2014 Program

2014 KLA LIRT Retreat Program

July 11, 2014 | Business Library and Academic Commons, Eastern Kentucky University

Full presentations and handouts from the 2014 KLA LIRT Retreat are available here. Presentations are linked via Slideshare, Prezi, or individual presenters' institutional repositories.

Presentations

Gauging our impact: Assessing Outreach and Student Learning Using Readily-Available Technologies

Toccara D. Porter, Rosalinda Linares, and Samantha McClellan | University of Louisville

Critical inquiry is an integral part of information literacy. Equally important is assessing student learning outcomes that identify changes for library instruction approaches as well as teacher development. Three projects will be highlighted by University of Louisville librarians:

1. Piloted self-reflection exercise for students who attended library instruction sessions.
2. Blackboard statistics tracking on SoftChalk tutorials for distance education students.
3. Open-ended student feedback for course-embedded SoftChalk modules.

Google embedded forms, Blackboard, and open-ended surveys were used to gather data on student learning. This assessment has implications for outreach opportunities, information literacy instruction, and visibility to the campus-wide community. Instruction librarians will leave the presentation with a renewed perspective on using readily available technology for assessment.

Learning to Teach, Teaching to Learn: Developing a Sense of Self as an Instruction Librarian

Lisa Nichols | Transylvania University

This interactive session will explore the professional development practices of instruction librarians and ask participants to reflect critically on those experiences, both in and out of the classroom, that inform their identity as a teaching librarian. We will brainstorm and discuss potential strategies for developing greater authenticity, presence, and emotional investment in the teaching and learning that occurs in our library settings.

How's it Different from an Annotated Bib? Helping Students Survive the Literature Review

Leslie Valley | Eastern Kentucky University

To better prepare students for graduate-level research and writing, many faculty are incorporating literature review requirements in their undergraduate classes. Students, however, are often unfamiliar with the goals, structures, and expectations of such assignments and faculty may struggle to teach them. Because librarians are the introduction and bridge to research, faculty turn to them to offer guidance beyond searching and accessing information for the literature review. This session will offer strategies and resources for explaining literature reviews and helping students learn how to understand, organize, and frame their research.

“A Funny Thing Happened in Library Instruction" : Facilitating Communication Through Humor

Ashley Cole and Linda Sizemore | Eastern Kentucky University

This interactive presentation will describe the biology behind humor, when to use humor, and the importance of it in communicating information literacy to students, faculty, and EVERYONE. As facilitators of learning, librarians can use humor as a teaching tool to reduce library anxiety and to increase creative thinking. Participants will learn techniques and share methods in order to gain an understanding that humor is a skill that must be cultivated.

Library on the Go: Taking the Library to the Students

Carrie Byrd, Jan Wren, and Sara Schumacher | University of the Cumberlands

Library on the Go is a new program piloted by the University of the Cumberlands in Spring 2014. We had three main goals when we began this project: to promote awareness of library resources, particularly mobile apps and discipline-specific databases; to reach students, particularly those who do not frequent the library, by having librarians available at campus activities and locations; and to boost the visibility of the library and the librarians around campus.

This session will focus on how the library partnered with several campus constituencies during Spring 2014 and how we plan to improve and expand the program in the future. We will discuss our use of iPads and other mobile devices to take the library to the students. The use of these devices allows us to give the students an opportunity to be more active in their instruction, rather than in a classroom setting where individual instruction is not feasible. By allowing students to be hands on we can ensure they are taking away knowledge relevant to their current and future needs. We will also talk about our assessment techniques, which include having the students demonstrate on the mobile devices their understanding of our customized instruction.

Achieving the Olympian Feat of Gamifying Library Instruction

Ray Bailey | Morehead State University

At Morehead State University’s Camden-Carroll Library, we “gamified” our one-shot Library Instruction by creating the “Library Research Olympics Triathlon.” Since we implemented the gaming approach, feedback from librarians, faculty, and students has been very positive, and achievement of our Student Learner Outcomes has improved. This session will provide details about the rules, policies, and procedures we developed, as well as a discussion of the challenges inherent in creating a game suitable for one-shot instruction.

Using Exploratory Image Searching to Invite Inquiry into the Student Research Experience

Beth Fuchs | University of Kentucky

From the student perspective, progress in the research process is made by moving directly from choosing a topic to collecting sources. Developing a focus and identifying interesting questions are often seen as time-wasters and left out of the process entirely, particularly in the case of novice researchers, and yet, research tells us that these are the areas where students tend to struggle the most. How can we introduce students to the idea that before they can find answers, they need to ask questions? This session will introduce the idea of using image searching as a method for helping students who are at the beginning stages of research to engage with their topics. By initially focusing on images rather than words, students are freed to interact with their topics visually which can create an environment conducive to exploration and investigation. This session will describe the development of this teaching technique, demonstrate how to implement it in class, and assess its instructional strengths and weaknesses.

The Role of Creativity in Information Literacy and Research

Clay Howard and Trenia Napier | Eastern Kentucky University

In this session we will explore the role of creativity in information literacy and research. The presenters will describe their experiences planning and delivering a new, for-credit Creativity & Research course and model an in-class topic development exercise. The session is geared toward those seeking to inject creativity into an existing credit-bearing info lit course (or those seeking to propose one) or to those seeking to inject creativity into their one-shot library instruction sessions and/or info lit drop-in workshops.

Participants can expect to:

• Discuss “big C and small c” creativity
• See creative research products from the course
• Work with a group to create a lesson plan for info lit learning outcomes
• Participate in a round-the-room “graffiti” topic development exercise