Mixing up the Menu: Info Lit as an Appetizer and not the Main Course
Type of Presentation
Panel (1 hour and 15 minutes presentation total for two or more presenters)
Target Audience
Higher Education
Location
PARB 227
Proposal
When the primary course for teaching information literacy within the college is not a prerequisite, or even a co-requisite, for your course, what are teachers to do? Often, students focus on gaining information processing skills in their FYW or FYE courses. These core courses are sometimes a misnomer, required to graduate but not necessarily required in the first semester or even the first academic year. Our panel will examine four courses outside of the First-Year Writing sequence, courses where the competencies do not specifically address information literacy (or if so only in tangential ways). Our panel will include four instructors who each teach a different developmental or humanities course. We will talk about strategies we can incorporate into our classroom assignments that promote information literacy skills to students who have perhaps never before completed college-level research for an assignment.
Presentation Description
This panel will discuss strategies to help students develop research skills in college classes where information literacy is an afterthought. How do instructors squeeze in information literacy when the course is already stacked full of subject-based competencies? We will present some of our solutions to this dilemma and then, via discussions, encourage the audience to offer solutions of their own.
Session Goals
Provide attendees with examples of ways to infuse information literacy skills across the curriculum.
Create an opportunity to exchange ideas about how to prioritize information literacy in an already crowded course design
Look for ways to apply assignments that encourage information literacy across disciplines.
Keywords
information literacy, curriculum, course design, developmental education
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
McLallen, Wendy; Harvest, Carol P.; Yarnell, Lisa; and McBride, Christie, "Mixing up the Menu: Info Lit as an Appetizer and not the Main Course" (2020). Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy. 54.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gaintlit/2020/2020/54
Mixing up the Menu: Info Lit as an Appetizer and not the Main Course
PARB 227
When the primary course for teaching information literacy within the college is not a prerequisite, or even a co-requisite, for your course, what are teachers to do? Often, students focus on gaining information processing skills in their FYW or FYE courses. These core courses are sometimes a misnomer, required to graduate but not necessarily required in the first semester or even the first academic year. Our panel will examine four courses outside of the First-Year Writing sequence, courses where the competencies do not specifically address information literacy (or if so only in tangential ways). Our panel will include four instructors who each teach a different developmental or humanities course. We will talk about strategies we can incorporate into our classroom assignments that promote information literacy skills to students who have perhaps never before completed college-level research for an assignment.
