2019 Conference

Reimagining Student Success: Approaches That Increase Participation, Representation, and Relevance

May 3, 2019 | University of San Francisco – Fromm Hall – 2497 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117

Evolving pedagogy and an increased emphasis on assessment have driven librarians to reconfigure their approaches to student success: participation in campus-wide initiatives; rethinking student learning outcomes and assessment; encouraging experimentation and learning that empowers students to take the lead in their own success. Speakers shared practice and research-based approaches on the inventive, intersecting, and radical ways their instruction has redefined/reimagined student success. In particular, this conference highlighted participatory learning, critical information literacy and pedagogy, and approaches that put students at the center of their learning. Our honored keynote speaker was Melanie Chu.

9:00 – 9:30 Registration and Refreshments

9:30 – 9:45 Welcome Remarks (Xavier Room)

CCLI 2019 Chair: Irene Korber – Head of Research, Instruction, & Outreach, CSU Chico
Tyrone Cannon – University Library Dean, University of San Francisco

9:45 – 10:45 Keynote Address

Curiosity, Compassion, and Conversation: Facilitating Student Learning in the Library (Xavier Room)

Melanie Chu, Director of the Library & Learning Services
Lake Tahoe Community College

Slides

Keynote recording

Photo of Melanie ChuImagine a space for transformative meaning-making and participatory learning, where users can go for both deeply personal discovery and for intensely collaborative experiences — you might call to mind a high-class museum or high-tech exploratorium. Now imagine that space is your library’s own lobby. This keynote brings together critical information literacy and museum visitor studies, reimagining the powerful potential of participatory learning in the library’s shared spaces. Using one library’s art series, we will explore the personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts fundamental to experiential museum learning. Drawing upon museum engagement techniques, librarians can better support the experience, engagement, and assessment of student learning in creative, effective, and nontraditional ways.

Melanie Chu became the Director of the Library & Learning Services at Lake Tahoe Community College in Fall 2017. Before joining LTCC, she was Outreach Librarian and library faculty at California State University San Marcos for 14 years. Melanie has also served as a librarian for Semester at Sea, a multi-country study abroad program.  Her most recent publication: Out of Context: Understanding Student Learning Through Museum Studies

10:45 – 11:00 Break

11:00 – 12:15 Workshop Sessions

Stepping Down: A Critical Approach to Teaching Source Evaluation (Xavier Room) 

Zohra Saulat, Information Literacy Librarian
California State University, Chico

Slides

Academic librarians often face the challenge of preparing individual one-shot information literacy sessions for multiple classes in widely differing subject areas. This one-shot conundrum also leads librarians to either over-pack classes with important, but too many, learning objectives, or create loosely articulated sessions without quality learning activities. Either leads to a failure to effectively engage students.

Source evaluation is a fundamental concept of information literacy. While there are many exercises that teach source evaluation, incorporating elements of critical pedagogy offers librarians a way to address many of ACRL’s frames in a single one-shot session while simultaneously pushing students to the forefront of their learning. This workshop will cover how to teach source evaluation through a critical lens in a variety of contexts. Participants will have the opportunity to practice creating their own critical source evaluation activity in groups. Please bring an electronic device to access the internet.

Using Interactive LEGO Workshops to Teach Metadata, Technical Communication Skills, and Standards Literature (Maraschi Room)

Zac Painter, Engineering Librarian
Terman Engineering Library, Stanford

Slides

This workshop on metadata and standards, designed to be taught in a single class period, is an attempt to provide learners an actively engaging way to interface with technical communication. Prior to the workshop learners are given a copy of a technical standard to review. In class, learners will describe and document a pre-assembled object, before disassembling it and passing their instructions and pieces to another group for reassembly. Originally designed to teach metadata concepts to freshmen in pharmacy and health science settings, this has been adapted to teach concepts behind standards, methods, and codes to undergraduate engineering students. It has also been used in technical communication classes across many subjects, including STEM and business, as a reinforcement for teaching clarity and precision within product or test description.

Goodbye Scavenger Hunt! Hello Problem-Based Scenarios (Berman Room)

Tessa Withorn, Online Learning Librarian
California State University Dominguez Hills

Slides

You receive an instruction request from a well-intentioned instructor who just wants students to “learn about the library,” but they have no research assignment on the horizon. You don’t want to put together another library scavenger hunt. Does this sound familiar? Scavenger hunts often fail to contextualize library resources and services within the curriculum and the lived experiences of our diverse student populations. How, then, can we engage students and promote student success, while also providing a broad overview of the library? Culturally sustaining pedagogy in tandem with problem-based learning provides one solution to this challenging scenario. This workshop will introduce culturally sustaining pedagogy as a method of integrating students’ experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, age, and class into the library orientation classroom. Participants will discuss their student populations and barriers to success, then use principles of problem-based learning to craft engaging scenarios that can replace a library scavenger hunt.

12:15 – 1:15 Lunch

1:15 – 2:15 Breakout Sessions

Social Justice, Information Privilege, and You: Developing a Collaborative First-Year Seminar to Increase Student Success (Maraschi Room)

Nicole Allensworth, Information Literacy Coordinator
Callie Branstiter, First Year Experience/Undergraduate Student Success Librarian
J. Paul Leonard Library, San Francisco State University

Slides

How does information privilege intersect with social justice? How can an understanding of this contribute to the lifelong development of first-year students, while fulfilling general education student learning outcomes?

In this hands-on session, two librarians from San Francisco State University will share their process for developing a credit-bearing first-year seminar course that adapts to new student learning outcomes developed collectively by a learning community that includes the library. Participants will learn to respond to campus-wide initiatives, collaborate with campus departments, develop student learning outcomes that are infused with information literacy, and create student-centered lesson plans that examine the overlap of social justice and information privilege while employing a lens of critical information literacy and pedagogy.

Reimagining a Standard One-Shot with Critical Information Literacy: Diversity within Google, the Deep Web and Library Databases (Berman Room)

Robin D. Lang, Instructional Services Librarian
Point Loma Nazarene University

Slides

This presentation applies student-centered critical information literacy theory to a one-shot lesson plan by engaging students in small group work and guided discussion around questions of information access and privilege. Students will navigate Google’s search algorithm and Google Scholar in conjunction with library databases to mine the deep web for high quality and diverse sources. Many students are not aware that Google searches only access the surface web, the tip of the information iceberg. Introducing library databases as part of the deep web gives databases an edginess and encourages further exploration of library resources; students have remarked they feel like “a secret agent” when using the deep web. Discussion of students’ privilege is a natural segue into a discussion on privilege, scholarship and the necessity of seeking out underrepresented voices. Critical information literacy theory and the ACRL Framework on Information Literacy provide authentic guidelines for addressing this information paradox. #critlib

Lightning Rounds (Xavier Room)

Group Slides

Taking Notes to Take Note: Conceptualizing Reading Apprenticeship Techniques in the Library Instruction One-Shot with Concept Clouds and Double Column Logs | Melissa I. Cardenas-Dow, California State University, Sacramento

The presenter will provide information on a still-developing inquiry into the use of the reading apprenticeship technique, called the double column log, in one-shot instruction sessions.

The Bias in Your Search Results: A Partial “Jigsaw” Activity | Lindsay Davis, Instruction and Outreach Librarian, University of California Merced

Using inspiration from critical information literacy practitioners, the presenter will introduce attendees to a partial “jigsaw” activity designed for a Race and the Media course that helps students recognize that the information tools and systems they use in their everyday and academic lives are not neutral as existing power structures of race, gender, class, etc. are also reflected in the creation, organization, and access of information.

Breaking Transpacific Barriers to Information Literacy | Kimberly Lace Fama, University of British Columbia

The presenter will describe work done with the IMBA (International MBA) students involving data from student experience surveys, the identification of students’ personal learning goals, and the use of the Acknowledge-Inspire-Aspire model toward the creation of valuable learning experiences for both coursework and professional development.

Data Literacy as a Flipped Undergraduate One-shot | Mary-Michelle Moore, University of California Santa Barbara

The presenter will discuss a data literacy one-shot aimed at lower-division undergraduate students in an interdisciplinary course. Data literacy in this instance includes the students’ ability to interrogate and think critically about data, read and interpret visualizations, and discuss how statistical information is used in research.

Creative and Critical Reflection with Zines!! | Paige Sundstrom, University of California Santa Barbara

The presenter will discuss and reflect on the new approach that she took to her credit-bearing course’s final assignment (a zine), aiming to center students’ voices and experiences while empowering them as researchers.

2:15 – 2:30 Break

2:30 – 3:30 Breakout Sessions

Radical Research: Good-Bye Highlighters and Post-Its! Hello Digital Tools for the 21st Century (Xavier Room)

Dale Vidmar, Information Literacy and Assessment Librarian
Southern Oregon University, Hannon Library

Slides

In this presentation, attendees will learn about various tools that can help researchers save and organize citations and .pdf files, annotate, highlight, create notes, tag, and search the full text of articles, tags, and notes and additional programs to assist in the thinking or brainstorming about coherently organizing and packaging ideas. Citation generators can make the creation of of reference lists as well as the in-text citations easier and more accurate. Writing and grammar checkers, image editors, and voice-to-text programs help nurture creativity and clarity. While it may not be incumbent upon librarians to master all the various digital tools available to students and researchers, having a passing knowledge of most and perhaps a specific expertise in some can open new doors to teaching information literacy and research skills. Central to this presentation is the intention to transform how students and researchers critically read and interact with research and information.

Empowering Students through a Feminist Framework: Intersectionality and Primary Source Literacy (Maraschi Room)

Sharon Ladenson, Gender and Communication Studies Librarian
Michigan State University Libraries

Slides

What are approaches for teaching about the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the information literacy classroom? How does the threshold concept of intersectionality, which explores the overlap of different forms of discrimination, align with key concepts presented in the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy? Intersectionality will be covered in theory, and specific examples of critical information literacy activities focused on intersectionality will be discussed. One example (among others to be shared) involves using zines to facilitate critical analysis of authorship, intersectionality, and making the voices of marginalized groups central. Participants will also share their ideas for exploring the intersections of diverse areas of social identity in the context of information literacy teaching and learning. In this discussion-based session, participants will address questions about the benefits of exploring intersectionality, as well as strategies they would use for teaching about the concept.

Students at the Center of the Studio: Peer learning, Collaborations, and Service Design (Berman Room)

Beth Filar Williams, Head of Library Experience and Access Department
Jane Nichols, Associate Professor & Head, Teaching and Engagement Librarian
Oregon State University, The Valley Library

Slides

Librarians support student success in many ways such as partnerships with writing centers. When an opportunity arose to partner with our writing center to create a shared space in our library, we saw it as a great way to support student success. Called the Undergrad Research and Writing Studio, student peer tutors treat research and writing as intertwined processes. Trained in studio pedagogy, peer research and writing consultants assist drop in student writers on a non-appointment basis, mirroring libraries point of need philosophy.  Research consultants also receive training to respond to reference and research-based writing questions as part of an eight-week Research-Based Writing Professional Development Seminar facilitated by the head of teaching, head of spaces and the studio coordinator. We share how we used service design to shape both the space and the service to support student learning and how our collaboration on the eight-week course and on conducting student reflections kept us aligned with our ethos of centering students and their learning.

3:30 – 3:40 Conference Closing by Vice-Chair Matthew Collins (Xavier Room)

4:00 – 4:30 Gleeson Library Tour

A brief tour of the Gleeson Library with a discussion of USF and Gleeson Library history. Those interested in joining the tour should meet near the front entrance to Fromm Hall following the closing conference remarks.

4:00 – 5:00 Happy Hour

All conference attendees and presenters are invited to join the CCLI steering committee for a non-hosted happy hour at Barrel Head Brewhouse [1785 Fulton St, San Francisco, CA 94117].