Many educators may view use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) as a new trend that has emerged in various school districts, especially those OERs that are (Common Core State Standards) CCSS-aligned. However, OERs certainly aren't new to education. Many educators have been using these types of materials since the late 1990s (Godwin 2016).…

According to the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), an enriching educational experience online in a collaborative learning environment requires three interdependent elements: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence. Social presence provides interaction in the online environment that allows…

This article provides the framework for a set of standards and outcomes that would constitute information literacy with primary sources. Based on a working model used at Dartmouth College's Rauner Special Collections Library in Hanover, New Hampshire, these concepts create a framework for teaching with primary source materials intended to produce…

This article describes information literacy struggles of ESL college students within the context of four information literacy components: Identify, Locate, Evaluate, Use. Experiences from an online freshman composition course are used to illustrate these struggles, along with techniques academic librarians use to help ESL students from a distance.

Research workshops are designed to help students develop skills that go beyond the scope of one-shot library sessions. However, with more students conducting research off-campus, online, and in the evening, workshops targeted towards complex skills and competencies are difficult to offer. But what if librarians were to design and deliver intensive…

Improving the information literacy and writing skills of undergraduate social work students continues to be an issue for social work educators. In spite of the persistent concern, only a few studies examine the factors influencing these skills and interventions to strengthen them. This article details a faculty-librarian collaborative teaching…

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…

Instruction librarians want clear data showing the effectiveness of our workshops as a way of demonstrating our value in education. This article uses instructional design approaches to show how to make specific changes when writing and measuring our learning outcomes to capture what we are doing in our sessions. Unlike instructors with classes…

This article will explore the basic tenets of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in relation to collaborative curriculum development and implementation; provide a case study examination of UDL principles in action; and suggest school library curricular activities that provide opportunities for multiple means of representation, action, and…

"Special Libraries, Special Challenges" is a column dedicated to exploring the unique public services challenges that arise in libraries that specialize in a particular subject, such as law, medicine, business, and so forth. In each column, the author will discuss public service dilemmas and opportunities that arise in special libraries.…

School librarians in Newport News, Virginia, are meeting the challenges of integrating an Inquiry Process Model into instruction. In the original model the process began by asking students to develop questions to start their inquiry journey. As this model was taught it was discovered that students often did not have enough background knowledge to…

This article is an exploration of ways in which LIS educators can consider culture, heritage, and identity as a framework for becoming participatory agents of their teaching practices in the LIS classroom. To support this framework, this discussion introduces the research methodology, practitioner inquiry, as a meaningful approach to studying…

At the State University of New York at Oswego (SUNY Oswego), a faculty member and advisement coordinator, both of the biological sciences department, and the biological sciences librarian have worked together since 2013 to present a workshop called Writing for the Biological Sciences. Offered once per semester, the workshop is sponsored by the…

This article makes the case for librarians to engage with second-year students as part of the burgeoning movement in higher education to provide dedicated programming and experiences for second-year students. Grounded in development theories and transition theory, the article describes the special needs characteristic of typical second-year…

Sociocultural literacy guides an instructor's pedagogy in the multicultural university classroom. By employing sociocultural literacy in the information literacy classroom, the instruction librarian can better teach students from all cultures including international students, first generation students, or students from a wide array of…