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Information literacy instruction in higher education tends to focus on a relatively small slice of the information literacy landscape: academic research skills. Students often fail to see the relevance of these sessions beyond the direct application to their assignments. In addition, while this type of instruction helps students succeed academically, it does not necessarily prepare them for their future careers, which can lead to a lapse in student engagement. A prior exploratory survey study among alumni of four bachelor of nursing programs provided insight into current information practices of professional nurses and how librarians could have better prepared them for their eventual workplace. This chapter outlines how this evidence informed a change in information instruction, now preparing nursing students for professional as well as academic success. This evidence-based approach has the potential benefit of making instruction more relevant and engaging to students, while at the same time expanding their information literacy skills. Teaching nursing students professional information literacy skills, in addition to academic information literacy skills, leads to better-prepared nurses which ultimately benefits their patients. The chapter provides several implementation examples but also addresses the challenges that librarians face when pursuing evidence-based practice to increase student engagement.

After an overview of the literature on challenges facing library instructors and their coordinators, the chapter describes how the communities of practice model relates to professional development in librarianship, specifically in the area of instructional development. A case study of a community of practice fostered by an instruction coordinator at an academic library is detailed. Academic librarians may encounter several challenges when entering the classroom as library instructors, and instruction coordinators seek to address these and other challenges as they build library instruction programs. By developing a community of practice, instruction coordinators can enable library instructors to learn together. The case study describes how the Instruction Coordinator cultivates library instructor development for members of the Teaching and Learning Team at Loyola University New Orleans’ Monroe Library through a community of practice model. The practical implications for this chapter are that instruction coordinators can establish instructional development opportunities that allow library instructors to enhance their teaching abilities and ultimately further library instruction programs. Communities of practice are well known in several fields and have been discussed in the library literature. This chapter provides additional value to researchers and practitioners through the discussion and application of the concept in the context of library instruction at academic institutions. The case study provides specific examples of how instruction coordinators at other academic libraries can apply the community of practice model and instructional development opportunities to a library instruction program in order to build and sustain a learning culture that supports library instructor development.

Liberal arts education has traditionally emphasized critical thinking and other components of information literacy. Because knowledge is accumulating and changing even more rapidly than in earlier eras, it is more crucial than ever that students develop the motivation and ability to become lifelong learners if they are to flourish personally and professionally in this information age. Cornell College has established a campus-wide emphasis on information literacy since 2000. While the skills and knowledge that constitute information literacy have been a part of the curriculum long before, an intentional effort to integrate information literacy into coursework in all disciplines has revitalized the dialog about teaching these critical thinking skills and has re-invigorated effort toward information literacy goals. That dialog causes us to ask one another and ourselves “What is information literacy? How is it to be taught, nurtured, learned, and utilized?” These questions and others were highlighted as the College undertook its re-accreditation self-study where information literacy was a particular point of emphasis.

While the important role of information literacy instruction as a central service in academic libraries is well observed in scholarly literature, there has been little examination of the impact of the rapid increase of instructional duties on practicing librarians, whose traditional instruction duties have expanded or whose positions have not traditionally required leading a classroom. The study in this chapter explores librarians’ perceptions of the impact that increased instruction tasks have had on their day-to-day and long-term goals, perceptions of the support they receive in performing their instructional duties, and what types of instruction training they have received throughout their career. The ways in which the addition of instruction duties for librarians have been perceived by the librarians themselves as they strive to increase support for instructional services without impacting the library’s ability to continue to perform traditional public and technical services functions is discussed as a marker of the future needs of the field and the necessity of recognizing professional strain.

This chapter reports a six-year integrated information literacy instruction program in Taiwan that brought together concepts from informed learning, especially the six frames, with inquiry-based learning frameworks in schools. A total of eleven inquiry projects have been implemented from grades 1 through 6. Six projects selected for each grade are explained in detail. The themes of the projects are designed based on the essence of six frames, each project involving one to three frames depending on the integrated subjects. Through the descriptions, we present how the information literacy instruction is integrated into various subject matters via the framework of inquiry-based learning, such as the Super3 and Big6 models. Students’ performances in subject content and information literacy of the six projects are delineated quantitatively and qualitatively.

Technology is integral to contemporary life; where the digital transformation to virtual information accessibility impacts instruction, it alters the skills of learning and comprehension (Gonzalez-Patino & Esteban-Guitart, 2014; Lloyd, 2010). Although librarians/media specialists provide orientation, instruction, and research methods face-to-face and electronically, they recognize that digital learning instruction is not a linear process, and digital literacy (DL) is multi-disciplinary (Belshaw, 2012). Policy and public research findings indicate that higher education must be prepared to adapt to rapid changes in digital technology (Maybee, Bruce, Lupton, & Rebmann, 2017). Digital learning undergoes frequent transformations, with new disruptive innovation and research attempts at redefinition (Palfrey, 2015). Research often overlooks junior/community colleges. We are all learners and we need to understand the digital learning challenges that incorporating DL includes in the new digital ecology (Adams Becker et al., 2017). This study provides real faculty/librarian commentaries regarding the understanding needed to develop digital learning and contemporary digital library resources. The authors investigate faculties’ and librarians’ degree of DL perceptions with instruction at junior/community colleges. Survey data analysis uses the mean of digital self-efficacy of variables collected, revealing that participants surpassed Rogers’s (2003) chasm of 20% inclusion. Findings provided data to develop the Dimensions of Digital Learning rubric, a new evaluation tool that encourages faculty DL cross-training, librarians’ digital learning collaboration, and effective digital learning spaces.

This paper reports on part of a dissertation project on the relationships between learning methods and students’ information behavior in Finland. In this qualitative study, information behavior is studied in the contexts of a problem-based learning curriculum and a traditional curriculum. In 1998, 16 theme interviews were conducted at the Tampere University Medical School, which applied the problem-based learning curriculum and 15 interviews at the Turku University Medical School, in which the traditional curriculum with an early patient contact program was implemented. The focus of this paper is on the concept of information literacy as a part of the students’ information behavior and its relationships with students’ conceptions of learning. The findings indicate that students’ information literacy is developed, on the one hand, through active use of information and sources in connection with real information needs, and, on the other hand, through an educational context which offers opportunities to get different viewpoints on issues. Following the same tendency, the more developed conceptions of learning were mostly held by the students belonging to the problem-based group with simple or developed skills in information literacy, although there were exceptions from this pattern.

This chapter addresses information literacy instruction (ILI) in business schools, where learning outcomes receive considerable emphasis due to accreditation requirements, and where information literacy outcomes are increasingly being recognized as critical to graduates’ success in the workplace. We report a study examining ILI practices and program components against the background of student demographics and factors in the learning environment. The outcomes of those instructional experiences for students are analyzed, including psychological, behavioral and benefit outcomes. Data were collected via student skills testing; interviews with students, teaching faculty, librarians, and school administrators; and a web survey of students. Taken together, the results convincingly demonstrate that ILI is a complex undertaking with diverse perceived outcomes. Some success is evident, and verifiable outcomes include increased student self-efficacy; positive perceptions of libraries, librarians, and online library resources; improved and increased use of librarians and online library resources; and increased efficiency and effectiveness of conducting information research. The results demonstrate the value of pedagogical approaches such as active learning, just-in-time instruction, and integration of information literacy instruction with course curricula, as well as the importance of marketing efforts to manage students’ expectations of instructional benefits. Although instruction remains uneven and complex due to divergent expectations and assumptions by different stakeholders (students, librarians, and administrators), successful learning outcomes are possible.

Research and writing can be challenging tasks for undergraduate students, and evaluating online sources for use in papers can be especially difficult to do well. This chapter discusses a partnership between a library and a writing center to teach writing consultants the basics of the Information Literacy Framework and online source evaluation. This included providing additional education for peer writing consultants. Consultants became more fluent in the aspects of evaluation and provided perspective on how and why undergraduate students struggle with this in the research and writing process, establishing the value of assembling networked pedagogical models for teaching information literacy.