Assignments Worth Doing: Engaging in Inquiry

1. Assignments Worth Doing:Engaging in Inquiry Iowa ACRL March 3, 2008 Jean Donham, Ph. D. Cornell College

2. Information Literacy • Skills, knowledge, and disposition for meaning-making • Contextual • Inquiry-based

4. Student Research What do today’s students think library research looks like? Assembly? Cut and paste? Reporting? Transferring?

5. Report Research Gordon, Carol (1999). Students as authentic researchers: A new prescription for the high school research assignment,” School Library Media Research Online, volume 2: 1-21.

6. Learning is in the question. . . • Encyclopedic: Information but rarely insight. • Meaning-oriented: What is the significance within a context? • Relational: What are the factors. . .? What influences. . .? What is the effect of time and events? • Value-oriented: What is the impact. . .? Who cares and why? • Solution-oriented: What can be done? What needs to be done?

7. Inquiry Observing Questioning Analyzing Questioning Reflecting Questioning

8. Findings Relevant/Personal Not just reporting Curiosity “Research in reverse” “Thinking like a scientist”

9. Authenticity • Higher order thinking • Deep knowledge • Substantive conversation • Real-world connection Newmann, Fred, Secada, Walter, and Wehlage, Gary (1995). A Guide to Authentic Instruction and Asessment: Vision, Standards and Scoring. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

10. Biology

11. Information Literacy Defined Attainment of the skills, knowledge, and disposition that enable one to locate, evaluate, use and communicate information effectively for the purposes of solving a problem, making a decision, or generating new knowledge.

12. Information Literacy Dimensions Skills: • be able to generate meaningful questions • be skilled in locating information • be able evaluating information • be able to analyze information and use it to construct meaning • be able to apply information intelligently to problems and decisions

13. Information Literacy Dimensions Knowledge: • What is intellectual property and why does it matter? • How is information organized to provide access in electronic resources? • What is bias and how does one recognize it?

14. Information Literacy Dimensions Dispositions: • be curious • be open-minded • be investigative • be metacognitive • be strategic • reason • use evidence Ritchhart, R. (2001, April). From IQ to IC: A dispositional view of intelligence. Roeper Review, 23 (3): 143-150.

15. Learning You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.  ~Clay P. Bedford It must be remembered that the purpose of education is not to fill the minds of students with facts... it is to teach them to think, if that is possible, and always to think for themselves. ~Robert Hutchins

16. Sources cited Donham, Jean, Kay Bishop, Carol Collier Kuhlthau, and Dianne Oberg (2001). Inquiry-Based Learning: Lessons from Library Power. Worthington, OH: Linworth Press. Farmer, Leslie. (2007). What Is the Question?. IFLA Journal, 33(1), 41-49 Gordon, Carol (1999). Students as authentic researchers: A new prescription for the high school research assignment,” School Library Media Research Online, volume 2: 1-21. Newmann, Fred, Walter G. Secada, and Gary G. Wehlage (1995). A Guide to Authentic Instruction and Assessment: Vision, Standards, and Scoring. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Ritchhart, Ron. (2001). From IQ to IC: A dispositional view of intelligence. Roeper Review, 23 (3): 143-150.