Revising the “One-Shot” through Lesson Study: Collaborating with Writing Faculty to Rebuild a Library Instruction Session

Abstract

The one-shot library instruction session has long been a mainstay for many information literacy programs. Identifying realistic learning goals, integrating active learning techniques, and conducting meaningful assessment for a single lesson all present challenges. Librarians and English faculty at one college campus confronted these challenges by participating in a year-long lesson study, a process of collaboratively planning, observing, and assessing a single lesson. By collectively identifying goals and priorities, designing and redesigning the lesson, and assessing outcomes through observation, surveys, and focus groups, librarians and teaching faculty negotiated varying expectations and demands for providing one-shot library instruction.he one-shot library instruction session is a routine occurrence at many academic libraries. Librarians strive to teach some basic research skills with the awareness that the one-shot instruction session is not ideal for meaningful retention or transfer of this knowledge to students' actual research experiences. These one-time, librarian-led presentations, which are developed to meet the needs of the first-year composition or other introductory-level course, are expected to both acquaint students with library services and teach them "how to research," including everything from searching the library catalog to using various databases to discerning types and quality of sources. Not surprisingly, such instruction sessions can easily overwhelm students with their jam-packed, whirlwind dispersal of information, and they can frustrate and overburden the librarians tasked with teaching them. Additionally, such instruction sessions are often unable to incorporate active crl12-255

Information Literacy Instruction Determining the Place of Library Professionals

“…Library signage, guidebooks, images, manually written instructions and self-help kiosks are a few examples of asynchronous instructions 2 . Traditionally librarians are still using one shot session to conduct IL classes, but they themselves admit that it is really a herculean task to cover a large amount of material within the limited time 39,40 . Multiple instructions sessions allow students to retain everything from the previous sessions and increase their ability in constructing and using information searching strategy 41 .The selection of information literacy instruction method is important as the communication is as vital as the content itself.…”

Evaluating Citation Analysis as a Measurement of Business Librarian Consultation Impact

“…In an attempt to optimize the effectiveness of the "one-shot" format, Watson et al (2013) engaged multiple measures to inform a library instruction session. Their study involved the cooperation of librarians and instructional faculty to establish the goals of an information-literacy lesson plan, active observation of student activity and behavior during the session, capturing student understanding through an assigned worksheet, and gathering impressions from students in follow-up surveys and focus groups (p. 387).…”

Using Lesson Study to Integrate Information Literacy Throughout the Curriculum

“…One of the first college-level lesson studies was piloted in a mathematics, statistics and computer science department (10). More recently, Watson and colleagues explored using lesson study as a method of collaboratively building a one-time information literacy instructional session between English faculty and librarians (11). The ease of using the lesson study methodology for various topics and across disciplines in higher education was strength that seemed to suitable for information literacy skills and EBP in the nursing curriculum.…”