Final Post: KSU 1101 Freshman Experience: Knowledge is Power!

A description of your environment: your teaching scenario, learners, purpose or end goal, and timeline. Are you teaching face-to-face or online? Is this a tutorial or a course? A one-shot library instruction session? Be specific. [from week 1] 

This course is a freshman experience course titled KSU 1101 Freshman Experience: Knowledge is Power! I expect enrollment of 20 - 25 students, all freshmen. The course will be delivered in person in a computer lab so students can get hands-on practice. These students are freshmen, and they are usually the same age (17-19). I could expect to get a few returning or older students in my course; however this is unlikely for this type of course. These students were born in the "digital" age, so they may feel they already know about information, about technology, and so on. However, they may have never been asked to critically evaluate information, or challenged to think about it in new ways. Their goals are probably to take the course, and get it over with -- it's often seen as a "blow off course" by students. Preferred learning styles are definitely working with technology, working with groups.  My main goal is to teach transferable, life-long information literacy skills and concepts. 

Your learning outcomes. These should be based on the needs and expectations of your environment. Are these outcomes appropriate for your learners? [from week 2]

A year (or more) after this course is over, I want and hope that students will apply skills and ideas learned in this course to their current coursework, and use these skills to solve real-world problems. 

Here are three examples of learning outcomes for my course:
SWBAT... 

1. Explain how information plays a role in their life in order to make decisions about how to use/create/consume information. 

2. Classify various types of information in order to determine the authority and validity of a source.  

3. Verify an information source in order to use the source to solve a problem. 

How will you assess your learners? What formative and summative assessments would best fit in your teaching scenario? Do they align with your outcomes? [from week 2]

Criteria 1 Students will be able to analyze social media reviews of apartment in order to decide where to live.

Aligns with outcomes 1 & 3  

Standard 1 Student will show they eliminated fake, unhelpful, or inappropriate reviews from their search. 

Standard 2 Student will show they used a variety of websites (social media, news, apartment sites) to make their decision. 

Criteria 2 Students will be able to design a budget around maintaining an apartment and city lifestyle.  

Aligns with outcome 1

Standard 1 Student will show they identified various factors that go into their monthly budget --  rent, rental insurance, utilities, fees, groceries, and so on.  

Standard 2 Student will itemize their budget and show me a monthly breakdown of what it costs to live in their city of choice. 

Learning theories and other instructional approaches to implement. What learning theories best support your outcomes? How might you leverage these theories to develop content and assessments? [from week 3]

The learning theory that has always appealed to me is constructivism. This theory is particularly appropriate for the course I am designing because I want to teach my students higher order thinking skills via active learning strategies. I believe in the constructivist principle that states learning happens when students are able to create meaning from experiences. The Cooperstein and Kocevar-Weidinger article states "In order to make knowledge useful in a new situation, students must make a deliberate effort to make sense of the information that comes to them. [...] They must manipulate, discover, and create knowledge to fit their belief systems."  

I will leverage this theory to develop content and assessments by designing activities in which students are put into the driver's seat of their own learning. I will try to eliminate passivity in the classroom to have students analyze, evaluate, and create information of their own. 

What tools will you use to deliver this content and have learners interact with your instruction? What might work best and why? [from week 4]

I really like the idea of using video and podcast tools (jing, iMovie, softchalk, voicethread) for student activities. Instead of the traditional paper writing, I will have students use multimedia tools to explain, analyze, and create products. I think this will work well because it forces the students to step out of their comfort zone, and for those who do not enjoy papers, it will get them to do something more active and collaborative. 

Reflect on what you have learned. What has been most useful? What do you feel you are still struggling with? How has this course changed how you approach instruction?

Thinking about a course holistically has been really helpful. It is challenging to design a course anyway, but I like to work through it backwards, like we did in this course. I think I will design a more effective course because I am putting the student in the center and working out from there. Keeping the student in mind means that I will focus on their needs and learning instead of my own teaching. This is changing how I approach instruction because it is taking me out of my comfort zone. I am super excited to take some risks when it comes to student learning. I've also come up with some good ideas on applying the new framework to my instruction. I think I am still struggling with feeling overwhelmed by putting together a course. It is such a big undertaking, and I want to make sure students are getting a lot out of it. But I think the old adage is true -- I have to put this into practice, assess, revise, and practice some more! 

Finally, did you find any of your coursemates' blogs particularly helpful? Link to any particularly useful posts or entire blogs from your peers. What have you learned from your peers? 

My peers have been very helpful in offering helpful criticism of my activities. They challenge me to go deeper, and to remember crucial things about students. A few of my classmates' blogs have been particularly insightful including Amanda Burch's blog. 

IDE Week 4 Ed Tech in the Classroom

I was doing some additional research on educational technology for this week, and came across this article on faculty focus. It's about reducing passivity in the classroom by putting students in the driver's seat of their own learning. I try to do practice this when I do one:one reference, and I love the idea of doing this in the classroom. This article discusses an assignment where students are put in charge of teaching a chapter of their textbook. They have to create a video for the class to watch before they teach, then they teach a 50 minute session. I love the idea of having the students create a flipped classroom of their own.  By using video creation technology (jing, imovie... something free that is easy to learn), the students can create their own product, and actively learn the information (while also learning another potentially useful skill -- video creation). 

This type of activity definitely aligns with what I surmised from the Horizon Report for higher ed: 

"The learning environment transforms into a dynamic and more social space where students can participate in critiques or work through problems in teams" (pg. 37). 

I want the students to be able to collaborate -- a goal/idea that is a thread running through my blog posts. I also think this is a great way for them to tackle a problem they might have in a real-life job situation -- explaining a concept to a coworker, creating a product, and delivering a presentation to a group. Also, this aligns with my wanting to teach the students that they are creators of information, and can contribute to the scholarly conversation. 

Finally, I think this type of activity motivates students because it is attention grabbing -- a novel experience that they may have not had the opportunity to participate in before, and it is hopefully instilling confidence in the learner by providing students with a new challenge and an interesting way to solve the problem. 

IDE Week 3: Learning Theories

PART 1:

The learning theory that has always appealed to me is constructivism. This theory is particularly appropriate for the course I am designing because I want to teach my students higher order thinking skills via active learning strategies. I believe in the constructivist principle that states learning happens when students are able to create meaning from experiences. The Cooperstein and Kocevar-Weidinger article states "In order to make knowledge useful in a new situation, students must make a deliberate effort to make sense of the information that comes to them. [...] They must manipulate, discover, and create knowledge to fit their belief systems." My goal for this set of activities is for the students to construct their own meaning around the concept: authority is constructed and contextual (ACRL Framework for Information Literacy). I will scaffold my activities to get the students to think about authority of resources, and using an authoritative resource to make a claim. 

Learning outcome: Students will be able to evaluate (Bloom's Taxonomy) online resources in the debate about the justification of the Iraq War in order to determine credible sources on the subject. 

Activity 1:
Students will be divided into groups. Each group will be given two articles to evaluate. These articles will not be about any specific topic or related to the Iraq War. They will look at the author, the facts in the article, the source of the article, and so on. They will need to determine if one, both, or neither are credible articles. Note: The instructor will not tell the student what makes an article credible. The students must decide on their own, and ask questions if they are unsure. The students will report out on their findings. The groups will teach each other what is credible, why something is credible, etc. 

Activity 2:
Then the students will use knowledge from activity 1 individually find credible sources of their own. The goal of this activity is to have students discover that scholarly articles about the Iraq War are not necessarily available on the Internet. First, the students will perform a Google Search. We'll discuss their results. The goal of this activity is to show that students may find credible sources on the Internet, but they may also find biased or unreliable sources, as well. We will have a discussion about what makes the sources credible, and why.

Next, the instructor will tell the students they must find scholarly articles, not news or opinion pieces. This will hopefully also spark questions about how to get to a scholarly article, and will lead us to a commercial database. Once we are in the commercial database, I will point out features such as full text and peer review. This will also lead us to a discussion on authority of authors whose works appear in a commercial database, why these articles are considered scholarly, and so on. 

Activity 3:
Students will apply what we discussed in the previous two activities and participate in a debate about the Iraq War. Students will be divided up into teams. Each team must find, evaluate, and critically think about resources about the Iraq War. The teams will provide a list of resources, and must add justification for their use in a blog post. Then the teams will come together and each will debate the war, and why or why not they believe it is justified. 

PART 2:

After reading the "motivation" article, I am really interested in the idea of incorporating the ARCs Model of Motivational Design into my teaching. I like the idea of using something novel to grab the students' attention at the beginning of class, and keeping them interested by showing them how this particular lesson is relevant to them or matching the instruction to the student's motives. For example, instead of having a "traditional" debate in activity three, I could design the assignment so that students can present their ideas in a way that is comfortable to them. They could present their ideas orally, in a video, or in a paper. 

Another important motivating factor is confidence. I think for activity two, students should be reminded that they may become frustrated or overwhelmed when they are doing their research, and that this is normal. I can reassure them that librarians are available should they have issues. 

IDE Week 2, Part 2: Achieving our Goals

Taking some time to review the alignment of my work so far, I've realized that I am right on track for integrating the situational factors, learning goals and outcomes, assessment, and activities for my course. For example, in my initial post I stated:

"My main goal is to teach transferable, life-long information literacy skills and concepts. The university doesn't have much to say about info lit; however our profession and society are clear advocates of these types of skills. "

The situation I describe in my earlier blog post -- having students analyze a variety of factors to help them make a decision about where to live post-graduation -- directly contributes to my desire to teach students transferable, life-long information literacy skills. 

I think a potential conflict or disconnect here maybe students who already live on their own, or who are older. Also, students from varied economic backgrounds may or may not respond well to this activity, and this could create conflict among the students. 

When I assess my students, I want them to be able to see how I was grading their work, so laying out specific criteria and standards is important to me. I want to do this by creating a rubric for each assignment and for the overall course itself. This will allow me to create a dialog with students, should they have questions about any feedback they were giving. It will also prepare students for the final assessment -- they know what has been expected of them, and they can perform to the rubric. 

I think by asking the students to do hands on activities, I can more fully address the learning goals I've laid out for them, and I will be able to assess them formatively. Using low-stakes assessment in real time, gives me feedback and allows me to adjust my teaching in order to better address their needs. Also, I understand the learning goals are integrated, so my assessments must assess each goal. For example, when I assess students, I am looking to make sure that the the feedback they are receiving addressing things like their ability to apply information to real-world problems, their ability to see this integration, and their ability to take charge of their own information. I also want students to care about the information, so I will have them assess their own learning by journaling.

In the interest of time (I've been super swamped this week!), I took a few of my learning goals and designed assessment/activities around them in the Worksheet for Designing a Course. Obviously, I would be more comprehensive/thorough in another situation, but for now this is what I have! 

IDE Week 2: I love assessment!

Be still my little librarian heart! It's assessment time! 

This week we are looking at student learning assessment, and I love that we are focusing on assessment that enhances the quality of student learning. Forward thinking assessment forces the student to use their learning, and not just recite it. This is also called authentic assessment, where students demonstrate their knowledge/understanding of the material by doing something. 

In attempting to come up with this type of assessment, I need to answer the question "In what kind of situation do I expect students to need, or to be able to use this knowledge?"

For my freshman experience course on information literacy, I know I want my students to be able to use this information in other courses during their time in school. However, I also want to go beyond that. For example, after graduation, students will leave their small town and move to a big city. I want my students to be able to choose a good location to live. So, one activity we could do is to analyze information to help the students make the best decision. I would ask them to do research on a particular area in the city they would like to live. They should consider the geography; walkability; insurance rates; cost of living; etc. This is a very real-world application of their knowledge. 

In order to assess whether or not students are succeeding at applying their knowledge to this activity, I must have criteria and standards by which to measure their performance. 

Criteria 1
Students will be able to analyze social media reviews of apartment in order to decide where to live.

Standard 1Student will show they eliminated fake, unhelpful, or inappropriate reviews from their search. 

Standard 2Student will show they used a variety of websites (social media, news, apartment sites) to make their decision. 

Criteria 2
Students will be able to design a budget around maintaining an apartment and city lifestyle. 

Standard 1Student will show they identified various factors that go into their monthly budget --  rent, rental insurance, utilities, fees, groceries, and so on.  

Standard 2Student will itemize their budget and show me a monthly breakdown of what it costs to live in their city of choice. 

Along with this exercise, I would build in opportunities for student self-assessment. I would ask students to discuss their research process with their peers in small groups, and ask them for advice. Then I would have the students reflect on their choices. Could they live in a cheaper house in order to have a better social life? Could they spend less on eating out so they could save money for retirement? I think questions like these would force students to think about how they are using the information they have to make decisions about their future.

Finally, in order to make sure the students are fully engaged, I need to be engaged in their learning by giving them feedback. I believe each week I could give students a progress report in class on where I think the class is, and what we can work on. After assignments, I would make sure my feedback was immediate. I don't like to wait for feedback before beginning my next project, and I do not want to make the students wait for theirs before they begin the next assignment. In order to give discriminating feedback, I would layout the criteria and standards for the students, in writing, before the assignment. I want the students to know exactly what to do in order to receive a good grade. Finally, I believe in compassion in the classroom, so I would make sure my feedback was delivered in a kind manner. If the feedback is in an open discussion, I would treat the person with respect and dignity. If this is private feedback, I would make sure the student knows that they can come to me at any time if they disagree with my feedback. 

I can understand if some people think this is an odd example for the library, but I think it parallels critical pedagogy discussion happening in another forum. I want to engage students will real issues they are having, and something like personal finance is a huge issue that no one talks about. No one teaches financial literacy. I think this is just one avenue we could explore in this class while incorporating other important information literacy concepts into the course. 

IDE Week 1: For Credit Information Literacy Course

The focus of my work in this course will be to design a for-credit information literacy course. My institution does not have anything like this right now, but I think it would work well as a freshman experience/first year student course. As an outreach tool, I think teaching a freshman experience course like this could be a boon to the library! 

Situational Factors

1. Specific context of the teaching/learning situation

This course is taught at the freshman level -- all freshman are required to take what is called a KSU 1101 first year experience course. I expect enrollment of 20 - 25 students. The course would be delivered in person, most likely in a computer lab so students could get hands-on practice. I'm not sure what time of day the course would be scheduled, this is up to the university. However, a factors that may affect the class is the room set up. Our lab rooms, especially in the English Building, are awkwardly set up so that the computers hug the walls, and the students face the teacher one way and face the projector in a total opposite direction. 

2. General context of the learning situation

The university expects this to be an introduction to the academic experience for the students. The professor is expected to teach students about college life, study habits, typical college assignments, etc.  These courses have different themes, and my theme would be information, because I think this would tie into the idea of an introduction to the academic experience very well. My main goal is to teach transferable, life-long information literacy skills and concepts. The university doesn't have much to say about info lit; however our profession and society are clear advocates of these types of skills. 

3. Nature of the subject

Again, the theme is information and I want to teach about various aspects, including ubiquity of information, the information economy, ethical use of information, etc. I would base my course content off of the new ACRL Framework. I think the Framework lends itself to more divergent thinking -- or using information to think of multiple solutions to a problem or issue, rather than converging onto one solution. I expect this to be a combination of theory and practice; however I will focus mostly on practical applications of the information. I think controversies within the nature of this subject are information can be overwhelming, false, difficult to understand, hard to analyze, and difficult to make an argument. Students are too often consumers of information, and they don't understand that they are also creators, and contribute to the information economy. 

4. Characteristics of the learners

These students are freshmen, and they are usually the same age (17-19). I could expect to get a few returning or older students in my course; however this is unlikely for this type of course. These students were born in the "digital" age, so they may feel they already know about information, about technology, and so on. However, they may have never been asked to critically evaluate information, or challenged to think about it in new ways. Their goals are probably to take the course, and get it over with -- it's often seen as a "blow off course" by students. Preferred learning styles are definitely working with technology, working with groups. 

5. Characteristics of the teacher

I believe teaching and learning is a group effort -- collaboration. I am not the expert by any means, and I believe we have a lot to learn from each other. I am deeply passionate about the subject, and I desire to create responsible citizens, courageous creators, and a fun learning environment. Although I said I am not an expert, I do have advanced knowledge of the subject with a desire to keep learning and evolving. My strengths include a willingness to ask questions, unafraid to say I don't know something, engaging/outgoing, and hopefully humor! 

Formulating Significant Learning Goals

A year (or more) after this course is over, I want and hope that students will apply skills and ideas learned in this course to their current coursework, and use these skills to solve real-world problems. 

Foundational Knowledge

Key Information: students will need to remember specific skills such as searching, research skills, research as an iterative process, how to analyze information, what to do when you have information, what to do when you don't have it. 

Key Ideas: information is power and currency; it's ubiquity in our lives means we have the power to consume, not consume, etc.; we have the responsibility to act ethically when using/creating/sharing information; students are a part of the scholarly conversation, and have the power to communicate/create their own information; students have the power to change the conversation as well. 

Application Goals

This course will engage students in all modes of thinking, especially critical thinking and evaluation of information as a commodity. The course will explore how to creatively use information to solve problems. Students will need to gain skills in multiple areas, including research on the open and closed web, evaluating resources for credibility and authoritativeness, and determining the value of information. Finally, students will need to be able to critically analyze information in order to make decisions and create information products of their own. 

Integration Goals

Students should be able to see the ubiquity of information in their life, and see the connection between how they research, evaluate, and analyze information in the "real-world" and in the academy. They should be able to see how they use information, exchange it, and make decisions. The skills and ideas they learn can be integrated into their daily lives, and into future courses they pursue at university. 

Human Dimensions Goals

Students should learn that they are already using the skills in this class in their own lives. They are already creating information, crafting stories, and using this to influence others. I want them to know that they have power, and can be empowered by information. 

Caring Goals

I hope that students start to care more about being responsible with information -- what they share, post, create, write, etc. I want them to care about creating and putting "good stuff"  out into the world instead of consuming. 

"Learning How to Learn" Goals

I hope students will become better informationists -- they will take charge of their own skill development and use these skills to better themselves and their lives.