1 Engagement and Assessment in a Credit-Bearing Information Literacy Course

Purpose – The authors teach a three‐credit, upper‐division, information literacy (IL) course to students in various majors. The purpose of this paper is to share the various philosophies and activities the authors use to engage their students and create a cohesive interdisciplinary course and to describe the various assessment tools utilized.Design/methodology/approach – In this case study, the authors give specific examples of engaging assignments and methods for evaluating student work in a credit‐bearing IL course.Findings – It is found that if students are engaged, and effective assessment tools are employed, library credit instruction in a face‐to‐face setting with upper‐classmen from diverse majors is an impactful way to teach IL.Practical implications – This article provides ideas on how to use a topical theme in teaching an interdisciplinary IL credit course; concrete approaches on engaging students in an IL course; and new strategies for assessing an IL credit‐bearing course. Many of the engageme...


Introduction
As librarians offer an increasing number of information literacy (IL) credit courses and develop a more significant teaching role, the breadth of courses they teach may expand from the traditional freshman-level introductory course.This paper offers a case study of one such course at the University of Wyoming (UW), with a particular focus on engaging students in the learning process and assessing learning throughout the course.The authors provide the context for an upper-level 3-credit IL course, an overview of the course and its learning objectives, the driving principles for the course, specific examples of how students are engaged, and information about course assessment.The authors' reflections and possible future directions conclude the article.The rationale for creating and offering this course is that it reaches students at a time in their academic career when they are required to conduct in-depth research in their discipline.Evidence of engagement is provided from formal assessments and the authors share their observations as instructors, since not every aspect of student engagement is strictly measurable.

Background
The University of Wyoming Libraries' Research and Instruction department decided to teach a credit-bearing IL class in 2007.Two librarians developed a one-credit, online, upper-level research class titled "Research from a Distance" (LBRY 3010), and another pair of librarians developed a three-credit, face-to-face, upper-level class called "Managing and Navigating the World of Information"(LBRY 3020).The focus of this paper is LBRY 3020, the three-credit course.This course ties to the university's general education plan called the University Studies Program (USP), which was instated in 2003.The USP has various requirements, including an information literacy requirement intended to meet research instruction needs in an in-depth way.One research and instruction librarian was a committee member during the creation of USP, and she was instrumental in creating buy-in for the information literacy requirement on the campus.Currently, there are different ways UW students may achieve their information literacy requirement; for many students, the IL class is embedded within their major and involves one or more visits to the library for instruction within their discipline.The information literacy designation is usually tied to a freshman-level course.The main rationale for librarians to develop and teach credit-bearing IL classes was to further reach students where there was a need for upper-level instruction.Instruction statistics at our library show that IL instruction sessions skew to lower-level classes, with nearly fifty percent of one-shot instruction sessions offered at the freshman level.Students in upper-division classes are in greater need of in-depth library instruction, since they are more likely to be required to conduct research and write or present more than first-year students.
The upper-level credit-bearing IL classes meet a particular general education need for transfer students (a population that can be difficult to reach), those students who did not take an IL course in their subject major, students inclined to continue with graduate school, or those who want a more thorough grounding in IL principles.Recent research at University of Wyoming shows a correlation between students who have library instruction in upper-division courses and higher grade point averages (GPA) at graduation (Bowles-Terry, 2012).Offering library instruction to upper-division students meets both a practical need for students who did not address the information literacy requirement early in their college careers.The authors have recently ascertained that it makes good pedagogical sense based on their analysis of student success related to library instruction.
The librarian-developed classes, LBRY 3010 and LBRY 3020, underwent the usual committee approval process for all new general education courses.The course prefix, LBRY, was important since these were librarian-developed courses, taught by librarians in the library.The registrar approved the prefix, and in spring 2008, both LBRY 3010 and 3020 were offered for the first time.
In 2009, the LBRY 3020 course underwent a major revision.The revision moved the course from discrete resource-based individual class sessions to focus on inquiry-based learning, defined as a "student-centered, active learning approach focused on questioning, critical thinking, and problem solving" (Lowery,191).In the revised class, students choose the thematic focus for the course and many of the course readings, and they work independently throughout the semester on a research project.The revamped course was offered for the first time in spring 2010, and was team-taught in both spring 2011 and spring 2012 by the authors.The 2012 UW course catalog description reads: "LBRY 3020 prepares students to be knowledgeable consumers of information in our global, high-tech society.Skills taught enable students to locate and manage information resources, preparing them for university level research and life after graduation" (http://www.uwyo.edu/registrar/university_catalog/lbry.html ).The pre-requisite to enroll in LBRY 3020 is completion of a freshman-level English composition class.

Literature Review
How does LBRY 3020 stand apart in the context of the published literature on credit-bearing IL courses?Our students are juniors and seniors and have a disciplinary identity when they come to our three-credit, face-to-face, class.A search of information literacy instruction scholarship generally reveals a focus on lower-division, one-credit, and online courses.The authors did not locate any professional literature focused on engaging and assessing students in an upper-level, face-to-face IL course.There are articles related to credit IL classes and to elements of our teaching approach, and those articles are included here.An early article (Dennis, 1990) describes a three-credit information literacy class offered via the Interdisciplinary Studies Department in 1989 at Salem State College, which focused on specific tools and various databases at the time.The author mentions using curricular outlines and prophetically concludes with the question, "Will academic librarians envision a role for their instruction programs in teaching students how to use information and not just how to retrieve it?"Jacobson and Xu's article "Motivating Students in Credit-Based Information Literacy Courses: Theories and Practice," provides some strategies for engagement in a one-credit IL course, specifically using Keller's ARCS Motivation Model (Jacobson and Xu, 2002).
The more recent literature-2006 and forward-reveals increased publication activity regarding IL credit courses.An article in a 2011 issue of Reference and User Services Quarterly entertains the notion of what an interdisciplinary, information-seeking skills course would look like for graduate students (O'Connor and Newby, 2011).Margaret Burke recently surveyed academic librarian colleagues about their involvement in credit-bearing courses (Burke, 2011), and while there were very few responses to the survey, not many of the librarians who responded teach classes focused on upper-level students.Jennifer Sharkey writes about teaching critical thinking and multimedia skills in a one-credit, freshman IL course (Sharkey, 2006).Finally, Davis, Lundstrom and Martin gauge academic librarians' perceptions of various teaching models and find there is support, although not overwhelming, for credit IL instruction by librarians (Davis, et al., 2011).Our literature review indicates that information on credit-bearing IL classes focused on upper-division students is lacking, possibly due to the fact that not many such classes are being taught.We seek to fill that gap in the literature by sharing our own experiences teaching an upper-division class with grounding in inquiry-based learning.

Overview of Course and Learning Outcomes
The course outcomes for LBRY 3020 are based on Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL's) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency).
The course outcomes include: • Students will be able to locate, evaluate, and use information appropriately.
• Students will be knowledgeable users of library and information resources.
• Students will use information as a commodity by completing exercises to find and evaluate information and to manage and manipulate it for a targeted goal.• Students will become information literate learners, able to integrate technology skills and information literacy skills.• Students will demonstrate an understanding of ethical issues such as plagiarism, copyright, and intellectual freedom.All information literacy classes (both one-shot sessions and credit-bearing courses) at University of Wyoming share these learning outcomes, but they are met and assessed in different ways from class to class.In LBRY 3020, librarians work with students to meet these goals primarily through working on a research project that culminates in a presentation and a paper.Students choose their own focused topic for the research project based on our class theme.
"Managing and Navigating the World of Information" is a three-credit class that meets twice a week.Registration for the course is capped at 24 students, and the class meets in a flexible classroom setup where students usually sit in groups.The course is organized around several units of study that are supported by an online tutorial called Tutorial for Information Power, or TIP, (http://tip.uwyo.edu/info_overload.html)and an online textbook, The Elements of Library Research by Mary George (2008).Units covered consist of: • Investigating: an introduction to research as inquiry • Searching for information: strategies and tools for discovery • Locating information: the fine art of finding sources • Evaluating information: insight, argument and beyond • Using information: integrating research in your writing & ethics of information use • Accessing information after graduation and on the job.For most units, students complete an online module of the Tutorial for Information Power (TIP), read a chapter from The Elements of Library Research, and complete assigned activities in and out of class.
The tutorial that students complete through the course, TIP, was created by UW librarians for use in all information literacy classes at the university and it is included in ACRL's Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online (PRIMO) database of quality instructional tools.The tutorial is organized in modules with a 50-question quiz at the end.The tutorial and the course units all introduce parts of the research process, and the various parts are framed as a contribution to the end goal of the course, which is for students to produce some new knowledge on a topic of interest in the form of a research paper and a related presentation.
The textbook The Elements of Library Research was chosen because it has a practical focus to guide students through the research process.We also find the tone accessible for students, but not condescending.It is brief and fairly easy to read, and it is affordable.Many of our students have given the book very positive reviews, expressing a wish that they had read the book earlier in their college careers.A major strength of the textbook is that it focuses on and successfully teaches research concepts rather than specific tools, which gives it ongoing relevance.
The syllabus for the course is an evolving document throughout the semester, since students choose the thematic area of inquiry for the course and help to select course readings (see Appendix I).A wiki or a LibGuide(http://libguides.uwyo.edu/LBRY3020) is used to share the syllabus and other course materials.Online tools are used to share course materials because the focus of the course is chosen by students during the first two weeks of class, underscoring the need for a collaborative space to discuss the focus of the class and for students to post potential class readings.

Student Engagement
Active learning and participation are guiding principles for LBRY 3020.In a 2010 Communication and Education article, the author describes the importance of class participation.She lists benefits of student participation, including more engagement in higher critical thinking (interpretation, analysis, and synthesis of ideas), and improvement of communication skills (Rocca,188).We engage our students and encourage active student participation in a variety of ways, including the arrangement of the physical space, implementing a course theme, conducting discussions, and incorporating active learning and reflective writing exercises.
The physical layout of the room has a positive impact on the interaction level of the students.Librarians teach in one of the library's classrooms with moveable tables, chairs and laptops.Students sit at tables in groups of three or four individuals, which makes it easy for them to work together on the various group activities assigned.
Since students come from a variety of disciplines, class cohesion is an important consideration.In order to give students ownership over the class, they are allowed to choose the area of inquiry for the class.Students are given a few overarching themes to choose from, and after some discussion, they vote to determine the theme for the semester.Examples include foodways, social impacts of technology, social justice, education, and popular culture.Students are encouraged to discover how the course theme might relate to their major area of study and use that connection as a focus in their work for the class, particularly the final presentation and paper.The theme is tied to class discussion, and at times, students raise issues for discussion beyond the course readings.For example, KONY 2012 (a social media call to action against alleged war lord Joseph Kony, targeted to college students) was an excellent topic for debate and critical thinking among our class members in spring 2012, when the course theme was social justice.
Discussion and participation are heavily weighted, and count for 40% of the final grade.Both verbal participation and exercise completion count toward student participation.Discussion begins early in the semester to set that norm for the class.Students are responsible for finding, evaluating, and sharing the common readings related to the theme.Students search and select journal articles for discussion and provide related discussion questions.One of the instructors leads the discussion, and student-provided discussion questions and open-ended prompts are used to keep the dialog going.We also have students read and discuss chapters from the text The Elements of Research.An effective strategy to keep students engaged in the chapter discussions is to give the students the discussion questions ahead of time, and then have them bring their answers to class.Instructors have found that students are more likely to participate with their "cheat sheets" in hand; this also provides evidence that students have completed the reading.The instructors have discovered that heavily weighting participation, starting discussion early in the semester, and giving students ownership of some of the class discussion questions, prepares students for a more thoughtful discussion.
LBRY 3020 features an active learning exercise in nearly every class meeting.For example, students are sent out in teams with iPads and an assignment to complete an ethnography of one floor of the library.Students are asked to come back and report on the terrain, how people use the space, what services are offered, and to complete a map.This introduces students to parts of the library they many never have used and to formats like microfiche that they have not seen before.Another example is the use of popular movies to illustrate information literacy ideas: a clip from High Fidelity to talk about classification systems and organization and a clip from the horror film The Ring to observe and comment on a research process.The article, "It Came from Hollywood: Using popular media to enhance information literacy instruction" contains these and other related ideas on incorporating media into library instruction (Peterson, 2010).Students find the film clips engaging and they are used as a jumpingoff point for discussion of information literacy concepts.
Another active learning approach used to engage students later in the semester when talking about information ethics, is to have students do some political fact checking using resources they learned about through the course-especially timely in an election year.Students are asked to find examples of famous plagiarism or copyright lawsuits on YouTube.These activities are both fun and informative, as students learn firsthand about the use and misuse of information and uncover misdeeds.Some of the active learning exercises are inspired by The Library Instruction Cookbook, (Sittler and Cook, 2009), a useful resource for lesson planning.In addition to group work and work in pairs, students occasionally complete exercises on an individual basis.These exercises mostly relate to technology tools-for example, students set up Refworks accounts and learn to edit Wikipedia.Some active learning exercises are tied directly to their field of study."Managing and Navigating the World of Information" serves students from all majors who need the information literacy credit for general education, and so it is by necessity an interdisciplinary course.In spring 2012 we had students majoring in accounting, art, criminal justice, English, nursing, physics, psychology, and more.Taking into account this wide array of student interests, strategies were developed to keep students from various majors engaged and to serve their divergent information literacy needs.For example, students get into groups by related majors, and write about what research looks like in their field and how it is disseminated.They then share that information with their classmates.Another discipline-specific exercise is to have the students find a call number range related to their major, write it down, and then organize themselves in front of the classroom in Library of Congress classification order.
Mini lectures (topics include finding and using images, primary sources, and writing) and guest speakers (topics include copyright, government information, and rare books) are used sparingly and effectively.Mini lectures are a maximum of twenty minutes, and generally serve as a starting point for a discussion or hands-on exercise.Each semester the class takes one class field trip to visit an archive and a rare books library at the point when they are discussing primary sources.
Finally, reflective writing is utilized as a tactic to engage our multidisciplinary students.Students occasionally respond in writing to short, in-class reflective prompts-some questions they answer include: • What was a research project in which you succeeded?
• What are your research hang-ups?• How will you manage your research this semester?
• How do you define information literacy?(asked both early and later in the semester) • What went well and what did not with your paper?As students complete these various types of active learning exercises, they earn points and receive feedback.Awarding points for the exercises provides students with motivation to keep up and attend class, and seeing their work regularly throughout the semester provides the instructors with numerous assessment opportunities.

Assessment and Evaluations
After teaching LBRY 3020 for two semesters, our observations indicate that most of the students are engaged in the class based on the high levels of discussion input and learning activity participation.Many of the active learning exercises described above also contribute to the assessment of student learning in the class.Other, more formal, assessments of students are also conducted.

Formative assessment
One of the main assessment methods is observing student participation in discussion and activities in class.The instructors are usually able to find out if students have completed assigned reading and assignments by observing small group discussions or asking for in-class responses to reading questions.In every class period the instructors also give students at least one activity to complete, which offers an opportunity to see their thought processes and their understanding of concepts learned and practiced.Also, after each module of the TIP online tutorial has been completed, an in-class quick check and discussion are done to make sure students understood what they read and the exercises they completed.Attendance and participation count for 40% of the final grade, and students' points are maintained in a spreadsheet each semester; students usually earn two points for coming to class and two points for speaking in discussion or turning in the exercise or reflective writing assignment for the day.It is helpful to have two instructors to keep track of who has participated.
Together, the research paper and research presentation assigned in the class account for 40% of each student's final grade, so instructors feel it is important to offer as much support as possible to help students succeed in those two assignments.The paper should be 5-6 pages and the presentation is 7-10 minutes.The instructors plan one-on-one conferences with each student around the middle of the semester and require that students submit a paper draft in advance.In-depth feedback on drafts is provided, as is coaching for revision and completion of the assignments.These conferences provide another informal opportunity for instructors to see how students are learning and progressing in the class.Rubrics are used to assess final papers and presentations, and students have access to the rubrics all semester (through a wiki or a LibGuide) (see Appendix 2).The rubrics were initially developed with student input, and using them in a systematic way has made grading both quicker and fairer.The rubrics provide transparency for how grades are computed and allow for student buy-in.The final assignment that students complete provides one last look at what they learned over the course of the semester.After observing the presentations of their peers, students are asked to write a synthesis essay in which they must bring together at least two major themes of the class presentations and reflect on what they learned about the topic.These brief, one-page essays are valuable to the instructors, and hopefully helpful for students as they synthesize new information they have gained in the class.

Summative assessment
Students are given the same pre-and post-test at the beginning and end of each semester.This provides a "big picture" view of how well students meet the learning outcomes of each class and how their knowledge changes from the beginning of the semester to the end.The pre-and post-tests have ten multiple choice questions, each tied to a specific ACRL information literacy standard, and five additional confidence questions.Positive results on the pre-and post-test were evidenced in both 2011 and 2012: student scores increased 8% over the course of the semester in 2011 and increased 13% in 2012.This demonstrates that students' knowledge and confidence improved.

Student course evaluations
Students are asked to complete a voluntary midterm evaluation of the course so the instructors can make corrections midstream if there seems to be a problem.
A few open-ended questions are asked: • What is going well for you in this course so far?
• What class activities do you find most useful?Why?How could class time be best used?• What is not going so well for you in class?How could the class be improved?
Students are asked to submit this evaluation anonymously and the instructors find that the midterm evaluation is a useful corollary to the required end of semester evaluation, because it more directly affects the students in the course when we receive feedback before they leave the class.Several students let the instructors know in the midterm evaluation that due dates were not always clear to them.As a result, those due dates were clarified in the second half of the semester.Instructors were happy to note that there was also some consensus on positive aspects of the class: students commented positively on the class environment, instructor approachability, and reported that they were developing better research skills and greater awareness of available resources.
Students in the class are asked to complete an online end-of-semester evaluation that is administered throughout several of the colleges at University of Wyoming.In the evaluation, students are asked 22 questions and respond on a Likert scale.Questions include items such as instructor preparation and knowledge, appropriateness of workload, and other similar topics.Students also respond to two open-ended questions: 1) Please comment on your instructor's effectiveness and 2) Please comment on the course content and materials.Instructors find that students offer less feedback on the end-ofsemester evaluations, perhaps because they no longer have a stake in improving the class, and while these official evaluations are important for the instructors' professional portfolios and provide some ideas for course improvement, they actually provide less information for improving teaching than the evaluations that are completed mid-semester.

Reflections and Future Directions
Instructors have found that students in "Managing and Navigating the World of Information" tend to form close friendships over the course of the semester, which is likely attributable to the set-up of the classroom in groups of three or four, the amount of group work that students are asked to do, and (hopefully) the open and friendly atmosphere the instructors work to establish in the class.According to student feedback, the relationships formed over the semester keep students more engaged in the class.
For instruction librarians, a credit-bearing class offers several opportunities that their other job responsibilities do not.Unlike the many one-shot class sessions that they teach, this class provides the chance to get to know a few students really well.It also serves as a kind of semester-long laboratory to try out new library lesson plans and teaching strategies.In the safe space of that classroom, the instructors feel free to try engagement and assessment strategies that they may later use in a one-shot session.The instructors feel comfortable experimenting with new teaching strategies because they really get to know their students, and students get to know their instructors.Unlike a one-shot session, where dynamics are unknown and cannot be developed, the instructors see their students thirty-two times during the semester.The fact that they have familiarity and time with their students leads to the safe space for experimentation.Since the class has been taught as a team for two semesters, it has also provided an excellent opportunity to collaborate on teaching over an extended period of time, which has helped those involved to reflect upon and improve their teaching skills.Instruction librarians' roles continue to evolve, and teaching a three-credit, upper division course is an effective way to contribute to the university's mission and have a measurable impact on student learning, most obvious in our pre-and post-test results.Librarians' role as LBRY 3020 instructors places them in a category similar to other faculty on campus and provides some insight into what other teaching faculty experience.
In the future, the authors would like to design a study to compare learning outcomes for junior-or senior-level students who took a credit-bearing information literacy class taught by a librarian to students who took a freshman-level information literacy class taught by their own disciplinary faculty.There are many benefits to offering this type of class to upper-division students, but the authors are interested to see whether having the information literacy class offered within a discipline is more effective than having the class offered by librarians outside of a disciplinary context.
Currently, the University Studies Program at UW is being streamlined in its entirety and many requirements will be jettisoned, including requirements for stand-alone diversity, global, oral communication and information literacy classes.These changes are being made at an institutional level because the current number of required classes makes it difficult for some students to graduate in a timely manner.However, information literacy will continue to be a required learning outcome in freshman seminar classes.In addition, learning outcomes such as "critical and creative thinking" and "inquiry and analysis" are integrated throughout the newly proposed University Studies Program and provide avenues for librarians to pursue ongoing partnerships with teaching faculty and perhaps to develop new credit-bearing IL classes related to specific subjects or with a focus on writing and oral communication.Whether or not LBRY 3020 is continued in its current form or in a revised form, the course has given librarians involved many opportunities to create new and engaging lesson plans that can be used in various instruction settings.

Conclusion
In this case study, the authors offer guidance and practical tips on student engagement and assessment of student learning for librarians who are teaching or developing a credit-bearing class or for librarians who teach mostly one-shot sessions.The authors also discuss some of the advantages to working with upper-level students in a credit-bearing class environment, versus freshmen.Upper-level students are at the point in their college career that they have a subject major focus, and are expected to produce in-depth research papers and projects.As the authors work with upper-level students from various disciplines over the course of a semester, they find it effective to employ a class theme and active learning in order to engage the class.Students are more invested in a course when they choose the topic of inquiry and have input on the readings and discussion topics.The authors have various strategies to assess student learning over the semester that differ from their usual assessment of one-shot sessions, but many active learning and assessment strategies prove adaptable.The learning activities and the formative assessment strategies developed for this course may be used in various class settings, including adaptation for one-shot sessions and even online classes.The authors do not advocate that oneshot or course-integrated instruction sessions be banished, but rather they have a place alongside creditbearing IL courses.Based on their experiences teaching and assessing LBRY 3020, the authors believe that credit-bearing instruction, especially upper-level, is a vital and influential role for academic librarians.It is hoped that this case study encourages fellow librarians to pursue a variety of engagement and assessment strategies in their own teaching.

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Syllabus Changes
Students will participate in creating the course schedule and readings.Additions will be made to the schedule, based on student contributions, and readings will be posted on the online course guide (http://libguides.uwyo.edu/LBRY3020).

Grading Scheme
• Participation will make up 40% of your overall grade for this course.Every day there will be in-class assignments and/or discussions for which you may earn points.• Throughout the semester you will complete modules of the TIP tutorial.This will provide an introduction to investigating, searching, evaluating, locating and utilizing information.In Week 9 you will take the TIP quiz.You must pass with at least a 70%.• Your paper will be worth 20% of your overall grade.In this paper you will be asked to write a literature review based on a research question for a chosen topic.A detailed assignment description and rubric with grading criteria and expectations will be provided.• Your presentation will be 20% of your overall grade.This assignment asks you to present to the class your understanding of the sources you found related to your research question.You will synthesize the source information with your understanding of the topic and tell the class about why it's interesting.
Late Assignments, Papers and ExamsWork that is submitted after the assigned deadline will receive zero points.If you have a university excuse, please contact the instructor(s) as soon as possible to make arrangements.