Creating Collaborations for Providing Sci-Tech Information Literacy

1. Creating Collaborations for Providing Sci-Tech Information Literacy Using Active Learning Techniques to get a foot in the door. ALA ACRL/STS Presentation, June 28, 2004 M. Fosmire, Head, PSET Division, Purdue University

2. Acknowledgements • Alexius Macklin, User Instruction Librarian at Purdue, who has had more to do with the success of this program than I have. • Wayne Booker, a private donor, provided seed money for this program.

3. Outline • Share some venues for making connections • Describe how problem-based learning (PBL) is ideal for teaching information literacy • Provide examples of PBL collaborations at Purdue

4. Age old Question of BI • How do you get attention of instructors? • Ans: • Feed them/Incentives • Get info literacy in University strategic plan • Get involved in University-wide teaching initiatives

5. Incentives • Our grant bought lunch for about 15 faculty • Presentation resulted in two pilot groups and several interested faculty members • Faculty conversations among selves helps define needs, desires • Phase 2: Mini-grants to buy time of faculty to develop information literacy projects (Macklin)

6. University Strategic Plan • Purdue has a strategic plan mentioning information literacy: • Goal 2 — Learning:Attain and preserve excellence in learning through programs of superior quality and value in every academic discipline • Core competencies of learners in critical thinking, communication skills, information literacy, information technology, and methods of inquiry; teaching students how to learn; and sensitizing them to the values, ethical principles, and global perspectives implicit in their studies • Good for foot-in-the-door “how are you meeting the strategic plan goals of information literacy?”

7. University-wide Teaching Initiatives • Universities have rediscovered their teaching mission – formed Centers for Teaching Excellence to support instructors • Centers are always looking for programming • research assignments • plagiarism • problem-based learning

8. Focus on PBL • Dramatic success with PBL model for information literacy instruction • Alexius Macklin co-founded PBL interest group in CIE • Campus-wide PBL Day, May 2001, with poster sessions and presentations.

9. Why PBL? • Active Learning Technique • Hands-on activities more interesting than lectures • Faculty increasingly required to include active learning in courses • Inherently requires information skills – ‘Stealth info literacy’

10. What Is PBL? • Students are given an ‘ill-structured’ open-ended problem to solve. • Students need to: • articulate what the core problem is, • determine what information they already have, • determine what information they need to gather, • synthesize the information to resolve the problem, and • defend their results.

11. Power of PBL • Technique intrinsically requires research—to identify ‘learning issues’ for problem and filling those needs • Structure follows info literacy competency standards • Information skills follow content, not vice versa • Skills acquired at point of need, as wrestling with the problem

12. Example (EAS 109) • Problem: • Everyone is talking about global warming. As a legislative aide, you need your boss to stay in power, so you can keep your job. Recommend a policy about global warming that will make your congressperson look good. • Specifically: Your working group has been selected to provide a recommendation concerning X as a possible solution to the global warming situation. For the next lab, prepare a presentation showing why your recommendation should be endorsed by your boss.

13. How Information Literacy Fits In. • In order for the student to be successful at their project, they need to be able to: • Articulate their problem/information need • Locate needed information • Analyze and evaluate information • Synthesize information to solve the problem • Properly attribute information sources • In a nutshell, the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards

14. Problem Definition • From the scenario, ask students to extract the main question or problem they need to resolve, in their own words. • Basically, create a research question or hypothesis

15. Determine ‘Learning Issues’ • We use KND method • What do they already Know? • What do they Need to know? • What do they Do to find their information? • With a KND chart, they can articulate their information needs.

16. Topic Articulation Worksheet • For example, How old is the Earth?: • What do I Know? • Teacher said 4.6 billion years • Radio-something dating • I’m 20 years old, so its older than that • What do I Need to know? • The date of the Earth’s Formation • What is radio-something dating? • How does it work? How accurate is it? • What do I need to Do to find it? • Write down key concepts • Put them together to create searches for information. • E.g. – age of earth; radiometric dating, ice cores, formation of earth

17. Then, let them work • Let ‘em loose on the internet (20 minutes) – Locate Information • They write down what they learn • Exchange papers (10 minutes) – Analyze/Evaluate Information • Give them evaluation criteria and peers see if they found some ‘good stuff’. • Present to Class (5 minutes) • Students present good, bad examples • Students like to learn from peers

18. Then, repeat with Journals • They have used search strategies in a forgiving system (the Web) • Now, they dig into more substantial fare • Repeat search and report process—asking them to find differences between web and published resources

19. Bringing it all together • Groups create presentation defending their solution to the problem – Synthesizing Information; Citing Information • The best presentations are repeated in the lecture class, and questions from them appear on exams

20. What do the Instructors Do? • Cliché for active learning:Not the sage on the stage, but the guide on the side. • Circulate for one-on-one help with all aspects of the exercise • Since interfaces come and go, concentrate on discovery skills rather than syntax

21. Student Results (self-evaluation)

22. Student Results (cont.) • 54% of students rated Information Labs as one of top two labs in the course • Instructors saw marked improvement in student papers

23. Status of this Project • The Development of a Program: • Year 1: Michael Fosmire and Alexius Macklin, created two information labs, 4 lab sections • Year 2: Michael Fosmire and Carolyn Laffoon, created one information lab, 4 lab sections • Year 3: Trained TA’s to administer lab, Carolyn Laffoon providing backup assistance, 5 lab sections • Moving responsibility to TA’s, makes project scalable and more tightly integrated into curriculum

24. Other Projects • Vet Med—integrated into their PBL coursework -- G. Stephens and B. Brown) (mini-grant) • Rte. 231 relocation (HTM, Forestry, Landscape Arch) – V. Killion (mini-grant) • Science and Society – A. Macklin • EAS 243 Mineralogy – M. Fosmire • Coming Soon: • Ag + Bio Eng.; • Organizational Leadership and Supervision

25. Last Words of Advice • Flog your successes (and those of others) as much as possible • But, don’t think that one technique or style fits every situation… • Listen to your faculty’s needs and respond to them

26. Conclusions • PBL offers a foot in the door to help faculty provide active learning exercises • PBL-based exercises promote hands-on experience with all Information Literacy Competency Standards • Students enjoy labs • Students feel they can transfer skills to reports/projects in other classes

27. Instruction URLs • EAS 109 • www.lib.purdue.edu/eas/inst/eas109 • Vet Med 520-540 • http://www.lib.purdue.edu/vetmed/inst/svmleader/index.html • Rt 231 relocation • http://www.lib.purdue.edu/pnhs/inst/231Relocation/ • EAS 243 • www.lib.purdue.edu/eas/inst/eas243 • Comments or Questions: • fosmire@purdue.edu

28. Further Reading Background on the techniques of PBL and more detail on our collaborations • Duch, B.J., Groh, S.E., and Allen, D.E. 2001. The Power of Problem-based Learning. Stylus: Stirling, VA. • Fogarty, Robin. 1997. Problem-based Learning and Other Curriculum Models for the Multiple Intelligences. Classroom. Skylight: Arlington Heights, Ill. • Macklin, A.S. 2002. Integrating Information Literacy Using Problem-based Learning. Reference Services Review. 29(4):306-314. • Macklin, Alexius Smith, and Michael Fosmire. “The LEADER Project.” College and Research Libraries News, 64, no 3 (2003): 192-195. • Fosmire, Michael and Alexius Macklin. “Riding the Active Learning Wave: Using Problem-Based Learning as a Catalyst for Creating Faculty-Librarian Partnerships.” Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 34, Spring 2002. http://www.istl.org/02-spring/article2.html.