; Foldnes, 2016), some find little or no effect. Interestingly, a perusal of the null effect studies reveals that some of them tend to use a control group comparison where the traditional teaching already involves several active learning elements (e.g., Yong, Levy, & Lape, 2015). In our opinion, this indicates that there is less to be gained from adopting the flipped classroom model if you are already using mostly student-centered active learning teaching methods. Hence, the flipped classroom is perhaps best considered a tool for opening up the classroom session for more active learning.

How then, could the flipped classroom model be implemented in IL teaching? Based on our own experiences with flipped IL teaching, we would offer the following advice. (For a detailed example of a flipped IL session, see Section 6.3.2.5.)

6.3.3 Collaborative learning

In Section 3.4.2, we cited evidence to the effect that collaborative learning, a popular variety of active learning, tends to yield superior student achievement when compared to individual or competitive learning. Further, in Chapter 5, Toward Academic Integrity and Critical Thinking, we argued that discourse and dialog with peers and academic authorities is important for development of Academic Bildung and critical thinking. In this section, we introduce our own understanding of collaborative learning and provide some examples of how it can be implemented in an IL context.

Following Barkley, Major, and Cross (2014), we will apply the term collaborative learning to a relatively broad collection of different group learning activities. Specifically, we will define collaborative learning as two or more students working together, contributing equally, on activities designed to foster learning. This is broad enough to include most varieties of intentional, planned, and structured group activities, without being too liberal (i.e., it excludes just seating students together and telling them to talk to each other). In our definition, cooperative learning, by some considered a more tightly controlled and narrowly defined type of group activity, is subsumed under the collaborative umbrella. Still, while our approach to collaborative learning is eclectic, and we do not adhere to a particular tradition, we do recommend structured activity, as argued in Section 6.3.2 on flipping the IL classroom.

When implementing collaborative learning in an IL classroom, it is useful to consider some of the reasons why it works so well. This helps us guide how we plan and practice it in our sessions. Of course, knowing that it works tells us no more than just that, and theories of why are mostly just theories; more or less validated theories, to be sure, but hard to establish firmly as causes of the effectiveness of collaborative learning. Nevertheless, on the basis of the theory and research reviewed throughout this book, we can construct a few likely causal factors that serve as useful guideposts.

First, collaborative learning may foster learning because it involves elaborative processing, generating explanations, and practicing retrieval. In short, it resembles a combination of the most effective, high-utility learning strategies reviewed in Section 4.1. Interestingly, recent findings suggest that practicing retrieval from memory collaboratively, instead of on our own, further boosts the effectiveness of practice testing (Wissman & Rawson, 2015). The reason is probably in part that it provides opportunities for distinctive processing, i.e., the simultaneous processing of similarities and dissimilarities among to-be-remembered concepts.

Second, and closely related to the first point, collaborative learning provides lots of opportunities for students to receive some feedback on their own attempts to gain mastery over that which they are trying to learn. Remember from Section 3.2.2 that students tend not to be very good at accurately judging the quality of their own learning. When working together in small groups or teams, students are forced to voice their ideas, their reasoning behind conclusions and solutions, and hence their own understanding and mastery of to-be-learned concepts and skills are directly or indirectly tested. Fellow students will usually provide support, comments, objections, or alternative interpretations and solutions, highlighting the quality of each student's contribution. If students are adopting a learning orientation (c.f. Section 3.3.1), they are likely to be able to use the feedback inherent in these situations to their advantage. Collaborative learning supports the visibility of student learning (see Section 3.4.1) by offering feedback opportunities.

Third, working together seems to trigger some of the social instincts that help us learn. We saw in Chapter 4, Learning Strategies, that our motivation to engage in something depends in part on our perceptions of relatedness; if we feel that an activity or setting helps fulfill our need for secure and satisfying connections with others, then we are more likely to invest in it. Furthermore, if the collaborative activities are designed such that there is a positive interdependence—each student's effort and learning positively impacts the learning of the rest of the group—students are likely to feel a responsibility to contribute. From our own experience, we find that the more unenterprising or timid students, who, in solitary activities will tend to make a half-hearted attempt at it, and then just sit there staring passively at what they have produced, will often become more active, more likely to look for alternative strategies and solutions to an exercise, once they have a partner or two to work together with.

6.3.4 Case-based teaching and learning

Students need to get acquainted with academic values for making good choices. Together, the knowledge of general rules and the ability to understand particular situations will form the kind of judgment students need in order to develop academic integrity. Seeing to that students are familiar with the rules and that they are trained to be able to “read” complex, challenging situations is a sound prophylactic step when we want to lead students into good academic conduct. Getting to be familiar with, thinking about, and practicing the decision making they later will be challenged by in common concrete situations in their academic work, and perhaps in particular in their academic writing, is a precaution for the future. We believe that experience with being in the situations where one will be tried and tested, and where one will need both courage and ability to resistance in order to make good and right decisions, will be helpful for future choices of course of action.

In terms of teaching and instructional design, this insight about students’ needs related to academic integrity points toward case-based teaching, where students also should be able to bring in their own experiences and cases. It points toward being exposed to rich example material for seeing different typical situations, and it points to teaching and learning in small groups, with ample possibilities to voice your own thoughts, possibility to address, discuss and take a stand on academic values and practices. It takes time, practice, and personal engagement to evoke commitment and emotional involvement in academic values. This is why we think case-based teaching and learning is a good idea in courses in information literacy, where development of academic integrity often is an intended outcome.

A case is a scenario, real or constructed, and case-based learning is basically the idea that you are to learn something new by being invited into the complex concrete situation of the case, where you are to think yourself into the position of another. The task is to consider the further course of action in a situation containing a problem, or a conflict to be solved, or a decision to be made. The problem or the conflict usually does not have a clear solution, or the decisions that need to be made are not obvious, and it will be necessary to draw on previously acquired knowledge or principles.

In case-based learning, the assignments will often illustrate challenges in the practice of the students. Working on cases presupposes an investigative approach to the task, and a willingness to try out their already acquired knowledge in light of new experiences. In this way, the need for new knowledge and new skills become visible to the student herself, during the work on the task. Case-based learning is ideal for developing a personal sense for the concrete and the particular, in light of general principles. The cases and assignments needs to be well thought out, or, if real, carefully picked out, in order to be relevant for the intended learning outcomes whether these are affective, in the form of attitudes or values acquired, or cognitive, in terms of knowledge, skills, and general competence. Case-based learning presupposes a high level of student activity where both individual preparations and collaborative work are necessary for solving the tasks.

In case-based teaching, it is important that the case descriptions give the students possibilities for developing an understanding of the challenges they will meet in practice. The case itself may be a shorter or longer note, or it may be a video cut. The case will describe the actors involved and their roles and interests, and the case will often have the perspective of a main actor. The case may be supplied with additional material like newspaper articles, reports, or pictures, and the level of complexity will depend on the course objectives, or intended learning outcomes (Lycke, 2016, p. 176). This means that the work on developing cases can be time-consuming for the teacher.

In case-based teaching and learning, it is common to organize the work in three different phases: (1) individual preparation, (2) small group work, and (3) discussion in class. The teacher will have to time and plan the sessions carefully. We suggest that the teacher divides the students into groups and gives the groups specific assignments and allotted time, and then the groups present their reasoning in class.

Preparation: The presentation of the case could be open or the teacher may encourage students to be more or less systematic in their approach to the analysis of the case. The Center for Teaching and Learning at Boston University suggests the following systematic approach:

Small group work: Kirsten Lycke suggests the following questions for focusing the group work on the case:

Discussion in class: The discussion in class should be led by the instructor in order to keep the discussion on track, and also in order to be able to highlight issues of specific importance, correcting mistakes and not the least, to meet the intended learning outcomes of the session. It is important that the acquired insight of the students come to the fore, and that it feels safe to present their views, draw conclusions, generalize, argue for and against solutions, and ask further questions. However, case method teaching is likely to lead not only the students but also you as a teacher to new and unexpected places. It is thus wise to think through how you will handle it.

Lycke (2016, p. 179) recommends that the work on the case material should lead to a dialog about transfer to other situations and to the students’ reflection on their own learning. Further, in a summary of the discussions it is important to highlight the principles and questions involved in the case, and encourage the students to relate the casework to themselves and to their own practice.

Both collaborative learning in general and case-based learning in particular allow students to bring their perspectives and thoughts into class. This is important for supporting the students’ motivation for learning in line with self-determination theory and the theory of Academic Bildung. Reeve (2009) has pointed out that in autonomy-supportive teaching, the teacher's use of language should be noncontrolling and informative in the sense that words like “must” and “shall” should be avoided in the communication about the curriculum and the learning activities. Patience has also emerged as an important factor in order to facilitate that learning (at least to some extent) can take place in the student's own pace. Kusurkar, Croiset, and Ten Cate (2011) provide many specific tips on how to drive motivation increasing learning. These are basically aimed at medical students, but we think they can act independently of discipline or profession. The tips are about, among other things, how to provide students with responsibility to familiarize themselves with various minor subjects as they prepare, and present to a group of other students. They recommend that students not be compelled or forced to take part in this, but that they are encouraged and given time to collect courage and do the mental preparation, as many often do, to make this happen. Kusurkar et al. (2011) highlight the importance of setting aside time to provide feedback and that feedback must focus on improvement, a focus on learning and that it should not take the form of “personal attacks.” They further highlight the importance of emotional support that involves developing a warm and positive atmosphere that gives room for sharing—also of dissatisfaction with various parts of the instruction when that occurs.

We have now reviewed a variety of ways in which IL teaching can be implemented. To end this section, and before turning to Section 6.4 on assessment and evaluation, we would like to present our main inspiration for writing this book. In 2013, we felt the need to do some changes in our IL teaching. If the concrete output was an online resource on information literacy, iKomp (www.ikomp.no), it also led to a shift in focus in our teaching in general, both content-wise and structure-wise. Further, to create this course, we needed to improve our competencies and skills related to e-learning environments. Section 6.3.6 presents some experiences and advice on how you can proceed in developing an online IL teaching and learning environment.

6.3.5 The hows and whys of going online with iKomp

If you have decided to use or experiment with technology in your IL teaching, remember to ask yourself: How is it going to be different from what you usually do? Is it just a digital version of the old face-to-face way of doing something? If yes, does technology make it better? When you decide to modify the way of presenting content, i.e., going partly or completely online, you should simultaneously think about how the very content could be presented. Using technology in teaching and learning settings should add to, rather than just replace or modify, traditional methods of teaching, i.e., we should strive to create an optimal e-learning environment.

Section 6.3.2.5 presented a sample flipped classroom IL session, linking learning outcomes and selection of activities in a combination of online and face-to-face teaching. In this section, we will focus on how you could proceed in creating an optimal e-learning environment, whether its purpose is to serve as a complement to face-to-face teaching, an alternative to face-to-face teaching for distance students, or an IL encyclopedia. A little bit of a warning, though: Creating good online teaching material takes time, and if this is a significant constraint in your working day, consider using some of the good quality material that is freely available online.

So how did we proceed? Until a few years ago, IL teaching in our institution primarily consisted of one-shot sessions for BA students, and we spent a lot of time in class on general library services, and technicalities of searching and citing scholarly literature. We felt, however, that we did not manage to reach the students (and obviously not the ones off campus), and we considered it was time to take action. Our concrete goal was to create an online resource, in a MOOC format, that could function as a complement or supplement to our face-to-face teaching. A more diffuse goal was to modify the focus of our teaching—and, in fact, simply by starting working, discussing, and struggling, we gradually saw more clearly what was wise to do, cf. “[iKomp] allowed us to relocate training on searching and citing to the online environment, and thereby devote face-to-face meetings entirely to issues we consider far more important, i.e., how information literacy skills can foster learning” (Løkse, Andreassen, Låg, & Stenersen, 2016, p. 122). We created a working group at the library consisting of six people, with quite different areas of expertise (four subject librarians with formal training in different disciplines and various degrees of IL teaching experience, one consultant working on ICT and learning, and one graphic designer), we got a Go! from the library direction, and started working. The work was carried out alongside our regular tasks, but the mere fact of being driven by the same inspiration and the idea of a good end product strengthened the interpersonal bonds within the team and made us prioritize the online resource as much as possible. It nevertheless took us around 18 months before we had a first published version of iKomp.⁵

iKomp is structured in four interrelated, though independent, modules, which, together, encompass what we consider to be the major topics within information literacy: (1) learning strategies, (2) information evaluation (including critical thinking), (3) the hows and whys of literature searching, and (4) academic formation (including the hows and whys of citing sources).

Learning strategies was deliberately chosen as the opening module, as it emphasizes the importance of being aware of our own learning and of planning our learning properly. Usually, students are advised to take this module during the first few weeks at university, and, according to anonymous feedback from our MOOC users, the content is highly appreciated. The second module goes directly into the core of information literacy, being able to critically evaluate the information that surrounds us and pick out the best and most relevant parts of it. We also had nonacademic users in mind when developing this module, as the ability to make informed choices is vital, whether it be at school, at home, or at the workplace. The third module involves learning how to carry out the best possible searches. Many new students are quite inexperienced in searching other sources than Google, and need to understand how and why searching—basic or advanced—efficiently can help them get better results. The fourth module about academic formation asks students to reflect on their motivation for embarking on an academic education, and what they see as their role in academia. These are rather big questions, but still very important as they introduce reflection on the values of respect, integrity, and honesty, which (should) permeate academic thinking. We also use this module to go through the referencing and citation process, as this is of major concern for both students and faculty.

A mix of videos, texts, activities, and self-tests characterizes the entire iKomp course. Also, there is a 40 piece multiple-choice question exam at the end of the course for those who want or must have a certificate as proof of passing the course. This certificate can be uploaded into the institutional LMS for those subjects that choose iKomp as an obligatory course. In the first version, we authorized an unlimited number of attempts on the exam, and we provided explanations to the wrong answers. However, the examination of exam user data, whereby only 22.6% passed the exam on the first attempt, and 24.8% used more than 10 attempts (n=399), indicated that the students did not engage very much with course content. We thus decided to make the exam settings stricter, allowing four attempts only and replacing wrong answer explanations with hints back to course content. A test with n=614 revealed that 82% of the users passed on the first attempt, and that many used the save button in the exam module, which might indicate that the students were working on content as they proceeded in the exam. (For details, see Andreassen, Figenschou, & Stenersen, 2016; Andreassen, Låg, & Stenersen, 2015.)

Since our institution values open access—and by extension, open science as a whole—to information, the iKomp course is made freely available, regardless of institutional affiliation, on the open source platform Bibsys Open edX. This platform has an additional advantage which is to provide detailed user data via the analytics module Insights. Further, to cater for international students, the course also comes in an English version. As a result of this openness, and our promotion of iKomp on various conferences, the course has attracted attention from other educational institutions, including upper secondary schools in our region.

In light of the increased focus on dropout rates and retention, we clearly see a future cooperation with secondary education institutions as fruitful for preparing students for academia. Finally, as for faculty outreach, a gradually stronger focus on correct source use among study administration, decision-makers, and information literate up-to-date faculty members, has led several units at our institution to make iKomp an obligatory part of the first year of study. This allows us to more easily use iKomp as a complement to our face-to-face teaching, and it provides an alternative for distance students. But we still have a long way to go before all intended users use, and see the use of, iKomp. We acknowledge that change does not happen overnight, but we see that a good quality product, happy students, and pressure from above, help us in promoting and integrating what we believe is a valuable contribution to the institution’s work on graduating information literate students.

6.3.6 The hows and whys of online IL course development

Our work on iKomp (cf. Section 6.3.5) has focused on and been primarily concerned with improving information literacy teaching. Intuitively, we took a step towards the online environment, as this constitutes a normal and recognizable way of working for students. The majority of them know how to use online tools. But for us teachers, how to proceed in an unfamiliar tech landscape? Planning, designing, and implementing an online course is an immense undertaking by anyone’s measure. Big challenges like this, that give raise to hesitation, doubt in our own abilities, and stress—can easily put you right off an attempt to make an online course. But our claim would be that it is fun, it is challenging, and you are going to learn something new about how to teach, about how to collaborate with others and it might even change your view on things like online courses, multiple-choice tests, and ultimately, technology’s natural place in the future classroom.

If you want to go for development of an online IL learning course, this would mean personalizing your teaching online (cf. Section 6.3.2). The best advice we can possibly give you is to try to identify the challenges in your teaching, together with colleagues, and generate ideas on how to explain your key concepts through examples, tests and videos, having the intended learning outcomes of the students in mind. Further, do not forget to look at how other institutions are developing and making use of online courses. Spend some time reading and finding out about the various capabilities, and limitations of online content delivery systems. Course designers often think more about the course design and its content than on how well a system performs in relation to it. Trying to fit a finished course into a content management system can be quite a painful experience both for you as a course designer and your development team.

When starting to think about creating an online course there are thus some obvious perspectives to consider. Course designers are, in one sense, those involved in creating the learning objectives, course notes, videos, tests, exams, and so on. However, a team that takes on the task of creating an online experience must in fact be a combination of both academics and technical staff working together as one. These teams are often working in very different environments; content is created in MS Word, graphics are created in Adobe CC, and the delivering framework is based on Open Source content management systems (CMS)—just to give an example of a hypothetical working environment. This should not discourage you in any way. Just be aware of the fact, you are not going to understand everything everyone is talking about during such a process, but after a while you might have learnt something new, and find yourself using technical phrases too.

When you visualize something, you are thinking about the task ahead in quite a different way than what you might be used to. As the term indicates, it is a process of seeing, visualizing what you want to achieve or create. Doing this will help you make decisions about what your design should look like on a screen, as well as thinking about who you are doing this for, and why. By working in this way, you will be able to always look back, and see if you are true to your initial vision. It is also imperative to record this, like any other documentation, so doodles and drawings are important in order to document your process.

Visual communication is a vast field of study and combines knowledge on everything from color theory to behavioral psychology. In this case, try to think of it as the “feeling” you want your course to have, humorous or serious, fun or scary (everything is possible!). This is all within the power of your visual communication concept; how are users going to interact with the content, and are they going to enjoy it or not? These are questions that need answering in terms of the initial idea and concept. It might not be something you put too much into, but at some level you will have made a set of decisions on these matters, and you will find that it does not take long before you get a “feeling” of whether you are straying and not focusing on the right details. Having included your visuals from the start could be what defines your success.

There are at least three different perspectives to keep in mind in any online course development project. On the one hand, we have the perspective of those who have identified the initial problem, and see the need for something new to meet a specific challenge. Then we have those who, together with the initial identifiers, are charged with solving the problem—in our case technical staff working with online development. And last we have to consider our end users, here, the students.

Taking the leap, from identifying a problem, and deciding to try to do something new and perhaps completely foreign, is a very brave step indeed. The perspective from the initiators’ point of view is the first in a vast number of steps this group is going to make. As a development group works their way through a project, this perspective is the guide that is going to keep the project on track. The initiator(s) have a unique point of view, and that is one of realizing that things can be done easier, and/or better. Also, knowing what the actual initial challenge was will help the entire project keep on track.

So, how can implementation of the instructors’ perspective impact the effectiveness of learning? The instructional method of design lends its ideas from architecture in general where structure and meaning, or form follows function, are at its core. In designing an online course, much of the effort in design follows these principles. Value can be added to any course when a clear route is planned.

In the iKomp project (cf. Section 6.3.5), we started with an initial problem, or at least with a question, about how to reach our IL students with our message. The idea was first and foremost to have a supplement or alternative to our face-to-face teaching, but we also worked hard on dividing the content up in a new way. We ended up with a combination of a linear model and a nonlinear model, whereby we give the users an experience of direction, but at the same time the possibility to move freely between the modules.

Let us sum up. Choosing to move learning/teaching course content over to digital media is a challenge. However, as librarians in the 21st century we should relate to technology, and, in fact, if we want to make IL teaching at our institution as effective as possible, we should also make sure faculty (and study administration when relevant) understand how to make best use of the available online resources. Thus we end this section with some general advice that might come in handy when you want to prepare yourself and your institution to be ready for developing an online learning resource.

We now turn to the final section of this chapter, which focuses on how to assess and evaluate our IL teaching.

6.4.1 Thinking about assessment

We argued in Chapter 3, Things We Know About How Learning Happens, that our conceptions of learning and teaching really do matter for the quality of student learning. Of course, this includes our conceptions about assessment. In this subsection, we want to offer three general points related to how we might think regarding assessment in order to best support both teaching and learning.

First, following the drift of a number of authorities on teaching and assessment in higher education (e.g., Biggs & Tang, 2011; Svinicki et al., 2011), we believe IL teachers should consider assessment as something that we do first and foremost in order to support learning, rather than something done as a control measure. Documenting learning is important for a number of reasons, but enhancing learning is a primary purpose for us. One of the reasons for adopting this stance is that IL teachers are not always in a position to exercise control over summative assessments in the courses we contribute to.

Second, following our discussion in Section 6.2.1, we should always strive to align assessment of IL knowledge and competencies with the intended learning outcome statements for the sessions and for the courses to which the IL sessions contribute. Students will tend to orient themselves toward what they perceive to be the real assessment criteria, and to adopt learning approaches and strategies in accordance. Hence, teaching and teacher's intended learning outcomes will be discounted to the extent that they misalign with assessments as the students see them.

Third, when thinking about assessment, we should keep in mind that clearly stated intended learning outcomes and success criteria are important prerequisites for student learning, and that effective teaching aims to make learning visible (c.f. Sections 3.1.1 and 3.4.1).

If we accept these points as reasonably valid, then it seems to follow that assessment somehow needs to play a major role in the sessions IL teachers and students spend together. We should build our teaching around our assessment, and use it explicitly and actively in both learning activities and expository teaching. We are, in other words, making a case here for embedded formative assessment.

6.4.2 Assessing IL with(in) the disciplines

In Section 6.2.3, we discussed the need for IL teachers to work toward the best possible integration of IL teaching in the various disciplines we serve. Most IL teachers serve several different disciplines and departments, and most experience a varying degree of success in their efforts to integrate.

In an ideal situation, an IL teacher is allowed to rather directly influence and design part of the assessment strategy for a given course or program. In such cases, the biggest obstacle to aligned assessment is out of the way, and we can choose assessment items and/or assignments for the summative assessments that best suit the teaching we contribute with and the learning activities of the students.

In many cases, however, summative assessments are already designed by faculty responsible for the course to which we contribute. This does not mean we should abandon the ideals of constructive alignment, but it does mean we need to be a bit more creative in order to make clear the connections between what we offer and how students are assessed.

Sometimes both the learning outcome statements for the course, the assessment assignments and the evaluation criteria line up fairly well with the IL learning outcome statements we might want to use for the IL teaching. In such cases, it is relatively straight forward to design IL sessions and formative assessments that match the summative assessments for the course.

For some courses, however, the summative assessments may only very implicitly include an assessment of IL. In such cases, we need to develop a common understanding with responsible faculty of how IL outcomes are indirectly valued and assessed. This may involve some delicate balancing. We want to communicate to students how the effects of IL competencies and deep learning strategies become visible to their evaluators, and how they matter to their final assessment results, while at the same time making sure that we do not overstate that connection or by implication accidentally blame and shame faculty for not having thought about making the IL outcomes explicit in course documentation and assessments.

In some rare cases, we may have to contribute to courses where traces of IL in the course summative assessments are few or nonexistent. In such cases, we may have to rely more on appeals to the longer term goals and values of students, and to assessments in other courses the student group is likely to also take.

In every case, however, we can and should always include assessment as part of our teaching. That is, we should practice embedded formative assessment by building our teaching around assessment items and activities.

6.4.3 Embedded, formative assessment

The research base supporting the use of embedded formative assessment is solid, both in general (e.g., Black & William, 1998; William, 2011), and specifically for information literacy (e.g., Schilling & Applegate, 2012). We do hope, however, that the case we have made for teaching for active, collaborative learning naturally lends its support to the use of formative assessment. Now, a reasonable objection to the idea of including formative assessment in our IL sessions is that it would take too much time away from actual teaching. We have mentioned several times in this book the often limited time an IL teacher has with a group of students. We have moreover argued that much of that teaching time should be devoted to collaborative learning activities in addition to any expository teaching we might need to do. How can we fit even more into our IL sessions?

The trick is to consider learning activities and assessment as so closely connected as to be almost indistinguishable. At various points in this chapter, we have provided some examples of IL learning activities. Many of these can be considered ways to elicit evidence of learning. And, since learning activities should be designed with outcome statements in mind, most, if not all, learning activities will serve this purpose. We recommend being very explicit about their potential to provide the sort of practice that will prepare the students for any summative assessments. This implies that embedded formative assessment can and should be engaged in throughout most IL sessions, and form a natural part of IL teaching. Sometimes, though, it can be a good idea to make a particular use of informal, test-like assessment at the beginning and end of the contact with a group of students, particularly if it lasts across more than one session.

As mentioned in Section 6.3.1 on lecturing, the start of a session is a good time to include a bit of formative assessment, perhaps in the form of a brief quiz, or a handful of very simple application exercises. This helps counteract the Dunning–Kruger effect, which may be particularly strong for students in the IL domain. It also helps establish a baseline, and thus helps an IL teacher who wants to properly evaluate the impact of her teaching. If a brief assessment can be administered prior to the session, as in a flipped classroom arrangement (see Section 6.3.2.2), this has the added advantage of forming a basis for adjustment in the plans or implementation of the teaching session itself. At the end of the series of sessions, an identical or very similar assessment can be repeated, thus allowing both teacher and students to compare performance before and after the sessions. This can be an important supplement to subjective student evaluations of teaching effectiveness (see Section 6.4.6).

6.4.4 Common IL assessment techniques

By far the most popular assessment technique for the attainment of IL learning goals is the multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ). One review of IL assessment case studies found that around half of all IL assessments were either MCQ (34%) or quizzes/tests (15%; Walsh, 2009). This is probably because such assessments are relatively easy to administer, usually quite quick to complete, and very easy to score or grade. MCQs are sometimes reviled for their alleged inability to measure higher order thinking, and for their alleged tendency to pull students toward surface approaches to learning. As we argued in Section 3.2, these beliefs about the merits of MCQs may not be entirely accurate.

There are a number of MCQ assessments available in the IL assessment literature. Some are rather ambitious, like the Information Literacy Test developed by Cameron, Wise, and Lottridge (2007). This is a comprehensive, standardized 60-item MCQ based on the ACRL standards (American Library Association, 2006). While such measures have some advantages, like comprehensiveness and verifiable measurement reliability, they do tend to become unwieldy, and hence to defeat what may be the strong points of MCQs, i.e., their ease of administration and scoring. Besides this, assessment designed to cover the width of IL competencies will usually cover a lot more than is reasonably covered in most IL contributions to a given course. As such, they will often miss the mark, and detract from, rather than contribute to, constructive alignment.

While a number of briefer MCQs have also been described in the literature, probably as a consequence of most IL teachers' wish to design their own assessment instruments in order to tailor them to their own teaching, few of these are readily adoptable, exactly for this very same reason. Furthermore, if the primary purpose of the assessment items we use is formative, and we want to use them in a teaching context, then administering a whole questionnaire may prove too cumbersome. That being said, the literature on MCQ assessments of IL learning is a great source of inspiration for any IL teacher working on her own assessments items, both for summative and formative purposes.

When designing multiple-choice questions, we have found it helpful to keep in mind the following: (1) always aim for plausible foils (the incorrect alternatives); (2) look for opportunities to measure application and inference, not just factual recall; (3) when using multiple-choice questions for in-session, formative purposes, using rather elaborate cases and/or problems that require a bit of work before an answer is arrived at is sometimes helpful; and (4) pilot the MC items before use, particularly if they are to be used as part of a summative assessment.

Another popular assessment type for IL learning is rubric-based assessment for written assignments. This may be the assessment type of choice for summative assessments in courses where IL objectives and teaching are well integrated, and where students’ achievement is graded on the basis of a written assignment involving the use of sources. Rubric assessment seems to eminently serve the need to make student learning visible, providing guidance and inspiration for IL teachers to improve their teaching (e.g., Oakleaf, 2011).

We would like to point out, though, that such rubrics can also serve as an excellent focus for in-class learning activities, and hence for formative assessment. Formulating an assignment that serves as a mini-version of some aspect being assessed by the rubric, and then having students practice applying the rubric to each other's solutions to the activity is a great way to align teaching to assessment. Notably, there is evidence indicating that the very act of applying assessment criteria, such as a rubric, to other students' texts may be a particularly powerful learning catalyst (Greenberg, 2015; Li, Liu, & Steckelberg, 2010).

As with MCQ assessments, it is probably a good idea to develop your own rubrics, adapted to the relevant discipline and the particular teaching context in which it is to be used. Again, however, there are a number of excellent rubrics in the IL teaching literature that can serve as helpful inspiration and sources of ideas (e.g., van Helvoort, 2010).

6.4.5 Assessing PhD students’ information literacy

To end the section on assessment of information literacy learning, let us recall Section 6.2.2.1, where the variety of student groups was discussed. As already mentioned, PhD support in academic libraries is fairly new, but increasing, and this includes the amount of teaching sessions that provide credit. Also mentioned in Section 6.2.2.1 was this student group’s fear of spending time on something not of immediate use for their PhD project. The natural question in this regard is: how can we assess their information literacy learning all while making them realize the benefit of carrying out the assessment task? If you are lucky to meet with the PhD students several times, you have the possibility of giving them a variety of assignments. One such example is the seminar series Researching and Writing a Critical Literature Review, organized at Harvard Graduate School of Education (see https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/5206/assignments/syllabus). During the seminar series, and with their own project in mind, the PhD students are expected to write research memos, prior to each class, submit a conference paper proposal, provide feedback to peers, and write up an end-of-semester assignment in the format of a reflection on the hows and whys of a literature review (semester 1) and a complete literature review (semester 2), both graded and commented by professors.

In most cases, though, we meet with the PhD students within a limited period of time, trying to cover several aspects of information literacy, e.g., citing, searching, and sharing knowledge. To assess their learning on all these aspects, and without having to resort to several time-consuming assignments, you need to connect these very aspects during the teaching session(s), so that the students can work with the assignment with a clear process in mind. One example that can serve as inspiration is developed at the University of Umeå, within the frame of a PhD course labeled Information Retrieval and Academic Publishing, where students are asked to search and select 5 journals within their field, all while describing the search process and the factors used in the process of selection. This exercise could easily be extended to embrace also sharing of knowledge, i.e., evaluation and (lack of) selection of OA journals.

In sum, although the overarching goal for IL teaching is similar, whether the student group is BA or PhD, the format and content of the assessment should differ. For teachers meeting with PhD students, it goes without saying that they need, to a certain point, to be familiar with what constitutes a doctoral writing process. If you do not have a PhD degree yourself, team up and discuss with colleagues who do, talk with faculty, and read.

6.4.6 Student evaluation

In addition to reading up on research, talking with colleagues and faculty, and your own experiences, the effectiveness of your teaching should also be evaluated via some sort of student feedback. In many institutions, written student evaluation is encouraged, or even made mandatory, by the administration, and as teachers we are thereby constantly confronted with the students’ view of our “performance.” While this might be one of the few channels whereby students can communicate their opinion of the course (and by extension, with us, the teachers), it might for some teachers trigger a wide range of emotions in that we take positive feedback to be a good sign, thereby feeling pride and confidence, and negative feedback to be a bad sign, thereby feeling disappointment and failure. While in particular qualitative feedback (typically open comment fields in the end of the evaluation form) might provide useful information about the student’s experience, there are however many pitfalls. All students might not fill out the form, some students might have a particularly bad day (or a particularly good one), and some might confuse learning with having been entertained or having been presented with material that is easy to work with. The general assumption of a link between learning and high rating is thus problematic, and even refuted in the meta-analysis carried out by Uttl, White, and Gonzalez (2016).

We do not mean that you should avoid written evaluation altogether. Allowing the students to anonymously pronounce on the teaching session, and in favoring qualitative answers, you get access to information about how your teaching is perceived, also by the more silent and passive participants in the student group. Here, to make the evaluation as representative as possible, make sure you devote 10 minutes in the end of the class to this, so that students feel more obliged to answer (once they are out the door, they tend to forget it). Further, in our experience, written evaluation is useful when you are in the process of designing your teaching. Being open about this to your students, you can ask them more developed questions on aspects in your teaching that you are uncertain about. This is particularly relevant and useful on higher levels, i.e., MA and PhD, where they already have years of training and you want to avoid overlap in course content.

Rather, to measure the success of your teaching, we suggest you use written evaluations in combination with user data provided through assignments (these being online or in class). While students might orally express a mastery of citing sources, their actual performance might indicate otherwise. This comparison of different types of student feedback allows you to modify both the content of the teaching, as well as the way things are presented. As mentioned in Section 6.3.5, the platform we use for our online IL resource (Bibsys Open edX) comes with the analytics module Insights that provides clear data on where the students struggle and, further, what they spend more or less time on within the course.

6.4.7 Peer evaluation of teaching

As mentioned in Section 6.2.3, working together with inspiring and trusted colleagues may have positive influence on the quality and learning effectiveness of your teaching. However, you should also consider bringing your colleague to your teaching session, inviting her to contribute with peer evaluation. With peer evaluation, we mean establishing cooperation with a colleague whereby you meet with the latter prior to, during, and after your teaching session. While the main goal is to improve various aspects of your teaching, i.e., planning, implementation, content, communication, etc., another goal is for your colleague to learn something from it, as well. Functioning as peer evaluators, we are not expected to sit in the back of the classroom and see whether the PowerPoint presentation is nice, the break is long enough, and all participants are awake. Nor should we sit there and search for things that we would have done “better.” Rather, having been confined the responsibility as peer evaluator, we need to engage at all levels (silently, though, during the session itself) in order to provide sound feedback. While this has the possibility of increasing the competencies and skills within the teacher group, it also solidifies the interpersonal bonds within—making us feel more part of a collaborative whole, with a common goal.

So how do we proceed? Lauvås, Lycke, and Handal (2004) propose three stages: (1) a meeting before the session, using as starting point a reflection written by the teacher; (2) peer evaluator presence during the session; (3) a meeting after the session, where the teaching session is analyzed in part in light of the initial reflection, in part in light of the presession meeting, and in part in light of the peer evaluator’s own impressions. In what follows, we present the main points of a peer evaluation formula, developed by teachers in pedagogical competence for higher education at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

It might feel a bit scary to have colleagues in the classroom, but never forget that the purpose is to improve your (and their) teaching, which in turn improves the learning effectiveness and student happiness. Also, exposing yourself this way will make you even more conscious and critical to what you do, and also more aware of all the positive sides of your teaching that are already there. Finally, documenting our peer evaluation is not a bad idea when you think about future meetings with faculty and study administration: This shows that you—and the library—take your responsibility as teachers in higher education seriously.