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This paper aims to explore how collaborative research assignment design consultations between instruction librarians and new graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) have the potential to improve the design of research assignments for first-year writing courses.

The author conducted a small number of questionnaires and structured interviews with first-time GTAs who serve as first-year composition instructors to explore their conceptions about teaching researched writing. Thematic analysis of the results of these qualitative instruments led to the design of a new framework for working with incoming cohorts of GTAs at her institution prior to the start of each fall semester.

New GTAs often emphasize strict source type parameters in research assignment design and expect their students to engage in expert research behaviors. Emphasizing the assignment design expertise of instruction librarians during new GTA orientation may lead to more assignment design consultations with first-time college writing instructors. Collaborative assignment design consultations between librarians and GTAs can improve the alignment of research assignment parameters with their shared goals for students' research and writing skills and habits of mind, including seeing research and writing as iterative and inquiry-based processes.

While not every instruction librarian works with GTAs, working with instructors to collaboratively design research assignments that shift focus away from using specific search tools and locating particular types of sources opens possibilities for what librarians are able to achieve in one-shot instruction sessions, in terms of both lesson content and pedagogical strategies used.

The existing literature on first-year writing addressing faculty and librarian assignment design collaborations, and research assignments more generally, does not often explicitly examine the experiences of librarians who primarily work with GTAs. This paper adds to this literature by highlighting specific obstacles and unique opportunities in librarian–GTA teaching partnerships in first-year writing courses.

This paper aims to discuss the potentials of interdisciplinary exercises that bring together art and design methodologies in expanding as well as redefining the given methods and principles of basic design in architecture education. The primary purpose is to improve the conventional, well-established principles and methodologies of basic design studios into fresh perspectives.

Focussing on the case study of a basic design studio assignment that translated Richard Serra's Verb List (1967-68) into space-generating operations, the authors analyse how a diagonal interdisciplinary approach to studio pedagogy opened up the basic design studio into the exploration of new concepts and approaches. The assignment encouraged architecture students to productively and creatively engage with a significant art historical work for the purposes of design thinking and exploration.

Findings reveal that the students explored the possible reciprocal influences between materials, actions, and issues of form and organisation, thereby operating in an interface between art, architecture and design surveying the possible interactions between these disciplines. Based on the outcome of this studio exercise, the authors argue that designing assignments that would bring together various and sometimes even conflicting approaches of different fields allow us to reassess and conceptualise anew the pedagogical aims and modi operandi.

The research is original in the ways in which it suggests many possibilities of dialogue, interaction and collaboration between art, design and architecture studios.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.

The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The use of random assignment can be effective and appropriate in the evaluation of programmes that serve children in schools. Because random assignment creates pre‐treatment equality between treatment and control groups, this methodology is particularly effective for understanding the impact of an intervention. Contemporary research on educational experiments has tended to focus on programme results rather than on their origin or implementation. While programme results are important, they provide little guidance to those interested in designing and implementing programme evaluations that use random assignment. This article shares the practical lessons learned from three educational experiments with researchers and practitioners interested in pursuing evaluations that use random assignment.

In 2015, a librarian (Jessica Blackwell) and a course instructor (Trevor Holmes) collaborated to offer experiential opportunities in the archive itself for a large introductory Women’s Studies class. Since then, students from six semesters of the course have worked with primary source materials from the library’s collections. This chapter is a description of practice rather than a formal study. The authors describe design elements from the course, public products of the assignment, and reflections based on observations over time, offering several ways for librarians with access to archival material to co-design assignments with instructors. In the assignment variations, students visit the archive to complete a short transcription or digitization task pre-selected to benefit both the learners’ research skills development and the wider research community. Final products go live online, benefiting the students and the global research community. Then, students link the experience to a course reading in a critically reflective paper. While initially the projects hold barriers for students, in formal and informal reflections they ultimately find it to be a rewarding learning experience. The authors contend that the assignment has significant elements of experiential learning and high-impact practices.

We study research designs where a binary treatment changes discontinuously at the border between administrative units such as states, counties, or municipalities, creating a treated and a control area. This type of geographically discontinuous treatment assignment can be analyzed in a standard regression discontinuity (RD) framework if the exact geographic location of each unit in the dataset is known. Such data, however, is often unavailable due to privacy considerations or measurement limitations. In the absence of geo-referenced individual-level data, two scenarios can arise depending on what kind of geographic information is available. If researchers have information about each observation’s location within aggregate but small geographic units, a modified RD framework can be applied, where the running variable is treated as discrete instead of continuous. If researchers lack this type of information and instead only have access to the location of units within coarse aggregate geographic units that are too large to be considered in an RD framework, the available coarse geographic information can be used to create a band or buffer around the border, only including in the analysis observations that fall within this band. We characterize each scenario, and also discuss several methodological challenges that are common to all research designs based on geographically discontinuous treatment assignments. We illustrate these issues with an original geographic application that studies the effect of introducing copayments for the use of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the United States, focusing on the border between Illinois and Wisconsin.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of developing an information literacy assessment project, and to discuss key findings from the project.

A variety of assessment tools were used to gather information about student learning and information literacy instruction: pre‐ and post‐surveys, student feedback surveys, faculty feedback to librarians, librarian self‐reflection, library worksheets, student research journals, and citation analysis of students' final research paper bibliographies.

It was found that the authors' initial suite of assessment tools did not provide the information wanted about students' research processes, so the authors' “assessment toolkit” was modified. It was found that more meaningful information could be gathered about students' research processes when the authors worked closely with faculty to embed information literacy assessments into course assignments. From the authors' analysis of student work, it was discovered that, for many students, library instruction was most valuable in helping them refine and explore research topics.

This paper will be useful to librarians and faculty seeking to implement an information literacy assessment project. The authors provide ideas for ways for faculty and librarians to collaborate on information literacy assessment, as well as on assignment and course design.

The purpose of the paper was to examine the importance faculty members place on student library use and their self‐perceived role in motivating students to use the library.

A modified and Arabised version of Baker's (1996) instrument was administered to all full‐time faculty teaching Islamic Studies disciplines at International Islamic University Malaysia.

The respondents consider student library use, making library‐based assignments and librarians'role as important. They are not fully satisfied with the students' library use skills, availability of information resources, and the value given to the library by university management. They expect librarians to provide, in addition to assisting students and faculty, a comfortable academic environment in the library.

This study was carried out with faculty members of Islamic Studies disciplines at one university. Further studies on similar and more general populations must be conducted in order to understand the situation fully.

Librarians are urged to respond proactively to the needs of students and faculty, to adopt a strong marketing strategy, and to develop general and course‐integrated information literacy programmes.

Baker's (1996) instrument, modified to suit the context of the study, was used for the first time in a developing country. This will stimulate research in similar countries. An Arabised version was prepared which can be used in Arab countries for further research.

This chapter provides two case studies of online graduate student engagement where a community of learning is fostered using Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 2001) ecological systems theory. The first case study explores an online graduate Sustainability Science course where students were provided with a space in VoiceThread to create video blogs (vlogs) and to extend course content with dialogue based on their values, relationships, and perspectives on issues like environmental degradation, social justice, and quality of life. The second case study surveys an online graduate course in Solar Energy, Technology, and Policy. These students completed a scholar-practitioner interview assignment of a solar energy expert, professional, entrepreneur, or policymaker. Both vlogging and scholar-practitioner interviews engaged graduate students in all of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 2001) ecological systems. For the vlogging assignment, the microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem were the most engaged; whereas for the scholar-practitioner interview assignment, the microsystem and exosystem were the most engaged. With respect to community building, both assignments fostered student-to-student interactions. The scholar-practitioner interview also fostered student-to-scholar-practitioner interactions, and, in some cases, student-to-alumni interactions. Innovative course assignments that engage professional, part-time graduate students with course content and other students, allow them to apply new knowledge, and broaden their professional connections are ideal.

This paper aims to highlight recent resources on information literacy (IL) and library instruction, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and IL published in 2015.

This paper provides information about each source, describes the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain either unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and IL.