Teaching Social Information Literacy to Undergraduates

Teaching Social Information Literacy to Undergraduates

Presented at the Missouri Library Association Annual Conference, October 3, 2013.

My Emotions!

Our benevolent god of the animated GIF, Buzzfeed, has graced us with another multimedia listicle thing-y, this time on what it is like being a new TA. They get it basically right, though what they describe isn't really limited to new TAs. The shifting feelings of despair, frustration, euphoria, and ambivalence have not gone away, at least as long as I teach. Sure, there's a little less despair as I grow more comfortable teaching, and probably a bit more frustration as I realize that just because I'm a better teacher than last year does not mean now I can get all of my students to actually care, but it's the same mix. 

It also got me thinking about the different feelings I get from being a reference librarian and being an instructor. My assistantship has me doing two things: working the reference desk at the main branch of a large academic library and teaching a couple sections of a weekly, for-credit information literacy/research skills course, primarily targeted at freshmen but with the occasional upperclassmen looking for a one-credit class. Looking at the emotions I feel during both parts of my job, I'd say they are similar, but everything that comes from the teaching part is just more intense than from the reference part.   

The sort of extreme pride and satisfaction that you get when the students finally get something? You only get that from the repeated interactions you get in a class. That's not to say I never get done with an extended reference interview and feel great. I do, and sometimes I really do feel that I've taught them something they will remember. But, when you realize from teaching a course that you have to explain the same concept or skill to freshmen for four straight weeks before they get it,¹ you figure out that what you show them at the desk one time probably isn't sticking for most. But when you are tracking the same students week after week and you start to see them applying what they've learned? Fantastic. Things go similarly for the negative feelings. Those students who come up to the desk, want you do everything for them, and refuse to be taught? Annoying. But in 10 minutes they'll be gone. You get the same type of student in a course, they give you the same attitude week after week, and eventually you probably fail them? Much worse. 

But, at least in my experience, it's been worth it. The successes make the failures worth it. 

1) Or longer. Boolean!!!

Teaching Philosophy

To prepare for some course development tasks I've been assigned this year, I'm reading through Char Booth's Reflective Teaching Effective Learning: Instructional Literacy for Library Educators.¹ During the first chapter, Booth talks about teaching philosophy: a short (75 words or less) statement of what motivates you to teach. Booth gives her own philosophy as an example of what she means:

I want to redefine the way people think about librarians, inspire as much critical thought as I do laughter, make sure they come away with something they can actually use, and most important, to never, ever, ever bore anyone to tears. (7)

After reading her example (and 15 other examples she got from many awesome librarians), I tried putting together a teaching philosophy of my own. A few days reflection and a couple drafts later, here's what I have:

I want to create critical consumers and producers of information, do so through activities and discussion that engage and provide the chance for self-reflection and collaboration, and broaden students' minds to how the library can support them as researchers and information users.

Thinking back on this, one point sticks out to me: I kind of have the library/librarians in a somewhat secondary position. Partially this could be attributed to the context in which I am an instructor. I teach a for-credit class at the moment that, while incorporating library use instruction, is more structured around the whole research process, including not just finding information but first developing an information need and then evaluating the information once it has been found. Also, I think that not putting the library first and foremost in my philosophy possibly helps make my teaching of more interest to students. Learning about library resources for the sake of library resources is of interest to the following groups: librarians, library science researchers, library students, and prospective library students. That's it (okay, maybe vendors). For everybody else, the library is but a tool to some end.

Anyway, have you thought about your teaching philosophy? What is it?

1) Everything is literacy for librarians, yeah?