Making Sense of the Information Literacy Framework through Partnering for Transparent Teaching: New Opportunities for Librarian-Faculty Collaboration

Type of Presentation

Poster Session (45 minutes)

Target Audience

Higher Education

Proposal

Since the adoption of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, there has been much debate among academic librarians about the practical implementation of the Framework tenets in instructional settings. Concerns about the fundamental assumptions underlying the Framework include its high level of ambiguity, issues with integrating the six frames into the existing pedagogical practices, as well as ensuring the buy-in of the Framework concepts by departmental faculty.

This poster delineates the results of faculty-librarian collaboration at Eastern Washington University to improve the information literacy skills of Social Work students through designing and implementing a library research workshop embedded in the senior-level Human Behavior and the Social Environment course. The mandatory workshop, worth a percentage of the course grade, consisted of classroom discussion and two practice worksheets that introduced the students to the notions of searching as strategic exploration and the contextual nature of authority in scholarly research. While the instruction was firmly anchored in abstract Threshold Concepts, partnering with the faculty for more transparent teaching enabled the students to fully understand how and why they were to learn.

The poster concludes with data collected from in-class student worksheets and final papers in the two sections of the course. The findings indicate an increase in student ability to apply the instructional content to their own research. The audience will glean insights into the pathway that allowed the librarian to secure full faculty support and seamlessly incorporate the Framework concepts in the heart of a rigorous subject-specific course curriculum.

Presentation Description

This poster highlights the results of faculty-librarian collaboration at a mid-size university to improve student information literacy skills through designing a library research component embedded in a senior-level Social Work course. It outlines a pathway for academic librarians to overcome the abstract nature of the ACRL Information Literacy Framework by partnering with faculty for transparent teaching and seamlessly incorporating the Framework concepts in the heart of a rigorous subject-specific course curriculum.

Session Goals

Explore collaborative ways with teaching faculty to better integrate Threshold information literacy concepts in subject-specific library instruction.

Keywords

Information literacy, librarian-faculty collaboration, library instruction

Publication Type and Release Option

Event

Share

COinS
 

Making Sense of the Information Literacy Framework through Partnering for Transparent Teaching: New Opportunities for Librarian-Faculty Collaboration

Since the adoption of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, there has been much debate among academic librarians about the practical implementation of the Framework tenets in instructional settings. Concerns about the fundamental assumptions underlying the Framework include its high level of ambiguity, issues with integrating the six frames into the existing pedagogical practices, as well as ensuring the buy-in of the Framework concepts by departmental faculty.

This poster delineates the results of faculty-librarian collaboration at Eastern Washington University to improve the information literacy skills of Social Work students through designing and implementing a library research workshop embedded in the senior-level Human Behavior and the Social Environment course. The mandatory workshop, worth a percentage of the course grade, consisted of classroom discussion and two practice worksheets that introduced the students to the notions of searching as strategic exploration and the contextual nature of authority in scholarly research. While the instruction was firmly anchored in abstract Threshold Concepts, partnering with the faculty for more transparent teaching enabled the students to fully understand how and why they were to learn.

The poster concludes with data collected from in-class student worksheets and final papers in the two sections of the course. The findings indicate an increase in student ability to apply the instructional content to their own research. The audience will glean insights into the pathway that allowed the librarian to secure full faculty support and seamlessly incorporate the Framework concepts in the heart of a rigorous subject-specific course curriculum.