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7/27/2019 Using Inquiry Methods to Foster Information Literacy Partnerships
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Using inquiry methodsto foster informationliteracy partnerships
Nancy Dennis
The American Social History Project's New
Media Classroom (NMC) initiative has helped
librarians learn how faculty might improve their
teaching of humanities courses by integrating
Web sites, electronic texts, digital archives, and
on-line discussion groups into course activities
and student research. This article will explainwhat the NMC is, placing it within broader
debates on pedagogy, curriculum, and
information literacy. It will show applications
of NMC inquiry activities to a library setting
and suggest that the NMC model furthers the
status of academic librarians by encouraging
them to participate more fully in classroom
activities.
The New Media ClassroomInitiated in 1996 by Bret Eynon and Donna
Thompson of the American Social History
Project at the Graduate Center at the City
University of New York (CUNY), the NMC
teaches high school and college teachers how
primary sources on the Web might transform
the traditional pedagogy and content of
humanities courses[1]. In week-long regional
summer workshops, participants from
Massachusetts to Washington explore and
evaluate on-line archival, image, and electronictext collections. By studying outstanding
examples of ``dynamic syllabi'', participants
learn how Web-based primary documents,
inquiry assignments, multi-media, interactive
class discussion groups, and student-authored
Web pages might enhance their own courses.
Donna Thompson insists that NMC's priority,
however, is ``.. . not the technology, [but] . . .
keeping the classroom student-centered and
focused on significant content material'' (Eynon
and Thompson, 1999).
Two New Media Classroom workshops wereheld in North Adams and Worcester,
Massachusetts in the summers of 1999 and
2000, respectively. Web sites for the workshops
are North Adams at [2]; and Worcester at [3]. In both sessions
participants debated the questions: Can serious
history research be conducted on the World
Wide Web? How might new media enhance
classroom teaching?
The author
Nancy Dennis is Outreach Librarian at Salem State College,
Salem, Massachussetts, USA.
Keywords
Librarians, Higher education, Partnerships, Learning,
Thinking styles, World Wide Web
Abstract
By broadening the definition of information literacy to
include classroom activities, the Association of College and
Research Libraries' (ACRLs) Information Literacy Competency
Standards for Higher Education challenge academic librar-
ians to reach beyond the library to teach critical thinking.This article explains how the American Social History
Project's New Media Classroom initiative fosters active
utilization of primary sources on the Web. After placing
NMC's inquiry activities within educational, school librarian,
and academic librarian debates, their use within women's
studies classes at Salem State College is demonstrated. It is
argued that such activities help academic librarians to
achieve parity with discipline faculty members by encoura-
ging librarians to become integrally involved in classroom
activities.
Electronic access
The research register for this journal is available at
http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
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Volume 29 . Number 2 . 2001 . pp. 122131
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NMC workshops celebrate the populist,
multicultural aspects of primary source
collections on the Web, consciously
interrogating documents and images along the
lines of race, class, gender, and ethnicity.
Sessions spotlight the mega World Wide Web
sites ` History Matters''[4], ` Crossroads''[5],and ``EDSITEment''[6]. Each will be briefly
explained.
Sponsored by the American Social History
Project's (ASHP) Center for Media and
Learning, and the Center for History and New
Media at George Mason University, ``History
Matters'' , is a
treasure trove of primary resources and
teaching materials for teachers of US history.
Particularly noteworthy are the ``Digital
Backboard'', which provides lesson plans
involving digital archives and photograph
collections, and ``Many Pasts'' which contains
first person accounts in text, photographs, and
sound.
The American Studies Association's
Crossroads site at Georgetown University is a
vast resource for interdisciplinary scholars in
American history, cultural studies, art,
literature, and sociology. Four categories:
communities, curriculum, reference/research,
and technology, provide selective listings of
primary source Web sites, dynamic syllabi,
curriculum projects involving technology, and
research projects for integrating the Internet
into high school and college courses.
Teachers of literature and language arts,
foreign languages, art and culture, and history
and social studies will find the National
Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Web
site, ``EDSITEment'' , a guide to top humanities sites,
lesson plans, at-home activities, and additional
learning activities particularly helpful.The New Media Classroom initiative
applauds historians' attempts to radically
change the way they teach history. Instead of
viewing primary sources as the exclusive
domain of graduate students, more history
teachers are involving high school students to
examine primary documents to make history
``come alive.'' John McClymer, History
Professor at Assumption College, calls this
``authentic learning,'' since it asks students to
engage directly with materials to form their own
conclusions, much as historians do in actual
research (Bass, 1999). The plethora of primary
documents on History Matters, Crossroads,
and EDSITEment makes this possible.
NMC shows how students might share their
findings in class or on-line via the ``SpeakeasyStudio and Cafe,'' a user-friendly message
board developed at the Washington State
University[7]. In some classes, students post
their own essays (often with hypertext links) on
class Web pages, or create their own Web pages
on specific themes. Exercises encourage
students to work in groups, receiving feedback
from peers.
NMC workshops instruct participants in
creating inquiry activities to help students
develop critical thinking skills by asking them to
analyze primary source materials, rather than
just to browse and take notes. In road testing
activities on ``The Heaven Will Protect the
Working Girl'' Web site, NMC-ers experienced
inquiry activities as their students might, clearly
seeing their advantages over traditional linear
activities for exploring Web sites[8].
The ``Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl''
Web site is a companion to ASHP's
award-winning video of the same name[9]. Set
against the background of the 1909 Shirtwaist
Workers' Strike in New York City, the video
tells the fictional story of two teenage girls one
Jewish, one Italian working in a sweatshop
who become friends, suffer numerous
indignities at work, and, ultimately stand up for
their rights. The Web site provides inquiry
activities that ask students to debate critical
issues relating to the video by engaging with
multiple perspectives presented in primary text
sources, photographs, oral history interviews,
illustrations, historiographic essays, and links to
related Web resources.In ``Sweatshops, Then and Now,'' for
instance, students compare contemporary
accounts of garment work with those of the
early twentieth-century, asking: ``In what
specific ways did the efforts of early garment
strikers lead to lasting improvements in working
conditions? How are the methods of current
activists fighting against sweatshops similar to
and how are they different from the methods of
the early twentieth-century union activists?''
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This exercise asks students to report their
findings to the class in small groups. Other
activities ask students to role-play past events or
to comment on the Shirtwaist Workers' Strike
from perspectives of editors of newspapers with
vastly different audiences.
The four inquiry activities in ``Heaven WillProtect the Working Girl'' cover sweatshop
exploitation, daily lives of sweatshop girls,
differing photographic images of immigrant life,
and the cultural meaning of present day and
historical fashion items. After viewing the video
and listening to fellow students report on all
four inquiry activities, a student would have a
multifaceted understanding of turn of the
century immigration and labor. The New Media
Classroom Teachers' Handbook lists more inquiry
activities, as do the Web sites ``History
Matters,'' ` Crossroads,'' and ` EDSITEment''
(American Social History Project Center for
Media and Learning, 1999). These sites lead, in
turn, to places like the ``American Memory''
(http://lcweb2.loc.gov/amhome.html) and
``Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture''
(http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/), which
provide teaching activities in addition to serving
as archival repositories[10,11].
While Bret Eynon conceded at the 1999
NMC workshop that high school students
might not have the historical background aprofessor has to make expert analyses of all
documents, he argued that inquiry activities
generate an enthusiasm for materials and a
sense of personal discovery that might outweigh
any drawbacks[12].
NMC inquiry activities and educationaltheories
The NMC's inquiry activities can be viewed at
the higher end of Bloom's taxonomy of criticalthinking (Bloom, 1956). By asking students to
analyze primary sources, make inferences, and
form conclusions, inquiry activities clearly rely
on the analytical and evaluative skills which
Bloom describes. They also reflect Dewey's
insistence that students learn by ``questioning,
poking, and reflecting'' (Barron, 1997). Such
inquiry activities stimulate active learning since
students do more than listen. In a history class,
they might engage with primary materials to
``do history'' (Wells, 1995). Inquiry activities
also foster collaborative and cooperative
learning, since communicating with others is a
key component (Dabbour, 1997; Wells, 1995).
As an example, in the NMC workshop,
members worked together as they analyzed
photographs and primary texts, searching forconnections between Nike sneakers and
shirtwaist dresses.
One such inquiry approach is problem-based
learning (PBL) which requires students to
confront a complex problem. To solve the
problem, students must locate and synthesize a
great deal of knowledge (Carey, 1998).
Students probe evidence as they search for
connections, grapple with complexity, and
advance solutions (Stepien and Pyke, 1997).
The ``Sweatshops'' exercise of ``Heaven Will
Protect the Working Girl'' asks students to dothese things in comparing present-day
resistance against sweatshops with that of
earlier union activists.
Like NMC participants and leaders,
classroom teachers from diverse disciplines and
grade levels note positive effects of inquiry
activities. Monroe maintains that inquiry fosters
the ``real work that comes when students tell
others what they have found'' (Monroe, 1996).
Kraft reports that inquiry activities transformed
his college English class and improved student's
involvement with material (Kraft, 1985).Harste observes that ``inquiry lets students
organize around a community of learners,''
asserting that it makes learning something one
discovers, rather than something one ``gets
right'' (Harste and Leland, 1998). Galas
observes that using inquiry in a children's
literature class made students the center of a
research quest, giving them personal meaning
(Galas, 1999). Skarecki comments on the
multi-sensory experience of using primary
sources on the Web to teach history (Skarecki
and Insinnia, 1999). In a science class, Ahern-Rindell found that inquiry encourages students
to learn more by teaching them less (Ahern-
Rindell, 1998).
Inquiry activities within library/information science
As library instruction evolves from instruction
in the use of research tools to the development
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of critical thinking and evaluative skills,
increasingly, library and information science
scholars have encouraged school librarians to
develop inquiry exercises to foster information
literacy. In his seminal article ``School library
media programs and free inquiry learning,''
Daniel Callison proposes that school mediaspecialists ` create . . . learner-oriented
laboratories, which support, extend, and
individualize the school's curriculum''
(Callison, 1986). He asks librarians to re-locate
their roles in the information process from that
of information providers to active participants
``at the critical center of the free inquiry
process.'' Media specialists could teach ``higher
levels of information analysis and criticism''
(Callison, 1986).
As Jay observes, becoming key participants in
developing thinking skills will help school
librarians move beyond ``stereotypical services''
of circulation of materials, storytelling,
housekeeping, and instruction on the card
catalog. They must become ``joint planners''
with teachers in instructional design,
curriculum improvement and integration of
advanced technologies. Librarians and teachers
can work together to create lessons that fuse the
teaching of content with processes of thinking
and searching (Jay, 1988).
Karen Sheingold concurs, envisioning the
school library as ``an apprentice's workshop for
thinking'' (Sheingold, 1986). The school
librarian ``is an expert who can help guide the
child through a process of inquiry.'' Inquiry
fosters higher-level skills of stating a problem,
constructing questions, analyzing data, and
presenting different points of view. In contrast
to traditional linear research projects which tell
students to find information on ``topic X,''
inquiry activities help a child create his/her own
knowledge.
Henri and Dillon outline advantages of``resource-based enquiry,'' in which students
learn by directly engaging with resources, much
as NMC activities do (Henri and Dillon, 1992).
Building on Callison, they further argue that
one cannot separate cognitive processes from
the searching stages of information literacy.
Teachers see benefits of interweaving
information skills and higher order critical
thinking skills into their curriculum. Like
Callison and Jay, Henri and Dillon see
professional advantages for librarians who
extend their curricular and pedagogical
involvement:
If teacher librarians are isolated from the
mainstream curriculum it is likely that their input
to the research process will remain largely at the
manipulative level. In this sense teacher librarians
will be involved in developing some (but a very
limited number of) information (research) skills.
The value of teacher librarians' input into the
process is greatly enhanced when they are able to
be involved in the cognitive processes. When this
occurs it could be said that the teacher librarian is
intimately involved in the process of information
literacy (Henri and Dillon, 1992).
Rakes demonstrates how Internet resources are
ideally suited to resource-based inquiry
activities. School librarians could apply such
activities to teach information literacy (Rakes,
1996). Craver's Using Internet Primary Sources to
Teach Critical Thinking Skills in History,
continues this theme, by outlining a myriad of
lesson plans in which students critically
examine primary sources on the Web (Craver,
1999).
The California School Library Association's
From Library Skills to Information Literacy: A
Handbook for the 21st Century, supports this
position by defining information literacy as the
overlapping of the ``searcher's thinking,''
` search process,'' and ` instructional strategies.''
Important to both teachers and librarians,
information literacy encompasses problem
definition, location and exploration of
resources, information analysis, data
application, and presentation of conclusions
(California School Library Association, 1997).
All segments involve creative, reflective, and
evaluative steps. Many activities are recursive,
as students revise information needs.
California's ` Thinking-meaning-centered''
curriculum teaches students to construct their
own questions, contextualize content, assesstheir own learning, make connections to
existing knowledge, and forge personal
connections to materials. It uses culturally
sensitive, collaborative, and developmentally
appropriate pedagogical techniques. Drawing
upon the work of John Dewey, the guidelines
endorse the use of inquiry activities and the
scientific method while designing learning
activities to explore a problem. They encourage
teachers and librarians to adopt resource-based
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learning, in which students engage with print,
electronic, visual, and sound resources.
Assignments should be interesting and
challenging. The guidelines provide sample
inquiry activities that resemble NMC exercises.
``Relating literature to life,'' for example, asks
students to draw upon novels and primarydocuments to discuss the role of the Japanese in
World War II. ``Picturing history'' asks students
to examine historical photographs to answer
critical thinking questions on the California
gold rush.
Ideally, schools will assemble ``curricular
planning teams'' of students, classroom
teachers, school media specialists, bilingual/
English as a second language (ESL) specialists,
other related school personnel, parents, and
community members to support information
literacy. Like Callison, Jay, Henri, and Dillon,
the California guidelines insist that school
librarians will assume a prominent role:
Library media specialists have often felt left out of
the traditional approach to instruction because
teachers saw little need for materials over and
beyond those carefully designed to achieve
specified objectives, be those textbook, workbook,
multimedia kit, or computer package . . . Library
media specialists encountering the constructivist
approach might find themselves in the center of a
unit as the students begin to seek resources in the
school, in the community, through librarynetworks, and from the Internet to begin trying to
solve their problem (California School Library
Association, 1997).
Inquiry and academic librarians
The Association of College and Research
Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy
Competency Standards for Higher Education,
provide further justification for broadening
academic librarians' roles in the learningprocess (Association of College and Research
Libraries, 2000). While standards one and two
involve traditional information searching
activities, standard three covers evaluation of
information and synthesis of content material.
The latter is normally the domain of classroom
teachers. Standard four covers using
information to produce a paper, report, or
presentation, also a typical classroom activity.
Standard five concerns the legal, social, and
economic aspects of information; arguably, the
terrain of either teachers or librarians. In
extending the components of information
literacy beyond the selection and use of
information sources (as Callison, Henri and
Dillon do), the ACRL standards show that
librarians' work has significance far beyond aninformation searching session in the library
(Callison, 1986; Henri and Dillon, 1992). What
better reason do academic librarians need to
seek closer integration with classroom activities?
In her 1988 ground-breaking appeal to
academic librarians, Sonia Bodi calls for
librarians to teach critical thinking, adapting it
to the needs of different disciplines (Bodi,
1988). Developing critical thinking is essential
for students working with complex subjects and
problems without easy solutions. In reinforcing
what is being done in a classroom, academic
librarians will be teaching analytical skills from
higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy of learning.
Carla Stoffle calls for academic librarians to
partner with faculty in designing courses and
curricula (Stoffle, 1998), and Ilene Rockman
describes a successful summer workshop for
faculty members to incorporate information
competence into their courses (Rockman,
2000). Meanwhile, Karen Curtis' research
found that there is presently little overlap
between what nursing librarians and faculty
teach. She asks: ``who will teach information
sources, faculty or librarians?'' (Curtis, 1996).
Dividing teaching of information literacy into
separate domains of librarians and faculty runs
counter to the ACRL definition of information
literacy as a continuum that straddles library,
classroom, and student activities. Like Callison
and Jay, Curtis concludes that ``a team
approach to information literacy involving the
librarian and nursing faculty is essential if there
is to be a change in the educational process''
(Callison, 1986; Jay, 1988; Curtis, 1996).Where might academic librarians begin?
Herrington asks librarians to move beyond the
traditional bibliographic instruction (BI) lecture
format, postulating that providing a lecture on
research for one course does not necessarily
lead to transference of literacy skills for other
assignments (Herrington, 1998). Tuominen
concurs with the need to re-think pedagogies,
showing how conventional approaches to
library instruction often proceed from
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librarians' pre-conceived ideas about user's
searching habits. This undermines attempts to
make students independent learners
(Tuominen, 1997).
Working closely with faculty to teach higher
level thinking skills requires reconceptualizing
library instruction. We must shift the focusfrom librarians postulating what students need
to know to librarians supporting students
creating their own paths towards information
literacy. Instead of simply lecturing about what
makes a good Web site, for example, librarians
might create inquiry activities that help students
construct their own criteria of model sites,
through their own experimentation.
Academic librarians are applying creative
strategies to support such critical inquiry. In a
two day workshop at Pacific Lutheran
University, Debra Gilchrist taught the inquiry
process to faculty and librarians (Gilchrist,
1993). Gilchrist describes how she incorporated
inquiry activities in subsequent bibliographic
instruction sessions.
In the ``Deep Slice'' assignment, for example,
students examined sources on the French
Revolution to answer the critical thinking
question: ``What was life like in 1760?''
Following students' submission of papers,
Gilchrist conducted an evaluative ``debriefing''
session in which students commented on their
reactions to the research process.
Barbara Schilling et al. provide intensive one-
to-one counseling to students researching a
problem-based activity in the Patient-Doctor
Relationships Course at the University of
Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Schilling et al.,
1995). Librarians act as coaches, teaching
information literacy skills at pivotal moments in
the problem-solving process. They tailor
instruction to needs of individual students,
rather than presenting a generic information
literacy lecture to the whole class. Glenn EllenStarr and Paul Gaskill employ a triage of
instructional techniques in coaching students
working on the Community Studies inquiry
assignment at Appalachian State University
(Starr and Gaskill, 1997). In searching for
print, electronic, media, and human resources
to construct a portrait of the leisure service
delivery system in their home towns, students
``learn how to do things in the discipline,''
acting as professionals in leisure studies might.
In a project that resonates of Callison and Jay,
Sonntag and Ohr are creating a ``learning
library'' at California State University, San
Marcos where librarians support active learning
through a multi-level course-integrated
Information Literacy Program (ILP) (Callison,
1986; Jay, 1988; Sonntag and Ohr, 1996).
Inquiry in library research classes: a casestudy
Tilley and Callison propose that librarians and
teachers blur boundaries of their respective
domains to serve as ``cognitive apprentices'' of
information literacy. The authors claim that
high schools provide the most structural and
curricular support for interchanging librarian
and faculty roles, asserting that:
. . . by the college level, the roles of instructors and
librarians have become so independent of one
another that cooperation of this kind would be
difficult for a number of reasons, both instructional
and logistical (Tilley and Callison, 1997).
One could argue that academic librarians, too,
have a framework for integrating with classroom
activities. Faculty status empowers academic
librarians to teach outside the library.
Implementing the new ACRL Information
Literacy Competency Standards broadens their
contributions to cover subject content in
addition to information searching. NMC
inquiry activities provide a vehicle for doing so.
In Fall 1999, I designed the inquiry exercise
``Who and What Define American Women?''
for library sessions in the course ``Introduction
to Women's Studies and the Seminar in
Women's Studies''[13]. Because of a long-
established relationship with the instructor,
Professor Pamela Shaw-George, I had complete
discretion in designing the objectives and
methodologies of this activity. It would reflectour new approach to library visits: to generate
excitement about new types of women's sources
on the Internet, while reinforcing awareness of
women's issues. We wanted students to
experience extraordinary collections of Web-
based primary sources. I would instruct
students in the use of specific tools and the
development of search strategies in follow-up
one-to-one tutorials when students began
working on research papers.
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Earlier, in March 1999, I had created the
``Women's History Month Exercise,'' to
cultivate an awareness of women's
contributions while introducing outstanding
women's studies Web sites. Working at their
own pace, first year seminar students answered
specific queries about prominent women andpresent-day women's issues. Instead of my
saying ``These are Web sites on women's history
or politics,'' I asked: ``What is National
Women's History Month, and why should we
care?'' ``What have American women
contributed to our country's history?'' Sub-
questions directed students to find specific
facts, such as when National Women's History
Month began and what it commemorates, and
why we remember Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Mary Mahoney, ``Mother Jones,'' and Gloria
Steinem. Students browsed suggested sites on
women's history, politics, art, music, and
current events to find answers.
While this activity went beyond the typical
librarian-centered show-and-tell, I felt that the
specific nature of the questions constrained
responses, limiting students' interrogations of
Web resources. It was artificial problem-
solving. Though students successfully identified
prominent women's contributions, the activity
did not ask them to make broader connections
between these facts and why we celebrate
National Women's Month. The questions did
not ask, for example, how Elizabeth Cady
Stanton might respond to present day concerns
of pay equity and child care.
The Web site ``Who and What Define
American Women?'' follows the NMC model
of asking students to scrutinize a selection of
primary source Web sites, while debating broad
critical questions. Students interrogate
resources by class, gender, region, and race.
The class divides into three groups, selectingone of three activities: ``Woman as worker bee
or honey bee,'' ``High brow versus low brow,''
or ``Quilting bee.''
In ``Worker bee or honey bee,'' students
explore two sites: Powers of Persuasion , the
collection of US government propaganda
posters from World War II available from the
National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA), and What Did You Do In the War,
Grandma? , a Brown
University project featuring oral histories of
women who contributed to the war effort, at
home and abroad[14,15]. While browsing this
information, students ponder: what did women
do in World War II? In which ways are imagesof women on these two sites similar? How do
they differ? What issues and concerns faced
women during this period? If you were drawing
the powers of persuasion posters, how would
you portray women?
``High brow versus low brow'' asks students
to analyze images of working-class women and
the Gibson Girl from the turn-of-the-century.
``Quilting bee'' leads students to sites from the
Library of Congress, museums, and craft stores,
asking them to consider the meaning of quilts
across geographical regions, gender, race, and
class. Both activities ask students to connect the
present-day to the historical.
After conducting this exercise three times
over the past two semesters, the librarian and
faculty instructors continue to be amazed at the
transformation of the class. Student responses
are overwhelmingly positive. ``Who and What
Define American Women?'' promotes
pedagogically advanced learning through
student-centered activities, multicultural
materials, resource-based learning, critical
thinking, and developmentally appropriate
challenges. Students actively engage with
materials, excitedly talking about differing
images of women. They laugh, debate, and help
one another. A high level of excitement
pervades.
The instructors stay in the background, as co-
facilitators. They are ready to respond to
students' questions, providing input, or relating
sites to class discussions, but place primary
responsibility for discovery on the students. The
instructors trust the students to find their ownway, and to discover what is important to them.
Quite often, the students see things that did not
occur to either of the instructors, and even the
most reluctant students become engaged in the
enthusiasm of the group.
Because the instructors speak less, the
students learn more, going beyond the initial
questions to examine other materials on these
sites. For example, while ``Worker bee or honey
bee'' asks students to look at poster images of
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US women in the Second World War, students
soon remark on the idealized depictions of
white males, and stereotypically odious
drawings of Japanese and German individuals.
After 45 minutes of examining sources, small
groups present their findings to the class which
stimulates more discussion. Because each groupcovers radically different approaches to imaging
women, the class cumulatively imparts a rich
portrait of American women from 1900 to date.
In addition to responding to the critical
thinking questions, students provide
sophisticated analyses of Web sites,
commenting on the point of view, agenda,
authority of information, and use of evidence.
This is an improvement over the scavenger-
hunt evaluation exercise in which students
scour Web sites for authors, sponsoring
organizations, dates of updating, etc. In the
inquiry exercise, students integrate evaluative
comments with analyses of content, relating
both to course themes of gender, racial, and
classist stereotyping. Comparing and
contrasting sites prompts far more thoughtful
insights about Web sites' qualities than in a
scavenger hunt exercise.
``Who and What Define American Women?''
clearly fits within the realm of Standard Three
of the ACRL Information Literacy
Competencies: ``The information literate
student evaluates information and its sources
critically and incorporates selected information
into his or her knowledge base and value
system.'' In discussing the critical questions,
students extract main points from Web sites,
apply criteria for evaluating the data, synthesize
main ideas, compare new knowledge with the
course text and lectures, investigate different
portrayals of women, debate findings with
others, and revise search strategies to further
interrogate Web sites. The assignment also
carries over into the first segment of StandardFour: ``The information literate student,
individually, or as a member of a group, uses
information effectively to accomplish a specific
purpose'' (Association of College and Research
Libraries, 2000).
By creating and executing this exercise
together, the instructor and the librarian move
from the library domain into the classroom, as
Callison, Jay, Henri, and Dillon advocate
(Callison, 1986; Jay, 1988; Henri and Dillon,
1992). Students view the librarian as a co-
partner in the learning process. This makes it
easier when the students return for one-on-one
research sessions and can be shown more
examples of primary source Web sites on
women, locally developed, such as ``Women's
Studies Internet Resources'' , a listing of archives, electronic
texts, syllabi, and learning activities[16].
Observations on an inquiry exercise
Daniel Callison, Glenda Rakes, and Carolyn
Hughes provide excellent step-by-step guidance
for creating inquiry activities (Callison, 1986;
Rakes, 1996; Hughes, 1986) which are student-centered. While the librarian and instructor do
the work up front, the rest is up to members of
the class. If educators tell students what they
will see on the Web sites, or calls their attention
to particular sites, the point of the exercise will
be lost for students will only see what they are
directed to see.
Several additional factors contribute to this
activity's success support from the faculty
member to include the librarian in the planning
process, support from the librarian
administration to promote library outreach
efforts between faculty and librarians, advanced
knowledge of the subject discipline on the part
of the librarian, a hands-on Internet-equipped
classroom in the library, and sufficient class
time (in this case, a weekly class which permits
two and a half hours for the activity in which the
students explore for 45 minutes, and then share
their experiences for the remainder of the class
period).
Conclusion
By establishing an information literacy
continuum that extends from the library into
the classroom, the ACRL Information Literacy
Competency Standards for Higher Education
challenge academic librarians to expand their
role in the learning process. If academic
librarians are serious about fostering
information literacy, they will augment the
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teaching of information selection and access
with critical thinking activities in the classroom.
While librarians can teach some aspects of
critical thinking skills during the search process,
they can do much more while students are
synthesizing content. Creatively partnering with
a faculty member to develop inquiry activities is
one approach for achieving this goal.
Academic librarians are advantageously
poised for immersion in classroom activities.
Privileges of faculty status and the acquisition of
additional subject degrees provide them with
both the framework and expertise for stepping
beyond the library. In doing so, librarians have
the potential to establish a ``clinical model'' that
supports students and faculty at a critical
junction: the classroom (McGowan and Dow,
1995). Activities such as the New MediaClassroom initiatives, and other projects, help
to demonstrate the value of librarians as integral
partners in the student learning process.
Notes
1 The New Media Classroom Summer Institutes.
Sponsored by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of the Graduate Centerat the City University of New York in cooperation with
the American Studies Association's Crossroads Project.Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
2 The New Media Classroom: Inquiry and Learning at
MassMoCA, July 1999. Created by Howard Lurie,Arnold Pulda, and Bret Eynon.
3 2000 New Media Classroom Summer Institute: ``LocalEvents, (Inter)National Significances'', AssumptionCollege, Worcester, MA, July 17-21. Created by John
McClymer, Arnold Pulda, and Debra Chad.
4 History Matters. Sponsored by the American SocialHistory Project/Center for Media and Learning of the
Graduate Center of the City University of New Yorkand the Center for History and New Media at GeorgeMason University with funding from the NationalEndowment for the Humanities and the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation. 5 American Studies Crossroads Project. Project Director
Randy Bass. Sponsored by the American StudiesAssociation and Georgetown University.
6 EDSITEment. Sponsored by the National Endowmentfor the Humanities.
7 Speakeasy Studio and Cafe. Sponsored by Washington
State University.
8 Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl: ImmigrantWomen in the Turn-of-the-Century City. Created bythe American Social History Project/Center for Mediaand Learning of the Graduate Center at the CityUniversity of New York.
9 Video: Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl:
Immigrant Women in the Turn-of-the-Century City.Created by the American Social History Project/Centerfor Media and Learning of the Graduate Center at theCity University of New York.
10 American Memory Historical Collections for theNational Digital Library. Sponsored by the Library ofCongress.
11 Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-media Archive. Directed by Stephen Railton.Sponsored by the University of Virginia.
12 Lecture by Bret Eynon, American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of Graduate Center atthe City University of New York at NMC MassMoCA.19 July 1999. North Adams, MA.
13 Who and What Define American Women? Created byNancy Dennis. Sponsored by Salem State College.
14 Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art From World War II.Sponsored by the National Archives and RecordsAdministration.
15 What Did You Do In the War, Grandma? Created byLinda P. Wood and Judi Scott. Sponsored by the BrownUniversity Scholarly Technology Group with funding bythe Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities.16 Women's Studies Internet Resource Guide. Created by
Nancy Dennis. Sponsored by Women's StudiesProgram at Salem State College.
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Barron, J.D. (1997), ``Theoretical foundation for informationliteracy: a refresher course in Ed Psy 301'', SchoolLibrary Media Activities Monthly, Vol. 13 No. 10,pp. 47-50.
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