Final Project

Redesign/Re-plan my one-shot Information Literacy Instruction

1. Teaching environment:

I am teaching one-shot face-to-face library instruction and most of my students are from upper division and graduate level.  The course's purpose is enrich students' research skills.

2. Learning Outcomes:

About a week before each session, I would request syllabus and assignment from the professors, plus any specific requirements that the professor wants their students to be familiar with.  For instance, one professor requests their students be familiar with different of engineering databases, while the other one wants her students to be able to write APA style rather than use any bibliographic tools.  Therefore, each session would be differently, but the basic learning outcomes are same, which contain identifying scholarly journal articles, choosing appropriate databases, using Boolean logic for research, and reference management tools to organize their results.  At each session, everyone has found one scholarly full-text article and saved in their RefWorks' folder or email.

3.  Assessment:

At each session, students practice to find one full-text scholarly article from one of engineering databases, which is their self-assessment.  With my other two colleague librarians, we create an online survey to collect students feedback in order to see if there anything we could improve our sessions.  From the survey, we learned most students request more activities, and less than 5% students think they have took the similar course while attending lower division courses, from whom we realized the misunderstanding of the purpose of the session.

4. Learning Theories:

We realized the misunderstanding of the purpose of the session.    From week 3's materials, I am thinking to lead students to THINK and ASK questions rather than telling them what and how to do it.  In addition, I have met with professors a couple of weeks ago to collaborate with them for a better on-site activity.

First, creating a NEED environment that professors need to provide actual topic and request students to submit either a topic or a full-text article after the course.

Second, design the activity with controllable results that I am sure what students will gain.  An example from my week 3's post will encourage students to think where they could get information, not always from GOOGLE (hopefully, I need to test it next semester since I have done all of my instructions) and help students to understand the library has well designed databases/directories for their research needs.

5. Ed-Tech tools:

While teaching face-to-face one-shot instruction, I am using limited high-tech tools.  But after reading the 4th week articles, I am think I could use Google Drive.  Great appreciation to Eliot Boden's post of activity to motive students in week 3: mapping out and sharing information resource give me idea of using Google Drive for teaching.  And other reasons to use the tool.  I don't have time to check if every student accomplish the activity, but I could use Google Drive to see everyone's response; in addition, students could share their thoughts, tips, and results with everyone; third, the weakness of one-shot instruction is that students cannot review what I taught, hard to find me because of my busy schedule.  If I could use Google Drive and save it for students to review whenever they need, it could help them to refresh memory, with shared notes from classmates.

6. Reflection and changes:

This course really guide me to rethink about my course design.  I knew there is something missing that students are lack of motivation with active-learning teaching model.  Cooperstein and Small's articles are really helpful.  However, some changes will make professors are uncomfortable so that I cannot make too much changes of my instructions.  During the meeting a couple of weeks ago, they stated that they LOVE active-learning style, which is nothing wrong just with taking this course, I am thinking there are changes we need to make sooner or later.  But I could start testing some small changes to motivate students.

7. Other's posts:

Ediot Boden:  http://eliotdesign.wordpress.com/
Hong Guo: http://spiltfrommyhead.blogspot.com/
Kimberly Lowe: http://kimbrary.blogspot.com/

Emily Woolery: http://emthegemreads.blogspot.com/
Kelly Dagan: http://kellydagan.com/
Kristy Padron: http://kmplibraries.blogspot.com/