Part II: Slavic information literacy for targeted user groups: Slavic folklore, the library, and the web: A case study of subject-specific collaborative information literacy at the University of Kansas

Slavic and East European Information Resources

Volumn 10, Issue 2-3, 2009, Pages 200-220

  Giullian, Jon ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS   (United States)

Author keywords

IL; Information literacy; Librarian faculty collaboration; Library instruction; Professional development; Slavic studies

Indexed keywords

EID: 70449715386     PISSN: 15228886     EISSN: 15229041     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/15228880903191699     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Among them is the California State University's Information Competence Initiative. See California State University, Systemwide Library Services, Information Competence Initiative, http://www.calstate.edu/LS/infocomp.shtml.
2. See also Ilene F. Rockman, "Strengthening Connections Between IL, General Education, and Assessment Efforts," Library Trends 51, no. 2 (2002): 185-198.
3. See Jerilyn Veldof, Creating the One-Shot Library Workshop: A Step-by-Step Guide (Chicago: American Library Association, 2006).
4. See the following: Breivik and Gee, Higher Education in the Internet Age: Libraries Creating a Strategic Edge (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2006), p. 41, 75-78, 129-134
5. Breivik, Patricia, Student Learning in the Information Age (Phoenix, Ariz.: American Council on Education Oryx Press, 1998), pp. 30-31, 36-37, 58-59, 66-67, 77-93, 100-102
6. Breivik and Gordon Gee, IL: Revolution in the Library (New York: American Council on Education: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan, c1989), pp. 42-43, 47, 50-52
7. Patricia Breivik, Planning the Library Instruction Program (Chicago: ALA, 1982), pp. 11-13, 120-121.
8. I would like to thank my colleagues in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas for their collaboration on this project. They include: Professor Maria Carlson and instructors Eugenia K. Amditis, Adrienne Harris-Boggess, Natalie Bazan, and Kelly Knickmeier. Special thanks to Natalie Bazan for her help with the compilation of data.
9. For more details see Association of College & Research Libraries, Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/ informationliteracycompetency.cfm.
10. Introduction to Slavic Folklore is a freshman-level course that fulfills a general education (gened) humanities requirement. It is offered each semester in two sections of approximately 40-45 students per section. Although designed for freshmen and sophomores, the course typically attracts a fair number of juniors and seniors who still need to check off a requirement; some of them do not view the instruction as relevant to their specialization. With such a diverse demographic, there is typically a wide range of skill levels among students, making it impossible to provide all students with instruction targeted to their individual needs. However, the fact is that a majority of the students in the class still need basic library instruction, even if they have already attended a previous library orientation.
11. It was a challenge to find times that would accommodate students' class and work schedules and instructor availability. This is why two additional make-up sessions were added.
12. All documents discussed in this paper are available at the Web site SLAV 148 Archive, http://lib.ku.edu/public/slavic/crspgs/slav148/ archive/slav148_archv.shtml.
13. 2006 Wheatshocker Professional Development Seminar on IL, April 10, 2006, 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM, RSC Ballroom, Wichita State University.
14. During his presentation at the 2006 KU Teaching Summit, David Jonassen stated that "problemsolving is the most meaningful intellectual activity in which humans consistently engage." Arguing that employers value problems solvers, Jonassen extolled the practice of giving students real problems to solve and praised the use of visual models, or concept maps. David Jonassen, keynote address, 2006 University of Kansas Teaching Summit "Teaching and Learning in a Changing World," University of Kansas, Lawrence, August 15, 2006.
15. Jonassen is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia. For more information on concept maps, see Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, IHMC Cmap Tools, http://cmap.ihmc.us/conceptmap.html.
16. We later expanded the program into three sessions per semester for 2007 spring, 2007 fall, and 2008 spring. In the fall of 2008 we scaled the program back to just two sessions.
17. Initially, students were allowed to select either the Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT) or Internet Detective. In subsequent semesters we used only Internet Detective because we felt that a written summary of what they learned from the Interned Device tutorial provided more reliable measures of student learning outcomes than responses to TILT's multiple choice quizzes. University of Texas System Digital Library, TILT: Texas IL Tutorial, 1998-2004, http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu. (The owners plan to take the TILT site down on August 14, 2009. - Ed.
18. [KR]) Emma Place and others, Internet Detective: Wise up to the Web (Bristol: University of Bristol, Institute for Learning and Research Technology, Intute Virtual Training Suite, 2006-2008), http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective.
19. The backwards design model suggests three steps to instructional design: (1) identify outcomes; (2) determine what constitutes acceptable evidence of achievement of those outcomes; (3) plan instructional strategies and activities. According to Jean Donham, College Librarian and Professor at Cornell College, professors have a tendency to identify more outcomes than can be achieved in one library session. Librarians thus have the responsibility to tell the professor what outcomes are possible given the amount of time invested in library instruction. Realistic outcomes that satisfy course goals can only be determined when the professor and librarian work together. Concepts from Jean Donham, "From BI to IL," and "Break it Down: Designing Active Learning for Outcomes," presentations at KU Libraries IL Retreat, University of Kansas, Lawrence, January 9, 2007.
20. Several elements from the Instructional Design Cycle were relevant to our project. These included: (1) a learners' needs assessment, which guides the process of identifying session content; (2) the "Need to Know Triangle," for prioritizing content to meet learners' most critical needs (the Need-to-Know Triangle is an inverted triangle with four levels: D) Everything that could be known; C) Never need to know; B) Nice to know; A) Need to know. This model is a form of prioritizing content to meet learners' most critical needs); (3) Dale's Cone of Experience, a concept from psychology that describes how much learners will generally remember according to the type of learning activity (10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 50% of what they see and hear, 70% of what they say and write, and 90% of what they say as they do something). Jerilyn Veldof, "Creating the One-shot Library Workshop: Instructional Design for Librarians," workshop presentation, May 21-22, 2007, also available online at her Creating the One-Shot Library Workshop, http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jveldof/WorkshopDesign/worksheets.html.
21. Veldof is also the author of a recent manual on instructional design for library instructors, Jerilyn Veldof, Creating the One-Shot Library Workshop: A Step-by-Step Guide (Chicago: American Library Association, 2006).
22. Consider the following sample problem: "You have citations to the following [two] articles and need to examine them for your research project. Describe your strategy for locating and getting copies of the articles" (fall 2007, Session 2, Problem 2). The first article was available electronically; the second article could be obtained only through interlibrary loan, and students had to determine this on their own. Following basic instruction, students tried to find the articles. Next, as a class we discussed the process, after which students then wrote down the solution. See also Keith A. Erekson, "Teaching Philosopy," Keith A. Erekson, Ph.D [faculty web profile], El Paso, TX. 2009, http://faculty.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid554952.
23. Erekson, currently an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas El Paso, sees "the teaching of history as a learner driven, operationally organized, socially structured, personally reflective activity." In particular, he seeks to help students see the relationship between history and the things that they do in their everyday lives. In a description entitled "The First Day of Class," Erekson describes the process of getting students to do history themselves; that is, to analyze historical sources, analyze arguments, and "craft their own arguments that engage historical scholarship in ways that are relevant to their individual and collective experience." For Erekson, the first day of class is an exercise in historical problem-solving (much like detective work). It encourages the acquisition of skills that could be applied beyond the classroom and thus makes the learning process more relevant. These were ideas that would help shape the contour of the fall 2008 research assignment. Keith Erekson, "The First Day of Class," Keith A. Erekson [personal/professional Web site], Bloomington, IN, 2006-2008, http://mypage.iu.edu/kerekson/news.html#firstday.
24. Peer observation also provided some evidence of this: "Students responded well to the chance to be engaged in 'real' research problems... There is an important 'learn-by-doing' component-suggesting that what is learned will be more permanent." Summary of peer evaluation of Jon Giullian conducted by Jennifer Church-Duran on September 26, 2006.
25. Adrienne Harris-Boggess, "Slavic Folklore - SLAV 148: Fall 2006 Syllabus," available upon request from the author of this article.
26. Wikipedia, About.com and other general reference sites, tourist-related Web sites, and personal home pages made frequent appearances on students' bibliographic essays.
27. For example, a keyword search in the KU catalog for Bald Mountain returns a variety of sound recordings but no monographs relevant to Slavic folklore. One would need to know to search for more general books on magic in Slavic countries. However, this requires taking a step back in the hierarchical order of information to search for books of a more general nature that might include a section on their specific topic; yet coming up with broader terms or cumulative concepts is also difficult for many undergraduate students.
28. For example, a search for the term Veles (a figure in Slavic mythology) yields no relevant results in the library catalog, but a keyword search for books on the broader subject of Slavic mythology returns many relevant results in English. When search terms are too general, students find it difficult to break the topic down in a way that allows them to identify the few vital resources from among the thousands of general ones. A keyword search for the term Russian witches (without quotation marks) returns 9,976 entries in the library catalog, while a keyword search for the phrase "Russian witches" (in quotation marks) returns nothing.
29. All documents are posted at: http://lib.ku.edu/public/slavic/crspgs/ slav148/archive/slav148_archv.shtml.
30. For the essay, students were given a series of questions to consider, such as: Where did you start the string? How many works did you look at initially? How many citations did you find in each work? How did you determine which source was the best? Why did you decide to follow a certain string? What type of resource was the easiest to use and why do you think it was fruitful? Which sources had the most interesting and/or reliable information? What "pit-falls" or "dead ends" did you run into? What was the most challenging thing about this exercise? What was the most important thing that you learned from this exercise? What would you change about this exercise?
31. In most cases students selected popular content rather than scholarly or even semi-scholarly content. It would seem that reliable Web content is either lacking, or that students cannot or do not have the patience to find it. They tend to select the first thing that seems relevant, for whatever reason, without adequately evaluating the content; or after searching for a considerable time they give up and just include what they found.
32. For more information on concept maps, see IHMC Cmap Tools, http://cmap.ihmc.us/conceptmap.html.
33. Student feedback, mentioned in the next section, indicated that students felt that the modular research assignment was too long and time-consuming for just 10 percent of the course grade.
34. See the fall 2008 research assignment description posted on the SLAV 148 Archive Web site, http://lib.ku.edu/public/slavic/crspgs/slav148/ archive/2008zfall/slav148_2008fa_rschplan_draft.pdf.
35. An unforeseeable problem that probably contributed to the failure of the project was the fact that the graduate instructor had to take extended medical leave at a critical time in the project.
36. On their respective blogs students would record progress on their research topic, list useful books and articles as they find them, and post links to relevant folklore sites. When applicable, students could also link to resources on each other's sites. A technology familiar to many students, the blog format also gives students a chance to be creative in its design. The final product would ultimately be a subject guide or webliography. The blog assignment could be either an individual or a group project. One advantage of the blog is that the instructor would be able to review student progress at any time. And students could receive instant feedback from the instructor rather than wait for papers to be reviewed and returned. Although potentially time-consuming for the instructor, guidelines could be put in place to keep it manageable.
37. Forms and compiled feedback are available on the Web site SLAV 148 Archive, http://lib.ku.edu/public/slavic/crspgs/slav148/archive/ slav148_archv.shtml.
38. For example, during the 2006 and 2007 fall semesters, surveys were administered at the end of each session; whereas during the 2007 spring, 2008 spring, and 2008 fall semesters, a single survey captured feedback from all sessions in a given semester.
39. This being the case, I decided to try an experiment in the 2007 fall semester. I decided to use two different feedback forms: (1) the standard form described above; and (2) a short form with the openended questions only. I hypothesized that students might provide longer, more thoughtful responses to open-ended questions on the shorter survey because they didn't have to bother with the Likert scale section. However, this hypothesis was proven wrong. In fact, long and short responses to the open-ended question were found on both types of forms. The results summarized in Appendix 3 suggest that the length of the feedback form had little or no impact on the length of response. However, a slight change to the form for the 2008 fall semester did impact the length and detail of responses. Using the small form, I added the word why to the three open-ended questions.
40. Comment by one sophomore student from 2008 spring semester: "I would change the length of the assignments. They were lengthy and time consuming although I know they were a way to teach how to research. The length was not needed to help get the lessons across. The material was still very good and will be helpful in my future classes here at KU." Available from the Web site SLAV 148 Archive, http://lib.ku.edu/public/slavic/crspgs/slav148/archive/ slav148_archv.shtml.
41. Anecdotal evidence of positive learning outcomes also came from other channels, including letters from library colleagues (letter to Jon Giullian, Slavic Librarian, from Tami Albin, Undergraduate Instruction and Outreach Librarian, January 18, 2007); and even end-of-semester e-mails from students enrolled in the course, such as this one: "I have said it before and I will again; other classes/courses should require similar activities as those we had to complete in [the] Slavic studies department. I have learned more about using library resources and or searching for materials for research assignments than I have in any other classes while attending this school. This is definitely a model to follow."