This article is more than 5 years old.

For the second year in a row, the Instruction Cave descended upon Radford University (in Virginia) for the Innovative Library Classroom Conference. Here are some of the highlights from our visit.

Keynote

Carrie Donovan, head of Teaching & Learning at the Indiana University Libraries gave a high-energy talk on how she and her team have viewed the ACRL Framework discussion as an opportunity to shift their role in supporting the teaching and learning of information literacy on such a large campus. Rather than delivering one-to-one instruction (which we’re able to do here, but which one could imagine being quite impossible with a student body north of 40,000) or developing a credit-bearing course program as we have, they’ve shifted their focus to be more consultative during the course development process, with an eye toward integrating information literacy concepts into individual courses and entire curricula. Carrie made it a point to reinforce in us the idea that we’re experts in our field and should act like it when we’re talking with faculty about information literacy concepts and how we can help their students achieve IL learning outcomes.

Conversation Starter: A Framework Tasting: Trying Out an Upcoming Vintage in Info Lit
Ginny Pannabecker, Virginia Tech

This was a great interactive session that allowed librarians to workshop the new Framework for Information Literacy. In the session, librarians were broken up into six groups to discuss one of the six new frames. Each group was then asked to discuss the following questions:

• What does this frame mean to you?
• How does your instructional practice already support this frame?
• What else would you like to try to engage with and support this frame?

Though the questions may seem simple enough, I thought the facilitator did an excellent job asking questions that really engaged the audience with the topic. My group had so much to discuss we didn’t even make it through all three questions. I think the session might be worth duplicating at some point at ZSR.

Can You Kick It? Bringing Hip Hop Pedagogy to the Library Classroom
Craig Arthur – Radford University

It’s fairly common to use “real world” examples to illustrate plagiarism and copyright when teaching students about these concepts, so I appreciated some of the fresh examples this librarian brought to the presentation. For example, when Mac Miller copied the beat of Lord Finesse’s “Hip 2 Da Game” without attribution and, of course, got sued (warning: nsfw language on the videos). It’s a great example that illustrates the complexity of copyright infringement, especially since Lord Finesse’s song also contains short samples of other music.

I think what I appreciated the most about this presentation was the discussion about the intersections of hip-hop production culture and information literacy. For example, he emphasized the fact that traditional hip-hop production actually requires a lot of information and research skills (as highlighted in the documentary Scratch). For DJ’s, acquiring knowledge of older music to potentially sample is an early example of Information Has Value. There is a lot of crossover between the ideas of academic integrity and sampling — the conventions are different, but both involve giving credit to those that have come before. Critical information literacy folks may also appreciate the brief discussion on the hidden history of hip-hop — one that does not follow the traditional “Rapper’s Delight” narrative, but instead starts much earlier with DJ’s/emcees. (Sidebar: this reminded me 9th Wonder’s visit to Wake Forest where he also discussed the lesser known history of the origins of hip-hop). It would certainly be an interesting subject to have students research in the future!

Emotionally Intelligent Library Instruction, Or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love our Feels
Jenny Dale and Lynda Kellam (UNC-G)

Kyle, Amanda, and Joy all attended this breakout session because we knew anything led by Jenny and Lynda would be good! Unless you have been under a rock for the last 17 years, you are probably very familiar with Daniel Goleman’s research regarding Emotional Intelligence which has been used in the business world since 1998. Goleman’s work inspired an avalanche of literature and presentations around the topic of Emotional Intelligence as it pertains to a wide variety of professions. One of these inspired works was written in 2005 by Alan Martiboys, Teaching with Emotional Intelligence: A Step-by-Step Guide for Higher and Further Educational Professionals. We have the 2011 2nd edition available as an ebook through our catalog, but I believe you can get the gist of what he is saying through the first link and that is the book I will cite.

Martiboys states that learning and emotion are intertwined; subject expertise is not enough for classroom success. In addition, we need teaching and learning methods as well as emotional intelligence (2). Emotional Intelligence (EI) can be learned, and Martiboys offers advice for making it part of the classroom experience. An EI teacher is: approachable, accepting, positive, a good listener, empathic, good at making eye contact, non-threatening, open, respectful, good at recognizing students, and not presumptuous (11). Instructors should plan their emotional environment which includes everything from how the classroom is set up to how you start your sessions. Martiboys stresses the importance of learning the names of students. Chapter four of his book focuses on the physical experience of learners. Martiboys says that we must plan the physical learning environment , including getting students up and moving in the classroom. While students do some movement in most of my classes, I plan to be more intentional about this starting in the fall. Another interesting section of this book is p.102-104 which talks about the concepts of “strokes” as a “unit recognition.” A stroke can be any acknowledgement that we give another, verbal or nonverbal, and we all need strokes to survive. As instructors, we are in good positions to offer positive strokes, and Martiboys encourages us to put energy into giving and accepting (not discounting) positive strokes.

How I learned to Love Evaluation and Not Care So Much about Assessment
Annie Zeidman-Karpinski (University of Oregon) and Dominque Tornbow (UC San Diego)

Annie and Dominque used the ABCD objective model to make the argument that one-shot sessions should focus on evaluation and not assessment. ABCD is an acronym for “Audience (Who are the learners?), Behavior (What do learners need to demonstrate to show they’ve achieved the outcome?), Condition (Under what conditions do learners need to perform the behavior?), and Degree (To what degree do learners need to perform the behavior?).” Instructors should be able to categorize learning outcomes within Kirkpatrick’s 4 Level Evaluation Model (Level 1 – Reaction; Level 2 – Learning, Level 3 – Behavior, Level 4 – Results). By this model, LIB100 courses are able to evaluate Level 3 (they are able to demonstrate appropriate search skills in class) and they are moving to Level 4 (where they will be able to apply those skills outside of LIB100). Here is a link to the slides used in this session.

In this session, they used several online survey tools (which I believe would have worked better if I had a device other than my iPhone):
Poll everywhere = PollEv.com/annie
Revised Blooms Taxonomy Action Verbs
Kahoot = https://kahoot.it
padlet = http://padlet.com/anniezk/tilc2015

Summary

Overall, it was a really good day with a great group of people! Attendance at this Conference was limited to 75, so it was a wonderful place to connect with other instruction librarians (including Lauren Pressley!) and to hear what is happening in library classrooms in the Virginia/North Carolina/Maryland region.