Type of Presentation

Panel

Target Audience

Higher Education

Location

Session One Breakouts

Proposal

In order to teach information literacy skills in an online library instruction session, a bit of pre-planning involving student/librarian engagement through active learning techniques is always helpful, if not necessary. Sarah Parramore (2019) discusses active learning techniques and information literacy:

Active learning techniques are the topics that are dominating the higher education scene. Not only are they the focus on college and university campuses, but academic libraries are also taking notice and integrating these techniques into their lessons on information literacy. (p. 476)

Using active learning techniques to increase student engagement works well for face-to-face classes, but how well does this work for increasing student engagement in a live Zoom class? Research librarians at Mercer University are currently researching ways to enhance virtual student-librarian engagement through an IRB-approved research study in which we seek to use two active learning techniques to increase engagement: brainstorming and discussion. Our goal is to study whether using these techniques has a measurable effect on our students' acquisition of information literacy skills.

Short Description

Teaching over Zoom is always a trial, but it can be especially hard for one-shot instruction sessions—How do you keep students interested over the internet? In 2020, Mercer librarians decided to focus on translating active learning techniques from the physical classroom to the virtual one. This IRB approved research studies how applying active learning techniques could increase student engagement in virtual instruction. In this session, we will discuss how Mercer’s learning ecosystems created the foundation for the study, consider the successes and failures, and give an opportunity for librarians to discuss their experiences in engaging Zoom classrooms.

Keywords

active learning; information literacy; library instruction; virtual classrooms

Publication Type and Release Option

Presentation (Open Access)

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Mar 26th, 9:45 AM Mar 26th, 10:45 AM

Virtual engagement Using Active Learning.

Session One Breakouts

In order to teach information literacy skills in an online library instruction session, a bit of pre-planning involving student/librarian engagement through active learning techniques is always helpful, if not necessary. Sarah Parramore (2019) discusses active learning techniques and information literacy:

Active learning techniques are the topics that are dominating the higher education scene. Not only are they the focus on college and university campuses, but academic libraries are also taking notice and integrating these techniques into their lessons on information literacy. (p. 476)

Using active learning techniques to increase student engagement works well for face-to-face classes, but how well does this work for increasing student engagement in a live Zoom class? Research librarians at Mercer University are currently researching ways to enhance virtual student-librarian engagement through an IRB-approved research study in which we seek to use two active learning techniques to increase engagement: brainstorming and discussion. Our goal is to study whether using these techniques has a measurable effect on our students' acquisition of information literacy skills.