Week 3: Part 1 - Learning Theories

Week 3: Part 1 - Learning Theories

It's been very interesting reading about learning theories this week.  Without knowing much about the various strategies - I see that I have been (instinctually?) using both constructivism and cogntivism theories in my teaching throughout the years.  I likely lean toward cognitivism a bit more for its simplicity in 'chunking' the research process into different steps.  The hope is that students will remember the step by step approach - rather than be overwhelmed by an assignment or the resulting end point (e.g. 15 page lit review).  Knowing where to start is half the battle.

For this week's assignment, I would like to explore two possible in-class exercises that approach constructivism and cognitivism in new ways (to me).

Constructivism - The Reference Interview

Early last week, there was a discussion on ili-l about how to help students focus their research questions.  One suggestion by Robert Schroeder is to engage all the students in reference interviewing each other.  I was really intrigued by this idea - since it can be somewhat formalized, and ends up providing valuable feedback for all students around their various topics.  Everyone would have the chance to analyze their topic, organize their thoughts and evaluate what information they need.

I.  The class would start out with me engaging one student (in front of the class) on how to conduct a reference interview.

• Have the student describe the topic
• Tease out details about specifics, framing, methodology, etc.
• Identify keywords have they been using
• Identify what information is still needed
• Determine where they are searching for information
• Produce their best articles so far

II.  Share with the class the information I wrote down about the student's topic - providing a framework for research, areas to explore and possible directions from there.

III.  Have the students work in pairs to interview each other for 5 minutes each.

IV.  Come together as a group to discuss how this process may have helped them identify new keywords and concepts to explore - or directed them to a new focus for their research topic.

If I understand constructivism, this exercise could help students understand their topic more clearly simply by having to discuss it with a colleague with a particular defined endpoint.  Through the process of describing their topic, they are gaining a more sophisticated view of their current understanding, as well as determining what information they need to move forward.


Cognitivism - Research guideposts and reflection

In this second exercise, I really want to get the students searching a database - rather than having me demo a database for them.  But - I feel the need to guide them somewhat with specific tasks so they don't go too far afield.

10 minutes:

• Using the information from the reference interview, search PubMed for your particular topic.
• Find one peer-reviewed article related to your topic
• What keywords did you use?  Why is this article relevant?
• Do the Library (and you!) have access to the electronic or print version?

5 minutes:

• Come together to discuss at least one student's search for the class - what worked, what didn't - and how can the search be reframed if needed?

10 minutes:

• Search for your topic again - but don't use any of the same keywords as before.  
• Find one peer-reviewed article related to your topic.
• What keywords did you use this time?  Did you get better or worse results than before? 

5 minutes:

• Take 5 minutes to talk with your colleague about the search process.  What strategies did you each use?  Was this straightforward - or more challenging than expected?

I really like Kelly Dagan's post this week - and took some inspiration from that.  I know that Kelly is focusing on constructivism.  I am having difficulty determining, however, if my own example is cognitivism, constructivism or a combination.  I imagine students working through a particular set of problems in a step by step fashion - but then processing the results in a constructivist way. The hope is that the combination of step-by-step activities, sharing as a group, and talking about strategies with peers will enhance the learning experience.

Week 2, post 2 - Integration

In this part of Week 2's assignment, we are asked to consider our situational factors, along with the goals, assessment and teaching activities we have planned.

1. Situational factors: In this case, all students will need to have access to a computer.  I realize now that I wasn't specific when I communicated with the students via an introduction email.  The students will be in small groups, however, so discussion and sharing will be possible.

I sent a message to the entire class (via the faculty member) providing them with some preliminary information, but also asking them to fill out a survey.  This survey should give me an idea of where each student is with his/her research, where they have searched, what they have found etc.  This will help me focus the research session so I am not repeating needless information that all students already understand.  With only 30 minutes, I need the session to be extremely well-planned.

I am unsure if there are disconnects between my beliefs and values and those of the students.  I am eager to read their responses to the survey I sent which will greatly assist with how I conduct the class.  In the future, it would be great to have one or more online modules that the students need to watch ahead of time, to get some of the information quickly.  We could then review early in the session and move on to more complex material.

2. Learning Goals and Feedback & Assessment:

There are three goals for the session:

a. As a result of this class, students will be able to develop/formulate appropriate, creative keywords and search terms after basic background research on a topic in order to focus their understanding and search process on targeted information needs.

Assessment activities:

• Have students search on their topic - then have students search again on their topic without using any of the same keywords.  Write down all terms.
• Share results with classmate - determine additional keywords/synonyms.

b. As a result of this class, students will be able to discriminate and compare appropriate resources (e.g. internet, databases, library catalogue, etc.) in order to identify the best resource to find appropriate information sources related to their research project.

Assessment activity:

• Have students search in a database they have not used before using keywords and search strategies from the first part of class to identify new information or additional search terms.

c. As a result of this class, students will be able to understand the connection between information sources (primarily journal articles) in order to broaden their search methodology to find other useful information on their research topic.

Assessment activity:

• Have students use one article they already found to identify two additional articles through 'cited by' links in Google Scholar.  Report out to class why the new article may be useful.

The one area which needs better development is searching additional databases.  Most students will search Google Scholar and have success there.  I would hope that they would use more specialized sources like Web of Science and PubMed.  However, maybe Google Scholar is okay for this assignment?  I always feel the need to show students the more authoritative databases - but perhaps this isn't the best use of our time in class?

I know that students learn a lot about their own biases and their topics when they are forced to use alternative search terms.  I also know that using the 'cited by' is new for most of them.  Seeing connections among articles is really key for the sciences.

I struggle with the question of showing them/having them use various databases that might not get them results quickly, further inhibiting the research process.

3. Learning Goals and Teaching/Learning Activities

As mentioned above, searching other databases may be the odd, extraneous activity here.  Perhaps I could demonstrate searching in Google Scholar and a library database to show the similarities and differences.  I wanted to stay away from too much demo though that would not result in practical application.

Regarding the other activities planned, analysing keywords, developing search strategies and finding connections between literature all have definite positive learning implications for these students and this assignment.  

4. Teaching/Learning Activities and Feedback & Assessment

Students always find it challenging and satisfying when they can alter their search terms - but still find relevant information.  Learning that they can vary the process is very instructive - and usually has a great impact.  If they are not successful, there are opportunities to ask for help and clarification on the process.  Additionally, working with classmates on alternative keywords is a nice way for students to articulate the information they need and get peer-feedback.

I am having a hard time distinguishing between 'practice learning activities' and 'eventual assessment activities.'  These terms are better suited to a semester-long class.  It's difficult to translate these to a one-shot session.

Week 2, post 1: Procedures for Educative Assessment

Week 2 - Post 1
Procedures for Educative Assessment

I am teaching a one-shot mini-session this Tuesday for one of our 2nd year science courses.  I only have 30 minutes with the students.  So, I thought I would use this week's assignment to help me decide what my goals are for this session in order to use the time most effectively.  The supplemental reading, Create Student Learning Outcomes for Library Instruction, had some really interesting information that changed the way I was thinking about this assignment.

Key points from the supplemental reading:

--When creating SLOs - answer the question, 'what will the students learn today?' rather than 'what will I cover today?'
--Avoid the following phrases when creating SLOs - since these cannot be assessed or measures:

• understand
• appreciate
• know about
• become familiar with
• learn about
• become aware of

While I really like the idea of Educative Assessment, I am having a difficult time with goals and assessment that are targeted enough to fit into one of these very truncated one-shot sessions.  Many of the examples seem like great homework, but 'forward-looking' seems harder for a 5-10 minute exercise.


1. Forward-Looking Assessment

Learning Outcome: As a result of this class, students will be able to develop/formulate appropriate, creative keywords and search terms after basic background research on a topic in order to focus their understanding and their search process on targeted information needs.

Example 1: You are submitting a grant to a large funding institution.  As part of this grant, you must provide keywords to categorize your grant.

a. List five keywords that describe your grant application broadly.  For instance, if you are working on identifying a gene that is responsible for the forelimb length in bats, you might select: limb development, evolution, Chiroptera, morphology

b List five keywords that describe your project specifically.  Using the same example as above, you might select: prx1, prrx1, Carollia perspicillata, lacZ expression

c. Using the keywords you came up with to describe your project, search for additional articles about your grant application topic in Google Scholar, Web of Science and PubMed.  What keywords were most effective, and which were not as effective?


Example 2: You are working for a corporation that provides environmental risk management consultations.  A client in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is concerned by the threat of global warming and how that might affect the client's palm oil plantations.

Using the search strategy model from class, please answer the following questions:

a. What are main concepts in the scenario above that you would include in a Google Scholar search?

b. List at least 2 synonyms for each concept you identified in part a.

c. Develop a search strategy that includes at least two concepts and three keywords.  Use AND and OR to create a strategy.

d. Search two databases on the Environmental Studies page.  What keywords were most effective?  Which would you remove from your search?  Based on your results, would you change your keywords to include new terms that weren't in your original search?


2. Criteria & Standards

a. Students will demonstrate in-depth understanding of their research topic and information needs through the careful generation of broad concepts related to their topic, as well as subject specific terms that demonstrate a focused understanding of key concepts.

i. Exceptional understanding: Students will have clearly defined broad categories related to their project and information needs.
ii. General understanding: Students will have defined general broad categories related to their project and information needs.
iii. Poor understanding: Students have difficulty identifying concepts and categories related to their research topic.

b. Students will demonstrate in-depth understanding of their topic through the generation of alternative keywords and synonyms that describe their information needs.

i. Exceptional understanding: Students will have clearly defined broad categories related to their project and information needs with a variety of additional keywords that show a broad and narrow understanding of their topic.
ii. General understanding: Students will have defined broad categories related to their project and information needs; however, not all categories may have additional keywords or synonyms.  The categorization shows that students have a basic understanding of broad and narrow concepts related to their topic.
iii. Poor understanding: Students have difficulty identifying concepts and categories related to their research topic. Few synonyms are identified, showing a lack of understanding of broad and narrow concepts related to their topic.


3. Self-Assessment

a. Students will search for articles/information on the internet using customary search terms.  Require students to search for the same topic, but not use any of the same keywords.

b. Think-pair-share: After students come up with concepts and related keywords/synonyms, pair students with each other to brainstorm on additional concepts and keywords.

4. FIDeLity Feedback

During class sessions, I usually ask for students to report back what worked and didn't work.  With only 15 minutes for the exercise and assessment, it is hard to give each student individual feedback during the class.  One strategy may be to follow up with students after class to ensure they have an opportunity to get additional feedback during a short session.

Frequent: I would circulate during the class to ensure that all students are coming up with categories and terms.
Immediate: Sharing exercise with classmates would give everyone an audience and feedback on the work.
Discriminating: I can go over one student's work for the whole class to show how the criteria and standards are used in evaluation.
Lovingly: Always provide positive feedback - reassure students that this process takes time and practice.  Always provide opportunities for students to get individual help.

Week 1: Instructional Design Essentials

Instructional Design Essentials

Instructional Design Essentials is a 4-week, asynchronous course focusing on instructional design in the library setting.  The course is taught by Erica DeFrain and Nicole Pagowsky.  This blog will contain course assignments, as well as discussion and comments from classmates and instructors.  Through these discussions, I hope to think more critically about my teaching and develop my typical one-shot sessions into learning encounters that will have greater impact on students and the curriculum. I have been teaching in libraries for more than a decade and hope to radically change the way I think about, plan for and conduct my classroom encounters.

I am currently a librarian at a small liberal arts college outside the United States.  We are a start-up library (and institution), with some support from the large university with which we are associated.  As a start-up, each of the library's staff wear many hats.  I have liaison responsibilities for the sciences, but work closely with faculty and students across all disciplines.  I coordinate the library's research, instruction and outreach activities - but also find myself leading efforts in areas such as e-reserves, interlibrary loan, collection development and website content creation.  My grand aspirations for creating a comprehensive, curriculum-integrated instruction program were put on hold during the last academic year as we set up day to day workflows and simply got books on the shelves.  This academic year, I am hopeful that I can collaborate with the writing center on campus, individual faculty and the curriculum committee to begin thoughtful integration of research skills into the curriculum.

Assignment 1: 

A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Course for Significant Learning

L. Dee Fink

Situational Factors to Consider

1. Specific context of the teaching/learning situation;

For this course, I am going to focus on my most common teaching encounter: the all-too-common one-shot session.  At my institution, class size averages 18-20 students.  All the students are quite young, either first year or second year students (we have no upperclassmen).  Usually, I would only get to meet with a class one time during the semester, for approximately 1 hour.  The class is live, in-person and in a classroom.  Often times, the seating is fixed, which prevents fluid movement or small group work.  Students bring their own computers (or not).

2. General context of the learning situation: 

At this point, the learning expectations are set by me and the professor.  I learn about the assignment, what the prof has covered in the course already and the future assignments throughout the semester.  Faculty usually let me decide what to teach since they just wanted their students to learn 'how to do research.'  They become really excited by tailored subject guides which help their students identify appropriate resources for a given discipline.

3. Nature of the subject: 

Although library instruction is very practical and skills-based, I try to bring in a bigger picture view of research that includes some theory.  I want them to learn about how information is organized and created.  Sometimes these basic concepts are lost on students, so they have no idea what to look for or what they are finding. I want students to know that they can bring their own creativity to the search process.  No one does research the same way - and that's okay!  Both convergent and divergent thinking are required, if I understand the definitions correctly.  There definitely are logical steps to take when searching, for instance.  But how you search (keyword choices, search strategies, resource choice, etc.) all have an element of creativity based on the user's choices and actions.

4. Characteristics of the learners:

All of the students are between ages 18 and 23. Most are exceptionally intelligent.  Many have done research projects before primarily using the discovery layer on the libraries' website or the internet.  Most have used JSTOR.  Few have had formal research training.  Their primary learning goal is to be successful with their assignment.  My interaction with them will help them be successful, although I am not sure they have those expectations or know what my role is.  Regarding learning styles, lectures tend to bore these students (as evidenced by half closed eyes if I talk too long!)  They all, however, come alive when I require discussion in small groups.  I think a balance is needed. I love this article - which suggests an activity after each 10 minutes of talking.  I try to stick to that.

5. Characteristics of the teacher:

I have been teaching students how to do research for more than a decade. I care passionately about the interactions I have in the classroom, the library and during individual consultations.  I know that a good impression in the classroom can have a huge impact on each student and their future interactions and perceptions about the library. My strengths are subject and resource authority, as well as an ability to break down the research process into pieces students can understand.  I am affirming, approachable and always try to make a class as useful as possible.  I often experiment with different ways to engage the class, and I'm not afraid to try new things.  I do fall into a trap, however, of wanting to give them ALL the information, as I fear I may never get to work with those students directly again.  

My weaknesses include not always taking the time to get to know the class beforehand, and getting too busy to follow up afterwards.  I have never been particularly good at creating meaningful assessment activities that allow me to know how effective a session was. 

Questions for Formulating Significant Learning Goals

I have a hard time determining what students know already - and what needs to be taught or reintroduced. I tend to have far too many goals for a short one-hour session.  Because there are a lot of things to touch on, I often run out of time to effectively assess the students' learning (while also making time for incorporating active learning exercises).  I am well aware that you can't teach students how to do research in one class period - yet I think I still try each and every time.  I am hoping to move toward 'less is more' and am really eager to see how I can change the structure of my classes to include a more discrete set of learning goals that I can assess effectively. 

A year or more after this course is over, I want and hope that students will: 

carefully consider and identify the information they need, search the internet or research databases thoughtfully, evaluate the information they find based on specific criteria related to their needs, and know where to get help if they cannot find the information they need.

Foundational knowledge

• Be able to differentiate among various types of information sources: books, magazines, journal articles, news resources, popular, scholarly, online, print, etc.
• Be able to read a citation.
• Know how to navigate the libraries' website and understand the types of resources, databases, guides and search engines available.
• Know why you would choose to search the libraries' catalogue versus an article database.

Application goals

• Generate appropriate, creative keywords and search terms after basic background research on a topic.
• Choose appropriate resources to explore (e.g. internet, databases, library catalogue, etc.), and be able to identify the best resources after searching.
• Critically evaluate information in a way that allows the student to know they've found the right resource, and recognize when they should to keep searching for better information.
• Understand the connection between information sources, and how to use one good source to find other useful information.

Integration goals

• Understand how to think about a topic critically from different angles, when to think more broadly and more narrowly, and how to identify resources for these different needs.
• Understand that research skills used for one course or assignment can be transferred and developed in the next course or for the next assignment.

Human dimensions goals

• Have confidence in their ability to break down a topic to research discrete concepts.
• Understand that they will become the expert on their topic if they put their mind to it.
• Know that seeking help with research or writing is not a failure, and that it's okay to learn throughout their journey as a student.

Caring goals

• Feel excited about tackling a particularly difficult topic, figuring out the best place to find information and finding those perfect information sources.
• Be confident with their understanding of a topic and how to transition from basic research to more in-depth searching.

Learning-How-to-Learn Goals

• Be critical thinkers about their research question and the type of information they should seek when researching.
• Understand that they may need to read 50 papers, but will likely only use 10 of them.
• Be able to identify information in an information source that requires following or investigating further.