Indiana University Libraries Information Literacy Colloquium 2012

This year was the first annual Indiana University Libraries Information Literacy Colloquium and I was lucky enough to be there to participate! Becky Canovan (who I've probably blogged about a couple of times, at least), from University of Dubuque, and I sent in a presentation proposal and it was accepted (more on that in a bit). So these two Iowa gals hit the road to (just north of) Louisville, KY to be there for "Learning Out Loud: Information Literacy Pedagogy for the Non-Shushing Librarian."

The conference began with your basic welcome, but with an instruction-y twist (of course) where attendees jumped right in with a Think-Pair-Share activity.  We discussed something that has made an impact on our instruction/institution.  When we came back to the whole group we heard answers ranging from making headway with increasing the amount of instruction, collaborating/advocating for IL with faculty outside of the library, to being purposeful about making sure students (and faculty) see you as a whole person (many librarians, especially new/young ones, feel pressure to wear their professional librarian hat at all times, but showing you're a person & making mistakes can open doors and make faculty & students more comfortable coming to you for help). Another programming idea that was shared was the Murder Mystery at the Library where students have to follow clues (as part of their orientation) to find resources & solve the mystery (it was Mrs. White in the Library with the candlestick!!!).  How much fun would that be during freshman orientation days?! I totally want to dress up and ham it up melodrama-style!

The first session I attended was "We Didn't Start the Fire": How Billy Joel's Song Can Motivate Student Learning and Deeper Engagement, given by Linda Lambert (Taylor University) and Ruth Szpunar (DePauw University).  When I read through the abstracts I was really excited about this presentation because "We Didn't Start the Fire" is one of the first songs on my running playlist--power up!  The abstract described using the song to apply Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences "in an active learning session which employs multimedia and provides participants with a hands-on experience.  As part of this session we will create a time line [sic] using the events between the years, 1949-1989. The aims of this exercise are to encourage students to probe more deeply into the historical and ethical issues mentioned in the song and to engage in the learning process in a personal way." Basically, students chose one of the people/topics from the song, did preliminary research (using encyclopedias) and plotted some of the information they found onto a timeline, then they were to locate a peer reviewed article (and be prepared to discuss and evaluate), and formulate 1-2 possible research questions. The presenters also mentioned a more modern alternative to the Billy Joel version is a song from the new Train album (not really an option for me, as that would likely make my ears bleed and all of my hair fall out as I run screaming from the room). This session wasn't exactly what I expected...or rather it was exactly what I expected and didn't bring anything new beyond having students choose topics & research them. I suppose it was my expectations that got the best of me, but I wanted some extra "oomph" or something more that would further engage students in the classroom. You can find more information, including lesson planning materials, here: http://libguides.depauw.edu/colloquium

Stay tuned for the next installment of "IULIUColloq" or "This Conference has a Super-Long Hashtag, but That's Okay Because Information Literacy is Awesome" (a little throwback to "Rocky and Bullwinkle" there with the two titles...).