This article reports the findings and implications of a qualitative exploratory study of writing composition instructors' approaches to teaching research skills and designing research assignments. The authors present the common learning goals, instructional approaches, and research teaching challenges that surfaced through semi-structured,…

Librarians provide instruction for students across disciplines, each with their own teaching and learning practices. An exploration of signature pedagogies will help librarians develop a deeper understanding of student learning. This article identifies reflective pedagogy as a teaching strategy librarians can use to expand upon this learning by…

With an awareness of growing issues in teaching source evaluation, the authors explored new methods to incorporate this skill into one-credit asynchronous information literacy courses. The authors discovered improvements in student performance when using SIFT and identified key strategies for its implementation to achieve best results.

As librarians' instructional roles continue to evolve, metaphor can be a powerful tool through which to reflect on and at times to reframe librarians' evolving educational roles and pedagogical approaches, as they consider beliefs and assumptions about teaching and learning and about their unfolding work and identities. This article explores this…

Librarians and educators have a unique opportunity to develop and incorporate gray literature instruction into nursing curricula, with specific focus on its definition, value, discoverability, and evaluation. This article presents a structured and hands-on approach to the collection of gray literature and its use in evidence-based nursing.…

With increasing demand for archival instruction and growing class sizes, archivists and special collections librarians are struggling to accommodate larger classes, both logistically and pedagogically. This paper reviews the literature on approaches from both higher education and archival instruction to identify trends for teaching big classes.…

The developmentalist conception of information's value makes learning the central consideration for evaluating information. Following philosopher Richard Kraut, this article argues that developmentalism provides an important complement to prevalent methods of teaching the evaluation of information. These methods emphasize (a) trustworthiness--for…

This study examines the current attitudes of librarians toward the practice of librarians teaching classes beyond the domain of library skills and information literacy. An electronic survey was sent to ILI-L (Information Literacy Instruction List), the Association of College and Research Libraries library instruction e-mail list. The author…

To integrate the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education into their professional practice, librarians are called upon to address both the cognitive and emotional aspects of their learners. The Framework does not provide prescriptive details for its own deployment, so it is up to individuals, departments, or entire libraries to…

As campuses become more culturally diverse, instruction librarians must work toward developing cultural competence. While the library science literature has discussed cultural competence, no scholars have directly connected it to instruction librarians' teaching. This article discusses literature, models, and best practices from related…

This action research study explores first-year students' conceptions of the research process, with a focus on which aspects students find most challenging and how this information can guide stakeholders in developing curricular or service-based interventions. To gather student reflections on the research process, researchers assigned and collected…

Instruction is a vital part of the academic librarian's public services mission, but the teaching efforts of special collections librarians can be overlooked due to the culture and particularities of teaching in an archival setting. This article documents the challenges special collections librarians face in integrating their teaching program into…

While remaining cognizant of several aspects of current information literacy (IL) instruction methods, including threshold concepts, the author re-created experiences shared by students as she searched for, analyzed, and compiled resources pertaining to the Renaissance. Good IL instruction supports education of the whole person, develops new modes…

The growing importance of the Internet in our society requires that university graduates be skilled in critical evaluation of the messages and sources present in the online world. Traditional efforts to teach these skills have relied on specific, checklist-like tools; recently, these approaches have rightly come under criticism for being…

Librarians at colleges and universities invested in graduate education must understand and incorporate adult learning theories in their reference and instruction interactions with graduate students to more effectively support the students' learning. After participating in a professional development program about adult learning theory, librarians…