Improving Information Literacy Skills for Psychology Majors: The Development of a Case Study Technique

Abstract

This article describes the development of a faculty-librarian collaborative project that integrated discipline-specific information literacy into an upper-level psychology class. The instruction involved a case study technique in order to increase student engagement in a content area while helping students gain needed information literacy skills that meet professional guidelines. We found that employing this approach enhanced instructor ability to more fully and meaningfully engage with students within a more comfortable classroom atmosphere. This method may be easily adapted to other disciplines as it allows for much creativity and selection of course-relevant themes. INTRODUCTIONInformation literacy is a vital skill that all students need to acquire. Merriam, LaBaugh, and Butterfield (1992) report the skills that psychology majors need to locate and effectively use literature in the discipline not only for the major but also for lifelong learning. In order to develop these skills, students should participate in coursework that includes course-integrated library instruction coupled with practice in locating sources, conducting a literature search, effectively using resources found, and developing an in-35 36 V. Milczarski and A. Maynard creased awareness of the information resources used in psychology and related disciplines. More recently, the Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Psychology Information Literacy Standards (2010) contains a series of outcomes to be achieved by students in this field, including determining the nature and extent of information needed, being able to access needed information effectively and efficiently, being able to evaluate information critically and incorporate selected information into a knowledge base, and being able to use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.In addition to the challenge of how to best achieve information literacy outcomes, faculty and librarians also experience a potential lack of student engagement in information literacy instruction for two reasons. First, information literacy skills such as creating a research question and searching an academic database are not inherently exciting or interesting; thus, students may disengage and fail to encode, retain, and demonstrate these skills. Second, students may even believe that they do not need to develop information literacy, which can lead to resistance. For many students, the need for information can be satisfied by a quick and easy search with their favorite Internet search engine. The benefits of taking the time to search an academic database (e.g., PsycInfo) are not well understood and may even seem cumbersome to students when compared to a simple Internet search. Therefore, faculty and librarians must face the challenges of making information literacy instruction interesting while also convincing students that the skills being taught are necessary and worth the time investment.This article will describe a faculty-librarian collaborative project that integrated discipl...

Science, Story, and Structure: Framing the Conversation for Psychology Faculty and Librarian Information Literacy Collaboration

“…For example, in 2006, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued its first set of guidelines for undergraduate psychology majors that included information literacy skills (Stoloff et al, 2009), which were further refined in their 2013 revision. Psychology faculty and librarian collaborations have been fruitful to enhancing student research and writing skills, preparing them to respond to their own professional development needs, and for improving information literacy competency in students (Birkett & Hughes, 2013; Milczarski & Maynard, 2015; Thaxton, Faccioli, Mosby, 2004). The undergraduate educational experience is seen as a prime area for these skills to be modeled and enhanced; however, many students enter college with minimal foundations in navigating information.…”

Case studies in the classroom: assessing a pilot information literacy curriculum for English composition

“…Because PBL offers an approach to learning that is active, collaborative and interconnected with real-world examples and sociocultural learning theory, library instructors have long seen it as a viable pedagogical framework (Wang, 2007). This includes one-shot, general education contexts (Carbery, 2011;Enger et al, 2002;Kenney, 2008) and discipline-specific courses (Cook and Walsh, 2012;D'Angelo, 2001;Diekema et al, 2011;Milczarski and Maynard, 2015). Applications of PBL range from a single in-class activity joining critical information literacy and multicultural education (Barefoot, 2018) to a fivesession sequence in a general education course (Wenger, 2014).…”