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There has been a long-standing interest within the academic librarian community to provide support for graduate students involved in interdisciplinary research. This column focuses on the challenges that researchers face when seeking information in an unfamiliar disciplinary area as well as what is known about the information behaviors of interdisciplinary researchers. Using a framework of information seeking strategies, elements of a course for interdisciplinary graduate students are proposed. Topics that are addressed are learning about the culture and language of an unfamiliar discipline; including the scholarly communication apparatus and organization of information; mechanisms for identifying and locating key authors, publications, research institutions, and emerging research fronts; how to determine when enough information has been gathered; and keeping up with the latest research.—Editor

Given the increase in the number and interest in interdisciplinary programs and research in U.S. institutions of higher education, academic librarians should be involved in determining the information literacy needs of graduate students in interdisciplinary areas.¹ Don Spanner expresses this need in his published study of a group of interdisciplinary researchers:

Is it solely the domain of scholars? What is the “trickle down” effect on students as curriculum shifts to encompass interdisciplinarity? Such a determination would allow reference librarians to consider the importance of developing the necessary bibliographic instructional skills to support both scholars and students in their research.²

Recent studies of the information needs and behavior of interdisciplinary researchers, including graduate students, demonstrate that researchers have difficulties discovering authoritative information sources when venturing outside their major field of study.³ What approaches have librarians and other information scientists found for teaching graduate students about developing vocabularies and learning about core information sources outside of their main disciplinary domains? This article attempts to answer this question by first exploring the information behaviors of interdisciplinary researchers and the difficulties they face in locating the key sources of information outside their disciplines. From this review and analysis, information literacy instruction approaches are proposed for creating a course for interdisciplinary graduate students on the following topics: learning about the culture and language of an unfamiliar discipline; how new research is communicated and made accessible to others; identifying and locating key authors, publications, and research institutions through chaining, or footnote chasing; probing activities to increase breadth of information gathered through searching multidisciplinary databases and federated search products; networking; keeping up with the research literature; and the integration and consolidation of interdisciplinary knowledge.

Challenges of Interdisciplinary Research

Lynn Westbrook describes interdisciplinary research as “the purposeful weaving together of two or more disciplines that are usually considered to be quite unconnected in order to reach a new understanding, create a new academic end product or advance research on a particular question.”⁴ From an extensive literature review of issues facing interdisciplinary researchers, themes that emerged are the need to learn the language and culture of the other discipline, the information-scatter issue for highly distributed research areas, the nature and quality of bibliographic apparatuses to search for information, and keeping up with current research.

For interdisciplinary researchers, there is a need to become familiar with the cultural assumptions, language, and the organization of knowledge in the “other” discipline.⁵ Being able to communicate with those outside one’s own discipline requires knowledge of the vocabulary of the other discipline. In addition, terminology may have a different meaning across disciplines. This can lead to similar research being conducted in different disciplines.⁶ Allen Foster reports the challenges for interdisciplinary researchers in identifying key research studies, themes, disciplinary communities, and the important authors in a field.⁷

There is also the issue of information scatter as described by Lynn Westbrook:

“Scatter” is a measure of the number and structure of the resources in an academic discipline. Traditional academic disciplines are tightly defined with a relatively small number of professional organizations, scholarly journals, heavily used reference tools and periodical indices.⁸

Within a well-established discipline, such as geology, information resource scatter will be low and highly identifiable. Women’s studies, on the other hand, is seen as being a “high scatter” interdisciplinary area where information resources are highly dispersed across a number of disciplines. Scholars in such fields have a greater learning curve,⁹ and the need to gather more information and have more contacts is higher than disciplinary scholars.¹⁰ For highly scattered interdisciplinary areas, this can be a barrier for assistant professors who also have responsibilities for teaching and tenure requirements.¹¹

In the realm of bibliographic databases, there are ease of use issues related to multiple interfaces, varying amounts of depth and specificity in indexing, and inconsistency in the use of controlled vocabulary and acronyms across all subject areas.¹²

Other challenges for interdisciplinary scholars are the need for current information and in keeping up in multiple disciplinary areas. This is also true for disciplinary scholars. The difference lies in the amount of literature to review and the information scatter discussed above.¹³ Carole Palmer describes the myriad tasks that interdisciplinarians face:

Keeping up with and using information across fields requires maintaining awareness of the many different facets of a research problem, the new work in relevant subjects, as well as potential emerging areas of importance.¹⁴

In summary, challenges for interdisciplinary researchers include learning the culture and language used in an unfamiliar discipline, identifying key researchers and research areas, and developing a method for keeping up with new research findings across disciplinary areas.

Information-Seeking Behaviors of Interdisciplinary Researchers

A useful framework for teaching graduate students in interdisciplinary programs is to follow the categories of information-seeking behaviors that have been variously described in the library and information science literature. David Ellis’s grounded theory approach for describing information-seeking behaviors of researchers is a good place to begin the exploration of models of information seeking activities.¹⁵ Based on interviews with social scientists, chemists, physicists, and English literature scholars, Ellis found similar information-seeking practices used by researchers in disparate disciplines even though the terminology differed. Ellis’s information-seeking model has the following categories:

• Starting/initial familiarization/surveying—initial information search (literature search, etc.)
• Chaining/chasing/verifying—following references from one source to other relevant information sources
• Browsing—semidirected searching (used by social scientists)
• Differentiating—identifying and differentiating between types of publications, journals and publishers, generalist and specialist (social scientists)
• Selection and sifting/source prioritization—prioritizing importance of sources
• Monitoring—keeping-up-to-date on specific publications or areas of research
• Extracting—mining a specific journal for relevant articles
• Assembly and dissemination—bringing material together for publication.

Allen Foster bases his model of information-seeking behavior on a study of interdisciplinary researchers at the University of Sheffield, UK.¹⁶ Three key processes of Foster’s nonlinear model are:

• Opening or beginning exploration—this includes such processes as networking, keyword searching, browsing, monitoring, and chaining;
• Orientation—identification of keywords, existing research, key disciplines, and problem definition or “picture building”¹⁷; and
• Consolidation—this is an iterative phase of refining, sifting, verifying, “knowing enough” and finishing.

The three key processes occur in a matrix of three elements: The internal context, the extent of knowledge already known to the researcher and level of experience. The external context includes limitation on time and conditions when entering an unfamiliar discipline such as access to resources, network of contacts, and navigation issues. The cognitive approach has to do with how information is processed, such as the ability and willingness for flexibility, openness, holistic thinking, and “nomadic thought.”¹⁸ Nomadic thought is similarly described by a researcher in Spanner’s study: “a fox knows many things … so I would describe myself as a fox or a kind of rhisomatic thinker—a kind of root system that extends out.”¹⁹

Carole Palmer, who has written extensively about information behavior of interdisciplinary researchers, describes the knowledge strategies used by interdisciplinary researchers, which can be summarized as (1) recruiting theoretical or applied experts; (2) consulting with colleagues and known authorities; and (3) learning, or the practice of “building one’s own knowledge base.”²⁰ This article will focus on this last strategy of building a knowledge base, which seems particularly appropriate for graduate students in their role as novice researchers.

A Model Course for Graduate Students in Interdisciplinary Programs

What would a course for teaching graduate students interdisciplinary information-seeking skills look like? Taking into account the known challenges for interdisciplinary researchers and the findings from recent information seeking studies, the following is offered as thematic elements for such a course:

• Orientation. Becoming familiar with the language and culture of an unfamiliar discipline. Understanding the organization of information for a specific discipline and the organization of information in academic libraries and specific disciplinary databases.
• Chaining/citation linking. Following references found in bibliographies as well as conducting citation searches in such databases as the Web of Science and some search engines, such as Google Scholar.
• Browsing/probing. Exploring a semidefined area of interest and determining networking mechanisms.
• Monitoring. Keeping up with current research and knowledge of research fronts.
• Consolidation and integration. Refining and sifting through information resources and knowing when enough information has been found.

This proposed course ideally would be co-taught with a librarian and a disciplinary instructor involved in interdisciplinary research. The disciplinary instructor would provide the disciplinary framework where real-world problems could be brought into the classroom for scenario-based problem solving activities. The librarian would provide the information-literacy perspective to address the many information-seeking challenges of interdisciplinary researchers.

As noted by Foster, and well known to instruction librarians, information-seeking behaviors are iterative and nonlinear.²¹ How to model this in the classroom? Foster’s suggestion is to start with simple research tasks and search strategies and build up to more complicated research scenarios and tasks, information sources, and searching techniques.²² This could be adopted in the interdisciplinary graduate student course outlined below.

Orientation

Exploring Disciplinary Cultures

One of the more formidable challenges for those working in an interdisciplinary program or research project is to become familiar with an unknown disciplinary culture and its language.

Repko describes the characteristics of a discipline as having the following elements:²³

1. phenomena, or what the discipline is concerned with, assumptions underlying the concepts and theories of a discipline
2. concepts and commonly accepted vocabulary
3. research methodologies
4. theories, or generalized explanations of how a particular phenomena works
5. epistemology—“what can be known about the world and how it can be known.”²⁴

One approach to understanding the structure of a field is to compare the known disciplinary culture, methodologies, and language with an unfamiliar disciplinary field. SantaVicca recommends a model using parallel logic for teaching students how to compare the way that two different disciplines are organized.²⁵ This provides students with “perceptual and cognitive skills” for developing knowledge in an interdisciplinary environment.²⁶ The first step involves comparing the definitions and organization of the two different disciplines using the language and texts from disciplinary practitioners themselves. SantaVicca suggests using quotations from a variety of practitioners in the field to represent how those in the discipline define themselves.²⁷ The quotations could be found in textbooks, autobiographies, and biographies of noted practitioners. Another approach is to determine how academic departments or professional entities organize themselves into fields of study.

Another approach would be to assign essays from a disciplinary encyclopedia that describe the history of the discipline. This would provide an understanding of the development of the discipline as well as why a discipline developed in a particular direction. Students would also learn about current areas of interest as well as those areas considered secondary or peripheral areas. Other approaches suggested by SantaVicca include reading articles that address the future of the discipline and interviewing practitioners in the field for their perspectives.²⁸

An approach for identifying key disciplinary terms and their meanings would be to introduce students to the concept of controlled vocabulary and thesauri. Palmer recommends having graduate students compare the meaning of words from one discipline to another.²⁹ Students could be given an exercise to choose an interdisciplinary topic, identify controlled vocabulary terms for that topic from at least two different disciplinary databases, and note the differences in the terms and their usage.

Scholarly Communication Mechanisms and the Organization of Information

With a familiarity of the disciplinary culture and language, the next segment of the course would focus on how new knowledge is transmitted in the discipline. Does a discipline use rapid communication methods to report new findings or does it rely on monographs to communicate new thinking? Having knowledge of the scholarly distribution mechanisms provides students insight into the types of communication and publication modes used by the discipline.

A good place to begin is to introduce students to the appropriate guides to the literature, such as Harner’s Literary Research Guide or Malinowsky’s Reference Sources in Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Agriculture. The guides not only provide information on disciplinary indexes and abstracts but are useful in identifying core journals, professional societies, and conferences.

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To graduate as self-guided, motivated lifelong learners, university students must become information literate. Teaching information literacy (IL) skills has long been a core role of librarians. As information and communication technology evolves, the focus of IL teaching changes with it. When information first became digital, librarians focused on computer- and database-searching skills. With the advancement of the web, the information environment has become much more complex, even overwhelming, thus the focus of IL needs to shift to conceptual understanding and critical thinking. Teaching IL effectively at a cognitive level requires librarians to understand and consider the stages of students’ intellectual development . In addition, well-designed IL interventions can facilitate students’ intellectual development. This column describes the development of an instructional session aimed at enhancing students’ IL skills by using socioeconomic data. It explicitly considers the current stages of students’ intellectual development and focuses on promoting intellectual maturation in the context of information use.

Conceptual Approach to Information Literacy Teaching

With rapid changes in the current global and information-intensive society, institutions of higher education face the challenge of developing attributes of their graduates beyond subject knowledge. The development of twenty-first-century skills, which include critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and creativity has become an important goal.1 IL is essential to helping students to become critical thinkers and lifelong learners. McCormick wrote in 1983 that “one of the values of formal education is to help us continue our education throughout life, and library educa-tion can play a vital role in that process, especially education which teaches us to question.”2 Traditionally, a considerable portion of library teaching has focused on mechanical search skills. However, librarians understand the necessity to enrich instructional programs beyond the tool-based approach. IL promotes learning through reflective thinking; it encompasses the conceptual understanding of information creation, dissemination, and use. Gibson contrasts the mechanical, tool-based approach to library skills and the approach that develops critical thinking: skills must be linked to concepts and taught in context; learners should develop the ability to move from parts to wholes; and the librarian should become a guide who helps students develop appropriate mental models for understanding new and complex information systems and environments.³

With information so abundantly available, taking a conceptual approach in IL teaching becomes more imperative. The challenges for information users have shifted from search skills to information evaluation and use. Herro writes that “the ‘magic’ of computer-generated information and students’ quick acceptance of its validity call for a particular emphasis on applying critical thinking in library research.”⁴ Librarians must develop effective instruction programs to help students navigate the information world wisely, select information sensibly, and use it responsibly.

Librarians report many good practices of IL teaching with a strong focus on concepts and reflective thinking. Examples include the following:

• a first-year biology course at Napier University in Scotland that encouraged students to explore and reflect on the processes of finding and using information;⁵
• a third-year course in the teacher education program at Chicago’s North Park College that incorporated debate into the library session, which required students to search for information from multiple points of view;⁶
• an English composition course that taught students how to distinguish scholarship from propaganda;⁷
• an activity in source analysis used in an international business class at Arizona State University East;⁸ and
• a lifelong values–based syllabus for teaching IL and critical thinking that was incorporated into the orientation course at San Diego State University.⁹

Intellectual Development of University Students

Closely related to critical thinking, IL involves the ability of individuals to consciously assess their information needs and purposes and control their information strategies. How readily students attain cognitive skills like these depends on their beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning. Librarians, who often are under the constraints of limited time and availability to students, tend to ignore the impact of these beliefs and fail to realize how quickly they can change as students mature through their relatively young scholarly lives. Jackson examines research findings on the cognitive development of college students by pioneers of the field, including Perry, King and Kitchener, and Baxter Magolda. Jackson reviews the developmental stages discovered by these researchers and gives suggestions of what librarians can do to address students’ learning at different stages. She reiterates that librarians “should understand how levels of cognitive development, or reflective judgment, can have an enormous impact on students’ ability to learn the skills that fulfill the goals of information literacy.”¹⁰

Stages of Intellectual Development

Kurfiss provides a practical overview of intellectual development.¹¹ She integrates developmental stages into four levels:

Level 1: Dualism, knowledge as facts. Students believe that knowledge is a collection of discrete facts; therefore learning is simply a matter of acquiring information delivered by professors, who are viewed as the authority of right answers.

Level 2: Multiplicity, knowledge as opinion. Students realize that conflicting opinions, theories, and points of view are inevitable features of knowledge. Without understanding the reasons behind the different perspectives, they attribute them to personal opinions, all of which they treat as equal.

Level 3: Relativism, knowledge as reason. Students recognize that not all opinions are equal; points of view should be backed up by good logic and evidence. They learn the importance of evaluating an issue by weighing multiple factors.

Level 4: Commitment in relativism, knowledge as commitment.

Individuals take a position and make commitments of what they choose to do or believe. They are committed to nurturing ideas and developing themselves intellectually.

Research indicates that students entering universities are dualistic or early multiplistic. By the time they graduate, they are able to deal with differing points of view, but still have difficulty relating evidence to argument.¹²

Being aware of students’ developmental stages helps librarians to look at IL from student perspectives. For example, students that are reluctant to explore different information types probably are still at the dualistic level. Students that do not have the patience to evaluate information sources do not have an attitude problem, they lack understanding of the complex nature of knowledge. Librarians can play a key role in helping students progress to higher stages of intellectual development through IL instruction, both in the classroom and through the reference interaction. In particular, IL teaching should consider students’ intellectual stages for effective reception, and at the same time target instruction to facilitate their progress to higher stages.

Cognitive Skills Defined in Bloom’s Taxonomy

Librarians should also be aware of how cognitive tasks relate to intellectual development. For this purpose, the set of cognitive skills defined by Bloom in his Taxonomy of Educational Objectives is a useful instrument.¹³ Bloom defined six major classes of skills within the cognitive domain: knowledge/remembering, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Bloom’s hierarchy cannot be mapped linearly to Kurfiss’s intellectual development levels; nevertheless, students at level 1 and level 2 naturally rely more on the “lower-order” cognitive skills when learning. They may find it hard to exercise those “higher-order” thinking skills, which become more proficient only as students advance to higher development levels.

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The human body is composed of multiple sensory modalities, and each of them engages a different part of the brain when stimulated. A common assumption of learning theory is that individuals prefer some sensory paths over others for learning, hence the distinction between kinesthetic, verbal, visual, and aural learners.¹ Multiple intelligences and learning style theory suggest that teachers engage the widest variety of learners in the classroom by offering differentiated instruction using multiple sensory cues. Research also suggests that all learners benefit from multiple sensory stimuli in learning regardless of their learning preferences because the brain operates at its best in complex environments. We know the brain is “designed” to process many inputs at once—in fact, it actually prefers it so much, a slower linear pace actually reduces understanding.² Thus a differentiated learning environment that activates multiple sensory paths not only accommodates the particular learning preferences of individuals, it also enhances learning for everyone.

Aural learners prefer learning through hearing. They are particularly receptive to auditory stimuli that involve tone, rhythm, and pitch. Recommendations for providing aural stimuli in the classroom often have been confined to using music as a memorization device (singing the alphabet, for example) or playing background music to enhance the general learning environment. This article will suggest more meaningful ways to use music to teach information literacy (IL) skills and demonstrate that incorporating music is an excellent means for adding interest, variability, and inquiry learning into IL instruction.

Extending Classroom Learning with Music

Because of the constraints on information professionals’ access to learners, IL instruction often occurs in brief, standalone sessions, sometimes called “one-shots” in the literature.³ The one-shot instructional session is a convenient format conducive to the thinly stretched schedules of professors, librarians, and students; however, it has several drawbacks. Incorporating music into IL instruction may ameliorate some of those drawbacks by providing a creative and efficient means for stimulating an additional sensory path to engage the brain in learning.

The first drawback of the one-shot session is time. The traditional fifty to seventy-five minutes allotted for instruction is hardly conducive to achieving complex IL learning outcomes. Kenny calls the one-shot a “trailer for the full-length feature … the ultimate goal for a one-shot … session is to have students actively engage with the librarians and library resources to provide a glimpse into the many ways the library supports student learning.”⁴ Librarians often find their teaching methods constrained by time and struggle to address IL beyond the skills-building level of training. A common cultural construct, such as music, is useful in providing starting points for analogy and metaphor building, which increases conceptual learning.

While neither the instructor nor the students may have formally studied music, human beings are inherently musical. Studies have shown that rhythmic intelligence is the first of the intelligences to develop: The rhythm of the maternal heart beat and other external sounds, such as music, penetrate the womb and stimulate fetal response.⁵ By the age of one, children of all cultural backgrounds engage in spontaneous singing (prior even to attaining language), and by age five they are already familiar with musical patterns and recognize when unexpected musical events occur.⁶ Most students, even international students, have grown up surrounded by examples of Western music, from “Happy Birthday” to the international reach of pop music to the near-ubiquitous Christmas carols. By making connections to music, a subject with which students are already familiar, librarians help students extend their knowledge base more expediently. Alternating between discussions of the abstract concepts (illustrated with musical examples) and concrete applications (e.g., a demonstration of database searching on a topic of interest) enables an efficient, but more conceptually complex, treatment of IL content.

The second problem of the one-shot instructional session is retention and recall. When students are bombarded with information during a brief amount of time—particularly through a single medium, such as lecture—their retention is understandably low. The link between music and memory enhancement is clear. It is astonishing how well people remember songs from the distant past in contrast to people’s retention of other types of information. Alzheimer’s research provides evidence of the music’s powerful connection to the brain.⁷ Even severely demented patients have a positive response to familiar tunes, indicating that musical memory is deeply rooted. Memory appears to be enhanced by music because it involves the whole brain; when engaged with a song, the left brain (which handles language, logic, mathematics, etc.) processes the lyrics, while the right brain (which handles rhythm, rhyme, pictures, emotions, etc.) processes the music. This is particularly useful for college students, who are accustomed to interacting with information in multiple formats and through a variety of simultaneous stimuli.⁸

Addressing Information Literacy Standards through Music

The Association of College and Research Libraries’(ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education provide the framework for IL instruction in most academic libraries.⁹ These standards provide a natural framework for designing IL instruction. What follows will demonstrate how music can be used to teach the core IL competencies described in the ACRL standards typically addressed by librarians.

The first standard asks that the student know that there is an information need and to determine its extent. Concepts that are included under this heading include the ability to distinguish between primary and secondary sources, to understand the potential audience of an information source, and the ability to reevaluate the information need.

One set of musical examples to illustrate the difference between primary and secondary sources is to contrast two recordings of Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks.” Originally written for an assortment of winds and percussion to achieve a military sound (24 oboes, 12 bassoons, 9 trumpets, 9 horns, and 3 timpani), today it is most frequently played as a work for the modern orchestra. Most students will have a strong preference for one recording over the other; presumably they will be more comfortable listening to the sounds that are more familiar. While the recordings are being played, the instructor might require the students write a few words or a one-minute paper describing each piece. The answers could be tallied on the board and a consensus reached. Then the instructor could provide some background about the two works and their instrumentation and compare them to information sources. Once the instructor shifts the focus from which piece the students prefer hearing to which one represents a historically accurate performance, the results should swing from one to the other.

The second ACRL IL competency standard requires students to use information retrieval systems effectively. To achieve this goal, students must formulate a search strategy, understand subject-specific and controlled vocabulary, and perform a search across multiple interfaces.

The use of controlled vocabulary can be highlighted by contrasting two works of Western classical music. A Mozart symphony will have a very different vocabulary than a work by the serialist composer Anton Webern. In some compositions, Webern used matrices and mathematical models to determine pitch sequences. This freed him from tonality, the familiar concept of using scales and harmony to determine pitch sequences. Research indicates that at age five, the human brain has a natural understanding of harmonic progression in the same way that an implicit understanding of language has already been formed.¹⁰ Webern’s serial compositions, constructed almost randomly, are devoid of the harmonic meaning normally found in Western classical music.

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Librarians and writing instructors are longtime allies that share the goal of teaching information literacy (IL). The IL concept, however, has been undertheorized in its relationship to writing pedagogy. In a series of articles on writing and IL, Norgaard challenges librarians and writing instructors to engage in an “informed conversation between writing and information literacy as disciplines and fields of endeavor.” Removing the usual “and,” Norgaard defines “writing information literacy” as “the notion that writing theory and pedagogy can and should have a constitutive influence on our conception of information literacy.”¹ He suggests that the IL theory should also have a reciprocal influence on composition pedagogy. Norgaard describes the basic problem with traditional conceptions of writing and IL:

If libraries continue to evoke, for writing teachers and their students, images of the quick field trip, the scavenger hunt, the generic, stand-alone tutorial, or the dreary research paper, the fault remains, in large part, rhetoric and composition’s failure to adequately theorize the role of libraries and information literacy in its own rhetorical self-understanding and pedagogical practice.²

Norgaard places the blame squarely on his own discipline, but he also suggests that librarians must learn from theoretical insights from rhetoric and composition. Norgaard describes the paradigm shifts in writing instruction that have opened possibilities for teaching a more situated, process-oriented, and inquiry-driven rhetoric. Librarians have much to learn from these theoretical contributions. We also have much to learn and offer from our own theoretical tradition. In fact, both IL and rhetoric and composition draw from the same intellectual well, building upon more general pedagogical developments. This shared intellectual history can enliven the practice of both disciplines, creating a “rhetoricized” IL and an “informed” rhetoric.

If writing instructors have undertheorized IL in relation to writing, this is, in part, because of librarians’ failure to articulate the contributions that our theoretical tradition can make to rhetoric and composition and, by extension, learning in general. Furthermore, many of the prevailing “pedagogical enactments” of IL, such as Norgaard’s generic stand-alone tutorials, scavenger hunts, and dreary research papers, reinforce traditional notions of IL and writing, derailing efforts to create a richer instructional practice.³

This article describes several pedagogical enactments of IL that are based on social constructivist and sociocultural learning theory. First, it explores the ways in which librarians and writing instructors at Utah State University collaborate to counter a limited reading of IL through creative learning activities. Then it identifies some of the barriers to creating a more situated IL through a brief, exploratory analysis of the ways in which instructional tools shape differing, even contradictory, understandings of writing and IL. These exploratory case studies are meant to be illustrative of the promises and challenges of true “writing IL.”

Informing Rhetoric: Theories of Information Literacy

Both librarians and writing instructors have explicitly cited the intertwined relationship between IL and writing. Three decades ago, Michael Kleine, a writing instructor, described the “horrors” of the night library, a place where students were “merely copying” and seeing “their purpose as one of lifting and transporting textual substance from one location, the library, to another, their teachers’ briefcases.” Kleine saw no “searching, analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, selecting, rejecting, etc.”⁴ Nearly fifteen years later, librarian Barbara Fister identified the same problem, citing Kleine’s image of the night library as one example. Fister writes that library instruction’s focus on information retrieval suggests to students “that research consists of the ordered use of tools to locate pieces of information from which research projects can be assembled.”⁵ Likewise, Norgaard criticizes the dreary research paper, the “‘cut-and-paste’ assemblage of material drawn from just several sources, supplemented, of course, with a padded bibliography.”⁶

While many blame technology for the current “cut-andpaste” mentality of students, there are deeper theoretical and pedagogical issues related to writing, information, and learning that help account for this consistent lament over the past thirty years. The continued resonance of Kleine’s night library stems, in part, from a gap between IL theory and practice. Many writing instructors and librarians still conceive of and practice IL from a behavioralist framework. Behavioral theories of education, dominant in the 1950s and 60s, assume that learning is based on precise, well-defined, and measurable behaviors and rules.⁷ For IL, behaviorism focuses on information sources and procedures. Librarians teach the “correct” sources and the “correct” order in which to search those sources while discouraging “wrong” approaches, much like the avoidance of “text errors” in writing instruction. Students, for example, should consult general background sources like reference books before exploring the periodical literature.

On the other hand, constructivist approaches emphasize that the prior knowledge of individual learners shape all information seeking, which is conceptualized as a recursive process, with an emphasis on strategies rather than mechanical procedures and rules. Social theories of IL emphasize students’ need to understand the social environment of academic disciplines, including disciplinary conventions and ways of knowing.⁸ Sociocultural theories recognize that information seeking and use, like learning, are socially mediated practices that occur through activity and between people in highly specific contexts. In this view, learning happens in a community of practice where novices learn to become practitioners and experts mediate the information environment, guiding them toward information that the social community values. Learning is conceived not as a mastery of formal and generic skills, but as expanded participation in a community of practice or activity system.⁹ The following case study demonstrates how these pedagogical theories can inform and reform instructional practice at the intersection of composition and IL.

Writing Information Literacy: Pedagogical Enactments Revisited

At Utah State University (USU), librarians and writing instructors have been actively engaged in a process of “writing IL.” In 2004, librarians began aligning learning goals for IL and writing with instructional strategies in freshman and sophomore composition classes.¹⁰ Like Norgaard, we concluded that course-integrated instruction was the most fruitful way to create a situated, rhetoricized IL. Building on a strong existing relationship with the USU writing program, we began the alignment process with a needs assessment of IL learning goals, but we delved into deeper collaboration and engagement with a series of conversations about writing IL. In 2005 we hired five USU writing instructors to serve as Information Literacy Fellows for the summer. Our goal was to create new instructional approaches to better integrate IL into both freshman and sophomore writing classes. The program began with discussions of teaching and learning and IL. We used Norgaard’s articles as a springboard for discussion and we created a document titled “Writing Information Literacy at USU,” which served as a touchstone during our curricular design and implementation process.¹¹

Librarians and English instructors created joint learning goals on the basis of “Writing Information Literacy.” These goals were focused on developing good questions, exploring a variety of information sources, and evaluating information not only for traditional criteria (such as accuracy) but also relevance and value to the writer’s purpose. We incorporated goals related directly to writing, such as attending to audience needs. The following remain the IL learning goals for USU’s Introduction to Writing course (English 1010).

1. Students will define their information needs in order to anticipate what they and their audience need to know and to focus, shape, and organize their ideas and writing.
2. Students will use a variety of sources to explore a topic in order to develop an appreciation of different types of information and their purposes.
3. Students will evaluate information for its value, relevance, and accuracy in order to develop the critical thinking skills of analysis and self-reflection.
4. Students will recognize problems in their own research and writing in order to get assistance and further develop their writing and information literacy skills.¹²

Instructors and librarians then collaborated to create specific lesson plans for use in English 1010 classrooms. Our primary innovation has been the use of problem-based learning to facilitate a more social and situated IL experience.¹³ Problem-based learning (PBL) provides students with authentic problems or questions to research. It focuses on the process of making meaning or extending understanding rather than producing a formally correct final product. PBL also highlights the social construction of knowledge as students learn about discipline-specific ways of knowing and communicating and as they develop understanding through collaborative group work.¹⁴ PBL also relies on authentic practice as the vehicle for learning.

One of the PBL projects was the SOS (Save Our Schools) project. For this assignment, students worked in groups to identify a problem with the U.S. education system, learn more about the issue, prepare an annotated bibliography, and present the information to the class. The process involved four class sessions cotaught by a librarian and the course instructor.

1. Session 1: The librarian visits class for twenty minutes and talks about a personally relevant myth of education, such as “girls are bad at math,” to explore preconceived ideas about education. The librarian then presents a few information sources that might address that myth to show how various people approach the issue.
2. Session 2: The writing instructor and librarian facilitate a brainstorming session to identify education problems, and the class begins to develop research questions. The librarian helps organize the questions into different groups on the basis of theme, discipline, type of resource needed, etc. The librarian and writing instructor focus the questions on something likely to be manageable for a group project.
3. Session 3: The class spends a period in a library computer lab for group work. Librarians meet with groups to go over worksheets that ask students to describe what they already know about their problem and what they need to know to understand it better. Librarians provide a brief demonstration of how to find an article. Students then break into groups, and librarians and English instructors coach the groups in selecting and searching useful search tools, depending on each group’s questions.

Many instructors scheduled an additional follow-up research day, with students working on their projects and the English instructors and librarians coaching them and checking on their progress.

We assessed the long-term impact of the PBL approach in English 1010 through focus groups. Facilitators asked students to reflect on what they learned in English 1010 and how this had or had not prepared them for English 2010. Having participated in PBL exercises, students preferred instruction focused on the real world rather than passive demonstrations. They appreciated the one-on-one help from librarians and reported that they learned a lot about library resources. But students said that they struggled with integrating and synthesizing the information they found and wanted to see a stronger relationship between reading, research, and writing.

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Our classrooms now include an increasing number of students who learn differently, including those that have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD), dyslexia, or other diagnosed or undiagnosed learning differences. This spectrum of students challenges academic librarians to develop new approaches to delivering information literacy instruction. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators addresses the needs of diverse learners, and many librarians incorporate active learning methods designed to engage students. Nevertheless, an integrated approach ensuring that information literacy instruction is accessible to all learners is needed. Universal Design for Instruction (UDI), developed to increase access for students with learning disabilities at the postsecondary level, provides a framework that librarians can apply to design inclusive information literacy curricula. The Research Services Librarians at Landmark College, a college for students with learning disabilities or AD/HD, have adapted the principles of UDI to develop an approach to library instruction called Universal Design for Information Literacy (UDIL). This column is based on the presentation “Universal Design for Information Literacy,” which we delivered at the 2008 New England Library Instruction Group Annual Program.

Students Who Learn Differently

Most every teaching librarian has a story of the student who is restless and distracted and who acts like the class clown, procrastinates, fails to participate, falls behind, or struggles to skim-read a list of articles. Although librarians generally do not know if these students have learning disabilities or AD/HD, these behaviors are more common and more pronounced among students with those challenges. The number of students with learning disabilities is on the rise. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2004, 11.3 percent of undergraduates reported some type of disability.¹ Among those, 7.5 percent reported a specific learning disability such as dyslexia, and 11 percent reported Attention Deficit Disorder.² This represents a 50 percent or more increase since 2000 and shows that, in most classrooms, there are one or more students with a learning disability or AD/HD; though librarians cannot always identify who these students are.³ It is likely that the number of students with learning disabilities or AD/HD is even higher because students at the postsecondary level must self-identify. Many students choose not to self-identify, possibly for fear of being stigmatized. A 2005 report from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 found that only “40% of postsecondary students with disabilities identify themselves as having a disability and have informed their postsecondary schools of that disability.”⁴

The Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA) defines a learning disability as “a neurological condition that interferes with a person’s ability to store, process, or produce information.”⁵ The LDA describes four processes a student with learning disabilities may have challenges with: “getting information into the brain (Input), making sense of this information (Organization), storing and later retrieving this information (Memory), or getting this information back out (Output).”⁶ A student with a learning disability may have challenges with more than one process.

It is important to recognize that a learning disability is not related to intelligence, and many students who are not officially diagnosed with a learning disability may have similar learning difficulties. A student with dyslexia may find reading text challenging, but the same material delivered in a different format, audio for example, would be just as comprehensible to a student with dyslexia as the text is to a student without dyslexia. For this reason, many of us at Landmark College use the term “learning differences” rather than learning disabilities.

Dyslexia is not necessarily outwardly displayed in a student’s behavior. The LDA describes that a student with dyslexia “experiences decoding errors, reads slowly, shows wide disparity between listening comprehension and reading comprehension, has trouble spelling, and may have difficulty handwriting.”⁷ Students with dyslexia have difficulty with “rapid visual-verbal responding.”⁸ The use of clickers in library classrooms, an attractive active learning exercise, favors fast readers and fast cognitive processors. Clickers can pose a challenge for a student with dyslexia. Also, taking notes during a lecture can be challenging, and students with dyslexia often prefer information in a visual format, such as a concept map that displays similar search words. Another challenge that students with dyslexia face in a library class is falling behind when trying to repeat the library instructor’s search terms or when trying to skim the results list of articles.

AD/HD is considered a psychiatric disorder rather than a specific learning disability like dyslexia. However, many individuals with AD/HD also have a specific learning disability. The LDA states that AD/HD:

can be determined to be a disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), making a student eligible to receive special education services. However, AD/HD falls under the category “Other Health Impaired” and not under “Specific Learning Disabilities.”⁹

AD/HD is a “persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyper-activity-impulsivity that is more frequently displayed and more severe than is typically observed in individuals at a comparable level of development.”¹⁰ Typical behaviors of a student with AD/HD may include displaying disinterest, disorganization, and impulsivity, as well as procrastinating and misjudging available time. Students with AD/HD actually have a heightened sense of attention, rather than a deficit. They pay attention to nonrelevant stimuli in a task or their environment, taking away from the attention needed for the relevant information.¹¹

As an individual with AD/HD enters adulthood, challenges with executive functions can become more prominent.¹² Executive function is an “umbrella term for the complex cognitive processes that serve ongoing, goal-directed behaviors.”¹³ Or, as Brown relates in Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults, executive function challenges are like having a poor conductor of a symphony: “Impairment lies not at the level of the individual musicians . . . but at the level of the conductor, who has to start and guide all of the individual players.”¹⁴ Definitions of executive function vary. One thorough definition from The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities explains that executive functions are “mental activities associated with self-control, attention, focus, or concentration that allow an individual to achieve specific goals” and are related to “four kinds of mental activities.” These are working memory (needed for the “problem solving process”), internalized or private speech (for using “complex sets of rules in problem solving”), control of emotions and impulses (“allows an individual to remain focused and to continually return to a path of progress toward a desired goal”), and reconstitution (the “process of observing behaviors and then synthesizing components of what has been observed into new combinations,” which is “essential to problem solving” and extrapolation).¹⁵

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Those who assist undergraduates at the reference desk know how tempting it can be, especially under time pressure, to find sources or perform online database searches for them. At the same time, reference librarians are likely to spend a significant number of classroom hours each week teaching undergraduates how to find, evaluate, and use information.¹ The question arises: is it logical or effective for librarians to instruct students in information literacy if they then undermine that instruction at the reference desk?

The independent research skills that are an integral part of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education have a great deal in common with the educational concept of self-regulated learning.² A self-regulating researcher is able to formulate a research plan as well as monitor and control progress toward the completion of the research.³ Furthermore, this self-regulation is an essential aspect of information literacy that is short-changed when librarians, with the best of intentions, insist on finding answers for students.

This article focuses on the one-on-one nature of reference interactions, and how they relate to tutoring interactions. It argues that, in approaching reference interactions as tutorial interactions, librarians can scaffold the self-regulation of student researchers and thereby more effectively support their emerging information literacy.

Reference Service: To Teach or Not to Teach

Two contradictory views regarding the function of library reference services commonly surface in the library literature. This dichotomy was essentially expressed more than forty years ago in the title of Anita R. Schiller’s 1965 article “Reference Service: Instruction or Information.”⁴ Schiller argues that librarians should focus on “providing direct answers to questions” and that instructing users at the reference desk confuses them with regard to what service they may expect.⁵ Schiller also appears to blame librarians’ self-defined instructional role for the inability of patrons to voice their information needs.⁶ (This argument is effectively refuted by several subsequent articles and studies that show that the inability to articulate an information need is common at the beginning of the information search process.⁷)

William Katz, in the 1997 edition of his well-known reference guide Introduction to Reference Work, states unequivocally that “bibliographic instruction is incompatible with the concept of helping and solving problems for the individual. The reference librarian can do one or the other, at least consistently, but not both.”⁸ Wilson calls the teaching role of librarians an “organization fiction,” essentially a self-perpetuating, quietly accepted lie.⁹ In addition, Miller and Rettig equate instruction librarians who practice instruction with outmoded products, claiming that librarians should keep users dependent upon them in order to forestall possible obsolescence.¹⁰ However, Neilsen correctly predicted that the increasing access to information in online databases, while not necessarily improving users’ effectiveness at finding quality information, would render moot any such attempts.¹¹

According to Wagers, these artificial distinctions between reference service and library instruction have “limit[ed] the range of legitimate service.¹² Significantly, Rettig, Rice, and even Katz in a later edition of his reference guide, do support the instructional role of librarians at the reference desk as long as the patron is given a choice in the matter.¹³ Perhaps more importantly, Rice also points out that a reference interaction does not differ fundamentally from an instructional interaction, given that librarians use many of the same communication and listening skills in each.¹⁴

Howell, Reeves, and Van Willigen conducted a survey that showed that patrons were more satisfied with reference service when instruction was present in some form.¹⁵ They suggest that reference interactions might be more effective when librarians take on a more overt instructional role.¹⁶ This is supported by the work of Michell and Harris, who use the term “inclusion” to describe the teaching dimension of reference work because the librarian “includes the patron in the reference process.”¹⁷ Their survey of a sample of librarians and library patrons demonstrated that male and female librarians and male patrons rated the quality of reference service higher when the interactions were considered “high inclusion”–included some form of instruction.¹⁸

Furthermore, Schwartz emphasizes that “classroom instruction ultimately will be limited in value unless it is backed up with individual instruction at the reference desk.”¹⁹ A 1991 survey by Witucke and Schumaker showed that 62 percent of responses to reference queries tend to include an “outline of strategy for finding the information needed.”²⁰ By Miller and Rettig’s logic, this would seem to indicate that a majority of academic reference librarians are hastening their own extinction.²¹

Consider that when a student approaches the reference desk, he or she may not have a coherent question to ask yet. As mentioned earlier, this vague “prefocus” state has been shown to be a natural part of information seeking.²² Circumventing this process with a librarian-supplied “false focus” may facilitate finding answers but still leave the student adrift in their own thinking.²³ According to James Elmborg, “whenever we answer a student’s question without teaching the student how we answered it or why we answered it as we did, we are essentially taking the question away from the student, thereby creating a dependency in that student that undermines rather than strengthens the learning process.”²⁴ Further complicating matters is the very real possibility that a student may still lack a focus even after relevant sources have been found. Indeed, in some cases, he or she may never actually find a focus.²⁵

A great deal of the meaning-making that is integral to research and writing may happen long after the official reference transaction has ended. The real answers or synthesis may only crystallize when the student begins to read his or her sources, jot down notes, and scribble a preliminary draft. Instead of providing an answer in this situation, the librarian has offered encouragement and structure for the student’s own knowledge construction. One-on-one instructional interactions at the reference desk are the perfect points at which librarians can encourage students to stick with the uncertainties of this messy process by modeling something called “self-regulated learning.”

Self-Regulated Learning and Information Literacy

According to Pintrich and Zusho, “self-regulated learning is an active constructive process whereby learners set goals for their learning and then attempt to monitor, regulate, and control their cognition, motivation, and behavior in the service of these goals.”²⁶ Monitoring involves the metacognitive skill of paying attention to progress toward a chosen goal and generating mental feedback that is then used to control that progress.²⁷ According to Ohlsson, continually comparing one’s current progress toward a goal to an internal model provides feedback that enables one to fine-tune effort toward the goal.²⁸ Goals can range from learning a skill, such as C++ programming, to completing library research. In addition to monitoring progress toward goals, students also must use this self-generated feedback to regulate and control that progress, especially if there are frustrating obstacles or difficulties, such as a missing book.

The concept of self-regulated learning (SRL) is similar to the concept of “self-directed learning” that is mentioned in the “Information Literacy and Pedagogy” section of the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards.²⁹ A number of ACRL performance indicators and outcomes overlap with the SRL skills of goal setting, monitoring, regulation, and control. A few pertinent examples will highlight these overlapping skill sets.

Within Standard One (determining the nature and extent of the information needed), an information literate student is expected to:

• “Define a realistic overall plan and timeline to acquire the needed information.”³⁰ This is similar to the SRL step whereby learners set a goal for their learning. In this case, a student sets a goal for the type of information needed and maps out the steps of acquiring that information.

Within Standard Two (accessing needed information effectively and efficiently), an information-literate student:

• “Assesses the quantity, quality, and relevance of the search results to determine whether alternative information retrieval systems or investigative methods should be utilized.”³¹ This corresponds to the monitoring stage of SRL, wherein a student compares the information accessed to the information needed to reach the goal, and determines how closely they match.
• “Identifies gaps in the information retrieved and determines if the search strategy should be revised.”
• “Repeats the search using the revised strategy as necessary.”³² These refer to students’ skills at regulating search behavior, based upon metacognitive feedback.
• “Extracts, records, and manages the information and its sources.”³³ This refers to controlling sources and information gathered.

Given these examples, it is apparent that there are salient similarities between students’ ability to regulate their own learning processes and their ability to engage in information literate behavior. Important examples of self-regulating practices within the research process that are directly correlated to information literacy skills include:

• realizing that the articles retrieved from an online database are not relevant enough;
• deciding to change one’s chosen keywords;
• choosing to do background reading;
• using controlled vocabulary terms when necessary; and
• persevering with the research process despite obstacles.

In each case, the student must monitor progress toward a goal (such as completion of the research) and use that feedback to modify his or her search strategies to more effectively attain that goal.³⁴

If first-year undergraduates are as embryonic in their self-regulated learning as they are in their research skills, then it makes sense that, as Pintrich and Zusho state, they would need “to be ‘other-regulated’ initially through coaching, instructional supports, and teacher scaffolding.”³⁵ Pintrich and Zusho also make the very important point that self-regulation can be “privileged, encouraged, or discouraged by the contextual factors” surrounding learning.³⁶ Given that academic librarians are one of the contextual factors surrounding the undergraduate research process, a case can be made that librarians are ideally situated to provide this other regulation within the research process via one-on-one reference interactions.

Self-Regulated Learning and the Reference Tutorial

The typical reference interaction can be considered as falling under a tutorial model in which students immersed in the research process seek out one-on-one librarian guidance in the same way they might go to faculty or teaching assistant office hours for help in solving a chemistry problem or debugging a computer program. Merrill et al. define tutoring as “guided learning by doing,” a collaborative effort in which the tutor assists the student in identifying and recovering from errors, as well as confirming when the student has demonstrated a productive solution to a problem.³⁷ Graesser, Person, and Magliano emphasize the uniquely collaborative nature of the tutor and student interaction, noting that in the process of correcting student errors, “the tutor and student are jointly constructing a connected structure of ideas when the errors occur.”³⁸ According to Merrill et al., one of the essential advantages of individualized instruction is keeping students on “promising solution paths.”³⁹ This echoes Rettig’s assertion that the librarian should “bring the user as expeditiously as possible to the judgment junctures”; for example, the points where only the user can determine whether or not a fact or an information source is relevant.⁴⁰

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They’ll do a database search, and they will invariably choose the first five articles in the list. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad, relevant or not.

They use the Web for everything. They have no idea that there are better sources out there to use.

They want to find that one article that’s going to write their paper for them. They don’t realize that they have to read and synthesize and then put their ideas together from several sources.

Their professor suggests a particular journal and when they come into the library, that’s the only journal they want. It has to be that very one.

How many librarians have said, or heard colleagues say, similar things about their students as those previous statements? How can these constant disappointments be explained? Is it that students don’t know all the resources available to them? Is it that they’re lazy? What can librarians and educators do to help them become more information literate?

In 2000, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) endorsed the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.¹ This document specifies five standards, each with several performance indicators and outcomes, which college students should master if they are to be deemed information literate and prepared for lifelong learning. Since then, librarians have made great strides in establishing programs and practices to teach information literacy to their students. The professional literature abounds with research and best practices for promoting information literacy, much of it focusing on applications and case studies. In addition, there have been, over the years, many articles dealing with theoretical constructs such as learning styles, critical thinking, and others. However, these studies, while contributing to the dialogue, have not been able to adequately answer the questions raised above. A theoretical approach that holds promise in answering these questions is cognitive development.

The present article will examine the current research on cognitive development and its consequent implications for information literacy instruction. Differences in cognitive development levels may help to explain many of the situations librarians experience with students, both in classes and at the reference desk. Along with an examination of learning and teaching styles, it is important that librarians keep in mind the importance of college students’ levels of cognitive development as they work with them.

William Perry’s Research on Cognitive Development

The first person to systematically examine the development of intellect at the college level was William G. Perry. In the 1960s, he and his staff of the Bureau of Study Counsel at Harvard University conducted a long-term study of Harvard students, with a few female students from Radcliffe. This was a qualitative study in which students met with the staff of the Bureau throughout their college years and held open-ended discussions, reflecting on the year just past. The result of this study was the book Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years.²

In his writing, Perry posited nine “positions” that students go through in their college years. They have been grouped into four categories: dualism (positions one and two), multiplicity (positions three and four), relativity (positions five and six), and commitment (positions seven through nine).

In Perry’s dualism, students see the world as either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. Authorities (with a capital A) have all the answers; if they do not, either they are not legitimate Authorities, or the answers are only temporarily unknown. Students believe that there are right answers for every question. They will only look for information that agrees with their beliefs. At early stages of dualism, students simply ignore uncertainty or place it in the “others” category: us/others. According to Perry and others, teaching consists of dispensing information, and learning involves taking in as much information as possible. Grading, from students’ point of view, should be based on how hard they have worked and how much information they have retained. “A characteristic phrase used by students in the Dualistic stage is: ‘What is the right answer?’”³ Students move from dualism to multiplicity as a result of all the diversity they encounter in their lives at the college level, especially among their peers.

When students reach Perry’s positions of multiplicity, they acknowledge that there are some areas in which answers are not yet known. When good Authorities disagree, obviously they are dealing with an area where the answers are yet to be determined. In the later positions of multiplicity, “the not yet known … becomes a new certainty of ‘we’ll never know for sure.’”⁴ Learning is seen to be more independent, centering more on process. Grading becomes less focused on how much the student learns and more focused on thinking independently. However, there is also the notion that one person’s idea is as good as another’s, so grading can also be thought of as arbitrary and more a matter of how things are expressed rather than what is expressed. “In this stage, the characteristic phrase is: ‘Everyone has a right to his or her own opinion.’”⁵

The attaining of relativistic positions is, according to Perry, a “drastic revolution.”⁶ In these positions, students are aware that there are few areas in which “right” answers exist, and that most knowledge is “contextual and relativistic.”⁷ Students finally understand their function as learners and acquire the “self-consciousness of being an active maker of meaning.”⁸ What was once Authority (with a capital “A”) becomes authority (with a lowercase “a”), and there may be multiple authorities who might often disagree. It is at this position, too, that students recognize the need for evidence to support their own opinions. It is important to weigh the evidence, both pro and con, to come to a reasonable opinion or answer that is “right” for the student in his or her context.

Perry characterizes the final positions as more ethical than intellectual. Within relativism, students–now adults–must make choices. But these choices are based on consideration, weighing alternatives, and coming to conclusions about areas of life such as relationships, careers, and values. In most cases these commitments are constantly reaffirmed or altered based on new evidence. It is only these positions of commitment that truly allow for fulfillment and lifelong learning.

Other Development Research

Several other researchers have studied students’ development with similar measures and results. The major studies are those by King and Kitchener, and Baxter Magolda. King and Kitchener did long-term studies of “reflective judgment,” basing their measures on the solution of ill-structured problems, or problems without “right” answers. They identified seven stages of development, similar to Perry’s. Students progressed through the inability to

• “understand that two people can disagree about an issue,” to an understanding that
• “knowledge is assumed to be absolutely certain, or certain but not immediately available,” to the
• “recognition that in some areas knowledge will never be certain,” and finally to the understanding that
• “the adequacy of … solutions is evaluated in terms of what is more reasonable or probable on the basis of current evidence and is reevaluated when relevant new evidence, perspectives, or tools of inquiry become available.”⁹

These stages are very similar to the positions described by Perry. However, King and Kitchener, by measuring reflective judgment, spoke more to the areas of critical thinking and the use of evidence. Reflective judgment is a measure of how students solve ill-structured problems–problems with no right answers; therefore, it measures how students critically assess a problem and how they do or do not use evidence to come to a solution to a problem.

Baxter Magolda studied what she calls “epistemological reflection … assumptions about the nature, limits, and certainty of knowledge, and how those epistemological assumptions evolve during young adulthood.”¹⁰ Her study, which grew out of her attempt to develop a simple test of Perry’s developmental scheme, uncovered what she called “Absolute” knowing, like dualistic knowing, and “Transitional” knowing, which is very similar to multiplistic positions. “Independent” knowing is also similar to multiplistic knowing in that it is “characterized by viewing most knowledge as uncertain.”¹¹ The final stage is “Contextual” knowing, “characterized by the belief that knowledge exists in a context and is judged on evidence relevant to that context.”¹²

For any of these three methods of research to have relevance to librarians, it helps to know where college students fall in these stages or positions. In Perry’s study, most of the students at the end of their freshmen year fell into the third or fourth positions. Thus, many of them were still dualistic to a certain degree, but were beginning to admit to multiplicity in some areas. None of the students in his study progressed to the ninth position, and most did not get beyond position five. Other researchers, using Perry’s developmental scheme, found that freshmen at other institutions were at position two or three, and may reach positions three to five by the time they graduate.¹³ King and Kitchener found that, in their study, “the functional level of most undergraduate students is between Stages 3 and 4 [and] they may be able to comprehend Stage 5 concepts.”¹⁴ Baxter Magolda explained in her work:

finding out what the authorities thought–a way of knowing I called “absolute”–absorbed most participants upon entrance to college. It wasn’t long before most realized that authorities did not have all the answers. Participants became transitional knowers … [and m]ost remained transitional knowers throughout college, continuing their reliance on external authority. A few participants adopted an independent way of knowing during their senior year. … Only two of eighty participants adopted contextual knowing, or viewing knowledge as relative to a context, and judged based on evaluation of relevant evidence.¹⁵

Therefore, based on these studies, it appears that upon entering higher education institutions, students are dualistic or early multiplistic, relying on Authority, believing in right/wrong, good/bad, and having difficulty recognizing differing points of view. By the time they graduate, most of them are able to deal with differing points of view, but still rely on Authority and have difficulty relating evidence to argument.

Information Literacy and Cognitive Development

How can librarians relate these theories of cognitive development to information literacy? In 1981 Constance Mellon wrote two articles related to cognitive development.¹⁶ These were, of course, before the development of the information literacy standards of 2000. In one of these articles, Mellon and her coauthor explained the “frustration of the college instructor who insists: ‘College students nowadays are incapable of thinking for themselves,’” as a result of the dualistic positions of many college students.¹⁷ Students in the multiplistic positions explain the “frustrated college professor who cannot understand why his or her students feel no need to back up their opinions with facts.”¹⁸ The authors stated that “many of the topics and concepts currently presented in undergraduate education can be understood much more readily by formal Relativistic reasoners,” positions that, from the evidence in the studies discussed previously, few students reach before graduating from college.¹⁹ In her second article, Mellon explained that at the freshman level, which for most students is dualistic, “students have little patience with alternative search strategies, with wide varieties of reference materials all designed to answer the same type of question, and with the complexities of information retrieval.”²⁰ She discussed different types of materials that should be presented in library instruction classes to students at all levels of cognitive development. However, her main point seemed to be that most assignments teachers design are aimed at the relativistic positions, positions that most undergraduate students never reach.

The information literacy standards may include many competencies that are beyond the cognitive level of the students librarians encounter, especially from classes like freshman composition or basic communication classes. For instance, Standard One, outcome 1.f. specifies that the information literate student “recognizes that existing information can be combined with original thought, experimentation, and/or analysis to produce new information.”²¹ The discovery that the student makes his own knowledge is one that comes at the Relativistic position. Standard Two, 5.a. states that the information literate student “selects among various technologies the most appropriate one for the task of extracting the needed information. …”²² This is the type of task that Mellon described as being difficult for dualistic students to understand. At that level, they are still looking for the right answer to come from the Authority.

Standard Three focuses on the information literate student’s ability to evaluate information sources critically and incorporate “selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.”²³ All of the performance indicators and outcomes listed under this standard call for skills that are far beyond what the average freshman student can accomplish, and may even be difficult for multiplistic students. In fact, from the multiplistic position, “all views may have equal legitimacy, and one’s own view may be as valid as that of an expert.”²⁴ This standard can only be accomplished effectively at the relativistic stage of development. This is the beginning stage for students to be able to use evidence effectively and to analyze that information to make their own meanings.

In 2002, Michael Lorenzen studied high school students’ use of the Web and their ability to evaluate sources they found there. Although this was a study of high school students, the results speak to many of the difficulties college librarians encounter in students. As might be expected, “Dualistic students will use the Web to look for the one right answer to the question. … They will have difficulty in determining which Web sites have valid information and which ones do not.”²⁵ Multiplistic students would be expected to consider all information of equal weight; one Web site is as valid as another. What Lorenzen found most troublesome was that students were using Web search engines to do the evaluation for them. Because most students think that search engines rank their results by relevancy, they think the first sites must be the most valid. “Many of the students felt that if a Web site was indexed by Yahoo! the information found on the Web site was reliable.“²⁶

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Academic librarians are currently challenged by a variety of nomenclature issues, nowhere more evident than in the expanding cluster of terms centered on concepts and processes of accessing, evaluating, and using information. This development is undoubtedly caused by the nature of library and information science itself, which is a soft applied discipline, or one without a prevailing explanatory paradigm, and with an overriding concern for application rather than pure theory.¹ It is also partly caused by the multiplying educational reform agendas connected with critical thinking, resource-based learning, and a variety of pedagogies of engagement, and also by the sometimes overlapping and sometimes diverging cluster of terms centered on technology skills–information technology (IT) fluency, technology literacy, computer literacy, digital literacy, and others. This welter of terminology with converging and diverging meanings can indeed be challenging in professional discourse, particularly because librarians see a greater need than ever to collaborate with other academic professionals and with interest groups and stakeholders beyond their home institutions.

The two primary terms that have emerged in the United States that address the concepts of accessing, using, and evaluating information are information literacy and IT fluency. The two concepts have distinct lineages that are now converging in program development and curricular applications at some institutions. Information literacy is now understood by most in the academic library community as an evolving set of abilities focused on defining information needs, searching, evaluating, using, and managing information, and also understanding something of its social and legal implications. This conception of information literacy, developed in the United States, is primarily attribute- and standards-based, and assumes that there are normative and definitive characteristics of information literate students.² IT fluency is another normative conception, with requisite knowledge and skills of IT fluent students promulgated by a group of experts from the research and academic computing communities.³ While these are the concepts used in the United States, other conceptions using the same or similar terms have emerged internationally that provide a broader context for understanding the two United States-based concepts. These other conceptions are either relational and research-based (the Bruce tradition originating in Australia), or developmental in orientation–the Seven Pillars model created by the Society of College, National, and University Libraries (SCONUL) group in the United Kingdom.⁴ The potential for each of these traditions to compensate or correct for deficiencies in the others is only beginning to be understood in the international arena. In the United States, only recently have the sociocultural dimensions of information literacy, as an educational reform agenda, begun to be explored.⁵ This article explores three diverging concepts and terms–information literacy, IT fluency, information fluency–and examines how their divergences and convergences are manifested in such emergent agendas as ICT assessment and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

During the late 1980s and throughout most of the 1990s, information literacy was the preferred term in the academic library community in the United States to describe a programmatic, curriculum-infused, institutional approach to research and information competency. During this time, academic librarians were challenged to consider the full implications of information literacy as a catalyst for change. A new agenda that aims to reform the curriculum includes questions of how to make sure that information literacy is not just library-sponsored, but includes many stakeholders who claim ownership.⁶ Equally important new agendas include the idea that learning, not just teaching or pedagogy, should be the overarching concern in program development; that the concept must include a major focus on the digital, networked environment and that the focus on the individual student as the locus of learning should be transformed to considering the social dimensions of learning.⁷ In effect, academic librarians, through a full consideration of the implications of information literacy, are rethinking their roles in relation to potential partners in the academy, and have begun to understand the cultural shift that is required to implement information literacy at a deep, enterprise-wide level on their campuses.

In the late 1990s, the research of Christine Bruce in Australia became widely known in the United States. Based on a research method known as phenomenography, this research focused on how a group of academic professionals actually experience information, rather than relying on experts to create normative conceptions of the information literate student or individual. Bruce called her model of information literacy a relational model because it depicts relations between people and information in realistic applications. Finding that her data from interviews with academic professionals showed certain recurring patterns, Bruce organized this relational model around seven faces or aspects of information literacy: information technology; information sources; information process; the information control; knowledge construction; knowledge extension; and wisdom.⁸ This model has enriched the understanding of information literacy for librarians as a construct that transcends traditional computer literacy or library literacy into a far more pervasive, knowledge-building, creativity-fused aspect of learning.

However, also in the late 1990s, the opportunities for deepening pedagogical engagement suggested by Bruce’s relational model were complicated by challenges for academic librarians presented by IT fluency, a concept that grew out of the National Research Council’s FITness Report of 1999 (FITness is the acronym for Fluency with Information Technology).⁹ This report marked a major advance on earlier notions of computer literacy, calling for education and training on foundational concepts of information technology (networks, file structures, and the like); contemporary skills (training in productivity or other software–the clearest link with the earlier notion of computer literacy); and critical thinking applied to information technology itself–its application and societal implications. This construct of IT fluency introduced the notion of fluency itself, suggesting a dynamic, maturational aspect to acquiring technology skills–an interesting link with the Seven Pillars model promoted by SCONUL, and with the lifelong learning agenda often spoken of as a related concern for policymakers influenced by the National Forum on Information Literacy, an umbrella group of educational, nonprofit, governmental, service, and professional membership organizations.¹⁰ Fluency conveys a dynamism in the learning process well-suited to highly mobile students who expect constant technological change. However, the IT fluency construct, like information literacy before it, still focuses on the capacities of the individual, and particularly calls for addressing critical thinking about technology and its applications–surely a much-needed goal, but one that does not encompass issues of engagement in the learner.

Also developed in the late 1990s, the United Kingdom-based SCONUL Seven Pillars model offers academic librarians in the United States a particularly intriguing way of thinking about their nomenclature challenges. This model organizes the major elements of information literacy into seven major strands: recognizing an information need; determining ways of addressing the information gap; constructing search strategies; locating and accessing information; comparing and evaluating it; organizing, applying, and communicating it; and finally, synthesizing and creating new products based on it. Each of these elements are depicted as pillars with a spectrum of developmental stages (novice, advanced beginner, expert), so that the whole framework can be considered as a developmental paradigm. The Seven Pillars model posits that the Seven Pillars or major strands of information literacy are undergirded by two basic skill sets: basic library skills (learned through what we have traditionally called library instruction or BI), and IT skills (learned through what we have traditionally designated computer training or software training).¹¹ The Seven Pillars model thus assumes a certain basic level of proficiency in these two domains–library and computing–before further development can occur in moving toward information literacy.

The confusion in nomenclature among academic librarians in the United States can be overcome in part by considering the Seven Pillars model for information literacy as an encompassing, expanding framework–one that includes elements of basic library skills and computer literacy as the rudiments in facilitating growth and deepened understanding, over time, of research, information access and evaluation, communicating research results, and certain stages of original or creative integration of research results. This model also shows both librarians and their academic computing counterparts that their legacy concepts of library skills and computer literacy are limiting and need to be connected to larger, enterprise-wide educational priorities at their institutions. Information literacy is not BI with just another trendy designation; computer literacy or IT skills themselves need to become integrated more completely into the curriculum. This same imperative for curricular integration and advancing beyond basic skills notions of information literacy receives further support from the seven faces model of Bruce, which shows deepening categories of knowledge-building and creativity that transcend computer-literacy or library literacy categories.

Complicating the nomenclature challenge, however, are the claims made by professional associations, stakeholder groups, government agencies, and others about the related sets of terms used in all levels of education to describe the information literacy agenda. Professional associations in the American library community, such as the American Library Association (ALA), American Association of School Librarians (AASL), and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), have promoted information literacy as the preferred term for a number of years. They have invested much time and many resources in professional development opportunities for librarians in information literacy pedagogy and program development and created Standards (AASL’s Information Power guidelines, and the ACRL-sponsored Information Literacy Competency Standards ).¹² These standards and professional development opportunities have assumed that information literacy is primarily an attribute of the individual student, that it may include some technology skills, and that critical thinking is the connecting element for all stages of the research process. At the level of policy development and cross-sector collaboration, the National Forum has championed information literacy in the broadest possible sense of educational reform, and has connected it with a range of other literacies: health literacy, math literacy, consumer literacy, and other agendas. Although it considers the impact of haves and have nots through discussions of the digital divide, the National Forum has not focused on technology skills, or IT fluency, except at the level of policy formulation and influence on policy makers. the National Forum has also maintained a strong focus on critical thinking as a key component of information literate individuals, and the need to infuse information literacy with content standards in K-12 and in higher education.¹³

As a multiple stakeholder group, the National Forum has also sought connections among all levels of education and has created conversations among policymakers that have influenced the use of the terminology focused on information, research, and technology skills. Most notably, the National Forum has influenced discussions about these skills through linkages with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, another multiple stakeholder group made up of major corporations, professional associations, and other organizations interested in the quality of public schools. The Partnership’s preferred general term is, of course, “21st Century Skills,” which includes Information and Communication Skills (including media literacy skills).¹⁴ In this model, the combination of information skills with communication skills is a natural blend; the Partnership also identifies another emerging paradigm, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skill set, which highlights a more integrated approach for educators, librarians, administrators, and policy makers to think about, and plan for, curriculum, assessment, and professional development. The ICT Skills conception was envisioned by the Partnership as part of a holistic set of abilities including thinking and problem-solving, civic literacy, financial and business literacy, and global awareness. The drive to connect information literacy skills with other capacities and abilities is a telling signal from this multiple stakeholder group that broader perspectives on learning are needed from all parties. For academic librarians, this conceptualization of information literacy or ICT skills as part of a broader set of learning outcomes for public school students offers one model for thinking about information literacy in a broader context at their own institutions, and also alerts them to possible K-12 curricular changes that will influence students they will eventually see entering higher education institutions.

The emerging connections and discussions concerning information literacy and IT fluency among various levels of education in the United States are demonstrated most clearly in the development of the ICT Literacy Assessment, by the Educational Testing Service (ETS).¹⁵ This test, designed to measure “information and communication technology skills,” is a scenario-based, real-time instrument that assesses students’ abilities with ICT literacy (defined as “the ability to use digital technology and communications tools to succeed in an information society”).¹⁶ The tasks included in the ICT proficiencies are organized into seven categories (define, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create, and communicate), which parallel some of the competencies identified in the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, but with a strong infusion of technology-enabled tasks and projects that are typical of what might be expected in a college or university environment, or in the corporate world. ETS originally designed the ICT literacy assessment for higher education, but is now developing a comparable instrument for high schools. As an assessment tool, this instrument offers the clearest example of an integration of information literacy and IT fluency; the promise of this tool is that it will, in a backward design fashion, cause librarians, faculty, administrators, and academic computing professionals to create new curricular structures and reward systems to promote ICT literacy or fluency at an institutional level.

Due to all of the discussion concerning the development of these terms that describe accessing, evaluating, and using information, a new concept has emerged in recent years called information fluency. This concept blends many of the characteristics of traditional information literacy and IT fluency and similar concept such as digital literacy, or e-learning. In higher education, various institutions have implemented information fluency programs and initiatives, with somewhat different emphases. Some have focused on a wide range of contributing partners in the campus setting as training sites for a range of technology-based or -enabled skills. An example is DePauw University’s information fluency program, which brings together computer science, the digital media lab, faculty instructional technology support, information services, the library, the center for contemporary media, and the university Web team to provide education and training through apprenticeships in such skill sets as programming, digital imaging, project development and instructional design, deskstop software, electronic research, video editing, and Web authoring.¹⁷ Such an approach showcases the experiential nature of information fluency as important to both traditional academic success as well as preparation for the workplace–practical applications of information and technology literacy in a liberal arts college setting. Another approach is that of the University of Central Florida (UCF), which has created an institutional information fluency plan as part of its quality enhancement plan for accreditation.¹⁸ Information fluency at UCF draws on the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education as an organizing framework, but combines those standards with technology literacy and critical thinking to create its information fluency plan.¹⁹ Notable also in the UCF plan is connection with student engagement, research-centered learning, and life skills development–an integrated set of capacities.²⁰

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As librarians and instructors strive to provide optimal learning experiences in an online medium, they need to consider the different ways that students learn. Some of the questions that should be asked include: Does one’s learning style or preference for a face-to-face environment carry over into an online environment? What learning principles should be considered when designing instructional content for the Web? Are there clues that can be used from what is already known about learning styles for multicultural populations that should be considered as materials are put online? The purpose of this column is to provide some examples from the literature that discuss these questions as they relate to online learning styles, especially for diverse populations.

Overview of Learning Styles

The identification, classification, or definition of learning styles varies widely depending on the perspective of the researcher. Additionally, the term “learning styles” is sometimes used interchangeably with terms such as “thinking styles,” “cognitive styles,” and “learning modalities.” There are numerous theories and opinions on learning styles. While early researchers, such as Kolb, focused on experiential learning, more contemporary researchers have expanded their models to include both psychological and affective dimensions.¹ James and Gardner suggest that individual learning styles are developed as an outcome of heredity, experience, and current environment, and that a core concept of learning styles is “how people react to their learning environment.”² Dunn cites another commonly accepted definition: “Learning style is a biologically and developmentally determined set of personal characteristics that make the identical instruction effective for some students and ineffective for others.”³

Four of the common theories and models used to explain how students’ learning styles vary are:

• the single learning-style continuum, which includes field dependence and field independence;
• definite learning style, which includes serialist and holist classification;
• situational learning style, which includes surface and deep processing; and
• multidimensional learning style, which includes analytic and intuitive dichotomy.⁴

Other contemporary models, as well as inventories, have also been used to assess learners’ modes of thinking. Gardner, for example, asserts that humans have different forms of intelligences or intellectual strengths, each with its own developmental path.⁵ Research has also shown that many people possess secondary learning styles that can reinforce initial learning.⁶ For this column, Witken’s Model and Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory will be highlighted, as they provide applicable information regarding cultural distinctions in learning with carryovers to the online environment.⁷

What Do We Know About Learning Styles for Diverse Groups?

There is no one preferred learning style that works for all students or even for any one particular ethnic or cultural group. Not all students from any particular group learn in the same way. In fact, different measurement methods assess different dimensions of learning styles that address such factors as instructional practices, information processing, social-interaction tendencies, and the influence of personality. Librarians need to be aware of cultural differences that influence learning. Cognitive, learning, and motivational styles of many students may be different from those most often expected by teachers and librarians who represent the majority culture. Researchers also suggest that individuals tend to fall into distinct categories related to the manner in which they prefer to learn and, to a large degree, these preferences are culturally identified.⁸

Dunn reviewed dozens of studies of major cultural groups in the United States to assess preferred learning styles.⁹ Although she found that individuals in these groups reflect a diverse array of learning style preferences, she also concluded that certain learning preferences are characteristic of the majority of members of each group. For example, European Americans prefer learning alone, expecting to do things for themselves through self-reliance and competence, whereas Native Americans and Latinos enjoy learning with peers and emphasize cooperation and loyalty. Asian Americans prefer highly structured learning activities, whereas African Americans are more comfortable with minimal structure. African Americans prefer kinesthetic or experiential learning activities more than Asian Americans or European Americans do.

Field Dependence Versus Field Independence Learning Theory

Developed in the 1940s, Witkin’s theory of field dependence and field independence cognitive styles carries many implications for cross-cultural learning.^1- It also significantly impacts users’ information processing, because the theory describes how well an individual is able to restructure information based on the use of salient cues and field arrangement.

Witkin designed an Embedded Figures Test to determine how well people can deal with a portion of a field separately from the field as a whole.¹¹ Field independence and field dependence as defined by Witkin and others are related to those characteristics of individual functioning that surface in social, intellectual, and perceptual domains of human behavior. For example, field-independent individuals perceive objects as separate from the field; abstract figures from a field; impose personal structures on the environment; set self-defined goals; work alone; choose to deal with abstract subject matter; are socially detached and rely on their own values; and are self-reinforcing. Field independents tend to be more self-directed and better able to make sense of unstructured material. Due to their narrow focus and ability to screen, field independents can usually process information more efficiently, but may miss the social context that their field-dependent peers more readily perceive.

In contrast, field-dependent people tend to rely on the field for clues about an object; prefer a structure provided by the environment; experience the environment more globally; are interested in people; use externally defined goals; receive reinforcement from others; focus on socially oriented subject matter; and prefer to work with others. Field dependents tend to learn better in a social setting (for example, class discussion, group work) and where direction and structured material are provided for them. They tend to specialize in work and study requiring interaction with people.

Findings by Anderson and Adams concluded that white and Asian American men tend to be field-independent learners who are parts-specific, can isolate facts as needed, are rather linear in their thinking and problem solving, and tend to test well.¹² On the other hand, white females, African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos of both sexes tend to be field-dependent learners; must see the big picture; are able to see details only in relation to the whole; seek to find personal relevance in the task at hand; and require that some sort of personal relationship be established between the instructor and the student. Field-independent learners may work well in a teacher-centered classroom that encourages competition and that allows them to develop their own strategies in nonsocial problem-solving domains, whereas field-dependent learners may prefer a cooperative learning environment that encourages peer interaction and support and that pays more attention to the social context in which tasks are framed.¹³ Field-dependent learners may also prefer to interact with the teacher, and tend to learn better when some structure, mediation plans, or strategy is provided.

Kerka stated that field-independent learners are more efficient in search-and-navigation tasks, whereas field-dependent learners are more likely to feel lost and disoriented in computer-mediated or hypermedia environments.¹⁴ Ogle compared field dependents’ and independents’ performance on a task of recall.¹⁵ The content was presented through two different treatments: a virtual environment and static images. A significant interaction was found between field dependence and treatment type favoring field independents in the virtual-environment treatment. DeTure found that students who are more field independent not only have higher self-efficacy when using online technologies, but also have higher confidence levels with online technologies.¹⁶ The research using this model suggests that those who are field dependent (for example, large proportions of Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans) may have a disadvantage in an online environment if geared to the dominant culture.

Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory

A number of studies have applied Kolb’s theory to investigate how learning styles affect e-learning and hypermedia learning (with specific considerations for diverse groups), and most of them indicate that learning styles play a key role in learning.¹⁷ Other studies on relationships between learning style and e-learning have been done on college- and graduate-level students, and citations to them can be found in the references.¹⁸

Kolb’s model conceptualizes the learning process as a four-stage cycle including:

• reflective observation or “learning by watching and listening, carefully observing before making judgments, viewing issues from different perspectives, looking for meaning of things”;
• abstract conceptualization, or focusing on using logic, ideas, and concepts;
• active experimentation or “learning by doing, ability to get things done, risk-taking, influencing people and events through action”; and
• concrete experience, or using experiences and real situations that are personally and immediately relevant to the individual. It emphasizes feeling, as opposed to thinking.

By pairing preferences for how experiences are perceived (theoretical or pragmatic) and how these experiences are transferred into knowledge (doing or reflective), Kolb identifies four different learning styles:

• Assimilator = Reflective/Theoretical–(Asian Americans tend to fit into this category.) This category includes individuals who are best at understanding a wide range of information and putting it into concise, logical form. They are less focused on social aspects of learning and more interested in abstract conceptualization and reflective observations.
• Converger = Doer/Theoretical–This category includes individuals who can take ideas and turn them into concrete situations. They use abstract conceptualization and active experimentation to learn.
• Diverger = Processor/Reflector–This category includes individuals who are strong on imagination and can view a concrete situation from a variety of perspectives. They use reflective observation and processing to learn.
• Accomodator = Processor/Doer–(Latinos, white females, African Americans, and Native Americans tend to fit in this category.) This category includes individuals who use concrete experiences, or attempt to make any situation concrete. They are good adaptors.

Online Success Characteristics

Of the four learning styles described by Kolb, Accommodators seem to be the most at risk in online-learning environments. Researchers are finding that Accommodators are the least likely to succeed in an online-learning environment that is abstract and reflective.¹⁹ Rourke commented that:

The Accommodators have an intuitive, active approach to perceiving and processing information. They perform best in environments in which concrete, practical information is presented through interaction with peers and instructors. They process information best when they can actively apply this information to authentic situations.²⁰

Moeller also found that “the most dominant learning style in the nontraditional learning environment was the accommodator style.”²¹ In other studies, students with assimilating and accommodating learning styles demonstrated significantly more agreeable attitudes toward varied aspects of network-based instruction than students with converging and diverging learning styles.²² When creating online-learning environments, it is critical that the needs of Accommodators be met via personalized learning with hands-on experiences. Kolb’s study remains one of the most significant for those working with learning styles. As others research learning in the online environment, they have used Kolb’s work as a starting point for their online research. Honey and Mumford’s work is one example of this.

Honey and Mumford developed a modified version of Kolb’s learning style inventory, which turns the Doer, Reflector, Theoretical, and Processor preferences into learning styles called Activists, Reflectors, Theorists, and Pragmatists.²³ Of the four types, Reflectors and Theorists tend to do best in online environments, partly because an online environment might provide them more time to think about their tasks. The remaining groups, Activists and Pragmatists, also have various characteristics that benefit from online instruction, but do well in face-to-face instruction as well. Activists like to be involved in new experiences and problem solving. They enjoy doing things and tend to act first and consider the implications afterwards. They like working with others, but prefer being leaders where they can direct the course. Pragmatists are keen to try things out. They want concepts that can be applied to their job or life. They tend to be impatient with lengthy discussions and are practical and down to earth. They learn best when they have the chance to try out techniques with feedback (for example, role playing), are shown techniques with obvious advantages (for example, saving time), and are shown a model they can copy.

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As more institutions of higher education recognize the importance of information literacy, the collaborative role for librarians is growing. Integration of information-literacy instruction is the key to successful student learning, and librarians are using various collaborative models on teams and as co-instructors in courses, learning communities, and campus-wide information-literacy initiatives. This article looks at some of the successful programs on college and university campuses.– Eds.

As the importance of information literacy grows within the academy, so does the importance of the role of librarians as integral members of the teaching and learning mission of the college and university. There is now a growing emphasis on teaching and learning as a component of the mission of twenty-first century libraries. At the same time, there is a growth in collaborative endeavors involving librarians and teaching faculty in efforts to reach larger numbers of students. Instead of relying on reference encounters in the library and formal library instruction, librarians are working to promote collaboration with faculty and campus units in an effort to integrate information literacy into the curriculum. Although the concept of librarian and faculty collaboration is not new, the commitment to an integrated approach has not become a trend. A review of recent literature and searching the Web showed that new forms of collaboration are making broad inroads into academic programs. This article highlights new developments in collaborative interactions in which the role for librarians is as a partner in the classroom and part of an integrated process.

The Importance of and Definitions of Integration

The need for librarians to collaborate with faculty in order to enhance the teaching and learning process has been acknowledged as both significant and as a challenge for the field since the inception of library instruction. The recent literature continues to articulate this need, identifying successes and failures in collaboration, as well as further defining what it means to collaborate.

The importance, and yet, difficulty, of engaging in successful collaboration has been well documented. In a preface to a 1995 article by Farber, Shirato noted that Farber stayed with the subject of faculty and librarian cooperation for such a long time because “he rightly recognizes it as one of the most essential ingredients in effective library instruction…. Success in this area has been hard-won… and in many ways the battle is not yet won.”¹

Winner agrees that collaboration is essential and also notes its difficulties, identifying the areas where collaboration often fails. She comments that there is still “no widespread acceptance of the librarian’s role in curriculum planning and course-integrated instruction. Teaching faculties are appreciative of the support given by librarians; however, librarians are not universally recognized as playing an integral role in course planning and teaching.”² Winner suggests that simply working with faculty is not enough; collaboration is only successful when the interaction between librarians and faculty results in an integration of the library into all elements of curriculum planning.

Many agree with this assessment. In 1995, Rader outlined three factors on which successful integration of library and research skills (information literacy) into the academic curriculum depended:

• library administrators had a long-term commitment to integrate library instruction into the curriculum;
• librarians and faculty worked together in curriculum development; and
• the institution had a strong commitment to excellent educational outcomes for students in the areas of critical thinking, problem solving, and information skills.³

Simons, Young, and Gibson expanded on the concept of integration as a critical component to programming in their development of the “learning library.” They defined the learning library as having:

active programmatic partnerships; curricular integration; sustained interactions among students, faculty, and librarians; and extension of influence into a ‘multiplier effect.’ The library becomes an essential component of students’ formal education and informal research needs. Rather than an external ‘add on’ to the educational experience, the library, as information resource and gateway, is a primary catalyst for cognitive, behavioral, and affective changes in students.⁴

Collaboration, then, continued to be the focus of a large body of literature that agreed that it is an essential element to successful teaching and learning. As Wilson observed, “Collaboration is key if librarians are to educate their clientele to be critical and self-sufficient users of information.”⁵

Characteristics and Skills Needed for Successful Collaboration

In addition to emphasizing the need for and more clearly defining the concepts of collaboration and integration, the recent literature has begun to articulate and define the elements of successful collaborations and the skills that librarians need in order to successfully interact with faculty. While many articles suggest these skills indirectly, there is a growing body of literature that specifically addresses this topic.Lippincott has written several articles on the importance of collaboration that emphasize the broad range of skills required to operate in a digital world and to work with faculty in educating students to find, critically evaluate, and use information successfully. She suggests that to be most effective, these collaborations should involve librarians in the development of the learning program. Librarians must be fully prepared and feel competent to work with classroom faculty in teaching students how to use technology to access information and then how to utilize critical thinking in the selection of information. She notes that there are a variety of factors that encourage success in cross-sector collaborative teams, including a “willingness to shape a common mission outside of the unit-specific mission; interest in sharing jargon and definitions of technical terms; willingness to learn aspects of the other partners’ expertise; and ability to appreciate differences and not criticize or stereotype others’ professions.”⁶In a 2002 study to attempt to identify the elements that create a successful collaboration, Ivey interviewed seven librarians and seven academics who were already working in partnerships in an attempt to identify the elements most important to collaboration. She defined four behaviors essential for successful collaborative teaching partnerships:

• shared understood goals;
• mutual respect, tolerance, and trust;
• competence for the task at hand by each of the partners; and
• ongoing communication.⁷

In 2004, Bell and Shank took the concept of integration one step further with the idea of a “‘blended librarian’ as an academic librarian who combines the traditional skill set of librarianship with the information technologist’s hardware and software skills and the instructional or educational designer’s ability to apply technology appropriately to the teaching-learning process.”⁸ Librarians and academics are becoming increasingly aware of the need to provide programs that develop student communication and research skills (information literacy). The examples of programs that exemplify information literacy or new methods of communication are well documented in the literature. However, the need for these two to become one–or integrated–is now emerging along with the need to understand what forms a successful collaboration.

New Methods for Successful Collaboration

Many college and university libraries are attempting to promote collaboration by having subject-specialist librarians serve as departmental liaisons. As such, they can make contact with the departmental faculty and develop relationships that will hopefully lead to opportunities for information-literacy instruction for their discipline. The goal is to bring departmental faculty and librarians together to improve student learning through course-integrated information-literacy instruction. Whether the collaborations result in single, well-timed instruction sessions related to class assignments, or become more involved with team teaching, they achieve the goal of integrating information literacy into academic programs. There are numerous examples showing that the depth of librarian involvement is growing, from librarians teaching information-literacy instruction as an add-on, to librarians as team members, or librarians in a coinstructor role. The examples selected for this article illustrate the characteristics of successful integration models. Most represent the first-year experience, as this is where most of the efforts for integration of information-literacy instruction into classroom instruction are taking place.

Integration into Specific Courses

Mathies outlines how a library liaison to Butler University’s College of Business Administration effectively built relationships that resulted in a 93 percent increase in the number of information-literacy instruction sessions over six years. This eventually led to the opportunity to collaborate with business-course instructors on a new course for freshmen business majors. The librarians worked to identify learning objectives for course instruction, and planned multiple library-instruction sessions that covered all of the instructors’ course objectives including group participation and an emphasis on critical thinking about information resources.⁹

At the University of Auckland Business School, information-literacy instruction in an electronic format was embedded in a compulsory introductory management course taken by students in their first semester. The modules of an online tutorial were designed to complement and to be accessed in conjunction with course assignments by students in multiple sections of the course.¹⁰ “Through cross-disciplinary collaboration on course design, delivery, and assessment, librarians and teachers created a student-centered information-literacy program for developing the skills identified… as being essential for business students, e.g., to effectively locate information and critically evaluate its usefulness.”¹¹

At Penn State University, librarians collaborated with faculty in the First-Year Seminar in the School of Information Sciences and Technology in developing and delivering course-integrated library instruction employing problem-based learning. Pelikan and Cheney have written about using problem-based learning to help students discover through experience how the library, its resources and their use, and varying approaches to research are basic to problem-based learning.¹² The development process involved close cooperation between faculty and librarians in developing the content for the multiple sessions for this team-based learning, where the librarians are functioning in a co-instructor role.

As Thaxon, Faccioli, and Mosby point out, difficulties in implementing collaborative programs are not uncommon. However, what distinguishes the collaborative endeavors mentioned here is not the time commitment for the librarian, the number of sessions being taught, or the number of students being reached; it is the level of librarian involvement in terms of goal setting and course development.¹³ Whether viewed as subject expert, as team member, or as coinstructor, librarians have been successful in developing course-based integrated instruction that can result in successful student learning, but librarians have also been successful in integrating information-literacy instruction into courses through learning communities.