A collaborative approach to information literacy.

Abstract

In an ongoing effort to instruct students in the use of a university library, an English faculty member and an academic librarian collaborated to incorporate information literacy objectives into a research assignment. Their partnership demonstrates simple, practical ways in which faculty members and librarians can together enhance students' information literacy skills by making small changes to existing instructional practices.

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In an age of sophisticated search engines and academic indexes, librarians and teaching faculty are faced with the challenges of integrating information literacy resources into students' learning experiences. The Association of College and Research Libraries' Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education defines the information-literate person as being able to

* Determine the extent of information needed

* Access the needed information effectively and efficiently

* Evaluate information and its sources critically

* Incorporate selected information into one's knowledge base

* Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose

* Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally. (3)

The process of information gathering and interpretation should be a learning experience, increasing students' own body of knowledge through hands-on experiential learning. How, then, can teaching faculty and librarians effectively work together to help students develop information literacy skills? As assistant professors of English and of Library Sciences at an urban branch of a public university in New England, we are collaborating on ways to integrate information literacy skills into students' learning experiences. This essay will show how our research on information literacy helped us reshape a Library Research Exercise and corresponding instruction session for a lower-division English literature class to better prepare students for lifelong learning.

Our pedagogical approach is informed and guided by certain basic principles of the information literacy movement in library instruction. First, our research in information literacy has convinced us of the centrality of library instruction to the learning process, and that integrating the two can best be accomplished by sustained collaboration between teaching faculty and university librarians. In the words of Trudi E. Jacobsen and John R. Vallely, "Each BI [bibliographic instruction] class should have clearly defined goals worked out by the two principal planners. Preparation for the class, the instruction itself, and any follow-up should take place within the framework of agreed-upon goals and with librarian and classroom teacher working together as much as possible" (359). Such faculty/librarian collaboration is an essential component of the information literacy movement and one that inspired us to jointly redesign the Library Research Exercise and corresponding library instruction session.

Another information literacy principle that has influenced our work together is the need to move from a tool-based, lecture/demonstration format of library instruction to a more broad-based, experiential approach that addresses such critical thinking skills as source evaluation, skills that will benefit students in all aspects of their lives. As Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes have pointed out, when we discuss information literacy "We are really talking about a new curricular framework: one that equips people not only with a bunch of technical skills but with a broad, integrated and critical perspective on the contemporary world of knowledge and information" (par. 26). Such instruction should be an integral aspect of the course, as expressed in the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education: "Achieving competency in information literacy requires an understanding that this cluster of abilities is not extraneous to the curriculum but is woven into the curriculum's content, structure, and sequence" (5). Faculty and librarians must work together to incorporate information literacy into a course and its assignments.

Furthermore, our research has shown us that for library instruction to be of maximum benefit to students, it should be presented when students will be asked to put to practical use the skills taught in the session. According to Kathleen Bergen and Barbara MacAdam, "students prosper most from any form of library instruction when it comes at a time of greatest need and relevance to their academic work" (334). Guided by our research on information literacy, we realized that the original Library Research Exercise, generated in isolation by an English faculty member without input from a librarian, was inadequate to address the critical thinking skills demanded by rigorous academic inquiry. Together, we made a commitment to revise the Exercise and adapt the library instruction session in a manner that incorporates the information literacy principles delineated above.

The first incarnation of the Library Research Exercise for English 519, Critical Analysis (a sophomore-level gateway course to the English major which also attracts non-majors), was built on a model used by another English faculty member who had taught the class previously. Its main intent was to introduce students to the Modern Language Association (MLA) and Literature Online (LION) databases in the hope that students would transfer these navigation skills to online databases in other disciplines (see Appendix A). By making the Exercise worth five percent of students' final course grade and by integrating it into the course content on William Shakespeare's Hamlet, the faculty member felt that the students would see its pedagogical value beyond the immediate learning of database skills. After a short e-mail exchange on the Exercise, the only other contact between the faculty member and the librarian occurred when the librarian visited class on the day the Exercise was distributed to make a 45-minute standard library instruction presentation introducing students to the library's subject-related holdings.

Underpinning the original design of the Exercise was a focus on preparing English majors to carry out scholarly research in their field of specialization; further, it was hoped that, while they explored two important databases in the discipline, students would be exposed to a range of scholarly writing on Hamlet. The design of the Exercise was also focused on efficient use of classroom time; it was felt that course content would not allow for multiple presentations on information literacy. It soon became clear, however, that the Exercise in its original form did not stretch students academically. They completed the Library Research Exercise, but with a perfunctory, paint-by-numbers efficiency, suggesting that the Exercise itself could have asked more of students and that the library instruction could have been designed more effectively. Students had not learned how to engage meaningfully with any of the database materials-because they had not been asked to do so. They could not be expected to understand, interpret, or use for their own research any of the articles simply because they had managed to locate them efficiently using the databases. The Exercise itself was nothing more than a fabled "treasure hunt," where students follow the designated steps of the assignment but are never required to think about what they are doing and why they are doing it.

Two more fundamental misconceptions underlay the Library Research Exercise and the way it was presented: first, that students' acquisition of technical skills, in this case the ability to search an online database effectively, was the key element of research. The Exercise emphasized the mechanical elements of an online database search--it offered no guidance on how to negotiate the academic sources once the students have retrieved them. Crucially, it did not, therefore, allow students to sharpen their critical thinking skills by evaluating the sources. The second major misconception was that a 45-minute library instruction presentation adequately prepared students to handle even the most basic challenges of academic research. According to Debbie Orr, Margaret Appleton, and Margie Wallin, "the 'one-off,' demonstration-style information skills classes delivered out of curriculum context do not necessarily coincide with the students' need for information, are sometimes not valued by students, and do not necessarily prepare them for the challenges of research, problem solving, and continuous learning" (457). The original Exercise was built on the basis that a single library instruction presentation keyed into the distribution of the Exercise would furnish students with sufficient information to complete it successfully. This compartmentalizes course content and information literacy and assumes that information literacy somehow can be "dealt with" in a single session. To separate information literacy and course content is a false proposition: information literacy is course content and needs to be seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the course, rather than appended to existing course material.

Clearly, the Exercise needed an overhaul and this task required a collaborative approach. Armed with these insights and bolstered by research in the field of information literacy, we decided to provide students with a thorough introduction to academic research through a more sustained and meaningful learning experience. The information literacy skills that students must acquire to become lifelong critical thinkers--skills such as the evaluation of resources and the ability to use resources in the creation of new knowledge--demand the integration of information literacy into course content; such a synthesis requires the close cooperation of the teaching faculty and the librarian instructor. As Lorie Roth notes, "In colleges and universities that are serious about meeting the challenge of the Information Age, the information literacy of students is a responsibility shared by faculty and librarians and is achieved by integrating information skills into the academic curriculum" (43). While the ultimate goal of the information literacy movement is to enact broad-based curricular change throughout the university (Brems 241), positive change is possible on a smaller scale. Therefore, we decided to make alterations to one "traditional" library instruction session and one "traditional" Library Research Exercise, changes that would incorporate information literacy strategies and enhance students' research and critical thinking skills.

We agreed that the librarian's lecture-based library instruction session and the faculty member's tool-based approach to the Exercise did not integrate information literacy skills into the literature course's curriculum or into students' learning experiences. We began by evaluating the usefulness of the "traditional" library instruction session. Clearly, the 45-minute lecture/demonstration was not accomplishing its goal of teaching students how to become independent library users. We both wanted students to use the online databases efficiently when working on research projects. But, perhaps more urgently, we also wanted students to critically assess the information they found on the databases by asking questions about the authority, credibility, currency, bias, and usability of the resources. The lecture format was not sufficient to teach students these multiple skills because it did not create an experiential learning environment. According to Kunkel, Weaver, and Cook, "Students are more likely to develop critical judgment through active learning strategies" (432). We decided to provide students with the opportunity to practice using the library resources introduced during the session.

However, adding an active learning component to the library instruction session created the possible risk of overwhelming students with too much information and too many activities in too short a period of time. Attempting to teach students too much often results in teaching them nothing at all; adding the active learning component to an already full instruction session would only muddy the waters further. We therefore took the "less is more" approach: if we were to teach critical thinking skills via active learning strategies, we needed to avoid confusing students, and we could accomplish this by exposing the students to fewer resources and teaching those resources well.

We drafted a lesson plan for the library instruction, dovetailing it with the revised Library Research Exercise (see Appendix B), and addressing the wider need for transferable critical thinking skills. First, we changed the venue of the session from the classroom to the library itself. Situating the instruction session in the library served three main purposes: it reinforced the centrality of the library to the students' academic lives; it provided them with a practical opportunity to become familiar with the space; and it tackled a source of library anxiety by acquainting students with the library in a non-threatening way, as research has shown that "Students who are not comfortable in the library tend to be anxious" (Jiao and Onwuegbuzie 374). Second, we developed a more interactive instruction session: whereas in the past the session began with a "show-and-tell" description of subject reference materials, we now asked students to use those resources in groups to answer specific research quandaries. The groups then presented both the reference resources and their findings to the class as a whole.

Given our new goal of teaching critical evaluation skills, we dispensed with teaching the online catalog altogether; most students in Critical Analysis have experienced at least one library instruction session in Freshman English or general survey courses and thus are already familiar with the catalog. We also focused on one database--Literature Online (LION): a clear and thorough grounding in the LION resource would result in research skills that would be transferable to the MLA environment. Students were presented with a research question and asked to use LION to find articles which answered the question. Although we did use a lecture/demonstration format to teach the more mechanical aspects of using the database, we also actively questioned students and allowed them to "figure out" the database with us.

Once the class obtained a list of articles, we gave students a set of criteria (authority, currency, accuracy, usability, bias) to use when assessing scholarly resources. They reviewed individual articles, analyzed them using the evaluation handout, and selected the "best" articles based on the criteria. After the students answered the research question, we divided them into groups and gave each group a research question to explore together. The in-class assignment mirrored the revised Library Skills Exercise that would later be assigned as homework. The intention was to demystify the actual mechanics of the Exercise, enabling students to focus on its critical thinking elements. We guided the students as they used the library's computers to practice the mechanics of using LION; together, the students also analyzed and assessed the articles they found on the database. The class then reconvened to discuss their findings and their selections before being asked to complete the graded Exercise individually at home.

Another change that we saw as essential was to increase the frequency of student experience of library skills; as Patricia Senn Breivik has noted, "to achieve information literacy, students must be given repeated opportunities to work with the same information that will bombard them throughout their lives" (26). Moreover, we felt that repeated exposure to library skills demonstrates to students that such skills are integral to course content and cannot be compartmentalized into a single information literacy session. Therefore, we dedicated a portion of the following class period to answering student questions about research in general and the Library Research Exercise in particular.

The results of the revised Library Research Exercise were mixed. As with the original Exercise, the mechanics of navigating the online index and of recovering sources provided students with few challenges. However, students were less sure about the appropriateness of the scholarly source they had selected for their "Hypothetical Research Assignment" (see Appendix B). During the presentation on evaluating a scholarly article, we had provided a number of mechanisms for students to use to evaluate an academic source for a specific research project: we had recommended that students read through the abstract of the article, read the introduction and look for the thesis statement, and read the conclusion. We also suggested that students do a "Find Word" search of the article, using the Find on Page function of their browser to see how often and in what context their particular search term occurred in the article. If all these methods taken together yielded a potentially useful article, then we told students to read the article carefully and evaluate it using the components listed on the accompanying handout.

When we examined students' completed Exercises, we discovered that a number of students had focused on the "Find Word" search to select their article, instead of undertaking the full set of recommendations listed above, displaying what Barbara Valentine calls the "workaround"--a technique that students use when undertaking research which saves time but which does "not necessarily reap the best results" (112). The "Find Word" search had been used by a number of students as the sole method for detecting an article on Hamlet and "marriage," with the result that some students evaluated an article which was entirely inappropriate for the "Hypothetical Research Assignment." Consequently, we have learned to deploy these "workarounds" extremely cautiously: what was intended to supplement and streamline a portion of the evaluation and critical thinking process, a few students had used instead of this process.

Although our Library Research Exercise continues to be a work-in-progress, we can draw important lessons from teaching information literacy in this context. First and foremost, collaboration between faculty member and instructor is crucial to crafting an information literacy assignment which is a natural outgrowth of both the subject being taught in the class and of the learning experience per se. Instructors are models for their students: inviting the librarian into a classroom on a regular basis, shaping the instructional context precisely to that librarian's skills, and emphasizing the integral nature of research, writing, and critical thinking, establishes incontrovertibly for students that research is learning, that the library is part of the classroom, that the librarian is a teacher.

Second, students should have ongoing support in the course of the Library Research Exercise: we should assist them at every step of the research and writing process. Working collaboratively, faculty and librarians hone students' abilities to navigate online resources and provide intensive support for students when they evaluate, analyze, and use academic sources in their own research. It is important to demonstrate instructional commitment to students as it communicates to them the serious nature of the assignment (that it is not simply something we do for 45-minutes before moving on to another subject); it also helps students to negotiate any library anxiety they may be experiencing. This commitment is reinforced by the librarian making multiple class visits--some of which may only need to be of a few minutes' duration--on a point-of-need basis.

Third, students should develop transferable skills, the most important of which is critical thinking. In learning how to more effectively evaluate scholarly sources, students read more attentively and learn about the importance of voice, register, context, and purpose-characteristics of accomplished writers across the disciplines. As Betsy N. Hine, Janet Meek, and Ruth H. Miller note, "Information literacy is not affected by changes in resources and in technology; if students acquire these skills, they have not lost out when the technology changes" (23). Emphasizing the analytical over the mechanical, the critical thinking skills over the technical skills, responds to students' immediate academic needs; it also equips students to elegantly adapt to the rapidly-changing technological landscape of information retrieval.

It is not enough for students to simply find the appropriate material. They need to be able to understand it and use it effectively because "Ultimately, information literate people are those who have learned how to learn. They know how to learn because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find information, and how to use information in such a way that others can learn from them" (American Library Association 1). If faculty and librarians take the first step, communicate with one another about how information literacy can be efficiently and sensitively integrated into existing course content, they will begin the process by which students can truly become engaged scholars and responsible citizens, able to effectively navigate their way through a complicated world.

Appendix A

Susi Paterson, Engl 519: Introduction to Critical Analysis, Assignment Sheet Library Research Exercise. Completed Exercise due Wed. 19 November

Rationale: This exercise will give you a working knowledge of the Modern Language Association (MLA) database and the Literature Online (LION) database. If you are en English major, you will discover that the MLA database is the foundational tool for all research in literature. If you are majoring in another discipline, you will find that the MLA database works in a similar way to many other online indices, and that the proficiency you develop can be applied to other areas of academic research. Whatever your major, it's important that you can effectively navigate your way around electronic databases because they are the databases that lead to genuinely sophisticated, in-depth, focused scholarship.

Articles published in scholarly journals have been approved ("refereed") by experts in the field, as have books and chapters in books. While this doesn't always guarantee high quality and complete accuracy, the academic review process is designed to identify and publish new and valuable work, and weed out work that hasn't yet reached this level. Scholarly resources are far superior to what is available on the Internet in general. Even nowadays, the Internet offers limited, very general, and usually "unrefereed" work. Anyone can post anything on the net. It may be a helpful place to start, but it should never be the first and last place that you go. Instructions:

Exercise 1

a) Using the MLA database, search "Hamlet and performance" as subject. Limit to English and Journal Articles. Print up the first page of your list of hits.

b) From your list of hits, find one article that's available in full-text format from one of the UNH Manchester library online databases. (The UNHM library shares its databases with all of the libraries of the UNH Library System). You can find the full-text journals by searching for the titles of the journals in the "Full-Text Electronic Databases" list which is on the Online Resources page of the UNHM Library's website. (If in doubt, follow the instructions on the flowchart you've been provided with). Print up the first page of one of the articles that is available in full-text format from one of our library's online databases.

c) From your list of hits in step a) find out which journals are owned by UNH Durham only (should be listed as Dimond Library). Fill out an interlibrary request form for one article in one such journal, and submit this as part of your assignment. Do not actually call in the article from Durham. You can get a paper form in the library.

Exercise 2

a) Using the Literature Online database (LION), click the "Search Criticism and Reference" link. Then click the "ABELL + FT" button. At the search screen, search for "Hamlet" as a subject and "performance" as a keyword. Under the "Limit to" box, highlight "Journal Articles." Click "Submit Search. "Print up the first page of your list of hits.

b) From this list of hits, find one which is full-text in LION. Hits that have a page icon next to them are full-text. Print up the first page of one of the full-text articles.

Appendix B

Susi Paterson, Engl 519: Introduction to Critical Analysis, Assignment Sheet

Library Research Exercise. Completed Exercise due Mon. 19 April

Rationale: This exercise will give you a working knowledge of the Literature Online (LION) database and some practice in evaluating scholarly sources for possible use in your own research. If you are an English major, you will discover that the LION database is very useful for your research in literature, If you are majoring in another discipline, you will find that the LION database works in a similar way to many other online indices, and that the proficiency you develop can be applied to other areas of academic research. Whatever your major, it's important that you can effectively navigate your way around electronic databases because they are the databases that lead to genuinely sophisticated, in-depth, focused scholarship. In addition, you must learn to understand and assess the usefulness of sources you find in such databases: how can you use them in your own research; how valuable are they to your understanding of the primary text; what criteria can you use in assessing a scholarly article?

Articles published in scholarly journals have been approved ("refereed") by experts in the field, as have books and chapters in books. While this doesn't always guarantee high quality and complete accuracy, the academic review process is designed to identify and publish new and valuable work, and weed out work that hasn't yet reached this level. Scholarly resources are far superior to what is available on the Internet in general. Even nowadays, the Internet offers limited, very general, and usually "unrefereed" work. Anyone can post anything on the net. It may be a helpful place to start, but it should never be the first and last place that you go. Instructions:

Hypothetical Research Context: You are writing an essay exploring the relationship between Gertrude and her husband Claudius in Hamlet. You need to find a scholarly article in an academic journal that helps you understand their marriage. You'll use the Literature Online database (LION) to search for your scholarly article. Use "Hamlet" as the subject heading; focus your search further by using "marriage" as a keyword; limit your search only to journal articles. When you are ready:

a) Print the first page of your list of hits

b) From this list of hits, find a full-text article that will help you with your investigation into Claudius' and Gertrude's marriage.

i) Print the first page of this article

ii) Using the criteria discussed in class and the accompanying handout, write a paragraph (10 sentences or so) evaluating how and why this article will be useful for your hypothetical essay. Do not tell us what you did to find your article; tell us instead WHY and HOW the CONTENT of the article will be a good source for your essay.

Works Cited

American Library Association. ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report. Chicago: American Library Association, 1989.

Association of College and Research Libraries; American Library Association. Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2000.

Bergen, Kathleen, and Barbara MacAdam. "One-on-One: Term Paper AssistancePrograms." RQ 24.3 (1985): 333-340.

Breivik, Patricia Senn. Student Learning in the Information Age. Phoenix, AZ: American Council on Education/Oryx Press, 1998.

Brems, Christiane. "Taking the Fear Out of Research: A Gentle Approach to Teaching an Appreciation of Research." Teaching of Psychology 21.4 (1994): 241-43.

Hine, Betsy N., Janet Meek, and Ruth H. Miller. "Bibliographic Instruction for the Adult Student in an Academic Library." The Journal of Continuing Higher Education 37.2 (1989): 20-24.

Jacobson, Trudi E., and John Vallely. "A Half-Built Bridge: The Unfinished Work of Bibliographic Instruction." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 17.6 (1992): 359-363.

Jiao, Qun G., and Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie. "Antecedents of Library Anxiety." Library Quarterly 67.4 (1997): 372-89.

Kunkel, Lilith R., Susan M. Weaver, and Kim N. Cook. "What Do They Know?: An Assessment of Undergraduate Library Skills." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 22 (Nov. 1996): 430-34.

Orr, Debbie, Margaret Appleton, and Margie Wallin. "Information Literacy and Flexible Delivery: Creating a Conceptual Framework and Model." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 27.6 (2001): 457-63.

Roth, Lode. "Educating the Cut-and-Paste Generation." Library Journal 124.18 (1999): 42-44.

Shapiro, Jeremy J. and Shelley K. Hughes. "Information Literacy as a Liberal Art." Educom Review 31.2 (March/April 1996): 29 pars. 5 September 2004 <http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewarticles/31231.html>.

Valentine, Barbara. "The Legitimate Effort in Research Papers: Student Commitment versus Faculty Expectations." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 27.2 (2001): 107-15.

Susanne F. Paterson, University of New Hampshire at Manchester 

Carolyn B. White, University of New Hampshire at Manchester Library

Paterson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of English, and White, M.A. and M.L.I.S., is an Assistant Professor/Library Specialist.