By Abby Kasowitz-Scheer

The College Connection is a new column providing space for discussion of issues and activities involving information literacy instruction at the higher education level. The column will explore ways in which library media specialists and academic librarians can help students make smooth transitions from high school to college through development of information literacy skills. This first College Connection column provides an update on the efforts of S.O.S. for Information Literacy project to expand to the higher education level.

Have ideas for future College Connection columns? Want to know more about the higher education component of S.O.S.? Contact Abby Kasowitz-Scheer at askasowi@syr.edu or 315-443-1943.

Background

Planned specific outcomes for academic librarians using and contributing to S.O.S. include:

• Improve teaching of information literacy skills in course-related and course-integrated instruction.
• Increase confidence in teaching motivating information literacy instruction.
• Engage in more collaborative information literacy instruction with faculty.
  

Progress

• Desired search functionality (e.g., fields, information literacy standards, search results page);
• Materials or resources to be included (e.g., incorporating media such as PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, images, video and audio; issues in presenting materials and connecting them to lessons);
• Proposed digital reference (AskA) service;
• General look and feel of the site (e.g., changes necessary to appeal the new higher education audience);
• Lesson plan submission process.
  

Recommendations

Focus group participants provided valuable feedback, summarized below:

• Remove login requirement. Participants viewed the login as a barrier to access. Casual searching should be made as easy as possible. The “my account” feature could be used by returning users who wish to have a customized space to store links to useful items, receive notices about new lesson plans and organize lesson plans into folders.
• One S.O.S site. Participants felt that there should be one site combining materials from K-12 and higher education, rather than separating the elementary, high school and college versions. This would be useful as K-16 educators and librarians examine the relationships between high school seniors and college freshmen.
• Multiple standards. The focus group generated a list of standards sets that might be useful in searching lessons in addition to the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (e.g., ISTE, NETS, etc.). Further research and discussion will be needed to determine how to allow users to search by and organize materials by different sets of standards.
• Simple vs. advanced searching. Participants generated a list of fields by which to search for materials. They expressed interest in having both basic and advanced searching capabilities and features allowing search results to be refined and sorted.
• Searchable supporting materials. Participants expressed a desire to search separately for materials and resources that are created to support the lesson (e.g., PowerPoint presentations, handouts, worksheets, video, audio, etc.). These materials should be linked back to the originating lesson.
• AskA service not needed. Participants felt that a digital reference service to connect with more experienced instruction librarians was not necessary. They felt that this effort would duplicate communication on ILI-L and other discussion lists where librarians regularly receive feedback from colleagues on information literacy issues. More desired was the ability to contact the authors of lesson plans and to have FAQ’s regarding the lesson plans. In addition, focus group participants were interested in communicating with recognized experts in information literacy in some way (e.g., web casts, etc.).
  

A progressive feedback panel has been assembled to provide input over the next year and a half on the design and development of the prototype. Panelists include academic librarians from community colleges, private colleges and public universities.

We are looking for academic librarians to serve as “pioneers” to provide feedback during development and to submit their original instructional materials (at least two) to populate the system. Please contact Abby Kasowitz-Scheer or Rabecca Little if you are interested in making a contribution to your profession through this valuable research.