Revisiting digital badges, 2016 edition

After a Twitter convo about what's going on with badging initiatives and recently reading an article about badging in libraries that I (+ noted by some others) don't agree with, it feels like time for an update on my thoughts about badging.

When I first started thinking about badges and using badges, they seemed to help solve the problem of so many requests for library instruction, but without having the resources to physically be embedded in each class. I first designed and implemented badging into the one-credit course we used to have for information literacy. It was fully online and part of the coursework included tutorials and other online work. I created badges for our initial pilot that required instructor feedback and more conversation between instructor and student for badges to be earned (rather than automated earning through multiple choice, etc.). This pilot was very successful. Students enjoyed earning badges, saying it helped them organize what they were learning and that it provided more... closure perhaps... than just doing a tutorial or reading something and moving on. Since this course was geared toward freshmen, the badges added a student success component to help them think more about how to study and how to move through a course.

When we moved into the Fall semester pilot (still in 2013), when enrollment for this course gets to be the largest (over 100), we had to revise the badges and make them all mostly automated so that our GA could actually get through all of them plus her regular grading and instruction work for this course. Although students were still positive for the most part about the badges, it didn't feel as successful, to me at least, from an instructor standpoint. This could wind up being a discussion instead about class size, but I think both aspects played a role in my impression.

During this time, I thought since the info lit outcomes for our general education program weren't as strong (and mandatory?) as they needed to be, and that perhaps embedding badging options into gen ed courses would help usher in more info lit instruction, but where librarians wouldn't need to be coming in to do one-shots. We just don't have the resources for those anymore, and as Instruction Coordinator, I will firmly say I don't feel they are beneficial pedagogically to our instruction goals here at the UofA (we are phasing them out, #nomoreoneshots).

I wrote about my presentation to gen ed faculty here and also included student feedback from the pilots. Faculty were positive and it was a possibility to make this work. With a new online college established (UA Online), we also considered embedding badges in these programs since badges might work better with fully online courses. We also considered badges for the Writing Program at the beginning of this academic year. But just popping in automated badges in various spots of the curriculum (without greater collaboration with faculty, potentially) would essentially be the same thing as a one-shot, just virtually. This would be more physically possible, but not be so beneficial pedagogically. After bouncing around and evaluating what might work best instruction-wise, and based on the needs of these programs and departments, we reverted back to thinking about badges as a student success tool. So we have ultimately landed on collaborating with the College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences (CLAS) to use badges in their student success course for undecided students. We are working with our GA and ARL CEP Fellow to have them create and design these badges, and there will be 4 available to students in this program to introduce them to research.

This brings up the discussion also then of using badges with the Framework versus the Standards. I was able to design badges, that required instructor feedback and communication (not automated), to teach students about scholarship as conversation, research as iterative, and other frames. It was totally possible. But when we needed to shift badges to automated for our large pilot (and CLAS has over 1,000 students), this isn't really possible. And it has nothing to do with what is better, the Framework or the Standards--I do like the Framework better, FYI--but pedagogically, instructor feedback and interaction with students is going to be more effective and have a greater impact (that's my opinion, at least).

I do think badges are great for student success purposes and for engagement. Badges contribute to how a one might want to project their identity. After discussions on campus about badging stemming from the pilot I did, badges are being used in a large-scale student engagement initiative that's essentially related to AAC&U High Impact Practices. I think this is a great way for students to track what more holistic experiences they are having on campus and can help them conceptualize what they've done. When it comes to classroom instruction or information literacy initiatives, I think the use of badges gets more tricky and a number of factors need to be considered. And I prefer more fluidity in instructional design and collaborations with faculty that badges anchoring curriculum can't provide.

Now, one of those factors that always seems to pop up when badges are discussed is employer needs and employer impressions of students' value as future workers. I recently wrote about the state of higher education and info lit instruction in the winter 2015 issue of Communications in Information Literacy: A Pedagogy of Inquiry, so you can get more context on where I'm coming from with that article. My entire perspective of badges since I first became interested was about improving pedagogy, badges as instructional design, and trying to give students more autonomy over how they might want to represent themselves and their learning. If the badges and the learning piqued employers' interest and helped students get jobs after graduating, that's great, but should not be the sole purpose of badging (or education!). This is one of the main problems I have with a recent article about badges for employers in the Jan 2016 issue of C&RL. The use of "critical information literacy" in the title is a bit misleading, but regardless, critical (as in essential, according to this article's use of the word) anything for instruction shouldn't hinge on what employers say they need. This post is already getting quite long, so do read my CIL article if you'd like more on that. As others had pointed out to me, some of the other problems with the article include: lack of citations to librarians who have already published and presented on badge-related topics (and the citation of my work is incorrect--we saw my article is the only one cited of librarians who have researched this, and is also described strangely, plus my name isn't even included in the citation); it's confusing why HR reps and not even hiring managers were interviewed; and why this particular methodology was chosen.

I'm writing this quickly before I do an ACRL webinar soon (to talk about our use of the Framework and how we are phasing out one-shots... which I would love to write more about sometime in the future), but I knew if I didn't make this post now I might not have time again for awhile. Here's hoping there aren't any glaring errors. And hoping more that this post was useful to those of you asking about what I've learned about badging and how we're using them here at the University of Arizona.

Expertise and educators: Teachers make a difference

If you care about teaching, stop what you're doing and read Joshua Beatty's CAPAL 2015 paper, "Reading Freire for first world librarians." I had seen others tweeting about how great this paper was but hadn't had a chance to read it until now.

I can't really even count the amount of exclamation points I wrote all over my printed-out copy. There are a lot! We talk about a few things regarding critical pedagogy that have had me feeling conflicted. I wasn't sure how to put my uncertainty into words. Conversations regarding teacher authority, students-as-teachers, and borderline disdain for outcomes have had me feeling like "hmmm no" but not entirely sure how to express my hesitation clearly. And when I say "we," I mean librarians, teachers, and higher ed faculty who engage in discourse about critical pedagogy, but also sometimes those more informal discussions in our #critlib chats. And this is certainly not uncommon, a hashtag to talk about umbrella topics does not automatically imply there is monolithic agreement and a shared politics/approach/philosophy. This is why these conversations are great, because it's a safe space to talk about these things. I just haven't been able to fully articulate my disagreement about these issues until reading this paper.

So without repeating everything he says, essentially, the point is that first world librarians have been interpreting Freire incorrectly. Most of us--myself included--have only read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which was written with a very specific time period and population in mind and does not apply to Western classrooms (especially in the U.S. education system). Beatty points out how "Freire believed that North American teachers had conflated the concept of authority with the concept of authoritarianism. For Freire, the difference was essential. Authoritarianism was opposed to the existence of freedom, and is illegitimate. Authority, in contrast, was not opposed to freedom, but necessary to it" (p. 6).

The teacher's authority comes from their knowledge of the subject matter; but as Beatty explains, Freire realized in our misreading of his work that in rejecting authoritarianism, we wind up rejecting the teacher's authority... the thing that is actually needed for reaching freedom. And when we reject the teacher's authority and focus on this idea of teacher as just a guide or facilitator and not an expert with authority, we are actually causing harm to both the students and the teacher.

How this causes harm to students: Teacher authority is thinly veiled behind this idea of a classroom of shared power, which is just not in existence. Problem-posing in truth would be to acknowledge the authority of the teacher, to discuss it and be aware of it, instead of pretending it doesn't exist or making it seem like it can go away. I have never fully abdicated my authority as a teacher when I am doing instruction, feeling that I would come across as insincere. I wrote a blog post previously about TMI and student retention, and how trying to appear as if on the same level as your students is not helpful to teaching. I had included a couple YouTube clip examples in the post that have seemed to disappear, but this one can illustrate the idea here from Kids in the Hall, He's Hip. He's Cool. He's 45! The dad is trying to act like his authority is invisible by being "cool" and imposing no limitations on his son. He "doesn't care" about restrictions such as curfew and even goes to offer his son a joint with his cool man stance on the couch armrest. But the son clearly sees through this facade, not taking his dad seriously, as if he's a joke (well, he literally is):

This is obviously an exaggerated example, but I think it is disingenuous to frame a classroom as hey we're all the same, teacher, students.... even though I have the authority to grade. Also, there really are right and wrong answers in a number of cases. Dialogue is important, though. Facilitating is also important, but not at the expense of denying the expertise of being a teacher.

How this causes harm to teachers: I have written about the identity of librarians, the identity of librarians specifically as educators, and presented on how incorporating critical pedagogy into information literacy education can help transform our image. What Beatty is saying in his paper ties directly to this issue inherent in women's work and female-dominated professions having an expectation for service work and caregiving. Caregiving and warmth is essential to a degree in successful teaching, as we recognize the human component necessary for learning (affect), but positioning teachers--and librarian teachers, a double-whammy--as simply guides or facilitators or helpers, we are reinforcing a renunciation of authority, respect, and the need for individuals (mostly women) in these roles. We can have authority without being authoritarians. We can be experts and strategic educators who use learning outcomes (especially as formative assessment) while also working with students to realize their own knowledge and interests via dialogue and bigger picture learning.

I have found somewhat of a clash between educational psychology / instructional design principles and critical pedagogy when considering design, outcomes, and the role of the educator. I was so glad to read Beatty's paper to help me realize exactly where I felt uncomfortable with this conflict and why it existed. He talks about a lot of other great things like the idea of neutrality, the importance of collaboration with faculty, and neoliberalism + educational technology... you should really read.

And so, if anyone really can be a facilitator or a guide or a helper, then who needs us? Freire's notion of laissez-faire education would be realized. Teachers make a difference, and we can use our authority to help students learn. 

Competency-Based Learning & Creating Meaningful Experiences: Mutually Exclusive?

Lately, I have grown to be more skeptical of competency-based learning as used in the contexts it has been generally implemented, despite the fact that I am working to integrate library information literacy badges into our university-wide general education program (see my recent presentation with Andrew Battista about this topic for the 2015 CUNY Games Festival). So I was a little unsure what to expect in the Educause webinar I attended yesterday, Participatory Learning and Assessment in Competency-Based Contexts (ignore the unfortunate abbreviation of assessment in that URL...).

But I was pleasantly surprised with the webinarand also glad to see it was Dan Hickey from Indiana University doing the presentation. I took a BOOC on assessment practices with him a year or two ago and the way that course was developed has influenced my online course design.

I just wanted to reflect on what he talked about during the webinar because I think it's important for info lit instructional design, student engagement in general, and also as a way to think about standards vs the framework as we continue to have ongoing conversations about the ACRL revisions.

So first, if you're not familiar with competency-based learning (CBL), you can get some background here. Granted, that background info might be a bit biased since the Dept of Ed is in favor of implementing CBL. It's essentially the idea of replacing Carnegie seat hours with focus on passing assessments instead. So, if you prove you already have the skills or knowledge, you don't have the spend the time (re)learning the material, or if you learn content more quickly than others, you can spend less time on a unit.. On one hand, there are some great things that could come out of that, especially when we think about making information literacy instruction more appealing for both faculty and students. But there is also the *other* hand, where both Audrey Watters and Tressie McMillan Cottom have discussed the false meritocracy this reinforces, creating more barriers and difficulty for lower-income students in particular. Likewise, when you can just buy your skills through "cheaper" online assessments that have been corporatized, where does that leave social learning and any magic that could happen in the classroom? And how much weight does that really carry for finding a job (particularly for marginalized groups)?

Dan Hickey's presentation seemed to be about bringing the benefits of CBL into the classroom, while avoiding the not-so-great parts. He did mention that CBL is really like an assembly line, and that it's hard to use competencies in this way because teaching is so contextual. We don't want to make competencies a "statement of declarative knowledge." It's impossible to have students all learn the same things in the same way. Different students will have experiences that make them find more importance in one thing over another, and different groups of students will create knowledge that differs based on varying points of view.

Hickey discussed 5 Participatory Learning and Assessment Design Principles in order to make this point and demonstrate how to better incorporate CBL to make it contextual, examples follow:

1. Use public contexts to give meaning to knowledge tools: it's necessary to help students unpack between course concepts and their own context. This is personalized learning, not individualized learning.
2. Reward productive disciplinary engagement: disciplinary engagement involves both declarative knowledge and cultural practices. Be open with comments and engagement, stay away from grades. Let students interact and explore.
3. Grade artifacts through local reflections: save time for interaction, not on nitpicking via grading. Grade reflections instead of posts and comments (and stay away from using discussion boards).
4. Let individuals assess their understanding privately: use re-engagement instead of remediation, and offer open-ended and optional opportunities.
5. Measure achievement discreetly: there is too much teaching to the test, focus on bigger ideas. Withhold item-level feedback for test security and don't let students obsess over item-level answer memorization.

More on ALA Instructional Design Essentials ecourse

image via infed.org

Since it's a ways off and we've had people asking about when it will be offered again, I just wanted to make a quick post that our next 4-week session of ALA Instructional Design Essentials will be offered in May 2015. Instructors are myself and Erica DeFrain. We decided to wait until May since it's a slightly less busy time for academic library instruction and thought it would work better with people's schedules. Registration will open up sometime later in spring.

We are reflecting and revising from the first session of the course in September/October 2014, but here is the gist:

What you will get out of this course:

• How to use backward design and instructional design models to create your own teaching, while being critical of the limitations of ID
• How to leverage learning theories and knowledge of student motivation to create more compelling instruction
• How to integrate assessment holistically into your curriculum, lesson, or learning object so that you can help students reflect on their own progress, while you reflect on your teaching
• How to critically select and position technology within your instruction to enhance student learning
• How to develop an awareness for critical pedagogical practices to create inclusive classroom atmospheres or learning objects 

We use a connected model of learning where participants interact and create content. Everyone is learning from everyone, and a number of students had said they made great connections to peers during the course. We had an amazing group of librarians enrolled in the fall and we really enjoyed being able to teach and learn from them!

Some feedback from students:

"This instructional design course has given me the holistic, systematic, and results-focused approach that I was hoping to cultivate towards instruction, and I look forward to further developing my teaching along these lines. My coursemates were a wonderful resource, and I found several posts helpful in thinking about measurable and contextually anchored assessment, the feedback loop, motivation and the affective domain, and the potential contexts for our teaching. Thanks in particular to [student], whose thoughtful comments were so helpful for assessment and technology applications, and to our instructors, Nicole Pagowsky and Erica DeFrain. This was my first experience in online asynchronus learning, and it has been a very positive one that I’m happy to recommend to others!"

"I thoroughly enjoyed the course and learned so much. My biggest take away was to start from the end and work my way backwards when planning for a course and developing curriculum. I have learned that it is not what I want to teach but what I want students to learn. I will never look at instruction the same, and that is a really great thing!"

"I think the thing I found most useful was how the course was structured, i.e. that we applied these Instructional Design principles to a real-life scenario. Going into this course, I had some familiarity with ID concepts, but I had never applied them to my own work. Having an end goal in mind made it easier to explore ID concepts in a practical way. I think the concept that will stick with me most is backward design; it has made me reconsider how I approach instruction, by making sure that I think first of the goals for the course, workshop, etc. before proceeding to how the material will be presented. I struggled most with learning theories, in this class. I think that I have a decent handle on them now, but I’m still not entirely sure of the intricacies of each theory."

"I already want to say thank you to Nicole and Erica for the great course. I learned a lot out of the reading! + the peer-endorsement activity was an eye-opening experience (thx to the blog technology :)"

"What struck me the most was how much my initial class design changed from week 1 to week 4. Without realizing it, I had done an about-face! When I pulled my old posts together and tried to write up this final project post, it became clear just how much the readings and the other participants’ blogs had changed my views."

If you're interested in registering for the course, feel free to contact me or Erica with questions; or get in touch with ALA for any logistical concerns.

#acrlilrevisions Next Steps

It seems like we are almost at the final version of the ACRL Framework revisions. I submitted my feedback a couple weeks ago through the ACRL Student Learning & Information Literacy committee that I'm on (we are sending it collectively) and feel for the most part that I have a decent grasp on how we might use these at the University of Arizona. Even though it's not finalized yet, we've been needing to work with the draft as is for projects here, such as badging, programmatic instruction, and constructing our department's IL plan and philosophy not too long after we had a restructuring. I'm helping coordinate our plans for programmatic instruction here so I keep thinking and re-thinking about these frames.

When designing instruction, I like to come up with "big questions" or "understandings," as Wiggins and McTighe refer to. From looking at the frames and trying to think about how can librarians and teaching faculty collaboratively understand these concepts and work toward shared goals, I put some big questions together to try and capture broader thoughts. From there, a colleague and I also worked on writing some outcomes we could map through curriculum mapping once everything becomes finalized. I'm also using these in other work that can't wait for the final draft. I thought I'd share some of this here as some librarians in my department are also sharing this with librarians at ASU and NAU tomorrow at a joint mini-conference that I can't attend since I will actually be presenting our version of the framework so far with big questions and outcomes to general education faculty for their feedback.

Below is our draft thus far. I thought I'd share it in the hopes that it might help others grappling with this stuff. I changed "searching is strategic" back to "searching is exploration" for our purposes because we all liked that version better here. We are also trying to think of more simple frame names that we could use. Even with our bigger additions and small adjustments, it's not perfect, but we're getting there.

Since it seems there is/was some disagreement via Twitter about whether "conversation" or "discourse" might be better wording for the first frame... I am on the side of conversation. If we're talking about opening up the act of research and having students become creators, I think discourse is limiting. Discourses set rules and restrictions, not really inviting in great diversity. As Aleman (2014) says, "Those in power or in control of the discourse normalize certain principles and ways of being through discourse to perpetuate norms, and to demand compliance, conformity, and submission to these norms" (p. 113). Discourse limits diversity in perspective and often in mode of publication. I also love this quote from Ball in Egea that I shared not too long ago: 

discourse, problems, neoliberalism via Egea, O.M., 2013 pic.twitter.com/cIyP6Qb25o
— Nicole Pagowsky (@pumpedlibrarian) October 9, 2014

So I say keep it "conversation." Ok and now here are our frames and outcomes:

Frame 1: Scholarship is a Conversation

Scholarship is a conversation refers to the idea of ongoing discourse within a community of scholars who create, consume, and critique new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of competing perspectives and interpretations, building on each other.

Big Questions:

Ø  What barriers exist when entering into the “conversation” of scholarship?

Ø  How can we gain greater understanding of topics by examining the connections and ongoing narratives between different scholarly pieces?

Ø  How do our responsibilities shift when moving from just consumers of information to critics and/or creators of it?

Students should be able to:

·         Recognize the metaphor of “conversation” to describe the purpose of research

·         Identify the contribution of specific scholarly pieces and varying perspectives to a disciplinary knowledge “conversation”

·         Contribute to the scholarly conversation at an appropriate level, through the lens of becoming a creator/critic

Frame 2: Research as Inquiry

Research as inquiry means that research is an ongoing exploration, depending on continuous questioning where answers develop new questions or new lines of interest in any field.

Big Questions:

Ø  How could understanding of a topic be improved through uncertainty in the process of research?

Ø  How can varying needs shape the importance of certain types of information?

Ø  How can we know what we don’t know? How do we go about figuring out what is not there instead of only what is visible by finding gaps in thought or content?

Students should be able to:

·         Formulate research questions based on curiosity and gaps in information or data available

·         Describe via reflection how the research process is iterative, requiring persistence

·         Apply research methods that are appropriate for the need, context, and type of inquiry

Frame 3:  Authority is Contextual and Constructed

Authority of information depends on where the source came from, the information need, and how the information will be used. It is constructed and contextual. Authority should be viewed with an attitude of informed skepticism and openness to new perspectives.

Big Questions:

Ø  How or why do we decide if someone has “authority” on a topic?

Ø  What might be expected of us as we become authorities ourselves?

Ø  How might biases privilege some sources of authority and silence others, especially in terms of others’ worldviews, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, etc.?

Students should be able to:

·         Determine attributes of authoritative information for different needs, with the understanding that context plays a role in authority-based attributes

·         Recognize that traditional notions of granting authority might hinder diverse ideas and world views

·         Acknowledge that oneself may be seen as an authority in a particular area, and recognize the responsibilities entailed

Frame 4: Information Creation is a Process

Knowledge can be expressed in different styles, which has an impact on how information is used and shared. It is important to look to the underlying processes of creation as well as the final product to critically evaluate the usefulness of the information.

Big Questions:

Ø  How might information be perceived differently based on how it’s packaged? E.g., why might there be an expectation to use scholarly sources in a college paper?

Ø  Why do certain types of information automatically seem to have credibility where others might not?

Students should be able to:

·         Articulate the purposes of various types of information as well as their distinguishing characteristics

·         Distinguish between format and method of access, understanding that these are separate entities

·         Identify which types of information best meet particular information needs

Frame 5: Searching is Exploration

Locating information requires a combination of curiosity, discovery, and luck. There is no one size fits all source for the needed information. Finding information is nonlinear and iterative, requiring the use of a broad range of information sources, flexibility, and the willingness to make mistakes and try again.

Big Questions:

Ø  How can we best determine what we’re looking for so that we can identify an effective search strategy?

Ø  How might differing information needs change an approach to searching?

Ø  How can failure and mistakes help us in finding information?

Students should be able to:

·         Make connections between the importance of matching information needs and search strategies to appropriate search tools

·         Implement more advanced searching skills to respond to a discipline-based information need

·         Reflect on the usefulness of making mistakes in the search process and how searching is not solely transactional

Frame 6: Information has Value

Information has value means that information possesses several dimensions of value, including as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence, and as a means of negotiating and understanding the world. The flow of information through systems of production and dissemination is impacted by legal, sociopolitical, and economic interests.

Big Questions:

Ø  How could value of information be wielded by powerful interests in ways that marginalize certain voices?

Ø  How might the use or absence of citations impact the conversation of research?

Ø  How could something like open access change creation, publishing, and learning?

Students should be able to:

·         Distinguish between plagiarism and copyright violations

·         Identify scholarly publication practices and their related implications for access to scholarly information

·         Identify why some groups/individuals may be underrepresented or systematically marginalized within the systems that produce and disseminate information

Moving away from teaching to the research paper

Might be sacrilege, but I find I have more engaging instruction sessions when students don't have a research paper attached as an assignment
— Nicole Pagowsky (@pumpedlibrarian) October 10, 2014

As I've been teaching a lot more classes lately that have a big research paper or capstone assignment attached in my new role as a subject liaison, I'm comparing it to my other work focusing on FYE-type instruction and student retention, thinking about engagement. This topic also came up in the Instructional Design Essentials ecourse I'm co-teaching with Erica DeFrain for ALA. Many participants in our course are starting to see the big red flags popping up with demo-based one-shots and student motivation as they have been working through designing their instruction or learning objects. As info lit instruction practice is moving more toward programmatic instruction and ensuring that an assignment is present so that there is more student buy-in and opportunities for assessment, I'm starting to question the assignment and (formal) assessment parts of library instruction... or, at least the research-paper-as-assignment.

The problem with one shots of course is that there is often an expectation to cram a ton of information into a 50-75min session that students will need to just remember for the rest of the semester and be able to complete their research papers "well." Not to mention library instruction becomes an isolated integration into the curriculum, particularly so when this type of instruction is in the form of skill-and-drill. There are many discussions going on--that have been going on for awhile now--pointing out that just teaching students how to use a database via a demo is not effective, and is boring for everyone (agreed!). Once students get to a point where they are writing a huge research paper, I almost feel like we've missed them, that they should have had more incremental, activity-based instruction, because this juncture in their instruction-need winds up being focused more on use of databases and just finding peer-reviewed articles to get the paper "done." I was teaching some undergrad students more context about what a literature review is for their required big paper, talking about their role as creators of knowledge, thinking of research as a conversation and where their research fits in, and crafting a narrative. I also did need to weave in database demos because the students had a certain requirement to fulfill. At the end of the session, I talked to the instructor to see if the session was what he was hoping for, especially since he had another section of the course coming in a few weeks later. He told me I really didn't need to talk about all that other stuff, all I really needed to do was point them to the databases because that's what they need for their paper. Students become so focused on the need to gather x amount of articles that other discussions become irrelevant and inefficient.

This is the issue with huge summative assessments, particularly the research paper. Barbara Fister has written about this problem at length, where she talks about Why the "Research Paper" isn't Working. I don't believe we have problems with student engagement when research papers are not attached to library instruction because our (potential) content isn't interesting, I think it's because traditionally (not everyone and not always, but typically in the past) a library instruction session divorced from an assignment *still* focused on a database demo. A database demo with no purpose, of course, is going to be agony for students (and the librarian). There are so many other things we could be doing, that some of us are doing, that serve as better options.

My perspective is that by the time students are writing huge research papers, they should have already had enough library instruction to where they could benefit from just a review of what they know. We should be scaffolding from the first year up instead of dumping all the boring mechanics of searching on students, with little other context, all at once. Now of course, much of this is out of our control, we get asked to do a one-shot where an assignment is already established, or even with efforts for collaboration, faculty might not want to work with us, or might just not feel they have the time. But when we can have a larger role in collaboration, especially for programmatic instruction, I try to suggest more scaffolding and lower-risk library instruction activities to enable greater discovery and discussion. Some of the best instruction sessions I've had have been with student success courses that don't have a big research paper, working with athletes, and working with a class examining social media that needed less help with "finding" and more so with creating a bigger discussion about information and communication. Unfortunately, I think this problem goes back to faculty not really knowing what we do and assuming we're just there to help students find things, as well as perceptions of librarians tying us to a "helper" role, so I think it just depends on the faculty we are working with and what our collaborative relationships are like. But I do think trying to move away from teaching to the research paper is one step in the right direction.

The Twitter convo continues from above...

Instruction bootcamp training: Faculty collaboration!

The last few months have been a whirlwind! We officially started our reorganization at the UA Libraries over the summer and have been getting situated in our new roles since. Before, our teams were functional, so we had an instruction team, a collections and research services team, etc. Now our departments are based on cross-functional areas that require more collaboration. My department is a combining of what was previously the instruction team and the collections + research team since we are following a subject liaison model for campus. With this merging, those in our department with expertise are training others. I helped organize an instruction bootcamp training for back in August where I covered the new ACRL Information Literacy Framework, some basic instruction concepts, and the process of curriculum mapping since we will be working toward mapping all programs (or as many as we are able to).

I was so happy that @susanarcham was willing to let me take a look at her curriculum mapping training materials that they used at Loyola Marymount in LA, and I found a lot of great stuff that I was able to adapt for my colleagues. One of the most useful activities that I wanted to share my adaptation of was helping librarians think about faculty collaboration from our new roles as liaisons. I added in some fun characters and scenarios and thought this activity might be useful for others doing instruction and heavy campus outreach. This is following the theme of "Mission Impossible" that Susan created. My department really liked this one.

Here is a snippet of one of the faculty profiles below. I divided everyone into subject-based groups to brainstorm and role play (sciences, business, social sciences, arts and architecture, humanities), and then we all discussed as a full group.

Find the full activity with all characters and discussion questions here.

I hope to share the rest of our training materials from the bootcamp if I have more time to blog about this. Otherwise, the next month is going to be focused on the Connected Courses class I'm taking, as well as the ALA Instructional Design Essentials ecourse that I'm teaching with Erica DeFrain.

Introducing #critlib chats!

Tuesday night marked the first #critlib chat we had on Twitter to talk about critical pedagogy in libraries. Myself and the awesome @barnlib, @catladylib, @edrabinski, and @kellymce  organized the chat, and I served as moderator for this week. I'm really excited that these are happening, because not only is it important to talk about this stuff, but selfishly, I've been really wanting there to be something like this for awhile.

We created a cheat sheet for the chats to provide information about upcoming topics, how the chats work, and then to post the questions in real time as a reference point beyond the constantly updating Twitter hashtag feed. It's pretty fast paced to do these Twitter chats, and can make having in-depth conversations difficult, but it is a good entry point, is fairly accessible, and open to all. We had a good amount of people participating and some excellent conversations going. It's helpful to have 3 tabs open for this: the cheat sheet, the hashtag feed on Twitter, and then your own notifications feed to make it easy to reply to people without losing #critlib. Thanks to @aszingarelli, we also now have a Storify you can check out to see how the conversation went.

For this first meeting, we mostly talked about definitions. What is critical pedagogy, and what is critical library pedagogy? How do you incorporate critical pedagogy in your library instruction and in other aspects of library work? It was a good first meeting to establish a somewhat common understanding, and provide more context for those who are interested but don't feel comfortable participating yet. Some people mentioned they were just going to lurk, and I think that's great there is so much interest. I hope the chat will make everyone more comfortable sharing their thoughts, it's not meant to be a judgmental place or where anyone assumes they're an expert.

We posted Gregory & Higgins' intro to Information Literacy and Social Justice as supplemental reading since they introduce the concept very well. I was reading Toni Samek's foreword to the book as well, and thought what she said about risk was important:

We should not underestimate the collective will of projects like this one. Each contributor should be thanked for the risk they take on the page. I have, on a number of occasions, said publicly that information literacy is far too often realized in service of the state. This is rarely a popular observation. (And so I have been told.) But for almost twenty full years I have worked under the protection of my right and responsibility of academic freedom. The same cannot be said for all of the seventeen chapter contributors to this work. I admire them for their conviction (2013, vii).

This is important to think about, as these might not be popular opinions. It is somewhat of a risk to discuss these things, particularly for those who are not in tenured positions. So it's great to have a place to chat to support others with these similar convictions. We hope more will join us next time. Tuesday, April 7th will be the second #critlib, and then we will be moving to every other week after that.

Also see our Zotero group with further resources and readings (some of these might wind up being readings for future chats).

More on threshold concepts and #ACRLILRevisions

The three threshold concepts in the new ACRL draft Framework for Information Literacy (Higher Ed) are noted as:

• Scholarship as a conversation
• Research as inquiry
• Format as process

From conversations on Twitter, Andy Burkhardt made a great post about how he has implemented "Research as inquiry" in his instruction. These practical examples are so helpful in understanding such a theoretical framework. Since I have been pushing research as conversation, or "Scholarship as conversation," in my own teaching, I thought I would share what I have done as well (for reference, I wrote about my initial thoughts on the new draft framework in a previous post).

Credit course and scaffolding

We have since paused our for-credit courses at the library, but in the last two sessions, I scaffolded research as conversation throughout the semester. I started off with introducing the concept, then made greater analogies to other modules, and in the end, had students create a short, animated video or comic strip (or script if they were not feeling visuals) illustrating a facet of research as conversation. (And this course is where we initially started using digital badges, as a side-note).

Searching online communities

In the fall, I had two additional opportunities of note to use scholarship as conversation, but also the other two threshold concepts. In a course in the UA's new eSociety program, my colleague, Leslie Sult, and I collaborated with the instructor to develop an in class activity and assignment. Students were researching a current event in a variety of formats/online communities (social media, local news, national/international news, news blogs, etc.), and the instructor wanted her students to do some critical thinking in groups to evaluate information and think about bias and point-of-view. I came up with the worksheet below, and we wound up having some great conversations as each group presented on their resource (YouTube and Twitter were especially interesting):

And additional questions we asked to coincide with the worksheet, after a brief lecture on related issues was delivered, included:

• Open versus closed community: impact? E.g., Facebook closed vs Twitter open – algorithms on Fbook and Google search when signed in (stay in the echo chamber)
• Primary versus secondary sources: what is the difference and when might you use either?
• How are messages changed/altered when they are retweeted or shared? Is anything lost? (like playing telephone), how do you account for this in searching? How do you know what part of the message is accurate? Methods for this
• Search strategies and tools: hashtags, groups, slang, memes, etc.
• Trolling: how does it affect communities and how might it change your search strategy?
• How do you know if someone is trolling a group or a topic discussion? Does trolling have significance in your search? Should you seek it out or ignore it?
• Back to whose voices are heard? What might the effect of being in the “echo chamber” do to whose voices you hear personally? What search strategies could you use to get out of the echo chamber?

The learning outcomes based on the instructor's course learning outcomes in conjunction with Leslie's and my goals for library instruction were the following:

1. Engage in a focused process of inquiry within an assigned online community in order to articulate the ways in which online communities function across contexts in contemporary life
2. Strategically access and evaluate information via search in an assigned online community in order to recognize various perspectives including rhetorical, philosophical, historical, sociological, and psychological viewpoints
3. Develop insight into the ethical aspects of information creation, use, access, and durability in order to be conscious of many group-related issues and practices relative to the use of computing technologies to facilitate group collaboration

Student athletes and avoiding plagiarism

When working with student athletes later in the semester, I more literally included scholarship as a conversation into my instructional design for a session I collaborated on with the Director of the athletes' writing center and my colleague, Niamh Wallace. I started the session talking about the process of research to frame positive uses of citations (how they help a conversation) and the negative effects of plagiarism, accidental or not (how they harm a conversation). To illustrate the concept in their minds first, I read them Burke's Unending Conversation Metaphor that I slightly adapted to more modern language they could relate to. I asked them to close their eyes and....

Imagine that you enter a party. You come late. When you arrive, others have been there long before you, and are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and fill you in. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you get the gist of the argument and join in. Someone answers; you respond; another comes to your defense; another aligns against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending on the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is endless. It’s getting late, so you have to take off. And you leave, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

Marisa (Director of writing center) incorporated a short lecture on how to write well when using other people's ideas, and as a hands-on activity had students write about their thoughts based on what we had presented to them (having them cite us). Then, using game design for this session, the theme was the "Citation Olympics," and we had students compete in groups for prizes as they learned content. Our format was introduce concept > practice > compete in the Citation Olympics at the end. Each module was a "sport," essentially. Here is a copy of the PPT we used to guide the session for a better idea (though much detail still gets left out from not including lecture notes).

Workshop on avoiding plagiarism for student athletes from Nicole Pagowsky


Anyhow, thought it might be helpful to share, and I hope to see how others have been teaching these concepts to gain a better understanding of how the new framework can be put into practice.

Thoughts on ACRL's New Draft Framework for ILCSHE

Image from goleansixsigma.com/bottleneck/

I've finally had a chance to read through the draft framework from ACRL, for Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (ILCSHE), as well as some good blog posts reflecting on the draft from Barbara Fister, Jacob Berg, and Andy Burkhardt. After attending ACRL Immersion - Program Track this last summer and also recently reading Susanna Cowan's, "Information literacy: The battle won won that we lost?" it seems like at least the existentialist part of the conversation on information literacy has been brewing for quite awhile. Cowan asks, "at what point does trying to interrupt the research process with the intrusion of instruction sessions, consultations, and tutorials become anachronistic, out of touch, and eventually irrelevant?" (2014, p. 29). And quoting Sugata Mitra, Cowan says we should "let learning happen," instead of essentially forcing/inserting ourselves into the process (p. 30). So the question then it seems many of us are asking ourselves is what does "information literacy" (IL) really mean, and if librarians don't "own" information literacy, what will our role be?

The draft framework focuses on three threshold concepts that would help advise our path, more so than define. Since others have taken a more theoretical perspective on their reflections, I am going to speak more practically:

• Scholarship is a conversation: I am so happy this concept is being included, as I have been pushing it in my own instruction for awhile, yet have found it more difficult to plan and assess (though assessment is a murky area, even more so with this new framework). This notion can inspire students to see themselves as creators of information, having a greater stake in the research they are doing (as the framework notes). One thing I wonder here is how can libraries better enable this, regardless of if we own IL or not. Libraries including student output might be one way to encourage students to perceive themselves in this way, to show their work is worth something in the world beyond a class grade and that they are truly a part of the "conversation." One issue Barbara Fister brings up that I'd like to echo is that "we need to bear in mind how these thresholds we define are cultural constructs and avoid assuming upper-middle-class white American experiences that might seem hostile or exclusionary to those who don't fit that assumed identity." Who will determine what these universal threshold concepts are, and how?

• Research as inquiry: Again, I think it's great this is included as a major concept. The framework talks about this meaning students understand that research is an iterative process and that "reflecting on errors or mistakes leads to new insights and discoveries" (p. 13). A major thought here seems to be teaching through failure, which research has shown to be effective. I'm just going to quote something I wrote in a previous post addressing this:

"Kluger and DeNisi (1996) support this notion of learning through failure by arguing that after doing an enormous meta-analysis of feedback interventions research, the conclusion is that the feedback literature is inconclusive and highly variable based on situations and learners involved. They explain that learners are most successful in learning through discovery, rather than feedback, particularly controlling feedback (ahem, grades)." via October 31, 2013

This also certainly mucks us up, as mentioned above, in regards to assessment. Though, as we partner more with faculty outside of the library, we will likely find more opportunities for reinvention and different ways to express our instructional "value."

• Format as process: This last concept, although I think it is going in a good direction, is the one I feel is missing the most. Overall, I would like to see the framework be a bit more radical, and I think this is an example of one excellent spot to invoke critical pedagogy in a very specific way. In looking at how information is produced and considering the peer-review process, medium as message, and the value of information, I was hoping to see a discussion on marginalized groups and whose voices get to be heard in traditional publishing and media (and why). These are important conversations to have with students, and particularly so when we are encouraging them to be creators of information, joining the conversation themselves. What impact might avenues of publishing have on their ability to be vocal when considering their perspective and identity? How is privilege intertwined in format and volume? 

Overall, I am pleased with the draft and am keeping in mind that it is just that: a draft. Other issues I have echo what others have stated, including that the framework set out to rid itself of jargon, but wound up only replacing old jargon with new jargon (metaliteracy, knowledge practices, etc.). I think not only do we want faculty and administrators to implicitly understand what we're talking about with this framework, but it would be great if students could read it and quickly, easily understand our objectives. Tomorrow, I am meeting with other instruction and research services librarians at my library to discuss the new framework as a group (as well as Cowan's article), so I am interested to see what my colleagues will say. I'll be leaving my own feedback to the draft soon after that and am also curious to see other points of view and engage in more conversations on the future of information literacy and library instruction.

Edit: Adding an additional thought as I work through my perspective on this, but I'm wondering what effect the theory of cognitive development, or rather, Perry's theory of cognitive/moral development will have on the success of this framework, particularly with early undergraduate students. When students are freshmen especially, they tend to think in duality, black vs white, and the instructor as absolute authority figure, having difficulty to move outside the box. With the framework being so flexible to student exploration, will it in fact improve learning for these students? Here is a good resource to color this in a bit: http://home.ubalt.edu/ub02Z36/Perry_Stages_ACRL-MD.pdf 

Badges and buy-in

In November, I presented on digital badges to the University-Wide General Education Committee (UWGEC) that I am an advisory member for on behalf of the library. My colleague and I have finished our multi-semester course pilot where we used digital badges with content in the library's one-credit course for undergrads, and now we are looking to expand to greater campus and also gather faculty feedback. If faculty don't find value in digital badges, we won't get very far.

The reason I chose the UWGEC committee to present to is because all new gen ed courses are required to explain how information literacy (and other critical skills) will be incorporated into their class. There were a few applications that came through where it seemed faculty were unsure of how to either include IL skills in the class or just how to describe how IL skills would be included in the class. We do have a list of the (soon outdated) ACRL standards to help guide instructors, but there are of course issues with the standards, aside from them not really being intuitive to someone who is not a librarian. Additionally, since we don't have a FYE program, incorporating IL skills at the Gen Ed level would reach more students earlier on.

When badges can be embedded into courses, instructors can more actively understand IL concepts and skills that their students will need and map IL to current course design. Faculty were very excited to hear about this possibility of a mix and match digital badge option for including research skills in their courses. This wouldn't require much additional instruction time on their part, and everyone (faculty and the library) would have access to assessment data. Prior to this presentation, it felt badge talk on campus was stalled or even non-existent, but I found some interested instructors to become part of our Pilot Part II, and was also invited to another working group on campus to include digital badges in eportfolios (actually very similar to what UC-Davis has announced).

Some key points to consider that worked for me when presenting on badges to faculty:

• Focus less on gamification when introducing the concept and more on measuring skills and competency-based education
• If your campus is like ours and upper course level faculty complain that students are lacking research skills when they reach them, highlight how embedding skills early and through scaffolding throughout students' college years will benefit all in receiving better work and helping students be better prepared
• Share as much student feedback as you can. If students are enthusiastic, faculty of course want to use methods students will enjoy and be successful at
• Stress flexibility and cooperation. We are not giving campus mandatory modules that they have to incorporate into every class, it's a mix and match as I mentioned above where badges would be incorporated into classes based on content, skill-level, and need. We want to be strategic and not create more work for ourselves or faculty (or students)
• Reiterate student anxiety on finding jobs after graduation, and how being able to display and describe specific skills could give them an advantage with future employers while also helping students better understand what they have accomplished

And I'll share some student feedback from our pilot:

•“I liked when I did really well on a task when I got a badge for it”

•“I liked badges because they helped me feel accomplished and as if I was doing something worth while”

•“It was more fun than just completing a written assignment”

•“I enjoyed that the badges … were useful in keeping track of my work, but also of what I learned [and] that most of the time they made us really reflect and put our knowledge of the subject to use”

•“In order for me to complete assignments, I have to break them down into tasks. With the badges this was already set up for me. I found it fit into my learning style perfectly and I loved how I could track what I was doing within each badge”

University of Arizona Libraries: LIBR197R Badges Pilot survey

We will be analyzing our data for these two semesters and then will be starting another pilot for spring if all works as planned and presenting on our findings at ALA Annual 2014 in Vegas. I don't think there is a date or time set yet but the title of our presentation is: But did they learn anything? Using digital badges to create customizable learning experiences for motivation and assessment. Hope you'll join us! It will be an interactive session where audience members will start putting a badging system together for their institutions (and this is through LITA).

Adding another piece to the library + student retention puzzle

image from www.businesscontinuityjournal.com

Grit has become a big, flashy word over the last year or so, in regards to instilling adaptive learning in students and building resiliency. The idea is that students who are able to adapt and bounce back from failure are able to learn from mistakes, being more likely to stick around in school when they are faced with challenges.

In looking at educational psychology literature, and is becoming more widely known through research on positive effects of gaming, experiencing failure supports adaptive learning. Rohrkemper and Corno (1988) highlight the problematic duality of failure versus success, where failure is always bad and success is always good. This in fact is not true, where constant success can be detrimental and failure can improve performance (that is, learning from failure). Focusing on how students think, rather than what they know, is one step in the right direction, along with modeling adaptive behavior, and teaching students to understand that tasks and learning can be malleable. In library instruction, this reminds me of what Pegasus Librarian (I believe?) mentioned in regards to providing students with a "dirt-view" of research (I can't find this post, I'm thinking it could have possibly been an episode on Adventures in Library Instruction). But basically, where we show students research takes work and builds on failure, and it's almost hilarious when we show students practiced, perfect searches because that is not how research works at all. Kluger and DeNisi (1996) support this notion of learning through failure by arguing that after doing an enormous meta-analysis of feedback interventions research, the conclusion is that the feedback literature is inconclusive and highly variable based on situations and learners involved. They explain that learners are most successful in learning through discovery, rather than feedback, particularly controlling feedback (ahem, grades).

Brownell (1947) advocated for teaching meaning in arithmetic, typically a rote, "tool subject." You'd think the argument of teaching meaning would be quite clear, especially in 2013, but this debate continues in some ways. We can see the shift in information literacy, it seems there is more agreement now to move away from navigation and clicks ("bibliographic instruction") to teaching students a more holistic understanding of research in "information literacy." Barbara Fister, as always, is very eloquent in how she explains the importance of this. But really this is another avenue to instill resiliency in students, by focusing on higher order thinking (though, higher order thinking is not always appropriate in every context), we truly are looking toward students' process rather than having interest only in final product. As Brownell explains, teaching meaning provides a greater context for students to find value in the particular subject being taught. With all the difficulty librarians can have regarding one shots (this model could/should change) in building connections with students and improving motivation for students to learn aspects of the research process, providing deeper knowledge about why, and not just what and how, can improve the learning environment.

I was going to next talk about how to provide successful feedback, because it is important, but to avoid making this post so long that no one actually reads it, I just want to wrap up with whether in a class (credit-bearing, one-shot) or through more auxiliary approaches, libraries should be places for students to build grit and resiliency through exploring failure. We talk about how orientations are important for students to develop a social connection and feel comfortable somewhere on campus, and this is a very important aspect of retention, but these safe spaces should also provide opportunities for students to take safe risks and learn how to adapt to failure. This doesn't necessarily mean libraries need to gamify the whole library or offer badges as a panacea for solving student retention or student motivation concerns, but these are examples of methods that could prove useful. Setting up other opportunities in the library for students to test out ideas are ways in which to draw them in and instill adaptivity. Hopefully they are also getting opportunities for safe failure in their campus-wide courses, but it's certainly not a guarantee. Libraries should think about how we can provide opportunities for safe risk in a variety of ways, whether it's instruction, programming, collections, or UX. It's one step in figuring out how we can support student retention initiatives on campus and demonstrate value.

--
Brownell, W. A. (January 01, 1947). The Place of Meaning in the Teaching of Arithmetic.The Elementary School Journal, 47, 5, 256-265.

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (January 01, 1996). The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance: A Historical Review, a Meta-Analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 2, 254-284.

Rohrkemper, M., & Corno, L. (January 01, 1988). Success and Failure on Classroom Tasks: Adaptive Learning and Classroom Teaching. The Elementary School Journal, 88,3, 297-312.