Preparing teaching librarians for practice: focusing on the basics
Abstract:
This chapter explores the skills and knowledge required by teaching librarians to perform their instructional duties and suggests eight key areas of competence which constitute a basic knowledge base for instructional librarianship. The eight areas of competence include: conceptualising information literacy; articulating the instructional mission of the library; learning theories; broad learning frameworks; instructional needs assessment; writing goals, objectives and intended learning outcomes; selection of teaching and learning activities; creating effective learning materials; aligning assessment with learning outcomes and activities; and promotion and outreach. The areas of competence described could be used by LIS trainers to structure an instructional curriculum for pre-service librarians.
A teaching programme aimed as a preparation for professional practice has […] to accommodate more than a definitive statement of the subject, it must be an introduction to thinking, asking questions, and interpreting, and should instil the same critical thinking skills that are prerequisites for information literacy. (Foster, 2006: 492)
Unlike school teachers, librarians do not have the luxury of specialised, prolonged training in how to teach and facilitate learning. The body of knowledge and skills that are deemed essential for excellence in teaching can seem overwhelming, as book after book and workshop after workshop promote emerging tools and techniques, which must be mastered and added to the basics. For teaching librarians who are struggling with lesson plans and learning outcomes, pressure to use a classroom response system or to create slick Adobe Flash presentations can leave them feeling stressed and inadequate. In truth, the main question for most teaching librarians is, ‘Where do I start? What are the basic knowledge and skills that will enable me to carry out my teaching work to the best possible level, given the current circumstances of my job?’ Librarians have many competing demands on their time (Walter, 2008) and must continually choose which tasks to prioritise. Confidence is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (2001) as ‘self-assurance arising from an appreciation of one’s abilities’ – in order to feel confident that the teaching and learning tasks which are encountered on a daily basis can be tackled without stress, teaching librarians must perceive that they possess a sufficient body of knowledge and skills that enables them to handle ‘ordinary’ teaching situations, as well as offering a framework for future development and more advanced skills. Advanced teaching methods and techniques can be acquired gradually at the discretion of the librarian and according to their circumstances. However, alongside the ‘content’ of teaching and learning, it is arguably more important for teaching librarians to develop a sense of self-development, to provide them with the tools to reflect on their teaching approaches, to identify their own learning needs and to explore training opportunities which will fill the gaps in their knowledge.
In Chapter 1, the question of what could ideally be included on a teaching librarian curriculum was discussed, and the skills and knowledge were categorised under three broad headings:
1. pedagogical/andragogical knowledge, and skills and instructional design;
Under each category is an array of sub-categories, pointing to various areas of competence that a teaching librarian could ideally develop – more than 20 in total, and with the probability that more could be added. However, given the relatively short length of most training opportunities for teaching librarians (a semester-long pre-service module is generally the most that teaching librarians receive, if at all), covering all of this content in detail is simply not possible. In designing their modules, instructors of teaching librarians must be strategic, focusing on key basic components which will enable their students to perform competently – and confidently – when out in the ‘real world’.
The purpose of this chapter is to suggest and elaborate a basic framework of knowledge, skills and reflective practice which every teaching librarian could acquire and which empowers them to immediately engage with ‘real world’ teaching and learning situations. Pre-service teaching librarian instructors can use this framework to develop their curricula; practising teaching librarians and students of LIS can use it to identify the gaps in their knowledge and to perhaps fill some of those gaps, although it is not a substitute for active training. Providers of CPD for librarians can also use the content to devise short modules and workshops for their professional clients.
What are the basics?
Instructional training for librarians needs to prepare them for the frontline work that they will actually be doing on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, from a practical perspective, we need to ask what are the actual tasks that teaching librarians regularly engage in? In their quantitative survey of 82 UK subject librarians, Bewick and Corrall (2010) found that the main teaching activities that occupy the librarians are as follows:
providing on-the-spot support (94 per cent);
writing guides and training materials (93 per cent);
teaching small groups (91 per cent);
If we were to compile a list of teaching librarian tasks, a typical workload might consist of some or all of the following:
Daily/weekly
facilitating face-to-face or remote learning activities – lectures, demonstrations, seminars, video-conferencing, remote online chat, etc.;
providing individual support and advice to students, e.g. at the reference desk, or through appointments;
communicating with students, academics, library colleagues and other non-library colleagues; responding to queries, discussing possible learning sessions, attending meetings;
familiarising oneself with the specific needs and characteristics of particular student groups; examining subject curricula and module assignments to determine how to integrate IL instruction (if possible);
planning broad approaches to learning sessions – sketching outline lesson plans, choosing an overall approach, e.g. problem-based learning, selecting areas to cover;
creating print and/or digital content for learning sessions – PowerPoint presentations, handouts, exercise sheets, assignments, quizzes, bibliographies, podcasts, videos, etc.;
grading assignments, analysing course evaluations, preparing reports;
creating promotional materials for the library’s instructional services – flyers, posters, e-mailshots, website content, bookmarks, social networking, etc.;
Monthly/annually
writing broad mission statements, policy documents or strategic plans;
keeping oneself up to date with new resources and developments in scholarly communication;
updating one’s teaching and learning skills portfolio;
thinking broadly about how to improve one’s own teaching and learning skills;
attending conferences, seminars, training programmes;
writing papers for publication or for conference presentations; writing grant applications.
Teaching librarians might engage in some or all of these activities on a regular, semi-regular or infrequent basis, depending on the amount of time they have to devote to instructional tasks. Using the above list as a guide, a basic body of knowledge and skills, or ‘building blocks’, needed by teaching librarians might consist of the following:
1. Core concept. Knowing the different ways in which ‘information literacy’ is conceptualised, defined, articulated through ‘models’, and how it relates to human information behaviour; being aware of one’s own experience of IL; helping students to explore and articulate their own experiences of information literacy, and to be able to draw on the most suitable conception of IL for any given circumstance.
2. Mission. Being able to articulate the educational mission of the library and reflecting on one’s own role within it.
3. Theory. Knowing the key principles of the major learning theories and applying theory to practice when creating learning activities to address defined instructional needs.
4. Needs. Being able to identify the instructional needs of diverse student groups; knowing the modal characteristics of traditional and non-traditional students and being able to vary one’s teaching approach to best facilitate each group.
5. Broad approaches. Knowing when and how to employ different broad learning frameworks, such as active learning, problem-based learning, enquiry-based learning.
6. Outcomes. Being able to write effective programme goals, learning objectives and intended learning outcomes (ILOs).
7. Methods. Selecting appropriate instructional methods and tools.
8. Content. Creating effective content for learning sessions in a range of media.
9. Assessment. Aligning assessment with learning activities and outcomes. Using the results of assessment and evaluation as a basis for instructional improvement.
10. Promotion and outreach. Selecting and designing effective promotional methods – marketing the instructional services of the library. Being able to communicate effectively with non-library colleagues, especially academics; maintaining a broader view of the impact of information literacy in society and advocating for greater inclusion of IL in institutional, national and international policies.
Each of the sections which follow explores each ‘building block’ in greater detail. An important aspect of each section is the discussion about why teaching librarians need to acquire the knowledge and skills associated with each ‘building block’.
Conceptualising information literacy
For teaching librarians, the twin foundation stones of effective information literacy instruction are:
1. understanding and appreciation of how people learn; and
2. a personal conception and understanding of ‘information literacy’, as well as broader awareness of how it is defined and described in different contexts.
What does ‘being information literate’ mean to you? When you describe yourself as a teacher of ‘information literacy’, what do you mean to convey in that description? You might wonder why it is considered important to spend time in describing and reflecting on ‘information literacy’, when the body of knowledge and skills required for effective teaching is already so broad. For teaching librarians, expertise in information literacy can be compared with the subject expertise that academics need in order to be accepted as lecturers or professors in their fields; if we do not know the key tools, methods, theories and concepts of the ‘subject’ we teach, and have not acquired some degree of skill ourselves, the task of facilitating learning in others is infinitely more challenging, if not impossible. Webber and Johnston (2006) contend that ‘information literacy’ already meets many of the requirements of an academic discipline; they describe it as a soft-applied discipline, ‘which subsumes the particular knowledge, skills and practices entailed by the [ACRL] information literacy standards’ (p. 116). As teaching librarians, we must have a strong sense of what it is we are teaching, and be able to convey this to our students. Described as a ‘slippery term’ (Snavely and Cooper, 1997) which has eluded a universally accepted definition, Elmborg (2006) suggests that the wide variation in how information literacy is conceptualised and the contexts in which it is used have actually contributed to the identity crisis within the profession:
Disagreements about what information literacy means are not merely a matter of semantics or technicalities: the lack of clarity has confused the development of a practice that might give shape to librarianship in the academy (p. 192).
However, it seems that it was almost by chance that the term ‘information literacy’ came to encapsulate a movement within LIS; as Pinto et al. point out, ‘Hundreds of terms with similar meanings can also be found in the literature’ (2010: 4). Coined in 1974, information literacy as a tangible concept has gradually emerged through a number of different channels:
Through highly specific definitions that are coined either by individuals or via group consensus in collaborative settings: there are now multiple overlapping definitions of information literacy, although none is universal (e.g. ALA, 1989; CILIP, 2004).
Through a diverse range of models, standards and frameworks, several of which depict the concept diagrammatically, or as a step-by-step process of information problem-solving and research (SCONUL, 1999; ACRL, 2000; AASL, 2007; Horton, 2008): typically, an information literacy framework begins with ‘recognising a need for information’ and concludes with the use of the information gathered or synthesis of an information product. A useful comparison of the three main information literacy frameworks (ACRL, ANZIIL, SCONUL) is provided by Andretta (2005: 42).
Through empirical research which explores individual or communal experiences and understanding of information literacy (Doyle, 1994; Bruce, 1997; Webber et al., 2005; Williams and Wavell, 2006).
As teaching librarians, do we need to be aware of every single definition and model? Clearly, this would be impossible. However, from a broad perspective, teaching librarians should be aware that conceptions of information literacy fall essentially into two categories, which have implications for the ways in which information literacy instruction is structured.
1 Sets of abilities
In the first and most widely adopted category are the ‘sets of abilities’ and ‘personal attributes’ definitions, exemplified early on in Doyle’s 1992 model, and later in the ACRL Competency Standards (2000), amongst similar frameworks. The approach to defining information literacy in these types of models ‘is characterized by the enumeration of knowledge and skills in a series of sections’, typically derived from academic settings (Webber and Johnston, 2006: 110). Although they have been criticised for embodying a somewhat rigid, ‘tick-the-box’ approach to information literacy that does not capture ‘real-world’ information behaviour, and which ignores the affective states of students engaged in research (Walton, 2010), what the models represent is an attempt to transmute an abstract concept (‘becoming information literate’) into a more tangible construct that enables individuals to envision ‘information literacy’ as a state that is achievable through effort and the progressive mastery of tasks. From a teaching and learning perspective, models such as these offer concrete goals, outcomes and performance indicators, around which learning and assessment activities can be structured and which can be potentially tailored to local contexts – they enable teaching librarians to identify ‘content areas’ for their sessions and to specify the desired level of proficiency at each stage. However, using standards-based models as a basis for information literacy instruction is not a straightforward process – Jacobs (2008) questions the ‘neatness’ of such models, while noting that it is this very neatness that teaching librarians find appealing, although they do not truly represent the ‘messy’ world of learning, teaching and research: ‘It is no wonder, then, that administrators turn to them as a way of managing the messiness of pedagogical reflection and curricular evaluation’ (p. 258). Andretta (2005), however, refutes the notion that these frameworks are too linear in nature, noting that ‘on the contrary, the acquisition of these competences operates on a process of reiteration’ (p. 44). From a pragmatic perspective, the various information literacy standards have been adopted worldwide, as a developmental basis for information literacy programmes (Neely, 2006; Aydelott, 2007). The potential for linking the outcomes and performance indicators to institutional objectives and graduate attributes is another factor in their popularity.
2 The ‘information-literate person’
The other way of conceptualising information literacy focuses on subjective experience and is decisively based on Christine Bruce’s seminal phenomenographic study, the ‘Seven Faces of Information Literacy’ (1997). In her work, Bruce’s aim was not to create a definitive model which would capture all possible ways of understanding information literacy, but rather to demonstrate how individuals conceive of information literacy in unique and variable ways, depending on their personal experiences of information use and the contexts in which information tasks are completed. Bruce’s approach is known as the relational model, which focuses on how individuals relate to various phenomena in their lives. Webber and Johnston (2006) share a similar viewpoint; in their paper proposing information literacy as an academic discipline, they assert that they ‘have shifted the emphasis more firmly from personal attributes developed mainly in educational contexts to the information literate person, situated in a range of dynamic, social and personal contexts’ (p. 111). This conceptualisation of information literacy is one of self-awareness and reflection – rather than focus on a set of skills to be mastered (which may become outdated as the nature of information changes), or proficiencies to be acquired, information literacy is viewed as the individual interacting with their environment, while understanding that different contexts require different approaches. More recently, Walton (2010) rejected information literacy models on the grounds that they do not take into account the highly contextual and social nature of learning or the psychological states of students as they grapple with information problems – he notes that ‘becoming information literate appears to be about an individual completing a task in a given context. This context leads to the interaction with sources (e.g. databases, e-journals, books, e-books, peer and tutors) and in so doing brings about the interplay of an individual’s behavioural, cognitive, metacognitive and affective states.’
What does this duality mean for teaching and learning? As teaching librarians, must we choose, and strictly adhere to, one of the information literacy concepts to inform our teaching, or is there scope for both? Since we view teaching and learning as a holistic process, there is surely room for both. Each way of conceptualising information literacy offers different suggestions about how to structure the learning process.
Influence of the ‘sets of abilities’ definitions of information literacy
Students, particularly adult learners, like to have a clear overview of the purpose and relevance of instruction and the tasks involved, so that they can manage their time effectively. Information literacy frameworks enable teaching librarians to provide that sense of structure through sessions that are planned around the various areas of proficiency.
They help to motivate students by allowing the setting of targets which they view as achievable, through clearly identified learning outcomes and performance indicators.
They allow students a sense of progression as they master each stage or task.
The frameworks encompass both lower- and higher-order learning processes – contrary to appearances, a structured approach does not preclude a ‘deep’ approach to learning.
The skills, abilities and attributes that are listed do not dictate the teaching and learning methods that can be used – as teaching librarians, you are still free to choose suitable learning strategies according to your perceptions of the students’ instructional needs and learning preferences.
Standards and frameworks are ‘excellent places to look for ideas about your own instructional goals and objectives’ (Grassian and Kaplowitz, 2009: 122).
Influence of the ‘information-literate person’ definition of information literacy
In addition to fostering knowledge and skills development, teaching librarians are encouraged to assist students in constructing their own conceptions of being information literate, which are not restricted to knowing or doing certain things, but are closer to a ‘state of mind’.
It emphasises the importance of reflection and metacognition in learning, and the need to be sensitive to context, but not limited by it – aligns with the ‘learning how to learn’ ethos, which is process- rather than content-focused. As such, it points to the need to incorporate reflective elements into learning situations.
It focuses on the individual and their interaction with the environment – each person has a unique way of addressing an information problem and should be encouraged to explore personal preferences and strategies, but also to be open to other ways of interacting with information.
It demonstrates to students that information literacy is not just relevant to academic work, but is applicable in multiple contexts, including citizenship, personal interests, economics and culture.
It encourages the exploration of personal values and development of a ‘personal information style’ (Andretta, 2005: 17).
It supports a social approach to learning, as students are encouraged to share ideas and conceptions of information problems and information literacy.
It is not restrictive, as it rejects the notion that there is a ‘right or wrong’ way of dealing with information problems, and encourages exploration of alternative strategies.
Bruce et al. (2006) also discuss the effect of different conceptions of information literacy on the teaching and learning process. In their Six Frames model, which we discussed in Chapter 2, they contend that there can be significant variation in how librarians, academics and students conceptualise the learning process and information literacy. In their model, each teaching and learning ‘frame’ is associated with a particular conception of information literacy:
content frame: information literacy as knowledge about the world of information;
competency frame: information literacy as a set of competencies or skills;
learning to learn frame: information literacy as a way of learning;
personal relevance frame: information literacy learned in context and is different for different people and groups;
social impact frame: information literacy issues viewed as important to society;
relational frame: information literacy as a complex of different ways of interacting with information.
As teaching librarians, you must also consider your self-perception as an information-literate person, and the constructs described above will surely influence your self-view. Take time to honestly reflect on what information literacy means to you and whether your conception adversely affects your self-efficacy. Are you limited by a very rigid, prescribed view of information literacy? Or do you see it as a continually evolving construct that is not defined by its ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’, but which enables you to interact with information in a satisfying way?
Articulating the educational mission of the library
In Chapter 2, we discussed how collaboration and advocacy are important aspects of the teaching librarian’s role. Promoting the work we do, reaching out to potential collaborators and advertising our services to non-users are essential, while information literacy remains an ‘add-on’ rather than a core element of higher education curricula. However, being able to clearly articulate our mission does not just serve a single purpose, i.e. marketing to external parties. Rather, engaging in a thoughtful, reflective and ideally collaborative process of setting out what we currently do, and what we can do, empowers us with a greater sense of our own mission and purpose and gives us a clearer vision of the steps we need to take to achieve that purpose. Teaching librarians should always keep an eye on the bigger picture, even when consumed with the daily detail of planning and delivering instruction. Grassian and Kaplowitz (2005) contend that mission statements (or ‘vision’ statements) can serve as a unifying force within libraries when created democratically: ‘When the mission statement clearly articulates a leader’s vision for the future, everyone should be able to relate to it and want to work toward attaining the goals embodied by it’ (p. 10).
The ACRL Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators (2008) set out this requirement in a number of the proficiencies:
‘The effective instruction librarian describes the role of information literacy in academia and the patrons, programs, and departments they serve.’
‘The effective coordinator of instruction investigates aligning information literacy standards with the institution’s program review, departmental learning objectives, and/or accreditation standards.’
‘The effective coordinator of instruction links instructional services to the mission of the institution and other campus planning documents and relevant off-campus documents (e.g. national standards, key publications, and reports).’
The Oxford Dictionary of Business (Pallister and Isaacs, 2003) defines a mission statement as ‘a statement that encapsulates the overriding purpose and objectives of an organization. It is used to communicate this purpose to all stakeholder groups, both internal and external, and to guide employees in their contribution towards achieving it.’ Creating an ‘information literacy’ mission statement is an opportunity for teaching librarians to clarify their educational role and to determine how it fits in with overall institutional goals and objectives. An information literacy mission statement typically consists of the following elements:
a single statement capturing the overall goal or ‘mission’ of the library’s information literacy services and/or the library in general, including the library’s core values;
a definition of ‘information literacy’ and/or ‘the information literate student/graduate’;
‘sub-goals’ or individual objectives, which support the attainment of the overall library mission;
a statement linking the objectives to the general educational priorities expressed in the institutional mission statement or strategic plan.
Examples of information literacy mission statements can be found on the web. For example, the goal statement for the information literacy programme at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries is ‘to insure that students develop fluency in obtaining, evaluating, and using information in an effective and socially responsible manner’ (Carnegie Mellon Libraries, 2008). The mission statement of the Library at California State University (Los Angeles) adopts a skills-based model of information literacy for its definition, namely the CSU Ten Basic Information Competency Skills (CAL State LA, 2002) while the mission statement of Indiana University Libraries bases its definition on the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (Indiana University Libraries, 2006).
The information literacy mission statement should describe what the library does, its core values, and its goals and objectives; however, it should also emphasise the value of the instructional services that are offered, and the unique contribution it can make to the education of students, e.g.: ‘Librarians are ready and willing to work with faculty to provide the guidance and supporting materials needed to teach students to be information literate and successful in graduate school and careers’ (Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, 2008). While mission statements are typically written every few years at most, teaching librarians should continually re-evaluate their goals and values and remain alert to any changes in the overall educational priorities of their institutions.
As writing mission statements is a task that teaching librarians may engage in relatively infrequently, why is this topic included as a core building block in the body of knowledge and skills required to teach effectively? The answer lies in the opportunity for reflective practice that is implied in the process. The act of thinking about missions and goals challenges teaching librarians to look beyond the purely pragmatic aspects of instruction, and to consider their broader role and contribution to the academy. Specifically, it encourages you, as teaching librarians:
to critically compare different definitions of information literacy and to give serious thought to what information literacy means in a changing academic environment, for all levels of student;
to reflect upon the educational needs of current students and to consider how best to meet those needs;
to familiarise yourselves with the educational priorities of your home institutions and to reflect on how your library’s instructional goals might support these broader objectives;
to critically examine how instruction is currently delivered and how it might be adapted to align with broader institutional practice and best practice nationally/internationally;
to reflect upon your own role in supporting higher education, an element that is frequently neglected in the professional training and daily practice of teaching librarians;
to become familiar with the terminology of information literacy, lifelong learning, critical thinking and other essential life competencies, which you can use to communicate more effectively with internal and external collaborators.
Learning theories
‘Sound instructional strategies and techniques are an important part of teaching but they must be informed by an understanding of pedagogical theory and grounded in an understanding of broader educative initiatives occurring on our campuses’ (Jacobs, 2008: 257).
As a teaching librarian, every book about information literacy instruction that you read will almost certainly contain a section or chapter on general theories of psychology and learning; for some time now, information literacy educators have recognised the importance of pedagogical theory in ensuring that the choices they make regarding instructional approaches and methods are not random – instead, they are informed by at least a basic understanding of the cognitive, behavioural, affective and social processes that determine how and why people learn in different ways. Jacobs (2008) speaks of a ‘theoretically informed praxis’, which ‘simultaneously strives to ground theoretical ideas in practicable activities and use experiential knowledge to rethink and re-envision theoretical concepts’ (p. 260). In Chapter 2, we discussed the importance of a personal teaching philosophy for teaching librarians and how it is desirable to focus on what the student does when creating learning activities, rather than striving to master a vast range of instruction tools and methods. Biggs and Tang also define ‘good teaching’ as ‘getting most students to use the level of cognitive processes needed to achieve the intended outcomes that the more academic students use spontaneously’ (2007: 91), a definition that only makes sense when instructors themselves understand how those cognitive processes operate in different contexts.
However, the literature on learning theories is vast and teaching librarians are time-poor. What do we actually need to know about theories of learning to enable us to make good choices about our teaching approaches? A recent survey of UK-based subject librarians by Bewick and Corrall (2010) revealed an interesting finding; when asked about the knowledge that librarians need in order to teach, ‘Teaching and learning theories’ was deemed the least important knowledge area (7 out of 73 respondents), while ‘Delivering teaching sessions’ and ‘Information literacy’ were considered most important (46 and 32 respectively). The authors note that a few of the respondents also questioned the relevance and applicability of learning theories ‘to a teaching role characterized by relatively short one-shot sessions’, suggesting that practical classroom management strategies were of greater importance to practising librarians than theoretical concepts (pp. 105–6). It seems that the link between theory and practice might not have been made clear, at least to those librarians.
Theoretical concepts, when studied in the abstract, will not help teaching librarians to improve their teaching and learning practices. What we, as teaching librarians, need is for the relationship between learning theories, student behaviour and teaching practice to be made explicit and relevant, i.e. the theoretically informed praxis discussed above. Some of this we can learn formally; a lot of it will be learned through experience and observation in our ‘real-world’ teaching and learning situations.
So, what are the basics? Remember, what we are focusing on is the student and what they do in learning situations. The theories we learn about must give us a greater understanding of student learning processes. Teaching librarians should view learning theories in a utilitarian way, rather than see them as abstract and only partly relevant. Learning theories are useful because they give us information about how students are likely to behave in certain situations, and how they are likely to react to the learning activities and tasks we set for them. They give us clues about what will motivate students and, conversely, what is least likely to engage them. Theories also point us towards the approaches and methods that will most probably lead to successful outcomes in our teaching and learning endeavours.
The basics of learning theory for teaching librarians can be categorised as follows:
General approach to learning: how and why students adopt a deep- processing or surface-processing approach to learning situations. Woolfolk et al. note that all the variation in learning styles displayed among students comes down to the basic difference between these two opposing approaches (2008: 147).
Influence of the major theories: how cognitive (constructivist), behavioural, social and relational perspectives explain what the student does, and is likely to do, in different learning situations.
Putting theory into practice: how different teaching and learning methods activate the desired mental, physical, affective and social states encapsulated in the above theories.
From a pragmatic perspective, these categories translate into three key questions that teaching librarians should ask for each and every set of learning outcomes:
How do I set up my session/programme to encourage students to adopt the learning approach that will enable them to achieve the learning outcomes I have set?
Which theory (or theories) gives me the information and guidance that I need to set up a session/programme that will engage and motivate students, and enable them to achieve the learning outcomes? What do I need to know about student learning behaviour for this particular situation?
Based on what I know about learning approaches and theories, what actual teaching and learning methods should I choose for this session/ programme to ensure that students do what they need to do to achieve the learning outcomes?
Let us look briefly at each of the categories.
Approaches to learning
The ‘deep-processing’ and ‘surface-processing’ approaches to learning refer to the levels of cognitive activity, or type of information processing, that students engage in when approaching a learning task. Students who adopt a ‘surface’ approach tend to activate low-level cognitive processes, such as memorising facts, learning ‘off by heart’, using unevaluated and inappropriate information resources, quoting from sources without proper acknowledgment, etc. Surface-processing approaches are linked to poor motivation – students may be adopting a ‘just enough’ approach to gain a pass, may be overburdened with other work, or may not see the relevance and meaning of what is being taught. Deep-processing learners, by contrast, are intrinsically motivated and use higher-level cognitive processes in learning – they endeavour to understand material rather than simply memorise it; they look for relevance and meaning in content; they relate new learning to prior experience; they look for the bigger picture, rather than just focus on detail; and they critically evaluate information, rather than accept it at face value. While the surface approach can be appropriate in certain contexts, problems occur when students attempt to use low-level cognitive activities to carry out tasks which require a deeper approach – an example would be learning mathematical formulae by heart, in order to solve an engineering problem. Some of the methods which encourage deep and surface approaches to learning are outlined in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1
Approaches to learning and teaching and assessment methods
| Teaching and assessment methods which encourage a surface approach | Teaching and assessment methods which encourage a deep approach |
| Non-interactive lectures and demonstrations Exams which focus on content Multiple-choice quizzes ‘Fill-in-the-blanks’ quizzes Providing full course notes ‘Following the textbook’ in teaching |
Problem-based learning Small group discussion and problem-solving Reflective/learning journals Concept-mapping Projects based on ‘real life’ scenarios and problems Webquests Annotated bibliographies (Students) creating blogs and wikis |
Learning theories
Currently, there are four popular theories – behavioural, cognitive (constructivist), social learning, relational – each of which offers a different perspective on how people learn, although there is significant overlap between the various theoretical principles. While it might be interesting for teaching librarians to know about the origins and historical development of each theory, it is not required for effective teaching; rather, we need to understand what each theory suggests about the ways in which people behave in different learning situations. Let us explore each theory through the eyes of a follower.
What do behaviourists believe about learning?
In a nutshell, behaviourists believe that people change the way in which they approach tasks (‘learning’), when the consequences of performing that task in a ‘new’ way strengthen the new way of behaving. Thus, if they get positive results from doing something in a certain way, they will continue doing it that way. The opposite also applies – if they achieve poor results, they will stop or change what they have been doing. Therefore, feedback is at the core of behaviourist learning and everything is judged in terms of behaviour – the mental processes associated with the displayed behaviours are not considered, as they cannot be observed. The behaviourist perspective has been criticised on the grounds that it offers a too-simplistic view of learning and does not capture the complexity of human information processing. However, it still forms the basis for many learning activities that are in use today. The basic principles to remember are:
The outcome of learning is a change in behaviour that is brought about by interaction with the environment – the learner must visibly do something in a different way.
The change in behaviour must be observable and measurable – what happens mentally does not count because we cannot see what’s happening inside someone’s head.
Consequences affect behavioural change/learning; positive consequences reinforce or reward behaviour (reinforcers), while adverse consequences suppress it (punishers).
However, reinforcers can be positive (resulting in pleasant consequences) or negative (removal of adverse situation).
Frequent reinforcement increases learning speed.
The student must be actively doing things for learning to occur, rather than thinking about tasks in the abstract.
What do cognitivists/constructivists believe about learning?
Unlike behaviourists, cognitive psychologists focus on mental processes and knowledge acquisition rather than behaviour, and explain learning in terms of how the learner processes and organises information internally – they assume that learners are fully instrumental in their own learning, rather than ‘controlled’ by environmental stimuli. Behavioural change may result from learning, but it is not automatic. According to this view ‘knowledge is learned, and changes in knowledge make changes in behaviour possible’ (Woolfolk et al., 2008: 294). What learners already know is of crucial importance in learning, since existing knowledge determines how new experiences are perceived, what learners notice, remember or ignore, and what they will pay attention to. According to the cognitive view, making sense of the world and dealing with unfamiliar experiences and phenomena is the principal driving force behind learning; new knowledge is constructed by the individual through active engagement with the environment, and is a highly individual process. The basic principles to remember are:
Learning is conceptual change, rather than observable behavioural change or simple acquisition of information.
Conceptual change may result in an overt change in behaviour.
Learners construct new knowledge through processing information that they receive from their environment.
New knowledge construction is based on prior learning – incoming information is processed and organised, according to existing knowledge or schema.
There are two types of knowledge: declarative knowledge, which means knowing that (e.g. facts); and procedural knowledge, which means knowing how (to do something).
Learners must be actively engaged in learning tasks, which must be relevant and meaningful.
What do social learning theorists believe about learning?
Social learning (or social cognitive theory) is a perspective that emphasises the influence of social interaction on the learning process. The basis of this theory is the idea of vicarious learning – that, through observing ‘models’ engaged in behaviours, we learn how to perform those behaviours, and what will happen to us in specific situations if we do perform them. A number of elements intersect to determine whether social learning is successful: (1) learners must pay close attention to the behaviour being modelled; (2) learners have to remember what they have observed; (3) learners have to practise the behaviour – knowing how to do it is not enough; (4) learners must be sufficiently motivated or incentivised to perform the behaviour. Observational learning is influenced by the learner’s stage of development, the ‘prestige’ attached to the person modelling the behaviour, the learner’s perceptions that success is likely, and their own conceptions of self-efficacy (Woolfolk et al., 2008: 275). Basic principles to remember are:
People often learn through observing others who are engaged in a particular behaviour – this is vicarious learning.
Through observation, we learn how to do something and what the consequences of doing it might be.
However, in order to learn from observation, we must pay attention, memorise the behaviour and practise it. We must also be sufficiently motivated to perform that behaviour.
Other factors also influence observational learning, such as our belief that we can also do it and the esteem we have for the person modelling the behaviour.
What do relational theorists believe about learning?
Relational theory focuses on the interaction between individuals and their environments, and acknowledges that people experience aspects of the world – including the learning process – in different ways, and at different degrees of complexity, and that this influences how they approach learning tasks. According to the relational perspective, ‘learning is seen as being able to adopt … more complex and powerful ways of experiencing [phenomena]’ (Bruce et al., 2006: 6). Thus, learning is not about mastering specific skills or competencies, but rather developing an awareness of the different ways in which it is possible to experience learning, and being able to draw on the perspective that is most appropriate in any given situation. For teaching librarians, the focus is on the different ways in which students interact with information, which might range from ‘knowing about the world of information’ to power relationships in society and social responsibility (Bruce et al., 2006: 6).
Applying theory to practice
As teaching librarians, the classroom activities you set up determine how the students will act, and therefore how they will learn. Based on what you have learned (and what you believe) about student learning, you can see how different methods activate learning in particular ways.
Learning activities which encourage a behaviourist approach:
quizzes and standardised tests, where rapid feedback is provided;
modularised e-tutorials or e-practicums, where students receive feedback at each stage;
guided step-by-step demonstrations and exercises, where each ‘step’ is mastered before moving on;
‘trial and error’ activities, where students approach a problem from different angles until the best solution is found;
Learning activities which encourage a cognitivist/constructivist approach:
problem-solving, either individually or in groups;
projects based on ‘real life’ scenarios;
group discussion and debate; brainstorming;
‘treasure hunts’ (scavenger hunts) or webquests;
reflective journals/portfolios;
creating information resources – e.g. wikis, bibliographies, subject guides.
Learning activities which encourage a social learning approach:
live interactive resource demonstrations, in computer labs with large- screen display;
animated or video demonstrations (e.g. YouTube);
peer-learning: students demonstrate resources to each other and discuss approaches;
Learning activities which encourage a relational approach:
group discussion and analysis of the different ways of approaching a task or problem;
exploration and discussion of existing models and perspectives (e.g. ‘expert searcher’, ‘novice searcher’), and application to the task at hand;
reflective journals or reflective ‘space’ embedded within practical exercises.
Broad learning frameworks
While learning activities that are based on behaviourist learning principles are appropriate in certain situations, it is approaches which draw from the more complex cognitive, social and relational frameworks which are considered more powerful for information literacy instruction. Ensuring that learning activities are engaging, relevant and meaningful for students is an important goal for teaching librarians – learning approaches must enable conceptual change rather than mere acquisition of skills; they must allow the student to be reflective and develop an awareness of their learning preferences and processes; they must take into account the potential for social learning; and most of all, they need to be active and absorbing, rather than passive. They must also enable students to draw on their previous experiences of learning and information use in developing new understandings and conceptions of information problems.
There are currently a number of broad learning frameworks which enable teaching librarians to incorporate all of these elements. It is important for you to be aware of them and of how they might be put into practice.
Active learning
‘Active learning’ is a broad, umbrella term which describes all learning activities in which students are required to do something, either individually, in pairs or in groups. It is in direct contrast to the more traditional, didactic approaches to learning, in which students take on the passive role of listener, rather than participating directly in the learning process. Lorenzen (2001) defines active learning as ‘a method of educating students that allows them to participate in class. It takes them beyond the role of passive listener and note taker, and allows the student to take some direction and initiative during the class’ (p. 1). Active learning encourages students to engage higher-order skills and to reflect on what they are doing. The role of the teacher is construed differently in active learning situations: instead of functioning as an expert ‘contentprovider’ (as in lectures, for example), the role is more like a ‘guide’ or ‘coach’, who accompanies students on their individual journeys of discovery, offering advice where warranted, but allowing the students to work out their own strategies and make their own mistakes, where necessary. Active learning fits in with all of the theories described above, each of which stresses the need for students to participate in order for learning to occur; in behaviourism, it is the consequences of activity that reinforce or suppress behaviours; in cognitivism, active engagement supports the idea that students are instrumental in their own learning and are self-directed; in social learning, students must practise the behaviours modelled by the experts, in order to retain them; and in relational learning, students must participate fully in the reflective process which leads to conceptual change. For information literacy instruction, which is more about process than content, active learning is essential.
There is no single specific teaching method that is used in active learning situations – to make your learning sessions ‘active’, you must simply ensure that students are not just passively absorbing information, with no opportunity to put the knowledge into practice. It is possible that many of your teaching activities are already active, although you may not have thought of them in those terms. As long as independent or collaborative student activity is involved, active learning provides an opportunity for teaching librarians to be creative in their approach. Active learning does, to a certain degree, require teaching librarians to relinquish some control over what occurs in the classroom (or outside of it); this can be difficult for some, especially where outcomes and lessons have been carefully planned (Lorenzen, 2001: 3; Kahn and O’Rourke, 2005: 9). However, as long as learning activities are designed in alignment with learning outcomes, librarians should not be overly concerned about students ‘going off track’.
As teaching librarians, we have a broad range of active learning approaches to choose from – and can certainly invent our own, if needed! The literature of LIS is full of examples of active learning, even though the exact term may not be used to describe the approach used in each case. Common strategies for active learning include:
individual or group problem-solving;
exercises or worksheets requiring the use of specific resources;
participatory group discussion, using white boards, Post-It notes, and other visual props;
creating annotated bibliographies;
using pre-specified criteria to evaluate print and online information sources;
peer-coaching – having one student explain a resource or procedure to a classmate;
reflective journals or portfolios;
using classroom response systems in large lectures;
stopping a lecture to invite class questions and discussion.
Enquiry-based learning (EBL)
As the term implies, EBL describes all approaches to learning ‘that are driven by a process of enquiry’ (Kahn and O’Rourke, 2005: 1), and falls under the umbrella of ‘active learning’. Any learning situation that requires students to carry out some degree of task or problem-analysis, to discuss strategies, to search for and analyse evidence, and to offer a solution or response can be classified as EBL. Kahn and O’Rourke (2005: 2) outline some of the key characteristics of EBL:
it requires students to engage with a complex scenario that is ‘sufficiently open-ended to allow a variety of responses or solutions’;
the process is controlled and directed by the student, rather than the instructor;
students must draw on existing knowledge and identify the learning needs associated with the problem;
students show curiosity and are motivated to seek evidence in order to address the problem;
students take responsibility for their learning and for analysing and synthesising evidence to solve the issue at hand.
As with most active learning approaches, the role of the instructor is assistive, rather than directive. Usually, the instructor is responsible for setting the problem or scenario and for providing some initial guidance and advice. The difference between EBL and the more traditional, content- driven forms of teaching is that the starting point is the problem; in traditional learning, students are provided with content first, typically in lectures; they are then required to apply theory to practice, through doing exercises or solving problems. In EBL, the students themselves must identify the type of evidence or information they will need to address the issue and then set about finding it. Thus, the process of applying theory to practice is fully holistic, as they see how content is applied in a meaningful way.
In information literacy instruction, teaching librarians can develop creative and interesting scenarios for their students, which are relevant to their everyday experiences. An EBL scenario might look like this:
As teaching librarians, you might wish to provide students with an initial ‘package’ of material, including suggested resources, to start them off, or to have an ‘expert’ in the area come in to give an introductory lecture. While the process is student-directed, well-timed intervention can provide extra motivation and encouragement. Kahn and O’Rourke note that resources for EBL can include: ‘specific time-tabled sessions, such as interactive lectures and seminars, workshops, laboratories, fieldwork, resource sessions and peer assisted study schemes’ (2005: 7).
Problem-based learning (PBL)
PBL is ‘seen as a set of approaches under the broader category of Enquiry- Based Learning’ (Barrett, 2005: 13), and is well known for its application within medical education, which began at McMaster University in Canada as far back as the 1960s. Barrett emphasises that PBL is not just a teaching and learning method, but rather a ‘total approach to education’, in which learning results from the process of resolving a particular problem (2005: 15). The problem acts as the ‘trigger’ for learning and is presented to the students before any other curriculum inputs. The PBL process is highly structured, with students working on problems in small-group tutorials over a period of time. The design of the PBL ‘problem’ is an important process, and Barrett suggests using a curriculum matrix, which plots the problems against the intended learning outcomes for the curriculum. Problem formats do not have to be text-based; rather, PBL tutors can use a wide range of resources, including videos, posters, newspaper articles, cartoons, TV programmes, quotations and passages from literature – again, it is an opportunity to be creative and to adopt formats that will engage and motivate the students. An operational definition of PBL is presented by Barrett (2005: 15), which explains the concept clearly:
1. Students are presented with the problem at the start.
2. The problem is discussed and defined in PBL tutorials, followed by brainstorming, identifying the ‘learning issues’ associated with the problem and deciding on an ‘action plan’.
3. Students set out independently to locate information to help with the learning issues, using a range of information resources.
4. Students reconvene in the tutorial, share what they have discovered and continue to work on the problem.
5. Students present a solution.
6. Students engage in reflection, reviewing what they have learned in the process.
PBL can be a highly effective way of fostering information literacy in students, as it engages higher-order skills and requires a great deal of critical thinking, questioning and judgement. Breen and Fallon note that ‘as PBL problems always reflect “real” and current issues students can use their information skills in a meaningful way. This will help students understand the relevance and value of information literacy’ (2005: 183). As teaching librarians, however, your involvement with PBL curricula unavoidably requires collaboration with academic teaching staff – as Barrett points out, it is a total approach to learning that requires the total restructuring of subject curricula, with a focus on ‘concepts’ and process, rather than blocks of content to be covered.
Instructional needs assessment
The process of identifying instructional needs is closely related to the next step, writing goals, objectives and learning outcomes, and is central to the planning process for teaching librarians. Although we might have a strong instinct about what a particular student group needs to learn, our basic philosophy of ‘start with the student insists that we avoid assuming that we know best, and instead make an effort to find out exactly what these students need to learn from us. Webb and Powis (2004) refer to this process as ‘auditing’, and define it as ‘the process of finding out what your learners need and expect from the session’ (p. 60). Before we can start to design our teaching and learning activities, we need to ask ourselves some basic questions first. Using a type of question checklist can help clarify our thoughts:
What academic programmes are the students engaged in and what kinds of assignments do they have to do?
What do we know already about the characteristics of this group?
What do we know about how information literate these students are?
Is there any evidence that there are gaps in their knowledge/skills that we can help to fill?
Is the course lecturer likely to be positively disposed towards instruction?
Teaching librarians can use an instructional needs checklist, similar to the one in Table 3.2.
Table 3.2
| Question | Already know? | Need to find out? |
| Academic programmes students enrolled in? | ||
| Type of assignments they are doing? | ||
| General profile (e.g. traditional/ mature? international? full-/part-time?) | ||
| Level of information literacy? | ||
| Knowledge/skill gaps? | ||
| Attitude of lecturer? |
Grassian and Kaplowitz (2009: 112) suggest that information about instructional needs comes to librarians in three different ways:
Reactively: through noticing issues that keep coming up in the library, e.g. repeated questions at the reference desk or requests for help in relation to a particular resource. Frequently, it come to librarians’ attention that particular class groups are having problems with an assignment set by their lecturer – this can be a cue to approach the lecturer with a suggestion for a collaboratively designed information literacy session that is structured around the assignment.
Interactively: through a direct request by a lecturer for instruction. In these cases, the instructional need is predefined for you, as the requester typically suggests areas that you should focus on. However, discussion with the lecturer may identify other issues that might also be dealt with.
Proactively: through carrying out some exploratory research and identifying areas where information literacy instruction would be useful. Teaching librarians must bring their promotion and outreach expertise into play when in proactive mode, to persuade academics of the potential benefits of instruction.
If we find that our list of things that we ‘need to find out’ is longer than the things that we ‘already know’, we will need to consider the different means of finding the information we require. We can do this informally or formally:
talking with lecturers in informal settings about their class groups and curricula;
talking with students about the areas in which they feel they need assistance;
general background reading about the typical attributes of various student groups;
observation of student behaviour in the library;
informal ‘polls’ on the library website about students’ attitudes to instruction;
talking with library colleagues about their perspectives on students’ knowledge/skills gaps.
surveys: print or online questionnaires distributed to students;
focus groups held with students or with academics;
information literacy pre-tests; developed in-house or using standardised diagnostic tests, such as Project SAILS (a commercially developed suite of standardised information literacy tests, available to higher education institutions in the US and Canada);
student self-assessment of competence and instructional needs.
Writing goals, objectives and intended learning outcomes
The process of writing programme goals, learning objectives and, especially, intended learning outcomes (ILOs) is arguably the most important step in information literacy instruction – and not just from the point of view of the learners, but also for you, as teaching librarians. It serves both a pragmatic function – determining what the students will learn to do as a result of your instruction and how they will demonstrate that learning – and, crucially, a reflective function, insisting that you think deeply about how you will facilitate the learning outcomes that you wish your students to achieve. Every single learning session – even a one-shot, 50-minute class – must be structured around clearly articulated intended learning outcomes.
Constructive alignment
To appreciate why objectives and outcomes are so important, it is helpful to first understand the idea of constructive alignment, a form of outcomes- based education proposed by John Biggs (Biggs and Tang, 2007: 51).
Simply put, constructive alignment refers to learning situations in which the learning outcomes, the teaching and learning activities and the assessment are all pointed in the same direction. Biggs and Tang explain it thus: ‘The “alignment” […] reflects the fact that the learning activity in the intended outcomes, expressed as a verb, needs to be activated in the teaching if the outcome is to be achieved, and in the assessment task to verify that the outcome has in fact been achieved’ (p. 52). Consider, for example, a session aimed at teaching students how to give effective presentations using PowerPoint. An unaligned session might have the following elements:
ILO. ‘The student uses PowerPoint effectively when giving presentations in any context.’
Teaching and learning activities. Short demonstration of PowerPoint using a data show projector, followed by a 20-minute lecture on what works best and what to avoid when using PowerPoint. Handout also given, with main points.
Assessment. Students do a quick multiple-choice quiz on the different functions and uses of PowerPoint.
This session is unaligned, because the teaching and learning activities and assessment tool do absolutely nothing to ensure – or demonstrate – the attainment of the learning outcome, which is that the students can use the software effectively when giving presentations. In order to align this session, we need to make sure that the outcome is activated in the learning activities and also that the assessment allows students to demonstrate that they have achieved the outcome – i.e. that they can actually use PowerPoint effectively when giving a presentation. So, an aligned session might look like:
ILO. ‘The student uses PowerPoint effectively when giving presentations in any context.’
Teaching and learning activities. Group-work: in groups, with one laptop per group, students are given a short brief and asked to create a presentation ‘cold’ – they have 30 minutes to do this. Each group then shows their presentation to the class, and they are evaluated and discussed by students and instructor, using a white board to highlight points. Then, the class is shown a short video of a presentation making effective use of PowerPoint, and given a handout, with tips for good PowerPoint use.
Assessment. Each group must give a 10-minute presentation on a topic of choice, using PowerPoint.
The element which holds everything together is the ILO – it determines how the learning should be facilitated by the instructor and how the students should be assessed. But most importantly, it is student-centred -it focuses on what the students will do after instruction, rather than on what the instructor is planning to do. This is the core of our guiding philosophy – start with the student.
Goals, objectives and outcomes
From a semantic point of view, there may be some confusion regarding the difference between goals, learning objectives and intended learning outcomes, as these terms are often used interchangeably. Indeed, learning objectives often appear indistinguishable from outcomes in terms of how they are phrased, while some instructors just stick to one of the terms. Biggs, as discussed above, uses the term ‘intended learning outcomes’ exclusively and does not refer to ‘learning objectives’ at all in his text, stating that the term ILO is preferred ‘because it emphasises more than does “objective” that we are referring to what the student has to learn, rather than what the teacher has to teach’ (Biggs and Tang, 2007: 70)
Using the terms separately, however, can be helpful in emphasising the importance of specifying how the students will demonstrate what they have learned, rather than just expressing the intention that they will learn it. The differences may be explained thus:
Goals refer to the broad, abstract aims of the programme or session – the entire programme or session target, if you like. For instance, you might state that ‘The goal of this programme is for the students to become proficient library users.’ Goals often seem lofty or aspirational, and don’t contain any real indication of how they are to be attained in practice. They are often what you will include in your mission statements as indications of your overall instructional strategy.
Learning objectives refer to what the students will learn to do as a result of the learning activity. They are always active statements, using carefully chosen verbs. For instance, a learning objective related to the goal above might be ‘The students will be able to locate the short-loan collection area in the library and successfully borrow an item, using the self-issue system.’ There are usually a number of objectives associated with a single goal.
Intended learning outcomes (ILOs) refer to the behaviours or actions through which the students will demonstrate what they have learned – while objectives capture the intended outcome, the ILOs state specifically how the students show that the outcome has been achieved. So, for the example above, an ILO might look like: ‘The students will find the short-loan collection area unassisted, and will borrow two items using the self-issue system.’ ILOs, in effect, determine the assessment approach that should be used, by making it clear that certain behaviours are to be exhibited – adhering to the concept of constructive alignment.
In practice, you may choose to use both terms (objectives and outcomes), or, like Biggs, you might decide to describe what you want your students to achieve in terms of ILOs only. The key is to ensure that what you write captures what the students will do, and not what you are intending to do in the classroom. Table 3.3 shows how we should ‘flip over’ our instructional intentions to reflect the desired student behaviours.
Table 3.3
Instructional intentions and intended learning outcomes
| What we want to do | How our ILOs should look |
| Teach the students how to cite and reference correctly. | The students will be able to compile a bibliography using the APA referencing convention. |
| Demonstrate to the students how to search databases effectively. | The students will be able to select an appropriate database and retrieve relevant items using appropriate search strategies. |
| Show students how to critically evaluate journal articles. | The students will be able to apply evaluative criteria to any scholarly publication. |
The problem with ‘understanding’
How do you measure or observe ‘understanding’? As teaching librarians, we obviously want our students to understand what they are learning, rather than just mechanically repeat behaviours or memorise content. However, when our ILOs require us to describe our aims in behavioural, observable terms (so they can be assessed), it is difficult to know how to express them. To address this problem, Biggs and Tang speak about ‘performances of understanding’, which are based on the idea that if students truly understand something, they will act differently in contexts involving that concept, thereby demonstrating that understanding has occurred (2007: 75). For example, if a student really understands the difference between popular and scholarly resources, they will avoid popular resources, and instead stick to scholarly ones when writing academic essays. So, rather than use the verb ‘understand’ in our ILOs, we should instead think of how that understanding will be exhibited in behaviour.
Old ILO: ‘The students will understand the difference between popular and scholarly resources.’
New ILO: ‘The students will choose 10 appropriate resources when writing an academic essay on a given topic.’
If you feel a bit stuck in writing your ILOs, you can draw on a range of frameworks which indicate different levels of learning and understanding, as well as suggested performance indicators that you can adapt to your local context. Three frameworks in particular offer useful guidance:
Selecting teaching and learning activities
While the range of teaching and learning activities available to you – the ‘instructional menu’ (Grassian and Kaplowitz, 2009) – is wide and varied, you will inevitably be working within a framework of limitations that will, to some extent, determine what you can and cannot do in the classroom. Factors such as class size, number and length of available slots, and staff and resource availability create very pragmatic conditions which direct our approaches. We find that we must balance these practical considerations with our desire to create teaching and learning activities that are aligned with our ILOs, and which will activate the desired learning approaches in our students. We have already discussed how certain methods foster broader approaches to learning, such as enquiry- based and problem-based learning. We have also seen how different methods are linked with different learning theories, in so far as they encourage students to learn in particular ways.
A common way of classifying instructional methods concerns whether they facilitate face-to-face (F2F) or remote learning, or whether the learning takes place in realtime (synchronous), or at a time of the student’s choosing (asynchronous). Within these classifications, methods can also be paper-based or delivered online. The matrix in Table 3.4 shows different methods, classified according to these categories.
Table 3.4
Categories of teaching and learning activities
| Synchronous | Asynchronous | |
| Face-to-face (F2F) | Lecture Tutorial/seminar Workshop Resource demonstration One-to-one instruction Guided library tour Group discussion/problem-solving Group/individual presentation |
Not applicable |
| Remote | Online chat (IM – instant messaging) Video-conferencing Conference call with or without video link (e.g. via Skype) Virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life) Email, texting, posting on discussion boards Collaborative creation of wikis or other documents, using applications such as Google Docs and Google Wave |
Paper-based or online exercises, workbooks, quizzes e-tutorials and e-practicums Virtual library tours Video tutorials or presentations Podcasts Slide shows Paper-based guides Online help functions Many of above often hosted on learning management systems/virtual learning environments |
As teaching librarians, we frequently face greater restrictions in our teaching than academic lecturers; often, we have little more than a short one- or two-hour slot in which to facilitate meaningful and relevant learning activities that are aligned with our ILOs. We find ourselves caught between content that must be covered and providing an opportunity for students to engage in active demonstration of that knowledge. However, the matrix in Table 3.4 shows that we need not necessarily restrict ourselves to that single classroom-based, F2F slot: rather, we should aim to harness the resources at our disposal, to create a ‘blended learning’ environment, which gives us greater scope to facilitate an active learning experience for the students and ‘allows you to use a combination of delivery methods in both formal and informal settings’ (Secker et al., 2007: 140–1). So, for example, you might be asked to deliver a one-hour session to a very large group of students (100 +), a class size which makes it very difficult to manage active learning or group work. A blended learning approach means that, even if you are restricted to a lecture or demonstration format for the F2F session, you could also extend the learning asynchronously, through making interactive exercises available on the virtual learning environment (VLE), or through arranging a remote question and answer session using the system’s online chat function, or even via email, if necessary. When choosing instructional methods, you should think not just of what might go on inside the classroom, but also outside of it. Technology has allowed us to broaden our conception of when and how learning takes place. When aligned with ILOs, blended learning can offer a powerful solution to the large class-size, short session problem, and take the pressure off teaching librarians to fit everything into a single session.
Creating effective learning materials
As teaching librarians, operating in a blended learning environment, creating learning materials is likely to occupy more of your time than actually delivering the sessions. Getting to grips with the different formats that are used for various learning activities is a challenge, and impossible to accomplish without training and collaboration. Among the different materials you might be required to create are:
paper or print-based handouts, worksheets, guides, quizzes, resource lists, journal templates, webliographies, etc.;
electronic versions of the above, using various software packages for word-processing, online quizzes and surveys, wikis, PDF documents, web pages, etc.;
presentations (e.g. lectures) or demonstrations, using overhead transparencies, PowerPoint or other software packages;
audio or video resources, such as podcasts or instructional videos (‘vodcasts’);
blended materials, e.g. slides with audio, video embedded within resource lists, classroom response systems with PowerPoint presentations, etc.;
e-learning tools, e.g. e-tutorials, virtual tours, webquests, full online courses, etc.;
social software/mobile applications – e.g. Facebook pages, blogs, smartphone applications, RSS, Twitter accounts, etc.
Effective design principles for all of these resources are impossible to cover here. However, some of the general principles which apply to the creation of instructional materials are worth keeping in mind:
1. Always start with your ILOs and constructive alignment – the materials you use to facilitate learning should enable students to engage in appropriate activities to achieve the ILOs.
2. Know what’s available – Secker et al. suggest that teaching librarians should create a ‘resource checklist’, which requires you to audit the materials you already have at your disposal and indicate ones which could be purchased, budget permitting (2007: 140).
3. Allow sufficient time to prepare relevant teaching and learning materials. If you have been asked to provide a session at the last minute, use the tools that will allow you to create materials most quickly (while adhering to point 1 above).
4. If you don’t know how to do something, don’t waste time trying to figure it out from scratch yourself (unless you have lots of time to spare!) – try instead to either access appropriate training or enlist the help of a person who is familiar with the particular software or application you wish to use.
5. Think ‘active learning’ – for whatever resources you prepare, endeavour to include an element of interactivity. Avoid passivity – the students must be actively engaged in learning in order to encourage a deep approach. This is particularly important for materials which are mounted on VLEs – you should aim to avoid simply migrating passive content into electronic format, but instead use the various interactive options that are available (e.g. wikis, chat, discussion board, quizzes, etc.).
6. Think first, technology later – don’t rush to use online or digital resources, just because they’re available, or you think that you ‘should’. Also consider how the physical teaching and learning environment is set up, before using technology-based materials, i.e. whether classrooms are properly equipped, whether students have access to relevant software, passwords, databases, etc.
7. If you fully ‘script’ a presentation or demonstration, avoid reading the script word-for-word during the session – instead, create memory prompts or short, summary points to guide you.
8. In materials that are to be given to students, always include the ILO that the resource pertains to and an explanation of how the resource contributes to achieving that ILO.
9. Aim for clarity and simplicity in all materials, whether paper-based, electronic or online – avoid clutter, overloading with content, overuse of graphics and animation, unclear guidelines or instructions, ‘dead’ hyperlinks, confusing site structures (for websites) and documents and programmes that take a long time to load or scroll through.
10. Always create ‘storyboards’ for resources such as instructional videos, e-tutorials, virtual tours, webquests and online PBL, so that you have a clear vision in advance of how they should run.
11. Don’t reinvent the wheel – don’t waste time reproducing documents that may be already available – e.g. online help or FAQs on databases and websites, previous materials that just need to be updated, resources that may be freely available to download and use for your own teaching, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc.
Aligning assessment with learning outcomes and activities
‘[A]ssessment always begins with thoughtful consideration of appropriate teaching approaches matched to learning outcomes’ (Sonntag and Meulemans, in Avery, 2003: 10).
As teaching librarians, it is not enough that we plan and deliver learning activities and hope or assume that the students will learn what we intend them to learn. The principle of constructive alignment requires that we set up assessment processes that will give students the opportunity to demonstrate that the ILOs have been achieved – we cannot have ILOs without also including a mechanism to determine if our learning activities have had the desired effect. Unaligned assessment means that the methods we are using do not actually assess the ILOs, but instead demonstrate some other form of behaviour or outcome: for instance, using a written examination to assess students’ ability to search a database effectively means that what we are actually assessing are the students’ memory, recall and writing skills (declarative knowledge) – it does not tell us whether the student would actually perform a search effectively in a real- world situation (functioning knowledge). The concept of active learning should run throughout the entire instructional development process, not just the teaching and learning activities. Sharma (2007) refers to the concept of authentic assessment, which is defined as ‘an evaluation process that involves multiple forms of performance measurement reflecting the students’ learning, achievement, motivation and attitudes on instructionally relevant activities’ (p. 127). Biggs and Tang prefer the term ‘performances of understanding’ to distinguish between methods which assess knowledge and those which assess the application of that knowledge in practice. Underpinning authentic assessment is a desire to represent the effects of learning through student performance of what has been learned, anchored in a more or less ‘real world’ context.
In planning our instruction, we should develop our ILOs and our assessment activities simultaneously – they are inextricable. Traditionally, assessment has been viewed as a process that occurs at the end of instruction, rather than an integrated activity that can enhance the learning experience, as well as measure it. Many of the familiar, standard, quantitative forms of assessment – exams, quizzes, multiple-choice questions – are now considered to foster a surface rather than a deep approach to learning, as they ‘are designed to test concrete knowledge and not the ability to use search skills in real life’ (Avery, 2003: 2). For information literacy in particular, which is concerned more with process (functioning knowledge) rather than content (declarative knowledge), this is an issue. The problem is exacerbated by students’ tendency to focus first on the assessment associated with a module or programme, and to tailor their learning approaches to what they perceive they will be examined on: Biggs and Tang refer to this tendency as backwash, which describes ‘the effects assessment has on learning, to the extent that assessment may determine what and how students learn more than the curriculum does’ (2007: 169). The existence of backwash is thus an even stronger argument for aligning assessment with ILOs and learning activities.
When we are planning our instruction, we can use a matrix to clarify our intentions and help to keep us on track in terms of aligning the ILOs and assessment methods (Table 3.5).
Table 3.5
| What do I want the students to be able to do? | How can they show this? | What assessment method will enable this? |
| Evaluate information sources |
Through selecting different information sources for a task and explaining why they chose them | Creating an annotated bibliography or resource wiki Reflective research journal |
| Make effective use of the library resources | Through completing a task or solving a problem which requires library use Through showing others how to use the library |
Project on a specific topic Individual or group problem-solving (e.g. EBL) Scavenger hunt Preparing a library guide for a fictional group |
| Understand how blogging works and what it can be used for | Creating their own blogs Contributing to others’ blogs Explaining blogs to others |
Individual or group blogging project Preparing a ‘blogger’s guide’ |
Other factors also influence the design and integration of assessment methods in teaching, and teaching librarians should be aware of a number of different parameters which are relevant to the timing, purpose and effect of assessment.
Formative and summative assessment
This refers to the point at which assessment is carried out.
Formative assessment refers to techniques used by instructors during a session or programme, to obtain immediate feedback on how the students’ learning is progressing. The results of formative feedback might be used to improve or ‘realign’ the learning activities, if they are veering off course. Biggs and Tang (2007) describe formative feedback as a teaching and learning activity (TLA) ‘that uses error detection as the basis for error correction’ (p. 164). Formative assessment is generally informal and often consists of reflective activities. Tools can range from in-class quizzes to short, reflective exercises, designed to highlight on-the- spot problems during a session.
Summative assessment occurs after learning has taken place and is designed to establish whether the ILOs have been achieved by the students. Summative assessment consists of specified activities, which provide the students with an opportunity to demonstrate attainment of the ILOs. As we have discussed above, summative assessment tools should themselves be viewed as an integral part of the teaching and learning activity. Summative tools are typically quite formal (e.g. essays, projects, presentations, examinations) and summative assessment usually carries with it a political agenda, in the sense that the data collected can be used to determine the effectiveness of a programme and thus influence the decision about whether it should continue in its present form or not.
Although the term is ‘summative’, it is worth reiterating that assessment tools should be planned and developed at the beginning of the instructional planning process, alongside the ILOs.
Norm-referenced and criterion-referenced assessment
This distinction refers to how judgements are made about the quality and standard of students’ work or performance.
Norm-referenced assessment (the ‘measurement model’) evaluates the quality of students’ work through comparison and requires that ‘learning outcomes of individual students are quantified as scores along a single dimension or continuum so that individuals may be compared with each other’ (Biggs and Tang, 2007: 171). Usually, this means scoring work in percentages and associating percentage ranges with particular letter grades (A, B, B +, etc.). According to this model, higher achievers are those who get the highest scores and low achievers the lowest – in other words, it places a greater emphasis on innate ability than on the effects of the teaching and learning activities. Distribution of grades among a typical class is usually expected to follow a ‘bell-curve’ distribution, with most students clustering around the middle – the expectation is that only a small number of students should achieve high scores and a small number should fail, and this is expected to remain constant. The requirement to place all students along this curve when grading means that there is little objective measurement of how well ILOs are being met – in that situation, it might be possible for all students to attain high scores, a situation which is not acceptable under norm-referenced grading. The negative effects of norm-referencing on student motivation are discussed by Biggs and Tang (2007: 171–6).
Unlike the norm-referencing model, in criterion-referenced assessment (the ‘standards model’), student work or performance is evaluated based on how well it meets a predetermined standard or criterion for performance. Students are not compared with each other; rather, each student’s performance is considered individually and independently from the rest of the group. As teaching librarians, we are responsible for establishing the desired standard and ensuring that students have the opportunity to demonstrate whether they can perform up to that standard or not. To do this, we can create rubrics, which describe the different performance standards at each level of achievement. An example of an assessment rubric for the PowerPoint session described previously can be found in Table 3.6. Unlike norm-referenced assessment, this model fits perfectly with the idea of constructive alignment – determining what the student should do and to what level, facilitating appropriate learning activities and then assessing to see if they can, in fact, perform the activity to the desired standard.
Evaluation
Finally, although our primary concern is (and should be) student learning, we should not discount the usefulness of evaluation, which is typically undertaken after a programme or session has been completed. Unlike aligned assessment, evaluation does not give us any information about whether learning occurred or whether the ILOs were achieved; rather, evaluation tells us about student satisfaction with the learning experience and highlights any challenges that the students may have experienced in the process. Grassian and Kaplowitz refer to this type of activity as ‘Level One’ assessment, or ‘happiness scales’, which ‘measure what learners think of the session’ (2009: 202). Typically, student evaluation questionnaires are administered in either print or electronic format, containing both closed and open-ended questions. Closed questions frequently require students to indicate their level of agreement with a statement; for example: ‘The learning outcomes for this programme were clearly defined’ or ‘The sessions were well-planned and organised.’ Open- ended questions give students the opportunity to highlight the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the programme or session and to make suggestions for improvement.
As teaching librarians, we should never take the results of these evaluation exercises as proof that our instruction has been successful or unsuccessful. Only our aligned assessment activities can give us that information. However, we can incorporate evaluation data into our reflective practice and use what the students tell us to modify or adapt our instruction, where warranted. Evaluation data can also be useful strategically in demonstrating to administrators and institutional leaders that our instruction is appreciated by students and perceived as useful to their education as a whole.
Promotion and outreach
‘Information literacy is not an end unto itself. Nobody aspires to it. Its habits of mind serve an individual for multiple purposes at varying times, but simply the state of being information literate has no value to anyone’ (Rockwell-Kincanon, 2007: 246).
In Chapter 2, we discussed how collaborating with academics and other relevant groups is essential in order for teaching librarians to embed their instructional offerings within academic curricula and to create learning situations that are meaningful and relevant to students. However, the challenges experienced by librarians in persuading academics of the advantages of information literacy instruction were also noted. The need for teaching librarians to actively market and promote their instructional services is now an accepted fact of professional life; while the benefits of information literacy instruction may be obvious to us, it is true that they are not obvious to all. A teaching librarian’s responsibility, therefore, is not just to ensure that meaningful student learning takes place in existing classes, but to seek out opportunities to introduce programmes and sessions where they are needed, in curricula and modules where they have never been embedded before. What are some of the reasons why we find ourselves having to actively promote our services? Some of the reasons have been discussed before. They include the following:
Many information literacy programmes or sessions that are offered on an elective basis suffer from poor attendance, with few students signing up to participate. Sometimes it seems like the only way to get students to attend sessions is to make them compulsory or ‘for credit’.
Getting out of the starting blocks – teaching librarians often find it challenging to get IL programmes up and running in the first place, due to lack of support from administrators, academics, etc.
‘One-shot’ only – as we discussed before, establishing curriculum- integrated programmes is a huge challenge for teaching librarians, who are constantly seeking ways to initiate collaborative working arrangements with academics to gain access to the curriculum.
‘Information literacy’ is treated with scepticism outside the library community – teaching librarians sometimes have to deal with scepticism or outright criticism about the nature of information literacy and the benefits it brings to society.
Rockwell-Kincanon (2007) suggests that marketing information literacy is ultimately about helping to close the gap between current information behaviour, and habits, and what is perceived as the information-literate ideal: ‘Marketing information literacy is a combination of promoting ideas (that research in a process of exploration and synthesis, for example), practices (to question an author’s credentials and biases), and tools (subscription databases, workshops in genealogical search strategies)’ (p. 242). It is important to present information literacy as something that is not just related to libraries, but which offers general techniques and strategies for solving problems and managing information in one’s life as a whole.
Grassian and Kaplowitz (2005) contend that teaching librarians need to engage in marketing, so that they can effectively deal with their competitors, e.g. instructional resource developers whose products are freely available on the web, or commercial resource providers (p. 225).
For instance, an academic might choose to direct their students towards a freely available YouTube instructional video on plagiarism, rather than ask the teaching librarian to facilitate a session. However, while tackling the competition is important, there is also a strong case to be made that teaching librarians must first address the much greater challenge of potential service users’ lack of awareness of the kind of instruction a teaching librarian can provide, or of their own instructional needs. From the marketing point of view, the starting point must also be start with the student – identifying what the instructional needs are and explaining how these needs can be met by the library.
As teaching librarians, we must be aware of the different ‘markets’ we need to target, as each will require a different strategy. In planning our marketing strategies, some of the questions we could ask include:
What do they need to learn (instructional needs)?
What aspect of our service offerings are we going to market/promote?
Who will be the target of our campaign?
What ultimate goal are we trying to achieve (e.g. instruction embedded in the curriculum, extra funding, etc.)?
What form of promotion will work best with this target group?
For information literacy instruction, sometimes the target audience can be different from the group that we will target in our campaign: Rockwell- Kincanon notes that ‘information literacy programmes also have dual audiences – the individual adopters and any “gatekeepers” for the institution’ (2007: 244). For instance, the target group for the programme might be first-year arts and humanities undergraduates. However, if we are to try and embed our instruction into the curriculum, it is not the students who we are targeting from a promotional perspective; rather, we must direct our efforts towards the academics who coordinate the programmes and who are the ‘gatekeepers’ to the curriculum. Or, we might choose a top-down approach and target the administrators and decision-makers at the highest level in an attempt to align our programmes with the broader institutional mission. Sometimes the campaign target will be the students themselves – for instance, when we are running elective sessions, e.g. lunchtime demos, library orientations, etc.
So, who are our target markets? In academic libraries, they include those listed in Table 3.7.
Table 3.7
Information literacy target markets
| Target markets | |
| Students | Undergraduates, postgraduates, full- and part-time, on-campus and distance learners, traditional and non-traditional |
| Academics | Course directors, but also teaching assistants, tutors, etc. |
| Researchers | Post-doctoral fellows, research fellows, research assistants |
| Administrators | Deans, faculty/school heads, committee chairpersons, etc. |
Each target group has a different agenda and individual instructional needs, both recognised and unrecognised. How do we tap into each group? We might consider a long-established analytical tool, drawn from the field of marketing – the marketing mix, or the ‘four Ps’ – product, place, price and promotion.
The four Ps of information literacy instruction
Focusing each of these categories on our target market helps us to make wise decisions about how to sell our products and services.
Product
What are we ‘selling’? As Rockwell-Kincanon points out, information literacy in and of itself is value-free – rather, it is up to us to demonstrate the value, or benefits that being information literate will bring to our clients’ lives. In academic institutions, we might focus on particular challenges to which information literacy might offer a solution, such as plagiarism, information overload or library anxiety. Our ‘product’ must fill a perceived need.
Place
Place relates to the distance a customer must travel to obtain a product or avail of a service. For new products which are unfamiliar to an audience, a shorter distance increases the likelihood of adoption. For information literacy, bringing the learning activities directly into the classroom or onto the desktop might be a better promotional strategy than expecting them to come to us. For instance, mounting the learning activities on a VLE so that they are available to remote learners is a good example of ‘placing’ a product to make it convenient and more attractive to clients, who might not be willing to physically travel to campus to attend a session. Holding a session in the training room in the centrally located library, rather than a computer lab in a building that is at the other end of campus, is another example.
Price
Price refers to the ‘cost’ a customer incurs in order to obtain a product or avail of a service. This does not just mean monetary costs, but also opportunity cost, in terms of time or convenience that must be given up. For information literacy, the ‘cost’ for an academic might be the class sessions that they have to ‘give up’ for information literacy instruction, or the time they have to spend in collaborative planning with the teaching librarian. We should try to keep ‘cost’ as low as possible when we are trying to establish our programmes (i.e. make it easy for our clients). When the benefits are eventually perceived, we then have the flexibility to vary our ‘costs’.
Promotion
Promotion refers to effective communication with the target audience. We must select the promotional tools that we think are most likely to attract the attention of our audience. We might choose from:
bookmarks, pencils, keyrings, etc., with library or information literacy logo;
social networking pages, e.g. dedicated Facebook page;
short presentation or ‘pitch’ to audience;
manning a stand at open days, graduate fairs, etc.;
testimonials from previous students (e.g. on website);
newsletters (print and electronic);
social events – coffee mornings, wine and cheese receptions, etc.
Must teaching librarians also become expert marketers and PR agents, on top of everything else they have to do? This is hardly realistic. However, we do have a responsibility to somehow put our products ‘out there’ and sell what we do to potential users of the service. What are the kinds of knowledge and skills that we need?
clear vision of the teaching and learning mission of the library and ability to articulate it, both verbally and in writing;
appreciation of the benefits that information literacy brings, not just to education, but to other aspects of everyday life, and the ability to convey that appreciation to potential ‘clients’, both verbally and in writing;
knowledge of the different tools that can be used to gather information about our target markets, e.g. surveys, focus groups, online polling, secondary research, etc.;
‘coolhunting’ – scanning the environment to discover the latest trends and issues that have captured the interest and attention of our target groups. We can find ways of exploiting these issues to draw clients in, sometimes in quite off beat ways – e.g. offering sessions which show students how to get the most out of their smartphone applications (with academic content included, naturally!). Behen suggests that librarians should adopt themes and formats from popular culture, to engage and motivate the ‘Google Generation’, including reality television, game shows and movies (2006: 63–91);
a good grasp of the ‘lingo’, i.e. the terms and phrases that will register with our target groups and will garner interest in what we have to offer – if ‘information literacy’ fails to resonate, try something different. Each group requires a different approach, e.g. you will not use the same language with academics as you would with young undergraduates;
willingness to explore and experiment with new social networking tools to promote and generate interest in our service offerings (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, blogging, text alerts, etc.). Also, the ability to recognise when use of these tools is not appropriate;
a degree of creativity, or at least a knowledge of methods that can be used to generate ideas – e.g. brainstorming sessions, idea boxes, creative workshops, etc.;
an appreciation of the power of ‘word of mouth’ – exploiting local and informal channels to spread the word about our services. For example, giving an interview to the campus newspaper, making a funny YouTube video to take advantage of viral marketing, networking with nonlibrary colleagues at social events, creating a regularly updated blog about what’s happening in the library, etc.
Exercises and reflections
Choose one of the scenarios below and complete the following tasks in relation to it:
Scenario A: Teaching a class of 150 first-year arts undergraduates (freshmen), all of differing backgrounds and abilities, how to research and write academic essays (four-week programme, two hours per week).
Scenario B: Teaching a group of 30 doctoral students in the social sciences about advanced research processes (eight-week programme, one hour per week).
Create a mission statement for your programme.
Choose and create an instructional needs assessment instrument for the group (e.g. pre-test, focus group protocol, etc.).
Write goals, objectives and ILOs for the programme.
Choose (and justify) an overall learning approach.
Choose (and justify) specific teaching and learning methods.
Create lesson plans for the first two sessions.
Create one or two learning materials for the programme (e.g. a worksheet, PowerPoint presentation, online quiz, webquest, handouts).
Create a suitable assessment for the programme, including a rubric for grading.
Devise a promotional flyer for the programme, aimed at academics.