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Information Literacy at Beloit College The information literacy program is for faculty who want to develop course assignments and teaching materials which advance students' abilities to locate, evaluate, organize, and synthesize information. The information literate student who appears on the left
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Information Literacy Summer
Forum
Coordinated by
the information literacy planning group
Joy DeLeon, Josh Hickman, Chuck Lewis, Sarah Meadus, and Chris Nelson
2008 Forum Schedule - May 20-23
Note: Readings may be selected from the Information Literacy Bibliography
- Fran Abbate drafted a course unit for her First Year Initiative course about "Venice--Invisible City." Outcomes of the assignments include greater visual literacy, practical suggestions for writing about art, forming research questions, and critical reflection about using sources.
- Kristin Bonnie developed an Introduction to a Scientific Research Paper assignment for the Psychology Research Methods and Design class. Students read and analyze a journal article, and learn how a scientific research article is constructed.
- Darrah Chavey's assignments for Cultural Approaches to Mathematics guide students through developmental steps in producing a term project. Students refine their topics, and consult a variety of online resources and databases to develop their lists of sources.
- Oswaldo Voysest prepared assignments for a Spring 2009 course titled Historical Figures and Events through Hispanic Literature and Film. Students read novels and watch films about how these figures have been portrayed in artistic works, and also to read and research about the actual historical figures through primary and secondary historical sources. Students will evaluate historical material (scholarly articles, newspapers articles, books).
- Diane Lichtenstein wants students in English 196, the survey of American literature, to find a visual "text" from the mid-nineteenth century. Early American Imprints, ARTstor, and the American Memory web site are possible sources. Diane plans to give a short written assignment for which students research the illustration's context and what it reveals about a course reading.
- Debra Majeed will give her First Year Initiative students at least two assignments that require writing with sources and formating a bibliography. In one assignment, students will compare and contrast metropolitan Chicago, site of the 1893 World's Fair in Devil in the White City, with metropolitan New Orleans, victim of Hurricane Katrina in Come Hell or High Water. The teaching objectives include becoming familiar with bibliographies as a source, with locating and using texts, and with endnotes and footnotes. Some sources on writing a comparison and contrast paper are High School vs College Writing: What's the Difference?, The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, and Guidelines for Comparison/Contrast Essays.
- Kathleen Mandell developed new materials for her First Year Initiative class on DNA this fall. She outlined a series of assignments in which students find information about the human genome. She also prepared questions which guide students through exploring careers and fields they are interested in, researching the demographics of professional organizations, and reflecting on voices that may not be heard in the organizations.
- Beatrice McKenzie developed an Information Sources Worksheet for the History Workshop. Goals of the assignment are to review components of an introduction and to enhance students' information literacy skills by identifying sources available for a history topic.
- Britt Scharringhausen examined how information literacy would play a role in the "Astronomy in the News" format that she uses for Physics 130 (Introduction to Astronomy.) She wants students to learn how to assess the reliability of scientific information in the popular media. She sees two main categories that would be especially relevant to the class: informative (or "gee-whiz") science writing, and also the intersection of science and public policy (global warming, Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design, asteroid impact hazards, etc.) See Britt's presentation for more details.
- Kathleen Schowalter built upon a previous assignment for Art 120-Art, History, & Culture to 1400 in which groups of students researched theories of why representations of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten changed during his reign. Then the class had a debate about the theories. She developed more assignments which involve analyzing visual images, performing short research tasks, some in groups, some individually, and working with "non-traditional" research materials - newspaper articles, the History Channel, and non-lecture or traditional discussion formats of learning. Her goals are to get students involved, to connect visual culture more directly from in and outside the classroom, and to have students practice skills as well as 'learn' them. Examples of assignments are looking at art in the news such as new findings at Stonehenge, and creating brochures or posters about an object for an audience equivalent to museum visitors.
- Pablo Toral created a "model European Union" exercise. Each student will represent an EU country and must research the country's policy goals and the interests of different groups, and analyze the constraints and resources. Their final product will be a written policy paper. They will use official EU and government web sites and other very current databases.
Presenters:
Chuck Lewis - Information
Literacy and Writing
Cynthia Gray -
Information Literacy and Assessment
Larry White - Teaching students
how to evaluate the validity of claims
Georgia Duerst-Lahti - Evaluating
sources in a student forum: watching the media watchdogs
Chris Johnson - A multimedia "research
paper" for dance history, Assignment,
Presentation.
- Ann Davies developed some assignments for a new course, POLS 380, Political Theory and Public Law: Research Seminar. Guided readings during the first part of the semester will be used as a means for talking about how issues may be framed, the development of research questions and seeking further information. Ann plans to have students discuss articles, brainstorm about questions, explore options for materials, and evaluate material during class and through Moodle postings. Details about course plans are included in Ann's information literacy handout.
- Georgia Duerst-Lahti would like to develop an assignment for the Congress class which involves mapping a bill. Using official and other sources, students would trace the bill's progress through committees, find background on what really happens, find roll call information, etc. If students know how to get that, it would help them investigate other issues.
- Chris Johnson has had students incorporate various media into their research. In her Dance History class, Chris assigned a Multi-Media Paper/Project. Students working on this assignment during the Spring 2006 semester learned how to incorporate video, sound, and images into web pages, power point presentations, or other platforms. One student chose to make a documentary. Students reported that they enjoyed the creative aspects of the projects and welcomed the opportunity to learn new skills. Chris is considering ways to refine the assignment in the future. Chris Johnson's presentation
- Heath Massey prepared an exercise for an upper-level seminar, Philosophy 380, special topics. Students searching for an answer to a philosophy question compare research tools and reflect on the advantages of each. They're introduced to sources such as JSTOR, Philosophers Index, BELCAT, and WorldCat. Their final products will consist of two documents: a preliminary bibliography of sources uncovered by the research, and a narrative of the research process. For details about the exercise and assignment, see Heath's handout on comparing research tools and compiling a preliminary bibliography.
- Catherine Orr developed discussion questions for her FYI course on Borders and Boundaries, asking students to consider how authors use sources and how readers might judge the validity of the authors' claims. She planned a source evaluation assignment in which students pick a group or organization active in immigration issues, find sources representing their point of view, and analyze the assumptions and arguments of that viewpoint. A library visit and activity is part of this assignment. More information about course plans is in Catherine Orr's presentation. Catherine thinks teaching students the basics of research and writing is the best service FYI instructors can perform for them as well as their future instructors.
- Jo Ortel reconfigured the Art History: Theory and Methods course placing greater emphasis on research skills, tools, and scholarly protocols. She has developed periodic "Special Assignments" to hone research and information literacy skills. In the second half of the course, students work on a more substantial, self-designed research project. See Jo's document about her ideas and the Theory and Methods syllabus, in progress.
-Glenn Appleby explored ways to make information literacy part of the experience for his first year students in Fall 2004. The topic of his FYI was "How Do You Know What You Know? Episodes in the History of Science". Glenn also wanted to add a component to the Cultural Approaches to Mathematics class that might be called quantitative literacy. He is increasing the opportunities for students to use and evaluate numerical data to answer questions. He would like to find better ways to aid students in finding relevant statistical and other quantitative data. He finds that students don't really know where to look, or how to evaluate what they find.
-Pam Cook taught a scope and methods in political science course in the fall. In the first part of the course, the class discusses the research process and Pam usually has a session in the library. Students have complained about this session because they feel it is "too elementary." However, their assignments based on the library session don't reflect "over-comprehension." Pam reshaped the session and the assignment so that it doesn't seem remedial. The goal of the assignment is to discover valid criteria to use in selecting research resources especially in evaluating internet sources.
-Andrea Cox taught Astronomy in Fall
04 and the Physics Seminar class in Spring 05. What she has been primarily concerned
with is getting students to use electronic sources effectively at all levels.
This includes:
- Knowing what resources are (and are not) available to them electronically
- Being able to assess the appropriateness of these electronic sources for papers
for given projects (reliability, level, etc.) and
- Knowing how to cite the sources in-text and in bibliographies in a reasonable
and transparent manner.
-Tom Freeman and Ed Mathieu team taught an interdisciplinary course entitled The First World War in History and Literature. They created a presentation on internet sources about WWI in history, literature and art. They found and evaluated sites and information. They developed guidelines for students to teach them how to evaluate the reliability of internet sources and to cite these sources.
-Chuck Lewis participated in the information literacy forum in more than one capacity. He made a presentation at the forum relating the teaching of writing to information literacy and he provided suggestions for information literacy in your classroom. He also developed plans and ideas to apply in the courses he teaches.
-Roc Ordman built on information literacy strategies he has used in his Global Nutrition class in which everyone presents posters for the Undergrad Research Symposium. In preparation for that, students go through several stages of evaluating web sites on nutrition. In class, students compare ads, books, and professional journals, discussing what they tell us about nutrition and sources. Then they put together the sources for their posters based on class discussions. For more information, see Roc's information literacy page.
-John Rapp designed a research paper workshop section to use in many if not all of his upper level comparative politics courses. His fall class, "Politics of Advanced Industrial Democracies," where he always assigns a major research paper, was the first class in which he applied ideas from the forum. He worked on ways to do a better job of explaining to students how to conduct research, design a comparative research question and hypothesis, and cite sources properly. He was also interested in learning about web-based tools concerning plagiarism, as well as software facilitating peer review.
- Sonja Darlington developed two research assignments for her Education in a Democratic Society (101) class. To broaden their educational experience beyond the local area, students will search for policies, philosophy, curriculum, student population data, etc. as presented in a school web site. Another assignment involves identifying and researching women educators using a variety of sources.
- Sadique Isahaku made plans to incorporate information literacy concepts into his Education of Diverse Learners class, including identification of research interests, using the web to prompt student generated research questions, identification of authentic sites, and testing for reliability and validity of claims from online sources. He also has been developing electronic portfolios for assessing student performance.
- Nancy Krusko reworked an assignment for her Medical Anthropology class in which students select a health issue and research both its epidemiology as well as anthropological approaches to the problem. In past years, students generally did not develop the anthropological content of their papers, so Nancy plans to give two assignments leading to the research paper. First, students will create an annotated bibliography of sources on anthropological aspects of the health issue. Second, they will find sources on epidemiology and create a poster to illustrate the epidemiological patterns of the problem.
- George Lisensky developed materials for his FYI on nanotechnology. This is a rapidly developing area, so reliance on the web for the latest information is expected. But with the range of sources available, from cutting-edge scientific reports through uninformed opinions and speculations, it's important for students to be skilled at evaluating information. George prepared web pages for his students on evaluating sources, information literacy discussion questions, and assignments.
- Sylvia Lopez prepared a library exercise for students in a course on the fantastic and paranormal in 19th-Century Spanish literature. The purpose of the exercise is to familiarize students with reference sources and other library materials in preparation for research on terminology, literary periods, literary theories and criticism.
- Melanie Schneider created a Research Process Self-Evaluation Form to assess what students think they already know. She expects that students will particularly need to develop their abilities to find and document sources. Melanie has also prepared materials which assist her linguistics students with analyzing research questions, understanding boolean operators, and developing a search strategy.
-Larry White, who participated in the 2002 Information Literacy Forum, returned in 2003 to make a presentation on evaluating the validity of claims. His ideas were spurred by a discussion of evaluating information according to heuristics such as an author's affiliation or whether a web site has a .com or .gov address. Larry presented an algorithmic approach to evaluating claims. See the outline of his presentation, Helping Students Learn How to Evaluate the Validity of Claims.
- Greg Buchanan worked on incorporating information literacy into his FYI and other courses, especially his interdisciplinary Human Sexual Identity course. In this class, students learned how anthropologists, biologists, feminists, and psychologists approach issues such as gender identity, sexual orientation, and the double standard. They reviewed methodologies, and then retrieved and evaluated sources which represented one of the approaches. Students were assigned to a topical "expert jigsaw" group in which each member of the group acted as an expert in one of the methodologies.
- Alexis Grosofsky developed a "psychology in the news" assignment in which students find a newspaper story and generate questions. News stories would be linked to an area of psychology, for example social, clinical, developmental, or experimental psychology. After a library session on searching, they would find sources that might answer the questions they've generated. They'd categorize sources as scholarly, news, popular, or sensational, evaluate the quality of each source, and prepare a bibliography.
- Ellen Joyce wanted to help students shape excellent bibliographies and use technology in her medieval history courses. She collaborated with Arno Damerow in ITS to set up course web pages which would provide a means of class communication and guide students to quality primary sources on the web. See the web pages for Writing and Speaking in Medieval European Communities and examples of web pages created by students in the History Workshop on "Discovering the Western Past."
- Rob LaFleur considered ways to connect students to library and internet sources for historical research while studying in Asia.
- Linda Sturtz addressed the issues of how to get students to ask questions and explore potential topics for historical research. Using the Valley of the Shadow web site of primary sources from two communities in the American Civil War, she introduced students to a variety of historical documents. Students explored the Valley of the Shadow site, considered how "rooms" of the virtual library were organized, dipped into sources which looked useful, and listed three general potential research topics.
- Larry White prepared a guide to resources for students who study abroad. He addressed three questions: How can students use Internet resources to better prepare themselves for living and studying abroad; what can students do to prepare themselves in advance to conduct research while abroad; and how can program directors help students access research materials while abroad.
Comments or Questions? Contact Chris Nelson at Beloit College Library