Teaching and Learning Resource Guide for Libraries

This Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Framework) grows out of a belief that information literacy as an educational reform movement will realize its potential only through a richer, more complex set of core ideas. It is based on a set of interconnected core concepts with flexible options for implementation.

Redesigning instruction to equip students to ask better questions must itself start with good questions. What can we do to encourage genuine curiosity? What classroom activities could provide students with experience in framing questions? What do students already know, and how can we give them permission to bring themselves into the process of making meaning as a social act? How can we talk about the ethics of good inquiry? How may assumptions students have absorbed through schooling that inhibit their creativity and curiosity be overcome? How can we address students’ anxieties and insecurities as we connect this scaffolding for inquiry not just for college, but in the world?

We have to understand that in the context of decision-making, simple can be good, less can be more, and the skills our students bring into the classroom may be a more valuable starting point than anything the traditional research process can provide.

Through a series of in-depth interviews, the researchers sought to understand how academic librarians who primarily instruct first-year college students conceive of, teach, and assess critical thinking skills in relation to information literacy.

Which modes of information literacy instruction (ILI) work best in asynchronous online courses? Recent national trends and COVID-19 have made it critical to answer this question, but there is little research comparing different modes of ILI specifically in asynchronous contexts. This multiyear study employed five different modes of ILI in different sections of an asynchronous online anthropology course and compared the modes’ effects on students’ coursework. Ethnographic analysis of students’ bibliographies revealed nuanced changes to students’ approaches to searching and source selection. These findings can inform librarians’ development of ILI curricula and pedagogy for the unique circumstances asynchronous instruction presents.