2017 Program

2017 KLA LIRT Retreat Program

July 21, 2017 | Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville

​Full presentations and handouts from the 2017 KLA LIRT Retreat are available here. Presentations are linked via Slideshare, Prezi, or individual presenters' institutional repositories.

Closing Keynote

Why People Forget Most of What They're Taught...And What You Can Do About It

Keith B. Lyle, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director of the Memory and Cognition Lab | University of Louisville

It's sad but true: People forget most of what they're taught, sometimes within mere minutes. Drawing on cognitive psychology, this presentation explains why retention of information is often frustratingly poor and suggests ways to combat the problem.

Presentations

Assessing the One Shot Instruction Session

Dana Statton, Research and Instruction Librarian | Murray State University

Handout

Do you want clear data showing the effectiveness of your instruction session? This session explores how assessment of current qualitative evaluation forms resulted in retooling learning outcomes for specific courses, the addition of more focused questions, and quantitative, measurable results. Using Dominque Turnbow and Annie Zeidman-Karpinksi’s approach, explained in Don't Use a Hammer When You Need a Screwdriver: How to Use the Right Tools to Create Assessment That Matters, it’s possible to collect meaningful data that improves your practice. Please bring to the session any learning outcomes that you would like to revise as well as any assessment questions or evaluation forms to workshop. You too can create assessment that matters.

Let's Make a Plan: Integrating Information Literacy Concepts into the Disciplines

Andrea Brooks, Information Literacy Coordinator and Jane Hammons, Instructional Services Librarian | Northern Kentucky University

Templates of Course Instruction Support Form, Program Plan, and Targeted Course Plan

While information literacy instruction has traditionally focused on general education courses, there has been a growing emphasis on the need for disciplinary information literacy. This presentation will guide participants through the development of an IL plan for a discipline. Presenters have developed and implemented IL plans for multiple disciplines. For each selected major, librarians developed an instructional plan that includes targeted courses, learning outcomes, teaching strategies, and assessment criteria. The development of these plans involved reviewing the campus catalog, program and department websites, and course syllabi to select targeted courses. From there, librarians adapted existing learning outcomes to specific disciplines, mapped these outcomes to the targeted courses, and developed instruction support forms and resources for each selected course. With this approach, librarians are better able to scaffold concepts within a discipline and ensure consistency for students in each targeted major. Presenters will share examples of the IL plans that they have developed for different disciplines, and using these examples as a guide, participants will walk away with ideas for developing discipline-specific approaches on their own campus.

Using Story Structure to Create Better Presentations (Based on the Anatomy of Story by John Truby)

Cara Marco, Assistant Library Director | Sullivan University Library and Learning Resource Center

Giving a presentation can be a source of great satisfaction, but all too often, presenters are left with the feeling that they lost their audience entirely. How can we present ideas in a compelling, well-organized way that makes a viewer want to keep watching? Instead of simply conveying information, we can use the same techniques as our favorite authors and screenwriters – the power of story. In this presentation, using the steps to storytelling developed by John Truby and explained in his book The Anatomy of Story, Assistant Library Director Cara Marco helps librarians develop a more compelling instructional presentation, persuade someone to adopt an idea, or get approval for an all-important project.

Academic Librarians' Perceptions of Instructional Efficacy in the Commonwealth of Kentucky

Kevin L. Jones, Reference & Instruction Librarian, Karen Gilbert, Associate Librarian, and Brad Marcum, University Librarian | Eastern Kentucky University

Handout

This study examined the perceptions of Kentucky academic librarians concerning library instruction at public and private institutional types across the Commonwealth. Instructional methods including for-credit courses, one-shot instruction sessions, online instructional materials, and others were examined for their efficacy, frequency, and time consumed. The purpose of the study is to aid in the establishment of baseline data on the changing nature of library instruction and information literacy techniques in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Intentionality and Transparency as Pedagogical Techniques in the Information Literacy Classroom

Beth Fuchs, Undergraduate Learning Librarian | University of Kentucky

When you build a lesson plan for a class session, how do you decide on its content and activities? What if you started to peel back the curtain a bit and let students in on some of your thinking and intentions? Recent research from The Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Project at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has shown that students benefit when teachers articulate the thought processes behind instructional decisions and goals with them. This relatively small intervention, traditionally applied to assignment design, has shown to have a big impact. How can the results of research on transparent teaching practices benefit the professional practice of instruction librarians, even when leading a one-shot session? This session will explore the research behind transparent teaching, consider the assumptions that underlie it, and provide practical ways to implement it.

Student Engagement with Sources in Library Instruction

Clay Howard, Reference & Instruction Librarian Team Leader | Eastern Kentucky University

In this presentation I will introduce a source analysis group exercise for the library instruction classroom and will discuss the philosophy behind it. I propose that student engagement with relevant sources should take priority over all other library instruction objectives. Obstacles to student engagement with sources abound and can include computers, lessons about Booleans and search statements, library webpages, lessons on CRAAP tests and other criteria for evaluating information, librarian fear of sources, et al. Conducting a source analysis exercise immediately at the outset of library instruction removes many of these obstacles and has numerous benefits:

• it captures student attention and legitimizes the librarian
• it introduces students to a variety of information types often neglected in library instruction
• it piques student curiosity and convinces students that high-quality sources relevant to their topic exist and can be found
• it contextualizes “evaluating information” by forcing students to think about how they might use different source types in their writing

The exercise can be used in a variety of disciplines and can be easily modified to target specific learning outcomes.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: Sussing Out "Fake News" in a Post-Truth Era

Jason Cooper, Head of Technical Services | Transylvania University

A three session sequence was presented to a cohort of First-Year Research Seminar (FYRS) students at Transylvania University. As part of the FYRS curriculum, students attended sessions that focused on basic research skills such as generating keywords and evaluating information sources. A rare fourth session featured a short talk on the various forms of fake news. Students were assigned one of the top circulating fake news stories of 2016 as compiled by BuzzFeed News. Their task was to apply the knowledge gained in previous library sessions, and to show how they analyzed their story for information currency, relevancy, accuracy, authority, and purpose. By sharing our students’ work on Tumblr, we hope to show how Transy students are engaging with the timely topic of misinformation. The fake news project demonstrates Transy Library’s commitment to its institutional mission of fostering lifelong learning and social responsibility.

Throwing Away My (One) Shot: The Evolution of Library Instruction

Heather Beirne, Education Librarian and Ashley Cole, Reference & Instruction Librarian | Eastern Kentucky University

The new ACRL Framework calls librarians to be information literacy facilitators, advocates, and partners, collaborating more deeply with faculty and mentoring students as they navigate an information environment that is becoming increasingly participatory and less static and hierarchical. Accordingly, librarians must adapt beyond the one-shot model of library instruction by “creating a new cohesive curriculum for information literacy, and in collaborating more extensively with faculty.” Through the intentional, synergetic redesign of instruction, assignments, and courses, together with purposeful campus-wide conversations about the scholarship of teaching and learning and student success, librarians will truly and authentically empower students to engage in deep learning about topics in information literacy(ACRL).

Join two EKU Librarians for a discussion of the ways in which we are working to expand our reach beyond the one-shot instruction session, including the development of a suite of information literacy-centered faculty professional development, faculty information literacy toolkits, an expanded research appointments program, embedded librarianship, and more.