Reaching Every Student - mandatory info lit courses: March 26

I went to this session in the hope that hearing specifics about campus-wide information literacy courses from a variety of different types of institutions would be instructive as to how we might reorganize our own credit bearing information literacy course. And, while I did not come away empty handed, I am confirmed in my view that there is no magic formula for these types of efforts.

There were librarians from four institutions: The College of New Jersey - a medium size public liberal arts college, Indiana University, South Bend - a medium size masters granting public university, University of Maryland University College - a large masters granting public university, and ASA College - a medium size associate granting for-profit college. The presentations were framed in terms of three themes: 1) Institutional dynamics & faculty buy-in. 2) Limitations & challenges. 3) Benefits.

None of these institutions are truly comparable to my own college. But, because the University of Maryland course focused on both graduate and undergraduate students, and ASA is largely a technical school, I chose to concentrate more closely on the presentations from Indiana University and The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). 

At Indiana University, about eight librarians and as many adjuncts teach their hybrid, credit bearing course to 1,200 undergraduates annually. The courses are taught using a combination of the LMS and LibGuides. Students have pre and post-tests, weekly assignments, and a final project of an annotated bibliography. They receive a letter grade.  At TCNJ, one full-time librarian teaches their online non-credit course to 2,200 undergraduates annually. Students take six multiple choice tests. They receive a pass / fail grade. For both of these institutions, the origins of the courses were institution-wide Gen Ed or curriculum revisions. The similarities, however, appear to end there.

At TCNJ, their online course is self-paced (or binge-ready, as the presenter noted) and taught through multimedia and practice tests. They note that they were able to get institutional and faculty buy-in due to their faculty partnerships and strategic placement on college-wide committees, but they acknowledge the perennial challenges of student motivation (given perceived vs. actual IL skills) and the lack of evaluation of authentic intellectual outputs. Nevertheless, they identified some of the benefits as making the library more connected college-wide, and having a course that lays a foundation for more advanced research skills.

At Indiana University, however, their course is taught both F2F and online, and includes regular homework, research assignments, and quizzes. And, because they are using so many librarians and adjuncts to teach the courses, they are able to devote more time to it. They estimate that it takes an average of 5 to 6 hours per section per week for grading, student contact and course delivery. They also spend time in the summers doing updates, link-checking and course revisions. They noted that what they “gave up” to teach these courses was double-staffing at the reference desk and no instruction for 100 level courses. 

While it is good to hear that librarians were able to draw on their relationships with faculty and administration to use these courses as a means to focus more directly on information literacy, it does seem that attempts to do more in-depth teaching and authentic assessment come at a price.