Month: June 2018

Critical Reading for Learning & Social Change

Lindsay DavisLeave a comment

ACRL’s Instruction Section’s Discussion Group Steering Committee held its annual virtual discussion forum on June 6, titled “Critical Reading for Learning and Social Change.” The panelists included Anne Graf (Trinity University), Rosemary Green (Shenandoah University), and Stephanie Otis (University of North Carolina at Charlotte).

While I watched the webinar live, I needed to re-watch the recording. You can find the webinar description, recording, chat transcript, and some accompanying materials, including a reading list and a handout with reading tips, at the IS website: acrl.ala.org/IS/annual-virtual-discussion-forum-recording

Towards the end of the presentation, Graf made a statement that really stood out to me: “Reading is done in private, which is why we don’t pay attention to it.” I think this is a fair assessment. As a librarian who teaches mostly in a one-shot landscape, time is limited. Most of what we offer when we mention how to read scholarly articles is a short game plan. I realize that a lot can be done just by showing what Otis calls the physicality of reading. I have never shown students that reading, for me, looks like a marked up print-out with underlines and notes. Graf also notes that she will ask professors how they read, which I think is great. Again and again, I am reminded that modeling helps show students skills that we take for granted. Graf also mentions that one assumption she had been making as a librarian is that teachers teach reading and librarians teach evaluation, but these are not separate acts, and perhaps we do need to do more to close this gap, especially as reading takes a lot more time than students think. (The handout that Otis offers shows that shows that students should read three times…)

This webinar provided some strategies that can help students become aware of their own reading practice. One exercise is to have students reflect on what it means to read academically in a journal prompt. Green, who works mostly with graduate students, says that responses typically range from “reading with purpose, connecting to what one already knows, and reading to reflect.” She also has students complete the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI), which is about 30 questions. The inventory helps students realize what they are already doing while also cluing them into other strategies. Similarly, Graf has first-year students simply make a list of what they do as readers.

UC Merced’s Bright Success Center (BSC) typically offers a “How to Read Your Textbook” workshop every semester. I do wonder if there is metacognitive component to the workshop. Last year, I had thought to reach out to my contact in the BSC about offering workshops beyond reading for textbooks, which is important, but there are other kinds of materials students have to read while in college. I am feeling much more motivated to reach out since I have something more concrete. If they already do something similar, I would like to observe the workshop to learn what students already know, what they do, etc. It may be able to help inform some of my own teaching in the research classroom.

I seem to have paid the most attention to Graf’s strategies since she teaches in the environment that most closely resembles my own. She also shared an exercise that I think many of us have probably done in some variation. Rather than telling students what to look for, she has students make those connections on their own first. I have done an exercise where students make their own criteria and then apply it to an article, but this is a little different. First, she has all the students find the full-text of an article based on a citation (to get some searching out of the way) and then quickly decide on the source’s quality and appropriateness for their class assignment via a vote on a 1-5 scale. She doesn’t use any polling software for this, but I would be inclined to use it so that students would feel more comfortable sharing what they think. She then engages the class in a Q&A session about things they notice about the article and what else they may need to look at or consider. The conversation generally turns into a realization that students need to spend more time reading the article to determine its relevancy.  The total exercise takes about 10 minutes. She sometimes then has students vote again.

While I didn’t look through the chat transcript, resources that folks shared in the chat include:

 

UC Librarian Review Process

Lindsay Davis1 Comment

On June 1st, I celebrated my two-year anniversary at UC Merced. Almost a week later, I also received the final packet for my first review.

While librarians in the California State University and California Community College systems are faculty, librarians in the University of California system are not faculty but are academic personnel. Our review process and criteria for advancement do highlight the academic nature of our positions. You can read more about UC librarians’ performance criteria and the review and appraisal process in the Academic Personnel Manual (APM), sections 360-10 and 210-4e.

We are evaluated in a peer review process every two years for those who are in the assistant and associate range or every three years for those who are full librarians. I was hired as an associate librarian with potential for career status. Because I started on June 1, 2016, it meant that I could have a review at 1.5 or 2.5 years as the process is based on calendar years (January-December). I was really worried about my output with the shortened time frame, but I was able to add a note that my review reflected 18 months of work. My supervisor also encouraged me to go through with the earlier review, so that’s, ultimately, why I decided to go ahead. But I was really nervous when I received my review notice at the end of November.

I was asked to provide the contact information of three people who could write letters of evaluation based on some aspect of my work in the last 18 months. For the letters, I asked the chair of a committee I served on from the Librarians Association of the University of California (LAUC); a colleague from an Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) committee I serve on; and a writing faculty member at UC Merced whose classes I have taught for a few times. While I didn’t see these letters until the very end of the review process, it helped to know I picked folks I trust.

In early February, I also submitted my current curriculum vitae, current and former job descriptions (an adjustment was made from Instruction Librarian to Instruction and Outreach Librarian in March 2017), goal statements, organizational chart, and my self-review. The self-review:

…consist[s] of a concise, vita-style enumeration of accomplishments keyed to the criteria […] specified by APM 360-10, followed by a narrative discussion of three of the most significant items within APM 360-10 b. (1) and three of the most significant items within APM 360-10 b. (2), (3), and (4).

I listed key accomplishments related to my professional competence and service within the library (A), professional growth and continuing professional education (B), university and library-related public service (C), and research/creative works (D). In the narrative, I also had to discuss three major items related to A, which signals my main job duties. I also had to discuss three other major items related to any combination of B, C, or D.

I was really pleased and a bit taken aback by my supervisor’s response to the documentation I turned in. It wasn’t so much her recommendation that I receive a merit increase and career status but what she wrote about my work. I and so many others in the library and on campus deeply respect her, and a colleague and I half-joke that we feel like we constantly fail her. She wrote five single-sided pages and included this:

It is already evident, from her liaison and outreach work, that Lindsay has made the library, its people, services, and resources more visible to some of our campus constituents. She has successfully started some collaborations and set the groundwork for future partnerships. Overall, I have been impressed with Lindsay’s initiative in reaching out to a variety of campus individuals and believe her endeavors directly support the library’s strategic focus (2017-2020) to engage the community.

[She and I both discovered that I’m not actually eligible for career status because my review came before I was employed for 24 months. Our Associate University Librarian (AUL) pulled me into a quick meeting to explain the error, but all it means is that I will receive career status during my review in 2020. (I still got the merit increase, though. Huzzah!)]

After signing off the initial recommendation, my supervisor submitted all of my documentation, including her narrative and my letters of evaluation, to the Committee on Appointment, Promotion, and Advancement (CAPA). The CAPA consists of my librarian colleagues at UC Merced, minus my supervisor, AUL, Deputy University Librarian (DUL), and University Librarian (UL). The CAPA then looks over all of the documentation and decides whether to agree or disagree with the recommendation, and the chair writes a letter to the UL with the committee’s decision. The UL then writes a letter with his recommendation to the Provost. The Provost then writes a letter back to me with the final decision. I received my letter in the final packet, which the UL went over with me.

This was also the first time I read the letters of evaluation, CAPA letter, and the UL’s letter. I have so much self-doubt, especially since I started my career in an isolated branch campus of a community college, but reading their feedback has made me feel really good and inspired me to continue to do good work for our students, campus, and profession.

I also learned something new about myself from the review: I’m quite relational. The CAPA letter specifically notes, “…[These activities] all speak to her collegiality, collaboration, and support for the success of others that characterize her professional endeavors.” I don’t think I had ever realized this, at least to this degree. Just like I do with thank you cards, I’ll be keeping this review packet near when I need a boost.

I also learned that I am pretty old-school when it comes to keeping track of my work. I have tried a variety of apps and online programs, and, ultimately, what works for me is to look at my color-coded Outlook calendar at the end of every month for classes and workshops I’ve given and webinars I have attended and note them down in Word / Google Docs. I also keep track of major projects in a planner, so I can see what I worked on every week, though I am not always good about filling it out. Last month, I realized that I could just simply start the document that I will be turning in for my review in 2020. I set it up with the headings I will eventually need, and it’s been going well so far, especially for the sections related to professional development and research/creative works. If you’re a UC librarian, here’s the basic template I am using, which can be downloaded and adjusted to fit your needs: bit.ly/uclib_review_template

If you are new to the UC librarian review process, don’t panic. Your colleagues who have been through the process will be happy to share tips. And when you get back your successful review, please celebrate and take joy in what your colleagues within and outside the library and your campus had to say about your work.

Predictable Misunderstandings in Information Literacy: Anticipating Student Misconceptions to Improve Instruction

Lindsay Davis3 Comments

I finally was able to watch the recording of Lisa Hinchliffe’s Credo webinar, “Predictable Misunderstandings in Information Literacy: Anticipating Student Misconceptions to Improve Instruction,” in which she provides an overview of the preliminary results of a qualitative study she conducted to determine what librarians believe are first-year students’ misconceptions related to information literacy.

In 2017, Library Journal and Credo Reference conducted a survey to learn how two- and four-year institutions tie information literacy to the first year experience. The survey results, “The First-Year Experience Instruction Survey: Information Literacy in Higher Education,” indicate that students are not well-prepared to conduct academic research, lack experience using libraries, don’t understand that they need to learn research skills, and are overconfident in their abilities. Librarians’ challenges in teaching information literacy include limited contact time with students, having too many outcomes, not having specific assignments to contextualize lessons, and not sharing the same expectations as course instructors. There were over 400 comments related to the findings.

Hinchliffe and her research assistants were curious to know if there are student misconceptions that drive errors in information literacy practice. These misconceptions are plausible inferences based on previous experience. Once we can identify these misconceptions, we can help students unlearn habits and strategies that worked for them in high school but may not serve them as well in college [see Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design (2008)]. Hinchliffe and her assistants coded responses to the report that seemed to answer “What is challenging about teaching first-year students?”, removed duplicates, and then synthesized the responses into nine summary misconceptions to form an initial inventory.

Students:

  1. think that they shouldn’t ask for help
  2. don’t see themselves as “scholarly apprentices” (view themselves outside the community of practice)
  3. think of research as a linear process
  4. think of the library as the place to find books
  5. equate relevancy search rankings as a measure of quality vs. relevance to the search statement they enter
  6. conflate achieving access and information quality (don’t understand that finding information isn’t the same as finding “good” information)
  7. believe that free online resources are sufficient
  8. believe that Google is a sufficient search tool
  9. believe they are information literate (Hincliffe later explains that students interpret information literacy as a cross between computer and digital literacy)

In the second phase of this project, Hinchliffe and the research assistants held librarian focus groups online to discuss the misconceptions. The librarians noted other student misconceptions, including:

  • all library resources are credible
  • every question has one right answer (rather than seeing research as an opportunity to explore possible answers)
  • the library is the place to study or work with fellow students (no mention of collections or resources)

As a practicing librarian with a limited five years of full-time experience, I have an anecdote for each of these. While further research needs to be conducted, what strikes me about this is that we can redirect some things we do in the classroom to help dispel some of these misconceptions. Hinchcliffe also reminds us that the best way to do this is to provide students with the opportunity to encounter these misconceptions so they can self-correct their assumptions.

I am very much looking forward to seeing how this research continues to take off and what it might mean for those of us in the front lines. I also think having a discussion around these misconceptions might be particularly good to have with librarian colleagues who teach, as well as course instructors.