Highlights from WILU 2014 (Workshop for Instruction in Library Use)

Sarah Morrison is the treasurer for the UWO CLA during the Summer 2014 term. She enjoys technology, non-fiction, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Lego, and Scaredy Squirrel. You can read more about her experiences at WILU on her blog at: http://sarahamorrison.net/tag/wilu2014/

The first event of day one was the keynote, hosted by Craig Gibson, from Ohio State University, and Trudi Jacobson, from theUniversity at Albany – SUNY. They were presenting about the Framework for 
Information Literacy for Higher Education, an initiative through the Association of College & Research Libraries. They talked about re-framing information literacy literacy based on threshold concepts.

Our first workshop was called Inspiring Professional Development on a Shoestring: Facilitating Learning Opportunities for Information Literacy Instructors. It was hosted by Lisa Shamchuk from MacEwan University in Edmonton. She spoke about the professional development activities she’s provided, including an IL Community, Library PD Days, and an amazing sounding IL Palooza. The highlight for me was talking about the teaching styles workshop she runs, where they all take a Teaching Perspectives inventory. I love stuff like this, and I took mine! I’m a nurturer, if you’re wondering.

The last workshop of the day was “Re-emagining” Library Guides for Independent e-Learning. This was hosted by Veronica Bielat and Judith Arnold at Wayne State University. They spoke about redoing library guides for students who are not necessarily coming to the library. Instead of focusing on resources, they showed us how to re-do them based on the processes that the students need to go through to answer the assignment questions they’re given. This was informed by the work of Project Information Literacy.

The first session I attended on day two was called Beyond the Database Demo: Using Discourse Analysis to Improve Research and Citation Practices. It was lead by Fiona Inglis from Seneca College. She outlined her experiences with being mapped into classes in different programs, and the information literacy problems she was encountering. Bringing from her past research in discourse analysis in language, she taught the students to become discourse analysts instead of just trying to frantically bring disparate sources together into a paper. Her work focused on helping the students learn to look at the written discourse of what they’re reading and participating in, so they can recognize that they’re part of the scholarly conversation when they research. Fiona then outlined how she has applied this to a one-shot class, multiple sessions, and classes about academic integrity. With my background in linguistics, I found this fascinating!

Next up was Bite-Sized Assessment for the Library One-Shot, hosted by Mary Snyder Broussard from Lycoming College. After going through some challenges getting effective feedback and assessments when you’re only in a class for one session, she outlined how using formative assessment, in the process of the class, can be an effective and quick way to see how the students are doing and adjust accordingly. This is a technique that is widely taught in education, but isn’t formally taught in LIS (as her literature review did not bring up a lot). However, Mary has found that librarians are doing it, just potentially not realizing that they do. She then went through some activities she uses at the start, during, and end of a one-shot in order to use formative assessment. The one that interested me the most was a citation game, where students take the parts of a citation and build it on the wall.

Third was E-volving Information Literacy Tutorials with E-maginitive and E-ngaging Design, presented by Rebecca Peacock, Axa Mei Liauw, Damecia Donahue, and Jill Wurm from Wayne State University. The talked about their relationship with the general education requirement course, COM1010: Oral Communication: Basic Speech. They had originally done in class instruction for over 100 sections a term (!!) so obviously they needed to move to an online model. They spoke about the process of moving away from in class, to drop in tutorials, to an online tutorial. The tutorial itself wanted to promote active, not passive learning, that wouldn’t overload students and was modular. They built it to allow for students to print out results throughout to hand in, and built it to be lightweight and not use Flash. (This meant it could be used on devices that don’t support Flash).

The last session of day two for me was Choose Your Own Adventure: Best Practices for Developing an Information Literacy Video Game. Presented by Jessica Critten and Dean Sullivan from the University of West Georgia, this talk spoke about their efforts to use a video game to suit information literacy teaching needs. They created the game for a semester long information literacy course as a solution to a lack of online class engagement. The game, called Adventures in Research!, aimed to create an empowering, immediately challenging and rewarding environment in which to interact with students without a testing/grading system. They outlined the process they went to in order to build it, and spoke about their future plans for the game.

The first session of day three was How Information Literate Are You?, presented by Barbie Keiser-Carey from the Business School at Johns Hopkins University. She teaches competitive intelligence and knowledge management. Her research involved asking the MBA-MSIS dual degree students she teaches to complete a self assessment of how information literate they were before and after their classes with her. At the start, they weren't as information literate as she had expected them to be. After taking the course, they felt much more comfortable with assessing and analysing information, and they were much more likely to ask a librarian for help.

Next up was a session about the Steacie Library Dungeon Hackfest. Hosted by Sarah Shujah, Science Librarian at York University, she spoke about her work helping the Steacie Library host hackfests and how they fit into the library’s evolving nature. A form of makerspace, she found that the hackfests were great for the students to develop an idea in a non-competitive environment, as well as get mentoring from other students and industry professionals. She found that libraries are natural places to host hackfests, as they are places of learning that support research, collaboration, and critical thinking. She framed hackfests as places of critical making.

The day ended with the closing keynote by Meagan Oakleaf, from Syracuse University, titled E-magine the Possibilities: The Role of the Library in E-learning. Using a framework based on design, she suggested we follow a four-part method in order to support and provide e-learning services. This method starts with identifying the outcome, deciding how we will assess the outcomes, deciding on our pedagogy, and then designing backwards.

I would like to give a huge thank you to Marni Harrington and Dr. Pam McKenzie for giving me the opportunity to attend WILU 2014. I appreciate your support so much!