English 2010 Library Instruction

Learning Goals | Instruction Options | Online Options | Assessment

Library instruction for English 2010 is designed to help students achieve the writing and research objectives of the course.

In 2005, we worked with five Information Literacy Fellows* to develop joint learning goals and accompanying lessons, based on the concept of Writing Information Literacy and our 2004 Needs Assessment for English Composition.

The following ideas were designed to be integrated with the sample 15-week syllabus outline developed by John Engler and Susan Nyikos, USU Department of English, and the textbook, Writing Arguments.

Learning Goals

English 2010 advances many of the English 1010 goals, giving students the opportunity to further practice and develop their skills at a greater level of sophistication and independence. The library instruction goals for English 2010 are:

Students will define their information needs in order to anticipate what they and their audience need to know and to focus, shape, and organize their ideas and writing.
Students will use a variety of sources to explore a topic in order to produce documented material directed to a specific audience.
Students will evaluate information for its value, relevance, and accuracy in order to assess whether the information they find is credible and useful for their purpose.
Students will synthesize and integrate the information found in order to create new knowledge or understanding, answer a question, make an argument, or solve a problem.
Students will document their sources in order to acknowledge their intellectual debts and demonstrate their understanding of research ethics.

Instruction Options

Librarians can help you adapt these ideas to fit your particular assignments and objectives. Our assessment data suggests that students benefit from 3-4 library sessions per semester. Students cite a wider range of sources when they have engaged in a highly-integrated library instruction curriculum. Problem-based learning exercises also seem to improve the quality of student work and their confidence in doing research. We have also found that the following sequence of instruction seems to be most effective.

Printer-friendly summary of sequence

Exploring a Discourse Community (Week Three)

If you are including a discourse community element in your class, consider using a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) scenario, in which students explore a real world problem or issue through the lens of different disciplines. The advantage of this approach is introducing the idea of discourse communities with a concrete and engaging example. Students also learn and practice the research process outlined below, including developing research questions and finding, evaluating, synthesizing, and applying information. This can be a good introduction to the research process before they begin working on their individual essays. It also addresses different levels of skill among 2010 students. Some will have had significant library instruction in English 1010, while others have had no library research experience at all. All of our scenarios can be adapted for one or two sessions, and we can develop new scenarios based on your own interests.

Sample activities

Introduction to Discourse Communities pdf / rtf
Summary: Using the PBL scenario as your common ground, have students brainstorm a list of questions that they need to answer in order to learn more about the problem and propose a potential solution. Using the list of questions, have students identify various disciplines or discourse communities that might have investigated some of their questions.

Exploring Disciplinary Knowledge pdf / rtf
Summary: Come to the library for a hands-on session in which students break up into groups and explore disciplinary-research tools for answers to their questions from the brainstorming session. Have them pay attention to the types of sources they find, including the audience, style of writing, and kinds of questions addressed. Have them summarize what they found at the end of class, and what they learned about how their discourse community asks questions and communicates knowledge.

Note: these two sessions can be combined into one, especially if students do some common reading and develop research questions as homework before class.

Online Collaboration Tools:
In order to promote collaboration and the synthesis of information, students can use the following tools to plan and organize their work. Librarians can help students set up free accounts:

Thinkature: a free online idea organizer. Students can set up a free account and then record their ideas on color-coded cards, upload images, and use drawing tools to connect ideas or draw diagrams.

Diigo: a free online annotater. Can be added as an extension to Firefox or Internet Explorer. Students can highlight and place sticky notes of web documents and then share their comments and ideas with the class. This could be especially useful for having students highlight special features of information genres for a specific discourse community.

Writing an Argument (Weeks Four through Eleven)

1. Topic and Question Development
Invite the librarian to your classroom shortly after you introduce the research assignment. Co-facilitate a brainstorming session in which you model how to come up with a “researchable” topic and specific questions to guide inquiry and research.

Sample activities

Topic Brainstorming pdf / rtf
Summary: Librarians can help facilitate a brainstorming session around common objects brought to class. Students brainstorm a list of questions related to these common objects and the instructor and librarian help students evaluate which questions are the most researchable. From "The Myth of the Boring Topic," in Bruce Ballenger, The Curious Researcher, 4th ed. (Pearson Longman, 2004), pp. 34-35.

What Do You Need to Know? pdf / rtf
Summary: Librarians can help facilitate a discussion and model the process of developing research questions to guide research for both personal and persuasive writing.

Group Research Question Brainstorming pdf / rtf
Summary: Students develop research questions for each other's topics in a pass-around activity.

Concept Mapping pdf / rtf
Summary: Librarians can show students how to use Inspiration, a concept mapping software, to generate maps of their ideas. This can also be adapted to use for maps written on paper. You could also use Thinkature (see above) for a concept mapping exercise.

2. Research Day
Come to the library as soon as possible after the brainstorming session. The librarian can do a very quick demonstration of how to locate articles. The rest of the time can be spent assisting students individually.

3. Work-in-Progress Reports pdf / rtf
Students will practice the process of synthesizing sources through small group work in class. Each student will summarize one source and explain how it contributes to their argument. The group will reflect on their information gaps and librarians will provide advice about how to find that information. Students could use both Thinkature and Diigo to present where their project is going and their thoughts about their information sources.

4. Additional mini-lessons
You can combine research days or other classroom instruction with lessons on evaluating websites and proper citation mechanics.

Evaluating Information pdf / rtf / handout (pdf) / handout (rtf)
Summary: Students use three criteria to evaluate websites, including evaluating the source of the website, comparing the site to other websites, and corroborating the information in the site with other sources. Think about using Diigo (see above) as a tool to annotate websites.

MLA Musical Chairs pdf / rtf / sample citations (rtf)
Summary: Students play musical chairs to learn how to properly format citations in MLA style.

Online Citation Game
Summary: Students can play an online game to learn how to format citations in MLA or APA style.

Online Options

If you are teaching English 2010 online, you can have a librarian assigned to your class. Most instructors enter their librarians as students in SyllaBase or Vista/Blackboard and the librarians provide comments and suggestions on research plans or proposals, paper drafts, and bibliographies. We have also developed the exercises below. The first is especially important for getting students set up early to do library research from a distance. We can also adapt the lessons listed above for the online environment.

Testing Off-Campus Library Access

Developing a Working Knowledge

Problem-Based Learning: Rising Tuition Costs pdf | doc

Assessment

In order to provide students with feedback to improve learning and our instruction, librarians are active partners in the assessment process. Assessment Ideas can help you develop appropriate and effective assessments of student learning.

Student work can be assessed using the English 2010 Information Literacy Rubric

*2005 Information Literacy Fellows: Julie Johns, Heather Robison, Anne Stark, Maria Walters, and Michael Ward.

Archived Lessons

Complete Archive

Our curriculum has changed in order to accommodate different textbooks and teaching approaches to English 2010. The lessons linked from the archive can be adapted to meet your needs.

For more information, contact Wendy Holliday, Coordinator of Library Instruction, 797-0731.

Instructional materials on this page are covered by a Creative Commons copyright.
Sample Attribution: Adapted from materials created by Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University.