Library Instruction at Indiana University Northwest

1. Create a lesson plan using backwards design

A simple backwards design approach is first developing actionable information literacy goals in mind that students can perform after the one-shot session. This makes laying out an assessment plan much easier such as introducing a lesson to students, explaining goals, showing the instructor your plan of action, and creating a rubric. Use verbs with actionable characteristics such as “cites”, “refers”, “searches”, “recognizes”, etc.

Don’t cram in a lot of goals into a one-shot especially if you only have a 45 minute to an hour session. You are integrating information literacy and not training new librarians.

In your plan, list out the databases that the instructor wants you to cover with the students. This will help you lay out your tabs (if online synchronous) and give you a road map to cover.

2. Collaborate with the instructor

Disclaimer: some teaching faculty just want a one-shot lesson plan and nothing more. This is perfectly fine. But there are some faculty who love the library and want to engage more with resources, reference, and instruction. Offer these faculty members an assessment plan and ask them if they want to collaborate with you on a one-shot assessment plan. If so, ask to be a “Librarian” role in Canvas so you can be on-hand to answer questions for students and embed tests and videos.

For reluctant faculty, ask if they are truly satisfied with instruction and see if there is anything more you can do. Politely ask if students’ grades for the research component are up to their standards and offer that you can try a different approach to try to raise them. Lay out this plan and say that you can be a presence in the Canvas course if students need help. After completing this assessment plan with other faculty, gather any good feedback or quotes to send to reluctant faculty.

The faculty request form will eventually have a question asking if instructors if they want to opt into this assessment plan. See the Qualtrics form below under Technology Tools.

3. Pre-session

Pre-session should be performed before you go into the classroom or synchronous Zoom meeting. It consists of 2 components: the pre-session survey and a short introductory video.

The pre-session survey is a Qualtrics test that will be given to students before any instruction takes place (both the introductory video and the full one-shot). The Qualtrics form will have the following questions (not yet created):

• Have you ever had a librarian visit your class before either in high school or college? (Yes/No)
• Rate your comfort level on using the library (scale 1-5)
• What are some things you want to learn about the library? (text box)

The introductory video is a short (5-10 minute) video that will be embedded into the Canvas course. The video can be anything you want, but it should include items that are easy to explain, requires students to just consume information (passive learning rather than active), and save you time for the one-shot. Some examples could be:

• Location of library, hours, amenities (study rooms, computers, coffee shop, etc.)
• Introduction and bio of the librarian
• How to get to the library website and tour of the library website

The video should be watched by the students 1 or 2 weeks before your one-shot session. This is where it’s very important to be in an embedded Librarian role in the Canvas course. Otherwise, you will have to trust the instructor to do this in the correct order.

4. Perform one-shot

As you are performing the one-shot, you want to be continually assessing the students (virtually or in-person). To do this, ask for random volunteers to do searches in the databases and ask what they retrieve. If in-person, walk around while students are doing searches.

Another assessment option is creating a Jeopardy! game to play at the end of the session. Also, Kahoot works great for asking students to crowd-source answers.

5. Post-session

The post-session consists of 3 parts: the post-session survey for students, embedded librarian, and post-session survey for faculty.

The survey for students should be given out 5 minutes before your one-shot time is up. These will be the same surveys we traditionally give out to students. (See evaluation forms under tools.)

The embedded librarian part is being present on Canvas and answering any questions.

To follow up with faculty, a new evaluation form will be created for faculty to take. Only the Dean will see these results and will share with the instruction librarians using anonymous responses.