Presented at LILAC 2019

1. GETTING WICKED IN THE CLASSROOM:
INCORPORATING COMPLEX, REAL-WORLD
SKILLS INTO LIBRARY INSTRUCTION
Karen Sobel & Lorrie Evans / University of Colorado
Denver
LILAC 2019 / Nottingham, UK

2. AURARIA LIBRARY
Serving:
University of Colorado Denver
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Community College of Denver
Denver, Colorado, USA

4. IN OUR HOUR TOGETHER,
WE WILL:
• Introduce wicked teaching
• Creating wicked learning objectives:
Naming large-scale goals and working
backward to support them
• Designing wicked assignments for the
information literacy classroom
• Coaching students to take on wicked
problems in their courses
• Time to plan wicked learning
objectives, assignments, or coaching
scenarios
Cauldron, courtesy Irene Kightley at Flickr

5. The book that inspired us:
Hanstedt, Paul. Creating
Wicked Students: Designing
Courses for a Complex World.
Sterling, Virginia, USA: Stylus

6. WHAT ARE “WICKED PROBLEMS”?
Big, messy real-world issues!*
The goal: We want our students to feel confident and
prepared to take on wicked problems in their careers when
they graduate.
*Author Paul Hanstedt developed the term “wicked problems to describe them (See Creating Wicked Students – highly recommended!)

7. content knowledge + skill knowledge + sense of authority =
thoughtful change
(Hanstedt, 2018, p. 6)

8. CONCEPTS IN WICKED TEACHING
Concepts we’ll cover today
• wicked learning objectives & goals
• wicked active learning
• trimming down your content
• wicked reading
• wicked assignments – for both
classroom and information literacy
assignments
Other major concept(s) in wicked
teaching
• wicked assessment
• wicked course structure

9. WICKED LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Your dream learning objective:
“I’d like these students to make every
decision for the rest of their lives based
on well-chosen, authoritative
information from excellent sources!”
Turning it into a realistic learning objective:
“Students will be able to generate strategies for
information seeking and selection based on real-life
scenarios they have generated.”

10. BRAINSTORMING
TIME!
• I want my students to use their
information literacy skills every
time they seek information
sources for the rest of their lives.
• How can I turn this into a realistic
learning objective?
• Photo courtesy Dave Wilson at Flickr

11. NESTING HIGHER- AND LOWER-
ORDER THINKING SKILLS
Now make a plan:
• What lower-level skills do
students need in order to
successfully use the skills you’ve
selected?
• For example, terminology…
• …or simply understanding how to
find good information…
• …or succeeding with cultural
factors that are implied in
assignments.
• How will you support students
who need a little extra help
using the lower-level skills?
Create a learning objective that’s
high on Bloom’s taxonomy.
Appraise
Formulate
Synthesize
Examine
Contextualize
Create!

12. BRAINSTORM AGAIN!
Let’s practice….
Think of a wicked learning objective that
you might use in a library instruction
session.
• What basic skills would you “nest”
under your learning objective?
• How would you prepare to support
these?
Photo shared by George Hodan at:
http://www.publicdomainfiles.com/show_file.php?id=13941528023
202

13. A REMINDER FROM PAUL HANSTEDT:
Align your goals with the course’s
goals!

14. WICKED ACTIVE LEARNING
What do you think of when you think of active learning?
How can you make discussion-based learning active?

15. ANOTHER WICKED REMINDER
FROM PAUL HANSTEDT:
Trim your content. Now trim it down some more!

16. WICKED READING – ADVANCED
CRITICAL THINKING
Real-world question: How can we help students lose their fear of
popular literature?
Another real-world question: How can we help them understand that
“popular” and “scholarly” commentary on the same topic both have
value?

17. CHARACTERISTICS OF WICKED ASSIGNMENTS
• Take place over a long period of time, leading to a big event or product
• Success, failure, and exploration are expected in the project. There may or
may not be smaller, graded steps along the way. Students really take the
lead! The professor is there to consult and give advice on the project.
(Students still learn a great deal from the professor in other parts of the
course.)
• The project may mimic work that’s done by professionals in this field.
• Information gathering is often realistic & organic.

18. SPECIAL CONCERNS THAT
STUDENTS MAY HAVE
• Challenges with finding
information in a real-world
environment
• Nervousness about having one big
final grade
• Unfamiliarity with some of the
professional-level skills that they
will use
• Feeling nervous about the
freedom of the project
• Stage fright or other performance
anxieties
How can librarians support these?
“witch cat XD,” shared at
https://www.sketchport.com/drawing/6126517369176064/witch-cat-
xd

19. EXAMPLES FROM OUR CLASSROOMS

20. WICKED LIBRARY
INSTRUCTION If you don’t have a course in mind, try creating
something that you could do in a single library
class session for my art history course. Major
information-related goals for that course are:
• Finding high-quality copies of art (in both print
and digital formats)
• Finding expert commentary that responds to
your questions on specific works of art
• Interpreting expert commentary for gallery
visitors
Come up with an activity for this
session!
Now let’s come up with wicked
activities for the library
instruction classroom.
Come up with an activity that
you could do during a 75-
minute session.
Think of an interesting
instruction session that you’ve
had in the past – what’s
something wicked you could
have done to support it?

21. Karen Sobel
Associate Professor/Teaching &
Learning Librarian
University of Colorado Denver
Email: karen.sobel@ucdenver.edu
Telephone: +13033157709
Twitter: @kslovesbooks
Lorrie Evans
Teaching & Learning Program Lead
Librarian
University of Colorado Denver
Email: lorrie.evans@ucdenver.edu
Telephone: +13033157744
Twitter: @LorrieEvans303