Education for Instruction Librarians has traditionally centered upon the acquisition of practical classroom skills. While this approach has merit, from a sociocultural perspective of learning, student development emerges more completely through engagement with the communal activities and values that constitute professional practices rather than…

The design and implementation of a scientific writing assignment in a >100 student upper-level undergraduate microbiology class resulted in a peer-reviewed publication in an open-access journal. The primary course objectives and requirements were met by assigning groups of four to five students one of 25 distinct section topics of similar size…

Can anonymous written feedback collected during classroom assessment activities be used to assess students' cognitive development levels? After library instruction in a first-year engineering design class, students submitted minute papers that included answers to "what they are left wondering." Responses were coded into low, medium and…

This case study discusses an assessment project in which a rubric was used to evaluate information literacy (IL) skills as reflected in undergraduate students' research papers. Subsequent analysis sought relationships between the students' IL skills and their contact with the library through various channels. The project proved far longer and more…

Students in Chemistry 254: Organic Chemistry for Majors were required to write a paper about an organic name reaction. Before turning in this assignment, students had the option of attending a one-hour library instruction session covering SciFinder, sources for spectra, ACS Style, and print resources about organic name reactions. Twenty-five…