A Pragmatic and Flexible Approach to Information Literacy: Findings from a Three-Year Study of Faculty-Librarian Collaboration

Abstract

While faculty often express dismay at their students' ability to locate and evaluate secondary sources, they may also be ambivalent about how to (and who should) teach the skills required to carry out quality undergraduate research. This project sought to assess the impact of programmatic changes and librarian course integration on students' information literacy (IL) skills. Using an IL rubric to score student papers (n=337) over three consecutive first-year student cohorts, our study shows that when faculty collaborate with librarians to foster IL competencies, the result is a statistically significant improvement in students' demonstrated research skills. Our study also reveals a collaboration "sweet spot": The greatest gains accrue when librarians provide moderate input into syllabus and assignment design, followed by one or two strategically placed hands-on library sessions. Successful collaboration thus need not entail completely overhauling content courses so as to make library instruction the centerpiece. Quite the opposite, librarians can help reduce the potential burden on faculty by supporting discipline-and course-specific research goals, as well as by sharing resources and best practices in IL pedagogy.

Information use among first-year students in health sciences: Is an intervention needed?

“…According to Stone, Pattern and Ramsden (2012), and there is a statistically significant correlation between library use and student success (grade point average), but that other factors also influence this success. While there is little reason to suppose that information skills must be learned by library interventions, there is some evidence to support that students benefit from collaborations between librarians and teachers (Junisbai, Lowe, & Tagge, 2016).…”

2BIC: taking your adventuring gear to organise pop‐up health information literacy sessions

“…It has become clear that IL is important for the development and success of individuals at a personal, professional and academic level. Several studies have proven that incorporating IL in the curricula leads to significantly better results in writing skills and class performance of students (Junisbai, Lowe & Tagge, 2016;Kot & Jones, 2015;Shao & Purpur, 2016;Soleymani, 2014). However, it remains the role of reference librarians to continually evaluate IL training and the impact of IL skills on student success (Shao & Purpur, 2016).…”

Faculty Teaching and Librarian-Facilitated Assignment Design

“…Barbara Junisbai, M. Sara Lowe, and Natalie Tagge posit that "faculty-librarian collaboration on assignment and syllabus development, followed by one or two strategically placed library class sessions, produced the greatest gains." 4 They conclude that this is good news for librarians tasked with unsustainable instruction demands. Librarians welcome any role that they can play in improving assignments and courses to carefully scaffold research skills, providing sufficient supports when the skills are first introduced and then removing the supports as students no longer need them.…”