Focus on
Foundations:
Bringing
Information Literacy
to an Online Faculty
Development Program
Three Worlds by M.C. Escher
Corinne Laverty, Queen’s University
Outline
• Evolving roles for librarians in working with faculty
• Focus on Foundations program for faculty: how is
information literacy integrated?
• Sample module: What do librarians want to know about
teaching?
• Best practices for learning online
New Roles for Librarians in
Working with Faculty
We already offer:
• Required information literacy tutorials
and classes within courses.
• Inquiry-based assignments that support
information literacy standards within courses.
• Library portals on web course pages.
• Full courses on information literacy.
In what other ways can we work
with faculty to highlight the role
of information literacy?
New Directions for Librarians
Create library template within online course tools. Whenever
a new course is created, there is a prompt to complete the
library template with:





Liaison librarian’s name and contact
Key information tools for the course.
Search guides for indexes and Google tools.
Link to reserve readings.
Link to RefWorks and RefShare accounts.
Guide to Multimedia
Design guides to multimedia for face-to-face and online
courses. Does anyone have one?
Search
Guides
Core Digital
Collections
Multimedia
Collections
web searching
principles & tools
learning object
repositories
webcasts
art, graphics,
photographs
image
Libraries
music, audio,
radio, podcasts
video, podcasts,
tutorials, audio,
virtual field trips
primary
sources
video clips
wikis, blogs
newspapers
feeds
Partner with Centres for Teaching
Initiatives with Queen’s Centre for Teaching and Learning:
Working as a Learning Technology Faculty Associate to
design modules for instructors creating courses.
Includes an overview
of information literacy.
Partner with Centres for Teaching
Initiatives with Queen’s Centre for Teaching and Learning:
Planning joint workshops on copyright, plagiarism, and
inquiry-based learning.
e.g. Inquiry@Queen’s is an undergraduate conference that
showcases student research in 15-minute presentations or
posters
Partner with Centres for Teaching
Queen’s has Learning Technology Teams:
Laverty, C. et al. (2003).
"Enhancing the classroom
experience with learning
technology teams".
EDUCAUSE Quarterly 26/3,
19-25.
Examples of librarians
as project leaders.
Partner with Centres for Teaching
Queen’s Faculty of Education employs a librarian in its
Continuing Teacher Education distance education unit.
She contributes to reference, selection of learning
resources, and strategic directions for course
development.
Partner with Centres for Teaching
Initiatives with Queen’s Centre for Teaching and Learning:
Focus on Foundations offers 10 workshops in a certificate program:
• Teaching for active and deep learning
• Scholarship of teaching and learning
• Working with teaching assistants
• Discussion-based teaching
• Assessing student learning
• Inquiry-based learning
• Curriculum planning
• Evaluating teaching
• Team/group learning
• Lecturing
Focus on Foundations Design
Each module integrates core strands:
 Information literacy
 Pedagogy
 Accessibility
 Technology
• Began with paper prototype with team members representing
all areas. Currently moving content into online template.
• Includes basics for liaison librarian contact, links to library
guides and services, reserve readings, information tools, and
alternative assignments.
• http://www.queensu.ca/ctl/programs/programsworkshops/index.php
Research on Search Skills
Research on Net Gen students
and their IL skills.
Perceptions of Libraries
and Information Resources (2005)
International research study by OCLC
Information Literacy in the News
George, L. (2008, Nov. 17). Dumbed down:
The troubling science of how technology
is rewiring kid’s brains. MacLeans,
121/45, 56-59.
Having difficulty concentrating?
Signs of ADHD?
No mental initiative?
Constant exposure to technology has created a brain gap in a
single generation. While some neural pathways are reinforced
enabling speed and multi-tasking, others are suppressed
causing difficulties with problem-solving, thinking, and task
completion.
Information Literacy in the News
Carr, Nicholas. (2008). Is Google
making us stupid? The Atlantic Online
July/August.
Immersing myself in a book or a
lengthy article used to be easy. ….
That’s rarely the case anymore. Now
my concentration often starts to drift
after two or three pages. I get fidgety,
lose the thread, begin looking for
something else to do. … The deep
reading that used to come naturally
has become a struggle.
Google Generation?
Williams, P. & Rowlands, I. (2008). Information behaviour of
the researcher of the future.
(British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee)
A new study overturns the common assumption that the ‘Google
Generation' is the most web-literate. The first ever virtual
longitudinal study … claims that, although young people
demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers,
they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read, and
do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the
information that they find on the web.
Evolving Literacies
YouTube Video:
Pay Attention
Created by Darren Draper
in the Jordan School District
to motivate K-12 teachers
to use technology effectively
in their teaching.
What Librarians Do
How students learn which databases to choose.
What Librarians Do
Active learning in the research process
How to teach web evaluation.
Quiz on Web Searching
Parts of Internet Detective Game
Originally used in 3rd year computer science with paper
folding.
1. Turn clickers on.
2. Wait until poll is open.
3. Press letter of your choice to vote.
4. Green light will flash.
5. Receiver will count your vote once.
Which of these organizations does this URL
represent: www.green.ox.ac.uk
1. The UK Green Party
2. Oxford University
3. Green Academic
Publishing
0%
The UK Green Party
Oxford University
Green Academic Pu...
Which site has the most primary
information?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Government of Canada
Google
Yahoo
Each site has equal
amounts.
25%
25%
25%
25%
Government...
Google
Yahoo
Each site ...
Which is the best indicator of website
validity?
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1. Site is on a university
server.
2. Site has five-star rating
from reviewing service.
3. Site has been reviewed
by a third party external
to site.
Google searches the surface web. How big
is the invisible web that it cannot search?
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1. Too small to worry about.
2. Twice as big as surface web.
3. 100 times bigger than surface
web.
4. 500 times bigger than surface
web.
Improving our Teaching
Think-Pair-Share:
Record three areas in which you
would like help with your own
teaching?
Share your ideas with people
sitting on either side of you.
Prioritize what you think
are the most important.
Share your top priority.
One Minute Left
From PowerPoint Alchemy
In which area of instruction would you like
to learn more?
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1. Creating hands-on exercises
in an e-classroom.
2. Integrating more active
learning tasks in face-to-face
courses.
3. Identifying which key concepts
to teach in the one-shot
lecture.
4. Presentation techniques for
large classes.
All learning is inherently active therefore
students can be actively engaged
during classroom presentations.
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
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What is your definition
of active learning?
25%
25%
25%
25%
1. Engagement with course subject matter that
encourages students to process information in a
way that develops personal understanding.
2. Sustained behavioural involvement in learning
activities and time on task.
3. Student use of metacognitive and self-regulatory
strategies to monitor and guide their learning.
4. Student willingness to pay attention in class and
participate in class activities.
Best Practices for Online Learning
http://library.queensu.ca/wiki/elearning/
Jonassen’s Guidelines for Creating an
Engaging e-Learning Environment
Problem Space
Select problem type: case study,
analysis, check Bloom’s taxonomy.
Related realistic
materials
Use examples of authentic cases from
the discipline.
Information resources
Librarians excel at finding readings,
websites, multimedia.
Cognitive tools
Use visualization tools such as
FreeMind.
Conversation &
collaborative tools
Discussion forum, whiteboards, virtual
reference, mail, listservs.
Social/contextual
support
Embedded textual and visual help;
options for peer assistance if appropriate
Jonassen, D.H. (2000). Toward a design theory of problem solving.
Educational Technology Research and Development, 48/4, 3-85.
Case Studies
Diverse cases in written and visual format:
Online interviews such as Dr. Cheryl Kerfeld in a
webinar at UCLA discussing inquiry-based learning.
Integration of Multimedia
Webinar: Inquiry-Based Learning
While research shows that it is not the use of multimedia in itself
that matters, but rather how it is used (Oblinger & Hawkins,
2006; Clark & Feldon, 2005), it is also acknowledged that
varying instructional processes, including using multimedia, can
influence learning when they lead to more intensive cognitive
processing (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005; Tobias, 2001).
Questions for
Resolution
Visualization of Ideas: Rubrics
Presenting Arguments
Concept Maps
Research
Assignment
Taxonomies
How will you transform your practice?