Instruction librarians are all too familiar with well-intentioned research papers and assignments that reduce information literacy to a simplistic checklist (must include 4 peer-reviewed sources) or set of skills (use interlibrary loan, cite materials properly). Librarians and classroom faculty should recognize that information literacy cannot just be magically imparted to students through a single assignment or library instruction session. Becoming information literate requires repeated practice in a variety of contexts. How often have you wished for the opportunity to just sit down with a faculty member and start from scratch when designing an assignment –or even better- an entire course? That is precisely what the presenters have done with two sociology courses at Illinois Wesleyan University. Professor of Sociology, Meghan Burke and Information Literacy Librarian, Chris Sweet collaboratively re-designed two of Professor Burke's race and ethnic relations sociology courses. The new courses integrate information literacy concepts throughout each course. Because of the new course structure, teaching information literacy has also become a shared responsibility.

1. Starting From Scratch:
Meaningful Integration of Information
Literacy through Collaborative Course and
Assignment Design
Chris Sweet, Information Literacy Librarian
Meghan Burke, Assistant Professor of Sociology
LOEX Conference, 2014

2. What are some common assignment &
instruction problems that drive librarians nuts?
● Find and copy a print journal article
● Scavenger hunts for library stuff
● Teach them to find good information (but
I’m going to give them everything they
need).
● I want them to know how to do academic
research, but they don’t really need it for
this class.

3. Turnabout is fair play...
What are some common disconnects between
disciplinary faculty and librarians regarding
assignment design and library instruction?

4. Faculty-Librarian Disconnects
● Students must find and then evaluate everything
ever written on a given topic and then only use the
best three sources.
● The primary pedagogical goals of an assignment are
usually not to teach research skills or information
literacy.
● How students use and interpret evidence within a
paper is often more important than the information
itself.

5. And another thing...
“I don’t have any time for information literacy
in this course because I have so much
disciplinary content to cover.”

6. What Happens When Assignments and Courses are
Collaboratively Designed?
● Information literacy becomes a natural fit
that enhances the course, rather than an
add-on
● IL becomes more of a shared responsibility
between instructor and librarian
● Course and assignment design flows from
course learning outcomes

7. Mellon Grant Overview
● Brief history
● Library Campus-Wide Faculty Development
Survey (pedagogical goals)
● CFP’s for collaborative assignment and
course design
● Required use of local and/or national IL
standards.

8. What We Did: Assignment Grant
SOC 230: Race and Ethnic Relations
● Elements: Literature review of relevant
scholarship, incorporated into course
papers (which were then higher quality)
● Formal Assessment: content analysis of
student reflection papers
● Should have been a course revision

9. Assessment: Student Reflection Papers
● Active revision of their thesis and argument through
engagement with the literature
o “Throughout the process of writing my paper, my thinking went very back
and forth with how I felt about the thesis I had chosen.”
o “I decided to switch my thesis back to my original idea. I feel that I found
sufficient evidence to support my claim and used the evidence that
supported my antithesis to provide arguments to further what I believed.”
o “I knew immediately what my topic was going to be. What I did not know was
how my research and the material we learned throughout this course would
shape the topic and add to and change my ideas about interracial
relationships.”
o “…it is the first research paper that I have written here that has made me
really think about my own stance on the topic.”

10. Assessment: Student Reflection Papers
Window into student research process, and how it was
enhanced
● “I realized that I would have to push myself not to use search engine such as
Google. This was a challenge for me because this is the first time in my college
career that I had to depend entirely on databases, which is a sad story in itself.”
● “My writing process for this paper was unique in that this was the first time that I
had several drafts of the paper prior to my final draft.”
● “When I chose my sources, the annotated bibliography definitely helped, because
I had to read through the full source and really analyze the source before
including it in my bibliography.”
● “I realized that Google search was not giving me mainly academic sources.”
● “This time the research drove my paper.”

11. New Course and Course Revision
Senior Seminar and SOC 350: Advanced Race
and Ethnic Relations
● Lit Review: Issues and Solutions
o Concept Mapping Workshop
● National Information Literacy Standards for
Anthropology and Sociology Students
● How did the papers turn out?

12. Lit Review Concept Mapping

13. Where do we go from here?
● Sociology Departmental Assessment Work
o Found core information literacy and writing
problems that were showing up in our senior work
o Developed course-level goals to implement in all
classes in order to overcome them
o More deliberate sequencing of IL instruction
throughout the SOC major.

14. That’s all well and good,
but what about stepping on toes?
● Instruction Session Planning (discuss course
and assignment goals first)
● Instruction/Assignment follow-ups. Are they
getting the results they want?
● After multiple iterations of an instruction
section

15. How can you do something like this without
external funding?

16. Thank you!
We welcome your feedback and questions.
Examples of assignments and CFP’s are
available here: http://tinyurl.com/burke-
sweet
● Meghan Burke mburke@iwu.edu
● Chris Sweet csweet@iwu.edu