library as instructional leader spring 2012 participating...

Library as Instructional Leader – Spring 2012 – Participating College Self‐Evaluation

CLOVER PARK TECHNICAL COLLEGE

Library Faculty Participation: 1 Discipline Faculty Participation: Dev Ed English

PARTICIPATION DESCRIPTION

English Faculty member Linda Avery and I planned our classroom activity. We designed a pretest worksheet for

students to complete on their chosen career to see how much knowledge they had about the job they were

preparing to enter at graduation on day one of our project. Day Two, I as the librarian introduced the students to

WOIS Career Database. Day Three I introduced the students to OOH ‐ Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Day 4 Students reworked the worksheet given new data.

ACTIVITIES

PILR

PROGRESS IN INFORMATION LITERACY

Basic Search skills learned in the project makes our students more confident in locating needed information on the

internet and in books.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

We will be continuing our job exploration assignment with Dev Ed English classes. It has proven to be a valuable

asset for our students. Skills acquired in searching print and online databases for career choice information has

been warmly accepted by our students. Linda and I was used the time the grant provided to develop the class.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

We did not have any exchanges with other libraries but we did scan their web sites for additional information and

ideas. Yes collaborations are necessary to share knowledge and not reinvent the wheel.

FUTURE LSTA PROJECTS

Library Databases ‐ 1. ones your library owes with strengths and weakness

for all to read and assess

2. databases trials by different libraries for strength and weaknesses

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION


This project allowed us to develop a long term assignment to aid future Dev Ed Students.

LEARNINGS

Search skills for Dev Ed Students needs more practice and honing. Students will tell you that they do not need to

learn how to search the web.

But you quickly see some new skills will make their endeavor more rewarding.


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SEATTLE CENTRAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Library Faculty Participation: 7 Discipline Faculty Participation: 22


Seattle Central librarians expanded existing relationships with discipline faculty and sought new partnerships to

build on the momentum from LSTA grant participation in previous years. Participants came together and

energetically worked on a variety of projects to further develop Seattle Central’s growing campus culture of

information literacy. Connections were made through division meetings, joint committee meetings, informational

emails, workshops, retreats, and Elluminate sessions. While we targeted faculty across all divisions, those who

were both willing and able came from ESL, Humanities and Social Sciences programs.

‐ 2009 Winter, Spring, Summer Project: Seattle Central Librarians collaborated with five English faculty to

develop a rubric articulating information literacy development through the ENG 096 to ENG 101 to ENG 102

composition series.

‐ 2009 Summer Workshop: Librarians joined Basic Skills and Developmental Education faculty for a 2‐day

workshop that laid the groundwork for improving support for ESL, ABE and pre‐college English students as they

engage with information and libraries.

‐ 2010 Spring Projects: Two ESL instructors accepted the invitation to partner with librarians on Authentic

Learning Assessment projects, one with younger international students and the other with adult immigrants.

‐ 2010 Summer: Seattle Central was the host site for a 2‐day workshop on Emerging Technology and

Information Literacy Teaching. Librarians learned how new technologies can impact the method and content of

information literacy instruction.

‐ 2011 Spring: In collaboration with the Learning Communities Committee, Seattle Central librarians,

faculty and staff developed a Rising Junior learning experience that is an intercampus, interdisciplinary, integrated

project. Students work in interdisciplinary teams to identify and address information gaps that serve as barriers to

student success.

‐ 2011 Summer: Librarian and discipline faculty attendees at the Dipping into ACRL Immersion retreat

reflected on their personal teaching philosophy and developed student‐centered learning and classroom activities.

‐ 2011 Fall: At the Shaping a Meaningful Information Literacy Plan workshop, librarians spent the day

reviewing and updating our decade‐old Information Literacy Plan, right on time for our campus accreditation site

visit.

‐ 2012 Spring/Summer: In response to one of the proposed activities in our recently updated Information

Literacy Plan, one of our talented part‐time librarians (assisted by a UW iSchool graduate student, and with

support from students and several campus offices) conceived, coordinated, and produced an upbeat 3‐minute

video to promote the library’s resources and services to current and potential students.

‐ 2011‐2012 PILR: Two teams completed the 4‐quarter PILR series (one team dropped because the

instructor was reassigned). Librarians, instructors, and students all benefited from this intense collaborative

model. Both teams saw positive relationships formed between students and librarian due to the high level of


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involvement in planning and assessment beyond the 50‐minute workshop in the library classroom. Librarians

checked in with students more frequently, at times visiting the regular classroom to reinforce concepts or

observe/evaluate student presentations. Changes in data from the 2nd through the 4th quarter, along with

anecdotal observations demonstrate the benefits of purposeful integration of information literacy into pre‐college

programs. Students were more confident about using the library’s print and online collections to achieve success

in other classes. Traditionally library‐wary students became daily visitors, accompanied by other students with

home they shared the recently discovered treasures.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Copyright Tutorial (creator or user), Accreditation

Site (creator or user), Rising Junior


Our library’s campus presence increased due to the grant activities. We’ve seen increased and stronger

connections with discipline faculty; the longstanding perception of librarian as ‘keeper of the book’ has evolved as

instructors recognize the role librarians play in addressing evaluation and plagiarism challenges from the digital

native student population. ESL instructors learned that information literacy learning outcomes are not limited to

transitional levels; that the campus library is a safe space to introduce intermediate level students to the Identify

Options outcomes of the IL rubric. During the kick‐off meeting that introduced information literacy as a potential

integrative project using the learning community model, the 30+ attendees were particularly engaged; discussion

continued well past the end time. The Emerging Technologies workshop motivated librarians to complete the

online eReference Shelf that allows students to browse by call number, just as they can in the stacks. This

seemingly minor change helps to alleviate the disconnect between the way things work in print and online.

Those 22 individuals who participated in the workshops, retreats, authentic assessment projects, and PILR and

Rising Junior teams have been spreading the word about information literacy; one conversation leads to another,

and new relationships are occurring.

Administrative changes that took place during the 2nd half of the grant period are having a positive effect on the

library as leader of the information literacy movement on campus: Our President is a library user who stops in

fairly often for a reading break; Both Vice Presidents recognize that facilities and services impact teaching and

learning; Division deans bring a fresh perspective to instructional models and enthusiastic support for the library.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

We have been busier than ever: meeting with librarian colleagues from across the state, actively participating in

campus curriculum communities, consulting with discipline faculty and taking workshop planning to a deeper level,

all in an effort to promote the value of the information literacy and the role librarians play in supporting students’

academic success.

We have become more purposeful in our instructional program planning, and strive to be effective and efficient

professionals by connecting unexpected opportunities and activities with existing outcomes and objectives

outlined in our information literacy plan. We are beginning to accept the fact that we can’t do it all.


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Our collaborative grant activities recently placed us in the spotlight when we received the 2012 ACRL Excellence in

Academic Libraries Award. We welcomed this chance to celebrate how much we’d accomplished thanks to the

collaborative efforts of a core community of librarians across the state.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

Our library’s “Reflect‐Learn‐Connect” research model was selected as the framework for the PILR assessment

rubrics. We’ve also been on the receiving end of statewide collaborative efforts that contributed to our teaching

and learning toolkit. Tutorials from Clark College (IRIS) and Renton, Bellingham, and Skagit Valley (Solving the

Copyright Mystery) were generously shared and adapted; Green River’s instructional manual for creating LibGuides

was a valuable resource for not only our own research guides, but as a starting point for using the SpringShare

system for our library web site. We have since given back to other libraries (Shoreline, Edmonds, Highline) by

sharing LibGuides code and advice. Shoreline recently facilitated an instructional planning retreat for the Seattle

district, a mutually beneficial experiment that kept our discussions focused while allowing all the benefit of sharing

ideas about the future of our information literacy credit courses.


‐ Develop innovative approaches that actively engage students in concept‐based information literacy,

rather than focusing on resources and the mechanics of search strategy.

‐ Explore how to connect multiple learning styles with the integration of information literacy across the

curriculum to achieve student success.

‐ Consider the new frontier of visual literacy whose concepts are closely related to information literacy, and

whose relevance is increasing in our media‐rich world.

‐ Advocate for information literacy as a degree/certificate requirement for all WA state community and

technical colleges.


The grant inspired us to continuously practice authentic assessment of the impact of information literacy

instruction on student success. And to consider what's next... To envision information literacy and the community

college library in 2020 and beyond (see Facing the Future: Think Like a Startup, a white paper by Brian Mathews).

LEARNINGS

‐ Rubrics can be tricky; for many discipline faculty they bring up negative connotations about prescribed standards

which limit individual teacher control and flexibility when it comes to assessment. Formal adoption of the IL rubric

by English faculty across the board is unlikely, but it remains useful for individual instructors whose teaching style

and composition course curriculum can effectively integrate the information literacy assessment criteria. Future


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rubric development would take into account existing assessment tools used by the instructor to offer a sense of

ownership.

‐ Both PILR teams found it better to focus on fewer information literacy learning outcomes than originally

planned, given the limited time allotted for teaching, and students’ tendency to get distracted or caught up in the

mechanics at the expense of higher‐level concepts. Trying to teach information types/cycle, finding tools, Boolean

connectors, keywords and subject headings, MLA citations, evaluation criteria, and MLA citation style proved too

ambitious for pre‐college English composition students, both native and non‐native speakers. For future projects,

librarian and faculty could arrange for brief classroom visits before the full session(s) in the library to help establish

a team dynamic and create space for framing and debriefing IL concepts.

‐ So far there has been no follow‐through on the Information Gaps integrative project, largely due to time

constraints as we prepared for our accreditation site visit with fewer librarian team members. We’re working on

how to graciously decline opportunities.


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SKAGIT VALLEY COLLEGE



Our library participated in several activities between 2008 and 2012. We had several individual projects as part of

PILR. Two librarians worked with an ESL instructor and their students and one worked with a GED instructor and

her students. We also offered a faculty workshop on incorporating IL in the classroom which included creating or

revising current assignments to include IL as well as create an assessment plan for the assignment. We did a large

scale project with our Psychology Department. This project evaluated the difference in IL skills in students who

had a library orientation vs those who did not. Lastly, we worked on a Rising Junior project. We met with

librarians at Western Washington University and discussed how our services compare and what we can do to

better prepare our transfer students. We chose WWU as the majority of our transfer students end up at WWU.

We would have liked to have continued our work with WWU, but budget cuts devastated the library and we spent

most of this past year, just hanging on!

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Copyright Tutorial (creator or user), Rising Junior


Information Literacy activities increased tremendously over this time period. We have had an Information Literacy

Plan since 2005, but the plan has been updated and is much more detailed. Attending workshops offered under

the LSTA grant has provided us with information that has helped us with our plan and thus our daily activities.

Information Literacy is now a general education value at SVC. We have incorporated this value into the library's

annual plans and we evaluate the goals and objectives annually. Before working on the various LSTA projects and

attending the workshops, we felt we were providing information literacy instruction in the library, now we know

that we are. We are also making advances in assessment, which is the trickiest part for our. Working on the

project (mentioned above) with the psychology department, gave us an opportunity to market very favorable

results to all of our faculty. We statistically proved that there was a significant increase in student IL success if they

were exposed to an IL session with library faculty. Learning about rubrics has helped us with assessment of classes

outside the PILR grant. We are including assessment in more classes. One of our librarians worked on the

Copyright Tutorial which is now available for all our faculty on the library web site. The Rising Junior project is

something we plan on picking up again. We made valuable contacts at WWU and hopefully will work with them as

well as Whatcom Community College. The grant has helped us improve our relationships with faculty in the pre‐

college classes. Developing assignments with and explaining the purpose of the assignment helped classroom

faculty clarify their own understanding of IL. Students in these classes benefited from extra instruction and also a

side benefit was that the additional time a librarian spent with the class, encouraged some students to become

more active library users.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT


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The overall impact of the grant was to increase our understanding of information literacy. In the beginning, there

might have been an attitude that could be stated as: "Well, of course, we include information literacy. That is

what we do." As we worked on the different projects and attended workshops, our understanding of what really

occurs when you apply the standards AND assess them helped each of us grow as librarians. More thought is put

into the 50 minute one‐shot classes. We are working at developing more relationships with classroom faculty to

bring them along on this journey.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

One of our librarians collaborated on the copyright tutorial. We did not have any other projects that included

collaboration. I do feel that the workshops we went to, were extremely beneficial and learning from other

librarians was one of the best things we gained from this experience. Learning what worked and what didn't at

other colleges gave us ideas that we incorporated at our college.


I would focus onadvocacy/building relationships on campus. It would be nice to be able to offer more workshops

to bring a better understanding to faculty/admin. of the value of libraries. I would like to see additional focus on

assessment as well. It is one of the trickiest areas for a lot of librarians.


This project has made the librarians stronger and more effective teachers and advocates for the library and the

instruction that we provide.

LEARNINGS

The librarians who worked on PILR projects learned that we do have to promote ourselves as experts in IL.

Although the classroom instructor is the expert in his/her field, we need to speak up and usually have to teach

them before we can do a good job teaching their students. I would work to get the faculty to understand the

reason/assignment before we began the work. Some modifications to assignments had to be made because the

librarian did not speak up in the first place. I would also go out on campus and shout our good results to

everybody that would listen.


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SOUTH PUGET SOUND COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Library Faculty Participation: one Discipline Faculty Participation: two


The purpose of this project was to help developmental education students recognize and select quality sources for

their research assignments. To prepare for this project a librarian and a Reading instructor attended an LSTA mini‐

grant workshop, and met several times to come up with a plan.

The two participating Reading classes, came to the library for three one‐hour instruction sessions, and the librarian

visited their classrooms once. Normally, these students would see the librarian just once.

During each visit, the librarian reviewed a slide titled: How do you know if it’s good information? As students

searched the catalog, reference and article databases, and the web, they were asked to consider five aspects of

quality: Accuracy, Authority, Relevance, Currency, and Objectivity. At the end of each quarter, students were given

four citations and summaries for materials about Lou Gehrig’s disease. They were asked to choose the best source

for a college research paper, and to explain their selection. Responses were scored using a rubric based on

information literacy standards from the Association of College and Research Libraries. In spring quarter, the same

rubric was applied to an annotated bibliography assignment that students completed as part of their group

research projects.

The strength of this project was that it got librarians and development education talking about their shared

information literacy objectives. We learned early on that we could be more effective by agreeing on the terms we

would use to teach students to identify quality sources. The librarian and the Reading instructors taught the same

concepts, using the same terms, in the classroom and the library, so that students had more than one chance,

using more than one method, to learn to recognize quality sources.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Rising Junior


Because of the LSTA mini‐grant project, the idea of librarians and developmental education instructors

collaborating to develop information literacy assignments has been institutionalized, and the language we use to

talk about quality standardized. Whereas many instructors just send the librarian their assignments before the 50‐

minute library class, Reading faculty work with the librarian to develop and evaluate assignments, and frequently

schedule more than one library class during the quarter.

The grant helped the library develop objectives and track our progress in teaching students to identify quality

sources.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT


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The overall impact of the grant activities was to strengthen the professional relationship between the librarian and

Reading faculty. Now, we discuss regularly the best ways to teach students to recognize quality sources. We both

have the same objective. We frequently modify the assignments as we strive to figure out what methods work

best. At the end of the quarter, Reading instructors share data with the librarian results of their information

literacy assignments. Together, we plan for improvements. For example, after spring quarter 2012, the librarian

and a Reading instructor looked at student work and agreed that next year we will highlight one of the most

important aspects of quality, Authority, which many students didn't seem to get. Without the LSTA mini‐grant

librarians and Reading faculty would likely still be confusing students by talking about the same thing (information

literacy) using different terminology. Now instructors, librarians and students have a clearer idea of the results we

are after.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

Our main collaboration with other libraries has been through the active College Library and Media Specialists

listserv. LSTA workshops were a valueable chance to network with more experienced and knowledgeable

colleagues in the area of instruction assessment. Though we did not explicitly collaborate on projects, I took advice

from, and borrowed many ideas and some tools from other college librarians as a result of my workshop

participation.


I continue to be most interested in how to improve and measure the effectiveness of library instruction. A focus on

online library instruction‐‐methods and tools‐‐would be welcome.


Thank you for the opportunity to work with colleagues and learn much more than I could have alone about library

assessment and other best practices.

LEARNINGS

We learned the power and value of reinforcing each other's instruction. I think it is reassuring for students to hear

librarians and Reading faculty talking about information literacy in the same way.

The grant itself was the main complication. Collecting the small grant required significant involvement from the

college's budget office, and was not cost‐effective. Disbursing funds through the library to faculty in another

department proved problematic and left participants wondering if is was worth the aggrevation. We all learned

some things about how grants work at the college so that this process might go smoother next time.


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SOUTH SEATTLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE



This LSTA grant cycle has given the South Campus faculty librarians the opportunity to grow as teachers, with its

emphasis on the development of information literacy assignments and assessment. It has also given us a structure

for collaboration with discipline faculty. Stipends have undoubtedly helped us to attract faculty colleagues who

were willing to work with us. We targeted faculty in ESL, Academic Programs, and Professional‐Technical Programs.

Two ESL faculty, one Intensive English Program faculty member, and one Academic Programs faculty member,

along with three faculty librarians attended the February 27, 2009, LSTA Kickoff Workshop at Bellevue College.

Additionally, a faculty librarian and an ESL faculty member attended the full‐day PILR rubric norming workshop

with Megan Oakleaf, which was held at Bellevue College on June 3, 2009. In general, the South Campus faculty

librarians have been well‐represented at the PILR workshops offered throughout this grant cycle. Almost all of the

LSTA workshops have had at least one SSCC librarian in attendance.

Information literacy projects have ranged from finding information and making oral presentations in class, to

writing assignments based on student research, to creating marketing plans in the professional‐technical areas.

ESL/Library collaborations introduced Level 3 or 4 ESL students to a range of library resources, print and digital.

Horticulture and wine technology students worked with industry publications, demographics databases, and web

resources to find marketing data.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Accreditation Site (creator or user)


• The grants provided an incentive and a structure that made it possible for us collaborate with a number of

faculty who might not have been interested otherwise. The stipends caught their interest and made it attractive

for them to work with us. We were able to reach students who we would not otherwise have reached. We have

continued to work with many of these instructors subsequent to the completion of their projects on the same or

new IL projects for their courses.

• In working with faculty, we experimented with designing assignments to incorporate information literacy.

• Rubrics – instructors participating in PILR have used the IL rubrics developed for the grant. The rubrics have

helped faculty to understand what the librarians mean by information literacy. Additionally, we developed a rubric

on “writer’s voice” for a Faculty Interest Group on helping students incorporate their own voice into their writing.

• Librarians have learned about assessment measures for information literacy, and are working to design measures

for better assessment of one‐shot library instruction sessions.


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• Creating an information literacy plan – The SSCC Library created an information literacy plan in Spring 2012. One

South librarian attended the Fall 2011 LSTA workshop at Highline on “Creating an Information Literacy Plan for

Your Library,” and has taken the lead on this project. The workshop provided a framework for the creation of

SSCC’s information literacy plan.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

• The librarians participated in many learning/training opportunities

• We had opportunities to apply what we learned at LSTA trainings on campus

• We have had more opportunities for faculty collaborations on campus – the stipends provided an incentive for

faculty to work with us

• Faculty librarians have become stronger teachers of information literacy

• We developed more working relationships with other faculty for collaboration on assignments that incorporate

information literacy

• We experimented with different kinds of information literacy assignments and assessments

• More faculty on campus are aware of the campus’ information literacy student learning outcomes

• Participating faculty were excited about incorporating information literacy in classes

• There is greater faculty understanding the relevance of information literacy to their students

• There is a larger number of students receiving information literacy instruction

• Students receiving more in‐depth information literacy instruction

CTC COLLABORATIONS

N/A.


Most of the focus so far has been on information literacy in the face‐to‐face classroom. It might be useful to write

a grant focusing on information literacy for elearning/online classes.


This grant cycle has been beneficial to the growth of information literacy on our campus. We have also appreciated

the many training opportunities around the teaching and assessment of information literacy. Librarians around the

state are doing many great things, and it has been wonderful to attend professional development activities and


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share ideas. The new WordPress site for sharing what librarians around the state have developed will be incredibly

useful. We also appreciate the Accreditation web site hosted at Highline Community College.

LEARNINGS

We had the opportunity to experiment with assignment design and assessment, and we have all become stronger

teachers through doing the grant work. We plan to carry this work forward and build on it. We are especially

interested in finding ways to assess our “one‐shot” information literacy instruction. It is challenging because we do

not follow the students all the way to the end of their course, nor are we involved in assessing the products

students create from their research. It would be interesting to work with faculty members who would allow us to

evaluate the information literacy components of their assignments.


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SPOKANE COMMUNITY COLLEGE LIBRARY



Aware of the necessity to partner with discipline faculty in order to be successful in the long term, we targeted

gatekeeper faculty teaching core classes in departments with heavy enrollment as partners. These influential

faculty leaders were able to help spread the word about Information Literacy (IL) and, after several quarters of

working together, share with us the responsibility of teaching and reinforcing IL skills.

Example project partnerships:

Project with English 101 instructors: (Composition I is a required course for all transfer program students which

comprise 26% of our population.) Part 1: We established IL standards for SCC ENGL101 students. Part 2: We

created a standardized IL assignment for all ENGL101 students on‐ground and online, and an accompanying

assessment for on‐ground students. This program has been in place for over 3 years and is very well received by

students, faculty, and administrators.

Project with Applied Education 121: Applied Written Communication instructors (This technical writing course is

required for all Professional/Technical program students which comprises 70% of our population). We created a

standardized IL activity, the primary objective of which was to teach students about trade journals in their field

(their function, how to access, reading skills and article analysis). A secondary objective was to ensure that

students understand the function of the library as a lifelong learning service and resource.

Wassail training: Faculty and administrators from the state attended our grant‐sponsored workshop with trainer

Nancy Goeble, who demonstrated the use of Wassail, an open source IL assessment data tool developed at

University of Alberta, Augustana. We then created our own version of Wassail, currently hosted on our college

server, which we use in our IL assessments and share with other colleges upon request.

Rising Junior Projects: We again partnered with gateway faculty to provide IL instruction and assessment measures

in core courses in History, Music, Education, and Biology (including integrating IL into the newly rewritten manual

for Biology I, the feeder course for all Allied Health students).

Over the years, several discipline faculty responded to our call to join us as we attended LSTA workshops and the

ACRL Immersion retreat.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Rising Junior


Our approach to the project was strategic on multiple fronts.

Under grant leadership, our library has begun drafting a comprehensive Information Literacy plan. The plan

includes all aspects of library service (collection, instruction, alignments with college and national standards and


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goals). Last year our library began a major reorganization, so the writing of the plan is on hold until our structure

within the college district and our staffing becomes more clearly defined; but the grant has been the most

significant motivating and educating factor in our creation of an IL plan, a crucial document for communicating our

mission and values, and clarifying the Library’s goals.

Horizontal and vertical programming: The LSTA grant resources enabled us to successfully create programs which

infuse IL horizontally on our campus so that all students are taught basic IL skills necessary for college success

(example courses: English (for transfer students) and Technical Writing (for Professional/Technical program

students)). We simultaneously continued our development of instruction beyond‐the‐basics, teaching more

advanced (vertical) IL skills in a variety of programs (example courses: Biology, History, English 102 (Composition

2)).

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

Our faculty partnerships enabled us to grow our IL efforts from the course‐level to program‐level. These work

intensive partnerships would have been impossible without incentives provided by the grant which has changed

what we do and how we do it. Our librarians have established a habit of assessment in IL instruction, and our

continuous efforts have influenced faculty and administrators to be aware of the core concepts and value of

Information Literacy. The term is becoming pervasive on campus.

Through the grant’s Rising Junior projects, we have begun providing a smoother transition for our transfer

students. We were able to partner with instructors in some core transfer courses to teach discipline specific

research skills and resources (for Health Sciences, History, and Music.). We also partnered with our college

Transfer Center advisors to teach Education students about transfer resources, enhance the Transfer Center

website, and create a Transferring Students research guide which is linked on the Library’s homepage.

The perception of faculty librarians’ roles has changed for the better. Discipline faculty and some administrators

see us more as instructional colleagues and less as functioning in a stereotypical librarian role.

Despite making a solid start to infusing IL into the college culture, we are struggling to cope with severe losses of

support for our library. Budgets for SCC Library collections, faculty, and staff have been severely cut; lost

employees have not been replaced; reduced hours and reduced manpower leave us with significantly less capacity

to optimize the momentum we have created under the LSTA grant. We have deep concerns about our ability to

continue and develop the vital IL initiatives we have begun. While succeeding as liaisons with faculty, we may have

failed at adequately connecting with administrators (administrators outside of the library). Despite giving evidence

of our value, we are now faced with inadequate support to progress.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

We participated in only one formal collaboration with another college in the WACTC system; our Wassail

(assessment tool) project was carried out in conjunction with colleagues at Spokane Falls Community College

Library. Employees from all Washington state colleges and the SBCTC were invited to attend the workshop

including representatives from local 4‐year colleges.

Contribution on a statewide level: A handful of WACTC colleges have contacted us to share the open‐source

Wassail tool with them.


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Collaborative effects not directly funded by the LSTA grant, but an outgrowth of such, have been:

‐ Presentations of our LSTA projects at conferences (SBCTC: Assessment, Teaching & Learning, and College

Librarians and Media Specialists (CLAMS) of Washington State).

‐ Resource sharing through the grant wiki and as a result of networking with other librarians during grant‐

sponsored events.


There are two specific areas we would like to focus on in future:

1. Articulation with 4‐year colleges. Currently we have in place some informal venues for discussion of IL skills for

our rising junior students, but we would benefit from a closer articulation with our 4‐year transfer colleges.

2. We’d like to have more training on creating assessments which provide scientifically valid evidence, particularly

data which shows the library’s value for student success. We feel we would benefit from more rigorous, scientific

training in designing, coding, and analyzing IL assessments and resulting data. Also, any training that will aid us in

more effectively communicating the library’s value to administrators and students.


To paraphrase Jonas Salk, “The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.” At the close of this

grant, we are challenged to find ways to sustain the framework of the great work we achieved with its support.

Through the LSTA grant we and our faculty collaborators were given invaluable education and support on a regular

basis over a period of several years. We are extremely grateful for that opportunity which we endeavored to

optimize by dedicating our best efforts. We can only hope to be able to carry on such good work in the future.

Lastly we’d like to mention the great value of the grant leadership which was responsive and imminently capable.

Their willingness to be flexible, their sage guidance, and consistent efforts to keep all of us moving ahead was the

single most valuable factor in this grant’s success.

LEARNINGS

We learned more than we can say. In acquiring closer, more integrated working relationships with students and

faculty, we learned about information needs we were unaware of before. We learned how our discipline faculty

teach, what is important to them and what isn’t, how to teach IL in a variety of disciplines and how the IL needs of

students in different programs differ and how they are the same.

We learned to use different tools and different approaches to teaching and assessing. We learned how to maintain

a focus on authentic assessment, even if we still practice the mastery of that skill.

We have been continuously inspired by other librarians participating in the grant, how they do this work with their

students, their clever ideas and wise insights. The repository of projects available on the grant wiki has been, and

will continue to be, a source of ideas and inspiration after the grant ends.


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SPOKANE FALLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Library Faculty Participation: Five Discipline Faculty Participation: 17


SFCC librarians collaborated in the design and teaching of research assignments in the Art, Sociology and

Psychology and a more general web page and assignment on plagiarism.

In conjunction with the Rising Junior iniative Spokane Falls held a workshop inviting faculty from selected academic

departments. The workshop was attended by facutly from social sciences, communications and science

department. Social science faculty formed a group that met to discuss how to embed information literacy skills

into social science classes. The group created a rubric for evaluating research projects.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, Rising Junior


Those SFCC librarians who participated in the inital immersion workshops at Sleeping Lady have improved their

ability to approach and communicate with discipline faculty regarding the embedding of information literacy skills

in discipline classes. One librarian in particular has added multiple sessions and lessons to what were once one

shot classes.

The Rising Junior workshop and resulting web page provided faculty with additional ideas for integrating IL into

classes. SFCC social science instructors were particularly interested in improving students's research skills. The

department continues to work ot add IL to class outcomes.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

The participating librarians are clearly more focused in their approach to teaching and integrating IL in discipline

classes. We have improved the way we assess student research and in the manner in which we approach faculty

regarding research outcomes in their classes.

The grant encouraged and taught us to integrate authentic assessments into or instruction and is what we do.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

We collaborated with our sister college Spokane Community College. This allowed us to do more training and

make better use of our grant funds.

We picked up a lot of ideas from other colleges at the workshops we attended.



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The intense immersion experience with experts in the field was the most valuable thing for us. We always need to

incorporate time for sharing great ideas from other libraries. I'd like to see us work more closely with our regional

universities to make sure our faculty and students understand what research skills are expected at the next level.


This program really helped us get started in the work we need to be doing

LEARNINGS

One thing in particular I remember our faculty learning is that students don't attend voluntary research instruction

sessions.

The librarians found that good and valid assessment takes much longer than instruction. We found that we prefer

to work with groups of faculty or departments rather that individuals. It's great to improve outcomes for a single

class but it doesn't spread like wildfire as we had hoped. We preferput our energies into to working with a whole

department or program to "teach the teachers." This seems like a much more effective use of our time.


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TACOMA COMMUNITY COLLEGE



The Tacoma Community College Library participated in several LSTA grant workshops over the last five years, and

participated in one mini‐grant (2011‐2012).

For the most part, our participation was limited to full‐ and part‐time librarian attendance at LSTA workshops. We

always found the workshops to be creatively invigorating and enlightening to the assessment and teaching work

that we were engaged in at our college.

One of our target faculty populations is developmental‐ and college‐level composition. We have been courting this

relationship for the past several years because on our campus, research skills are taught most intentionally in

these courses. To this end, we brought a composition faculty member to the LSTA workshop in July 2010. We

have since strengthened our relationship with her, and are now working as partners (with her and other

composition and discipline faculty) to develop and strengthen a Writing, Reading, and Research Across the

Curriculum program at TCC.

The mini‐grant project that we worked on involved assessing the effectiveness of two library instruction initiatives

that involved heavy collaboration with other faculty:

• Our first year of using Libguides, and

• A brand‐new 2‐credit library research course, taught by a librarian, and linked with a section of English

102 (Persuasion and Argument).

We found that there was a great deal of support for Libguides among faculty who piloted them, and that students

in their courses found Libguides to be helpful. We also have encountered a high level of enthusiasm for the 2‐

credit library research course among both faculty and students, along with several requests from faculty to link

with them in future quarters.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, Dipping into ACRL Immersion


One very useful aspect of the grant has been the opportunity to review and refine our Information Literacy Action

Plan. We wrote our first Action Plan at Immersion in 2005; during the Fall 2011 LSTA workshop meeting, it was

very helpful to have the time to review and rewrite our plan. Fortuitously, we were also in the midst of writing a

review of the library program for our college, replete with goals and objectives for the coming year. The two

activities overlapped nicely. We were very glad to see that we had achieved some of the goals we had set out to

accomplish in 2005, such as establishing a Librarian‐Faculty Advisory Committee.


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We have also found that as a result of grant activities, we are making progress in our goal to engage faculty across

campus in information literacy‐related conversations.

One of the campus‐wide initiatives that we have been heavily involved in this past year is the nascent Writing

Across the Curriculum program. With our input and the support of composition and discipline faculty, it has been

re‐born as the Writing, Reading, and Research Across the Curriculum program.

Another major project that is beginning to come to fruition, and that was heavily influenced by our participation in

LSTA grant workshops, is the catalog/rubric of information literacy skills that we developed to document the

research skills we think developmental English faculty at TCC are most commonly teaching at each developmental

level. We hope that this will be used to create a semi‐standardized baseline of IL skills that developmental level

students should be expected to master at our college. We further hope that our catalog/rubric will spark a

conversation among other, college‐level faculty, about benchmarks for teaching and assessing IL skill attainment

across the curriculum.

Currently, our developmental‐level IL skills catalog/rubric is being used by the Developmental Education

department as part of their annual program learning outcomes assessment project, which is a big achievement for

us in terms of collaboration with our target faculty and student population.

We feel that the grant has helped us to maintain a focus on the importance of engaging other faculty to promote

information literacy on campus; we recognize that we cannot achieve our goals without partnering with them.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

We found the LSTA grant activities to be the most useful when they overlapped with assessment initiatives at our

college; we found we simply didn’t have time to take on more than one major assessment project at a time, so

those required by the College took precedence. But fortunately, we found that LSTA initiative emphases and the

TCC initiatives did overlap. For example, even though we did not participate in PILR, we found that eavesdropping

on PILR conversations at the LSTA workshops helped us develop frameworks for a lot of the pre‐college teaching

and assessment work we were engaging in at TCC. The mini‐grant funding was very helpful, especially in a time of

budget cut‐backs; we were able to use the funding to provide time for librarians to complete information literacy‐

related assessment work that would have been very difficult for us to have completed otherwise.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

Unfortunately, although we think it is a great idea to collaborate with other librarians at other schools, we didn’t

find the time to do much collaboration outside of the LSTA grant workshops. But having those workshops to learn

from other librarians was invaluable to the work we did at our own college.


One of our library’s semi‐obsessions over the last couple of years has been the overlap between writing skills,

critical reading skills, and research/IL skills. That is the focus of our campus’s new Writing, Reading, and Research

Across the Curriculum program; so far, it has garnered a lot of interest and support among faculty. Over the next


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years, we will be looking for ways to keep it growing and asses its effectiveness. It seems like a great opportunity

to continue the theme of “collaboration with other faculty.”


Without a doubt, the grant has enabled us to do more and better work than we could have done without it.

Having the intermittent feedback and support from other CTC libraries, and being able to share ideas with each

other, has been invaluable for the work we do at our library. In addition, from perusing the reports from other

libraries, it seems that the projects we collectively engage in do have an impact on student development of IL skills

that impact both school‐related and lifelong learning. I hope to see the grant‐related projects continue.

LEARNINGS

We learned that collaboration with non‐library faculty is essential to the success of our initiative, and to the

achievement of the goals that we set for student learning. We learned that we share many common goals with

composition and discipline faculty, including a deep belief in the importance of student learning of critical thinking

skills that relate to information literacy skill development. But even though we recognize these similarities and

overlaps, we often do not have or make the time to collaborate as much as we should. In the future, we would

strive even more to carve out that time with other faculty to find fun, creative, dynamic opportunities to capitalize

on our complementary strengths.


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WENATCHEE VALLEY COLLEGE



Using a mini grant Barbara worked with Amy Olsen, an ESL instructor, to develop a library orientation and begin

building a bilingual literacy development collection targeted to make the esl population aware of the library and

services available for their use. The orientation was implemented once but the esl instructor moved and due to a

shortage of librarians this project has never been fully used. We have continued to develop the collection, and the

College is making a renewed effort toward its ESL programs, so we expect to return to this activity this year.

Barbara and Donna worked together on the LSTA PILAR project for the four quarters. They decided to work on a

comprehensive project. They incorporated the IL concepts throughout the quarter in conjunction with ABE writing

assignments. Barbara was embedded in the class, basically co‐teaching 2‐3 days a week. Barbara and Donna

reflected on what worked and what didn’t work, and then refined what didn’t work so well. The librarian and the

faculty member attended all PILR events. Donna was targeted because she teaches ABE/Dev Ed writing. Barbara is

now working with Amy Carlson, another DevEd instructor, refining and tweaking what Donna and I developed but

using it to help English 97 students’ step by step work through the research and writing process for an

argumentative essay.

In the rising junior project our goal was to identify the point in the research process when it would be most

effective to delivery library support to online students. Tria worked with faculty, Mary McIvor and Peter Donahue,

in Omak creating a tegrity video and a LIBGuide about topic development for an online class. The students were all

part of an online class so the content was delivered to them through their existing Angel Classroom. The librarian

created a sequential libguide to progress the students through their topic development. The librarian also created

a short tegrity video to show students how to use the libguide. Within the libguide were downloadable forms,

useful links, and brainstorming worksheets.

Searching Instruction: These students were also in an online class and content was sent to them through their

Angel classroom. The librarian created a document and a tegrity video to walk the students through searching for

particular types of data.

Instruction on scholarly materials: these students selected and read a peer‐reviewed related to their assignment,

discussed it with peers and wrote an article critique, summary and APA format citation.

Andrew worked with Rob Fitch’s online oceanography students he provided a bibliography review. Bibliography‐

review students provided the librarian with their thesis statement, draft bibliography, assessment of further

resources needed, and comments on the supplemental library materials provided to the course. The librarian

provided evaluative comments on the materials. The instructor offered the assignment as extra credit, so

participating students were self‐selected.

Andrew, Tria, and Barbara were able to attend all events. Donna and Peter attended Pillar events.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Rising Junior


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When I started at Wenatchee Valley College I discovered that the previous librarian had made an attempt to

develop an information literacy plan, through previous LSTA grants but had not really progressed very far; the plan

was helpful for me to assess where to go when I started. The LSTA activities that took place between 2008‐2012,

with the efforts of a director who is able to repeatedly insert the libraries role in student success during critical

campus planning conversations, have really allowed information literacy to become part of a campus wide

conversation. Information literacy is clearly represented in the college’s “support for learning” core theme.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

Barbara has used many of the assignments developed during PILAR for other classes as they are scalable. Barbara

has been able to discuss with other instructors what Donna and she were doing, show them sample assignments,

and help them decide if they would be interested in incorporating any of these assignments into their curriculum.

It also allowed Barbara to become more focused in her teaching, setting aside the all purpose one shot in favor of

targeting specific critical thinking concepts. This is most beneficial for the students, who sometimes come into the

classroom asking if they can be excused because they had this during another class; I can confidently tell them they

have not had this because I am teaching specifically to the class they are in at the moment. LSTA work has helped

the library develop and present faculty development sessions with examples of how to develop or modify existing

assignments to embed information literacy concepts into the curriculum.

The dipping into immersion resulted in developing the core of our information literacy plan and research and

development of multiple assessment and measurement tools assessing the impact of library services on student

success. These include a reference rating and tracking tool based on the READ scale; surveys, both for reference

and instruction; tegrity videos, surveys and data tracking.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

LSTA activities were the driving force behind Barbara applying for and getting a Faculty Learning Group grant

revolving around Information Literacy. The participants of this group were multi‐campus and multi‐discipline in

make‐up.

The distance education coordinator asked Barbara to develop a unit for his “online readiness” course that would

expose students to basic IL concepts and expose the student to the resources that are available to the online

student. This happened through his knowledge of what I had been doing through PILAR. We were able to present

this course at the ATL conference and it is or will be in the open course learning repository. We received very

positive feedback from our presentation, some specifically about the IL unit. There have been at least four other

colleges that requested the course so they could customize it for their college.


Online presence and learning objects to go with.


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Not only did the LSTA project allow us to spend uninterrupted time to hone our own library’s plan and decide on

which projects to concentrate. The activities allowed WVC faculty and librarians to interact with faculty and

librarians around the state. I took away a wealth of ideas and was able to proudly borrow from many of my

colleagues.

LEARNINGS

We have learned that we are creative bunch, our students think they know how to reserach, and they do for

personal information but not for academic information. When you are a one librarian operation it is hard to

participate fully in these opportunities.


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COLUMBIA BASIN COLLEGE



We targeted ESL and ABE faculty. Our collaboration started with a mini‐grant project. For PILR, we started with a

few brainstorming sessions. Then we met one‐on‐one with the instructors to design lesson plans and assignments.

We tried to engage them by explaining how IL could benefit their students without taking up a lot of their class

time. Only the librarians attended any of the off‐campus events, such as Dipping Into Immersion and Elluminate

meetings.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Summer workshop 2010


More hands on active learning, less lecture

Integrated library instruction

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

Through the grant activities, both GED and ESL students felt more comfortable using library resources in person

and online. For the first time, we are seeing ESL students coming in to the library to check out laptops and thumb

drives and to set up access to the campus wireless network. We’ve seen former ESL students who are now

enrolled in college‐level courses who come in and seek assistance frequently. The ESL classes are more aware of

available online tools such as library databases and Google Docs. They also became familiar with citing sources in

their work. Discipline faculty became more aware of the research and technology expertise of the librarians. We

expect continued collaboration with the discipline faculty.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

Collaboration was limited to informal discussions at workshops.


Making information literacy a required part of the curriculum throughout the CTC system. Design and offer a basic

computer literacy class for students who are not familiar with current technology. Explore the possibilities of

embedded librarians.


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Our local public library has many more ESL/ABE resources than we do. We introduced the students to their catalog

and online resources. We included links to those resources on the Resources pages of our blogs. Discipline faculty

also invited one of the librarians from the local public library who was interning at CBC to give a guest lecture.

They then took the students to visit the public library. We felt this was relevant to their everyday life that they

could use outside of school.

LEARNINGS

We learned that to make collaboration work, in‐person meetings early in the quarter work best. This gave us the

guidance we needed to formulate the instruction that was most appropriate. Being respectful of the faculty

members’ time constraints and working independently within their guidelines works best. Contributions of

content from the discipline faculty to the resource pages gave them ownership of the page resulting in

department‐wide use of the page.


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GREEN RIVER COMMUNITY COLLEGE



I think librarians from Green River Community College participated in just about every aspect of this LSTA grant

cycle!

Targeted faculty changed as the grant outcomes changed, but I would say overall we targeted the English and

Social Science Divisions with the mini‐grants, and we targeted ABE/ESOL with PILR.

List of specific projects:

1. 2010 mini grant: ABE students and the library

2. 2011 mini grant: IRIS for Angel: adapted the Information and Research Instruction Suite (IRIS) into modules

available for use by instructors within the Angel e‐learning system.

3. 2011 mini grant: established rising junior outcomes for the english division; mapped out IL outcomes for pre‐

college, 101, and 102 composition courses

4. PILR: two librarians and three ABE/ESOL faculty, winter 2011‐spring 2012

5. 2012 IL plan mini grant: library + social sciences + writing center, project to discuss, develop, and test IL

materials, and share results with the social sciences faculty in an in‐service training

6. 2012 IL plan mini grant: I‐trans: develop IL curriculum into I‐trans course; "train the trainer" on IL instruction

Events:

1. 2009 Information Literacy Workshop: Making the Invisible Visible

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Accreditation Site (creator or user), Rising Junior


Through LSTA grant activities, information literacy really became the priority of my library over the last four years.

When the grant began, my library had a cobweb‐covered information literacy plan that hadn't been examined in

years. It had unachievable goals and therefore was set by the wayside. The LSTA Rising Junior workshop allowed

two key library faculty and the library director to sit down and re‐examine our IL plan and really treat it as one of

the most important things we would create. It's still in the works, and the plan now is to go back to it annually for a

"refresh."


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LSTA also allowed us to reach out to different disciplines on campus to attempt to collaboratively integrate IL into

classes and curriculum we hadn't previously worked with much. One spring, 2012 mini grant involved working with

social science faculty. The social science division on our campus is famously difficult to get to the library, so this

activity was a bit of a "new beginning" in working with them to integrate IL outcomes in their courses and

assignments. PILR was a similar endeavor in that we reached out to pre‐college classes we hadn't worked with at

all before. I would say that after PILR, we have an excellent and respectful relationship with most the ABE/ESOL

faculty on campus, and they are aware of and excited about information literacy.

Another major bit of progress that resulted from LSTA activities was the creation of an information literacy

assessment plan. Before the mini‐immersion activity, assessment was piecemeal here at GRCC. After the

immersion experience we realized we needed to be more intentional and collect evidence of the impact we have

as a program for students across campus.

The IRIS mini‐grant activity was also the beginning of the library's information literacy instruction presence in the

elearning environment. We have a lot more work to do to establish and plan and presence in online classes, but at

least we've started!

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

I think the overall most significant impact of the grant activities was to raise awareness of information literacy as a

campus‐wide learning goal for our students.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

We didn't collaborate with other colleges on specific mini grant projects, but the workshops were an opportunity

to get together and spend "face time" with colleagues around the state.

GRCC was invovled with small collaborative projects such as the rising junior outcomes.


Information literacy should always remain a focus of LSTA 4‐year grant cycles. Seems like previous cycles started

with focusing on AA students, then moved to pre‐college students. Maybe the next focus would be on prof/tech

and trades students?


Thank you for this amazing learning opportunity!

LEARNINGS

The big rocks are important, but so are baby steps.

At one of the first workshops, Lynn Kanne had said something to the effect of "remember the big rocks." Imagine a

glass vase filled with lots of rocks. The vase is your library, the big rocks are the most important things your library

needs to achieve, and there are also small (but necessary) rocks. In filling your vase, if you put too many small

rocks in first, the big ones will no longer fit. If you put the big rocks in first, however, there's still room for lots of


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smaller ones to fill in around them. The point is that we need to make sure we have the big rocks in place before

we get bogged down in the smaller ones.

GRCC's "big rocks" are our information literacy plan, our assessment plan, our IL instruction program, and

outreach. LSTA allowed us to work on putting our big rocks in the vase.

At the same time, we learned that small steps can make a big difference. Lots of the mini grants we worked on

were quarter‐long projects with one or two faculty, yet they had great impact. So there's no need to feel like we

have to do everything in GRAND style all at once. A little at a time is enough.


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HIGHLINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE



Librarians and faculty attended LSTA grant workshops and meetings whenever possible. These included:

• Three full‐time librarians attended the fall 2009 workshop.

• Two full‐time librarians and one ABE/ESL faculty member attended the summer 2009 workshop.

• Two full‐time librarians attended the winter 2009 workshop.

• One part‐time librarian attended the spring 2010 Norming Workshop.

• One full‐time librarian attended the fall 2011 workshop.

• One full‐time librarian attended the Rising Juniors workshop.

• The full‐time librarian who was the LSTA grant coordinator on our campus also attended meetings related

to the PILR rubric creation and revisions.

We began by reaching out to faculty who had worked with us during the last LSTA grant cycle, some of which were

ABE/ESL faculty. This had the advantage of giving us partners who were already interested in IL work. Later, we

specifically approached ABE/ESL faculty to work with us on the PILR grant. We encouraged faculty to attend LSTA

workshops with their library cohorts whenever possible. The pre‐PILR projects involved authentic assessment in

courses such as:

• Communication Studies 101 which already includes IL in its persuasive speech rubric

• ESL level 2 which already had an assignment on researching country information

• ESL level 4/5 students in a special class to help them transition to pre‐college courses

• ABE090 students in a Transition to College class (international Summit students studying in specific

community college programs around the nation)

• I‐BEST classes for students in the Early Childhood Education program who were also taking ABE/ESL level

4 or 5 and GED level 1 or 2 classes

PILR projects included:

• ABE090 students in a Transition to College class (international Summit students studying in specific

community college programs around the nation)

• I‐BEST classes for students in the Early Child Education program who were also taking ABE/ESL level 4 or 5

and GED level 1 or 2 classes

• ESL level 3 classes in which the students researched and wrote about country information


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• ESL level 5 classes for Jumpstart Support in which the students did career research and provided oral

reports, a research journal, and citations of their sources.

LSTA mini‐grant: for this part of the grant, we had faculty apply to participate in an IL Cohort during spring 2012.

The goal of the cohort was for four faculty members to create/revise a research‐related assignment. The cohort

met three times over the course of the quarter. Faculty came from the following departments: Early Childhood

Education, English, and Political Science. Assignments included:

• researching career information

• writing about the government and politics of another country

• researching Washington laws and regulations as well as best practices related to childcare facilities

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, PILR, Copyright Tutorial (creator or user), Accreditation Site (creator or user), Rising

Junior


Due to our involvement in the LSTA grant, we have formed more lasting partnerships on campus around

information literacy. Faculty are as overloaded as librarians, so it was invaluable to be able to provide them with

workshops to help them learn more about authentic assessment of information literacy and with stipends to take

on some extra work. One example is the work that one of the full‐time librarians has done with an ABE/ESL

instructor throughout the four years. These two have collaborated on IL work almost every quarter and this

collaboration is continuing beyond the grant cycle. The ABE/ESL instructor is convinced of the importance of her

students learning IL skills. The latest work we’ve done through the spring 2012 mini‐grants has allowed us to pilot a

format we hope to use in the coming years. We believe faculty working together in small cohorts to think about

research, learn about information literacy best practices, reflect and revise, and provide feedback to each other

will work well on our campus. The work we’re doing this quarter will help us revise this cohort approach so we can

implement in future quarters.

In addition, our involvement in the grant and our recent accreditation activities have caused us to think more

deeply about assessment of IL. During the last year, our library has identified and mapped library‐wide outcomes.

Although we’ve gathered some IL assessment data through our involvement in the LSTA grant, we recognize the

need to systematize assessment more fully. Some of the partnerships we’ve formed during the grant process

helped us identify campus partners with whom we want to work to ensure systematic assessment of IL on our

campus.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

The grant really helped us focus our attention in a significant way on authentic information literacy and

assessment. This did take concerted effort, so there was an impact on librarians’ work flow. While it was beneficial


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overall, it was sometimes a struggle to fit these newer duties into already full work schedules; however, the

benefits outweigh the challenges. The grant made it possible for all the full‐time librarians to be involved which is

something that fits into our library culture (we all share reference, instruction, and collection development duties

equally). It also gave us an impetus for seeking out new partnerships on campus. But most importantly, it benefits

the students who learn information literacy skills that will help them succeed in their coursework and/or jobs. In

particular, it’s crucial for our campus to reach out to ABE/ESL students since we serve such a high number from

this group. We must help them become information literate as soon as possible so they can transition into pre‐

college and college classes which will help them secure jobs and provide for their families. In addition, we know

that students are now being exposed to valuable resources like the library and librarians earlier in their college

experiences and we expect that those skills transfer to other courses, which will help retention that benefits both

the students and the college.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

We did not collaborate with other libraries/librarians during the grant except during grant workshops. Attendance

at the workshops and hearing what the others had to say was very beneficial.


We can’t think of anything right now.


This experience was especially beneficial because there were so many libraries and librarians involved from around

the state. There was a lot of expertise and knowledge shared by the various players. Also, it was wonderful to form

so many partnerships with discipline faculty on our campuses, and the grant really helped with that.

LEARNINGS

The consensus seems to be that everyone found the projects and collaborations useful, but there’s always the

issue of time. We’re all stretched so thin already that it’s difficult to find extra time in our schedules, even when

there is stipend money as an incentive. It would be great if future grant opportunities could somehow fund more

in‐depth collaboration, meaning maybe those working on the project could get some release time instead of

stipends to free up time to do more in‐depth work.

If we did something similar in the future, we would like to have regular discussions centered around the work

being done by each team of librarian and discipline faculty member. Although we did have discussions from time

to time during reference meetings and via email, we didn’t set aside time to just talk about the grant work. This

meant that sometimes one group was doing something really interesting, but not everyone knew about it. Again,

the challenge here is finding the time for these additional meetings.

We also learned that the planning process takes quite a bit of time and there must be commitment to rethinking

and revising because we seldom “got it right” on the first try. The PILR project was particularly useful in showing us

how long it can take to properly design an authentic IL assignment and connect it to the rubric.


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LOWER COLUMBIA COLLEGE



Our librarians and faculty worked on several different aspects of the Library as Instructional Leader grant.

1. Beginning in 2009, a librarian/instructor team attended the February LSTA meeting. This led to work on

evaluation of different resources, culminating in the Scholarly/Popular PowerPoint presentation and video on the

LCC library website, and work which is ongoing in several different disciplines and with several instructors. This

presentation is primarily useful for transfer students.

2. In addition, one instructor/librarian team developed a subject guide to business and a research

introduction for business students. In addition, the business instructor and the librarian together developed a

rubric for evaluation of student bibliographies. Both the bibliography and the video of research introduction have

been used for 3 years.

3. One librarian worked with 2 Early Childhood Education (ECE) instructors to integrate levels of information

literacy into the ECE curriculum. This did not go as well as planned, but we did end up with a great resource on

terms for bibliographies and source evaluation which we still use.

4. Summer 2009, a librarian/ABE instructor team attended a 2‐day summer PILR orientation. The following

fall, 5 Transitional Studies instructors, one librarian, and our director attended the Fall PILR workshop. These 6

faculty signed up for the first cohort of PILR grant participation and were joined by an additional faculty member

for one quarter. This cohort involved projects ranging from ESL 1‐2 through I‐Trans.

a. ABE Levels 5‐6 worked primarily with website evaluation and basic search skills.

b. ESL Level 1‐2 tried to have students locate and evaluate information on the web, but this proved too

complicated. We modified the lesson plan every quarter, until by Quarter 5 we developed one that worked.

Students came up with their own way to know if campus was closed for weather by finding the most appropriate

place to look: web/phone/TV/other.

c. ESL Level 4‐6 worked with digital literacy. We adapted a computer skills textbook for English Language

Learners (ELL), and added more challenging activities each quarter. Students progressed from learning to turn on

the computer, to sending email, searching, and finally reading and summarizing web pages.

d. Integrated Transitional Studies (I‐TRANS) students worked on narrowing questions, determining the best

location to find information, and evaluating the information they discovered. The discipline instructors prepared

several excellent worksheets on how to evaluate the research process.

5. After one year of this activity, a second librarian began PILR work, along with 3 additional Transitional

Studies instructors. These instructors were unable to attend the fall workshop, but they did participate in several

quarters of activities. This cohort had mixed success, as both the librarian and instructors had difficulty identifying

projects for ABE Level 1‐2. The Level 3‐4 and Level 5‐6 classes had better experiences.


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6. In 2010, we began on the Rising Junior project, working with one instructor to create a targeted subject

guide to embed into a biology class, primarily helping locate resources and grading essays and citations. We found

embedding to be useful to the instructor, the librarian, and the students. This librarian/instructor team has

continued working together in classes, and has expanded the subject guide.

7. Both LCC librarians participated in “Dipping into Immersion.” We used this opportunity to explore

additional aspects of information literacy, as well as to collect ideas on assessment and evaluation for our college.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Copyright Tutorial (creator or user), Rising Junior


1. Before becoming involved with LSTA, librarians had made no real attempt to foster information at LCC.

However, from the 2009 LSTA meeting, our librarian began working with the “Reflect‐Learn‐Connect” model

inspired by SCC’s the poster and image. We organized our instruction into these steps, and presented information

literacy to our faculty as well as to our students.

2. We have used the form for the instruction plan (what do you want your students to be able to do, what

do they need to know to do it well, etc.) with instructors and in designing many of our orientations/workshops.

3. The LSTA activities led us to encourage faculty to join us at the information table. Our work with faculty

resulted in the development of subject guides and other teaching resources. Our “How do I?” page now includes

source evaluation information, citation resources, plagiarism links, and many tutorials.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

1. The instructors who joined us were not motivated primarily by the honorariums, but they were very

appreciative of the funds. One instructor would not have embedded us into her class were it not for the grant.

2. Overall, this grant has increased the footprint of Library Services across the campus, has made Library

Services more visible, and has enhanced the reputation of the library staff. In addition, the grant has provided us

with a framework for presenting the research process, has helped us teach both faculty and students the

importance of information literacy, and has given librarians a place at the institutional table.

3. Beyond LCC, participation in the grant activities has contributed to the professional development for our

librarians. We have increased not only our visibility on campus, but also our visibility across the state. What we

have learned through participating in grant activities has led to the publication of three articles, in Alki, ACRL News,

and Faculty Focus.

CTC COLLABORATIONS


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1. Our librarians collaborated with others by attending several working sessions and meetings.

2. In addition, at the annual “wrap‐up” Elluminate sessions, we twice gave presentations to the LSTA group.

3. One librarian participated in a panel discussion about information literacy at Rendezvous 2010, a

statewide Basic Skills conference.

4. One librarian helped review the Rising Junior rubric before it was published on the Information Literacy

wiki (http://informationliteracywactc.pbworks.com).

5. An LCC librarian contributed to an article about information on the national level which was published by

Faculty Focus.

6. Being part of this LSTA grant has empowered us to get involved in other activities – notably presenting at

3 CLAMS meetings.

(7, not directly related to this grant. As a result of having met and worked with Barbara Oldham through the LSTA

grant, Andrea joined her in the Faculty Learning Community with WVC and 5 other schools, with brought us to

discuss a few ways to teach information literacy and helped us establish cross‐college connections for future

activities.)


We would like to see a unified catalog and circulation system for all the CTC libraries, with joint database

subscriptions. If we could get this started with a grant, then by the end of the grant cycle, the bugs would be

worked out, and the individual libraries could contribute the ongoing funding.


1. The LSTA project inspired LCC librarians to reach out to other faculty members on campus: we attended

department meetings, contacted individual faculty members across the disciplines, and consulted with faculty

members to develop subject guides and tutorials. We have forged particularly strong bonds with both ECE and

Transitional Studies faculty. Most important, we have reaffirmed that the library is vital to the success of Lower

Columbia College students.

2. Our librarians have moved beyond the LCC campus, presenting at state meetings and networking with

librarians from other community and technical colleges. Taking part in statewide activities has enabled librarians

to further enhance the reputation of Lower Columbia College.

3. The primary librarian involved in the LSTA project was a .5 FTE adjunct librarian. This grant process

enabled her to do many things which would not have been done at all without LSTA support and funding.

LEARNINGS


Page 4

1. We learned that we needed to pace ourselves. In our enthusiasm for the project, we tended to take on

too much. One librarian worked simultaneously with 5 PILR instructors (covering all levels of Transitional Studies)

and 2 ECE instructors. Another librarian was trying to do ABE at three levels (1‐2, 3‐4, and 5‐6) at the same time.

Also, we tried to cover all 6 parts of the PILR information literacy rubric with each class. Smaller, targeted activities

will not wear the librarians out, and would be useful next time.

2. The PILR grant worked most effectively with instructors who also attended the November meeting. When

we tried to work with instructors who did NOT attend a LSTA meeting, they had more trouble understanding what

we were trying to do (even those who did attend had difficulties). In future endeavors, we would make a greater

effort to better educate participating faculty, either by strongly encouraging faculty attendance at LSTA meetings

or by offering on‐campus training sessions.

3. Our experience suggests that some faculty members have little awareness of their students’ levels of

information literacy. This caused us to scale back and scale back our ESL level 1‐2 activities – the instructor did not

believe her students would be unsure of the question, or unsure of where or how to look for an answer. Only

when we explicitly discussed “what IS the question” and asked “where would you look for an answer?” did the

instructor and her students realize that not everyone understands the question, and not everyone will require the

same resources. In the future, we would provide faculty with tools for assessing their students’ levels of

information literacy.


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NORTH SEATTLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE



We specifically targeted all types of faculty, focusing first on the pre‐college instructors who felt that their students

didn’t need the library because they are not doing “research.” Our goal was to show instructors how students at all

levels can benefit from information literacy, both in an academic setting and also in their everyday lives. Pre‐

college faculty we targeted: ESL (both mid‐ and upper‐level students), ABE, and International Students. At the

college level we targeted psychology instructors teaching transferring college students (rising juniors). All

participating faculty either attended a Fall Workshop or were represented by a member from their discipline.

Projects:

• Website evaluation, grammar websites: International English Program, Level 3

• Learning to use library resources and services: ESL, Level 4

• Math research, finding support materials: ABE Levels 1 – 3

• Career research: ESL, Level 6

• Course review and preliminary Master Course Outline review for IL: 100‐ & 200‐level psychology courses

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Rising Junior


Our library has made huge gains in integrating information literacy into college courses, both directly and indirectly

as a result of the grant work. Overall, we found that this work resulted in a better understanding by faculty of what

information literacy is, how to assess it, and how it can help their students. Examples of positive outcomes:

• After working with the librarian on a quarter‐long information literacy project, the coordinator of the

Intensive English Program included information literacy outcomes in the revised master course outlines.

• As a direct result of LSTA grant work, assignments in three psychology courses were revised to include

information‐literacy outcomes. Additionally, these faculty members now work with a librarian to incorporate IL

training sessions into their classes on a regular basis.

• As a result of collaborations and peer recommendations, ESL instructors now regularly bring their

students into the library. Circulation of ESL materials has doubled since 2008.


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• Ongoing LSTA work honed our outreach and communication skills, leading to successful collaborations

with faculty not involved in the grant work. One example: English faculty began to work with the librarian on a

regular basis and information literacy was included in the revised course standards for the English 102 composition

class. Other areas where relationships with faculty were strengthened: philosophy, music, and health/medical.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

Because of the grant activities, there is now a better, deeper understanding of information literacy on our campus.

More faculty than before recognize the value of information literacy and request library workshops with librarians

and/or encourage their students to meet individually or in groups with a librarian. Some have even adapted our

tools and teach them themselves. This new culture of understanding helped us successfully add information

literacy to our college’s revised Essential Learning Outcome for our institution.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

n/a


One goal would be systematically integrating and assessing IL at the program level, focusing on specific programs

such as nursing. We would also be in interested in collaborating with other CTC libraries in the system. Finally, if

we had the staffing, we would like to expand the number of faculty involved in this work. Once word got out, many

faculty members were interested in participating, but we were too short staffed to follow up.


Our LSTA grant work made us better librarians and significantly increased awareness of the value of information

literacy on our campus.

LEARNINGS

We librarians learned that it takes time to plan and teach collaborative information‐literacy projects. We also

learned that asking non‐native speakers to think critically about information can require an unexpected amount of

discussion and repetition, especially if students come from cultures where questioning information is not

encouraged. Finally, we learned that time is required in order to sustain and continue the work we have begun. It

was helpful to give the instructors the information and tools they needed in order to incorporate information‐

literacy components into the curriculum. Once the instructors felt comfortable and knowledgeable, they could

largely assume responsibility for the content.


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OLYMPIC COLLEGE



Amy Herman attended the “Information Literacy in the Pre‐College Curriculum” workshop on 11/20/2009, along

with ESOL faculty Irene Fjaerstad. Due to other professional obligations at that time they chose to not apply for a

PILR grant. However the workshop gave them an opportunity to discuss how Information Literacy might be

integrated into certain ESOL classes, based on the new statewide Adult Learning Standards. Reviewing the

standards gave Amy a much better understanding of the college’s ESOL program, which was very helpful given that

it’s one of her collection development and liaison areas in the library. Other resources that were available that day

gave us additional ideas for materials to purchase for our Adult Education (ABE, ESOL, GED) book collection. The

library now has an excellent and well‐used collection that is very much an asset to our ABE and ESOL students.

Amy Herman attended the “Emerging Technology and Information Literacy Teaching” workshop July 14‐15, 2010.

The workshop provided a time to reconnect with colleagues at other college libraries, and also presented several

new technology tools that could be useful in information literacy instruction. Amy continues to use several of the

tools presented at the workshop for information literacy tutorials and instruction, including LibGuides, Jing, and

Prezi. Amy followed up on some of the ideas she generated at this workshop, including using our library’s clickers

for training and assessment of both library staff and students, and in creating short instructional videos that were

embedded into certain LibGuides.

Dianne Moore attended the “Rising Junior” workshop on November 19, 2010. The workshop explored the

information literacy expectations 4‐year institutions have for transferring community college students. A panel

discussion that included librarians from the University of Washington‐Bothell detailed faculty expectations that

students know how to use scholarly sources, have expertise in navigating the library environment, be comfortable

in developing a research topic, and be able to identify a source type by the citation. One of the panelists said that

the perception is that community college students have had no library instruction and have no research skills.

Dianne came away from the workshop with a better understanding of the instructional outcomes that need to be

incorporated into the Information Literacy Instruction Plan.

Michael Hesson, Olympic’s former Circulation Supervisor, who is also holds an MLIS, attended the Mini Immersion

at Pack Forest in August, 2011. Immersion gave Michael the opportunity to improve and refine his teaching

strategies for both Information Literacy (including a distance learning IL course he created in library school) and

also re‐emphasized students and their learning styles as core to what we do as Academic Librarians. The mini‐

immersion teaching track also involved how to maximally collaborate with discipline faculty, get administrative

buy‐in, and promote library / information literacy offerings in other areas of campus. Mike was able to put what

he learned to immediate use in a research and writing class that he taught for WorkFirst later that month.

Amy and Dianne both participated in the “Shaping a Meaningful Information Literacy Plan” workshop on

11/18/2011. This workshop prompted them to revisit prior drafts of an Information Literacy Instruction Plan, and

start work on a new Plan based on the information and suggestions that were discussed at this workshop. To date

they have a draft that was presented for feedback at the Library Staff meeting in December 2011. They will be

completing the Plan during Spring and Summer 2012 quarters so that it can be included as an Appendix in our

college’s Accreditation report in Fall 2012.


Page 2

ACTIVITIES

Fall Workshops, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Rising Junior


The “Emerging Technology” workshop gave Amy ideas for improving instructional materials and delivery that she

could almost immediately put into practice. The “Information Literacy Plan” workshop led directly to the creation

of a new and improved plan for our library that will become a supporting document for our next institutional

accreditation report. The “Rising Junior” workshop helped with the creation of the Information Literacy plan as

well.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

The workshops that we attended have improved our understanding of the topics that were presented, and

motivated us to re‐write our instruction plan which will be used as an accreditation exhibit this Fall, once it is

approved by the Library staff.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

N/A


Assessing the Information Literacy outcomes for the library and the college; the library’s role in Accreditation;

assessing the Library’s contribution to student completion rates; librarian as academic advisor; assessing the

effectiveness of different modes of instruction by librarians.


The LSTA projects have been a valuable way for college librarians across Washington State to get together to

discuss issues related to information literacy and instruction and to share ideas and approaches. Being financially

supported in attending workshops and completing projects is also very helpful.

LEARNINGS

Attending the live workshops together is much more productive than sending a representative sho attempts to

bring information back to the other librarians.


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PIERCE COLLEGE DISTRICT



What kinds of projects did they work on?

Authentic Assessment Mini‐Grant [LS, EW, Bobi Foster‐Grahler]

PILR ‐ ESL [Marie Kyllo, SF]

PILR ‐ Dev Ed [Jeff Pisetzner, BT]

COLLG 105 Redesign [Lori Griffin/Tracy McDonald, JR, LS, SF, EW]

COLLG 104 & COLLG 106 Redesign [Tracy McDonald, JR, LS, SF, EW]

What events did they attend?

discipline faculty did not attend the workshops or other events.

How did you engage them?

Met with discipline faculty to better understand the student population and goals of the class.

Worked together to map IL outcomes to their course and program curriculum.

Asked for feedback on various revisions

Discussed student work after the assignment revision and gathered feedback from the instructor about how

students were doing with the assignments

Collected student work so we could assess it.

Shared feedback about our assessments of student learning.

Who did you target?

For PILR we targeted instructors who worked with pre‐college populations in ESL and ABE/GED.

For the Authentic Assessment mini‐grant, we targeted the program coordinator for Criminal Justice (Bobi Foster‐

Grahler), because her and Laurie Shuster were working to develop a new for‐credit discipline specific IL course.

For our Rising Junior mini‐grant, we worked with faculty who teach College Success, specifically COLLG 104‐106,

which require “library assignments” that were frustrating for students and librarians.

ACTIVITIES

Mini‐Grants, Fall Workshops, PILR, Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Accreditation Site (creator or user), Rising Junior


Page 2


The grant activities have helped us to further course‐integrated IL instruction, particularly reaching out and

mapping to key programs. This allows us to be more deeply embedded within the assignments and courses. For

example, INFO 102 is now a required component of the Criminal Justice program, and serves as a model if we

develop other required for‐credit IL courses in other professional technical programs. Beth Thoms has

collaborated with the Reading/College Success faculty at Puyallup to improve “broken” or poorly‐designed IL

assignments, aligning them with our IL outcomes.

However, this work doesn’t scale up to the programmatic level yet. Pierce College library faculty have a

challenging time thinking about our overall IL plan. I think there is still some confusion for our group about our IL

plan, IL objectives and library mission. It seems as if we have a document problem or difficulty communicating

with each other when we try to work programmatically on these documents. As a group, we have difficulty writing

IL program outcomes and criteria for success. Perhaps another “Immersion Refresh” experience or retreat where

we all can participate and come at the IL plan from a fresh angle would help us further out IL goals.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

The grant activities that we participated in were overall pretty beneficial to Pierce College. The activities

supported by the Authentic Assessment mini‐grant helped to launch a successful new for‐credit Information

Literacy course that is currently required for Criminal Justice majors. Other professional technical disciplines have

expressed some interest in developing discipline specific IL courses as well. Other grant activities have encouraged

greater partnership and collaboration with key programs and courses for IL. Our College Success work, part of the

Rising Junior mini‐grant helped us to establish greater communication with the program and its faculty. This will

help us in the future because we can more easily approach the faculty with other assignment design ideas and

input. Overall, those who participated in the grants have developed systems and frameworks for collaborating

with discipline faculty and assessing student learning.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

Outside of PILR, our library did not collaborate as a whole with other libraries/librarians in the CTC system. Emily

Wood worked with Lynn Kanne, Katy Dichter and Jack Harton on several statewide LSTA projects (planning Rising

Junior Fall Workshop, writing Rising Junior IL Outcomes, Library Accreditation Toolkit, LSTA Highlights). These

contributed to IL in the CTC system on a more programmatic, overarching policy level. The LSTA Highlights site has

seen a good deal of traffic in its first few months, and we have received a wide, diverse body of shareable

resources. I hope that librarians within our system and beyond find it useful and will also use the site as a vehicle

for greater interlibrary collaboration and sharing.


Increased opportunities for collaboration between libraries in our system.

Workshops and meetings where we can focus on best practices for IL instruction and programming

Sharing IL learning outcomes and lesson plans

Working more programmatically on IL plans, strategy and program outcomes


Page 3


The library faculty agree that LSTA projects have been very helpful for us to think about IL and work with discipline

faculty. We hope to participate in further LSTA grant projects.

LEARNINGS

One thing that we learned early on about our work processes was that it was better for the librarians to come to

the faculty with something specific for them to respond to (like the draft of an assignment we were working on).

Remembering that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel and it is useful to see if our colleagues across the state

have worked on similar projects.

Setting up a schedule/timeline by working backwards from our target date.

When (re)designing an assignment, it is essential that other librarians work study students “beta‐test” the

assignment to identify confusing areas or unrealistic expectations.


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RENTON TECHNICAL COLLEGE



Both of our faculty librarians attended and participated in the Dipping into ACRL Immersion at Pack Forest. One of

our librarians, Laura Staley, worked on the team that created the Copyright Tutorial.

ACTIVITIES

Dipping into ACRL Immersion, Copyright Tutorial (creator or user)


Grant gave us the opportunity to revisit IL principles and learn more through discussion and modeling of good

practices.

IMPACT OF THE GRANT

Raised awareness of good practices and possibilities for effective instruction.

CTC COLLABORATIONS

One of our librarians, Laura Staley, collaborated with librarians from Skagit Valley Community College and

Bellingham Technical College to create a copyright tutorial.


Continue to include professional development activities as part of the grant project.


Thanks to those colleges and individuals who led this effort.

LEARNINGS

There are many different ways of approaching IL instruction, and many different audiences. We learned some

different ways of reaching our audience.

library as instructional leader spring 2012 participating...

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