Just-In-Time Instruction, Regular Reflection, and Integrated Assessment: a Sustainable Model for Student Growth
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Just-in-Time Instruction, Regular Reflection, and Integrated Assessment: A Sustainable Model for Student Growth Gillian S. Gremmels and Shireen Campbell Inspired by our conversations at a Council of Indepen- require on-going processing, dates back to John Dew- dent Colleges Transformation of the College Library ey’s early twentieth-century theories and has been workshop, we have worked since 2009 to improve in- integrated into educational standards from the 1980s formation literacy instruction for and outcomes of a forward.2 Moon notes that reflection promotes deep major research project in a 200-level elective literature learning, explaining that “If learners are required to class. Results from a fall 2011 course that combined represent their learning in some meaningful activity, an embedded librarian approach to class instruction they will have been forced to adopt a deep approach with repeated just-in-time instruction and regular re- to the learning in the first place—or to upgrade their flections yielded rich information about the students’ surface quality learning into more meaningful mate- information-seeking processes and confirmed both rial.” She goes on to assert the importance of meta- the efficacy of thoroughly collaborative instruction cognition, or attention to one’s own thinking, to this and the importance of reflection to encourage im- process, citing previous scholars who have argued proved student research processes. After providing that instruction requiring metacognition is more suc- context on the pedagogic uses of reflection and for cessful than instruction focused solely on technique.3 the course and project, we will discuss the potential Exercises involving reflection that accompany implications and limitations of this type of project for complex research tasks seem particularly appropriate. promoting information literacy. Consider, for example, Rodgers’ explanation of how and why reflection works as an aid to metacognition: Reflection in an Information Literacy Context “The function of reflection is …to formulate the ‘rela- As a strategy for building information literacy skills, tionships and continuities’ among the elements of an librarians have for years advocated the practice of re- experience, between that experience and other expe- flection, defined by Moon as “a form of mental pro- riences, between that experience and the knowledge cessing …that we use to fulfill a purpose or to achieve that one carries, and between that knowledge and the some anticipated outcome. It is applied to relatively knowledge produced by thinkers other than oneself.”4 complicated or unstructured ideas for which there is Given the emphasis in the Information Literacy Com- not an obvious solution….”1 The use of reflection as petency Standards for Higher Education5 on “lifelong an aid to learning in general, particularly when learn- learning” and “self-directed investigations” as well as ers grapple with complex ideas and experiences that improved research ability for academic situations, re- Gillian S. Gremmels is the Leland M. Park Director of the Davidson College Libraries, e-mail: [email protected]; Shireen Campbell is Professor of English, Davidson College, e-mail: [email protected] 344 A Sustainable Model for Student Growth 345 flective practice seems a crucial strategy by which to reflections onto the SCONUL Seven Pillars frame- encourage information literacy. work. Based on their results, McKinney and Sen also Clearly, regular reflection on research practices endorse the use of reflection in information literacy can promote metacognition about these practices assessment.11 and improve student practice. Yet despite the routine endorsement of reflection as an aid to learning, the Class Description literature in field does not show much use of reflec- English 231 (Young Adult Literature) focuses on 19th tive journals for assessment of information literacy and 20th century American fiction for and about learning.6 Some research has been done. Gilstrap and adolescents. Fulfilling a general education require- Dupree used Critical Incident Questionnaires rather ment, English 231 is also an elective for other courses than journals to get qualitative information from stu- of study; it attracts 30-32 students from all years and dents about their learning. Though their data were not majors. The culminating project requires students as rich as lengthier journal responses, kept over weeks to choose a censorship or challenge case to study in or a semester, would have been, Gilstrap and Dupree which a young adult novel has been recommended nevertheless found that, “when evaluating students, for removal from a public or school library. Students using methods that focus on quality in education, must fairly represent all stakeholders’ positions, doc- critical reflection analysis tends to support why and ument and assess the challenge process, and analyze how learning is taking place as opposed to measuring the validity of the reasoning used by the protagonists only learning content.”7 In short, analyzing student by consulting scholarly research on the issues. For ex- reflections can aid those attempting to instruct in at- ample, parents angry about a novel that depicts teen- tending to the conditions in which learning occurs age sex without “punishment” in the form of disease, with an eye to improving the likelihood of learning in pregnancy, or profound regret might claim that the future projects. book encourages adolescents to engage in sexual ac- Others have more directly used reflection to as- tivity. The English 231 student would investigate psy- sess student research experiences. For example, Bor- chological and sociological studies to determine what donaro and Richardson had students keep research factors go into teenagers’ sexual decisions and the journals, submitting three entries over the course of communications literature to understand what media the project. Students were directed to explain their influences and cultural cues exist in addition to situa- source selection, search process, and outcomes and tions represented in novels. to comment on search failures and dead-ends, as well Thorough investigation requires delving into the as “to record thoughts, hunches, notes, and reflec- professional literature of multiple disciplines, not all tions about the whole process of finding and using of which are familiar to any one student. In addition, information.”8 Most students reflected on process and students must identify a case to study, navigate news- content separately. Some were able to reflect on the paper databases and websites to find additional infor- two together, and in Bordonaro and Richardson’s esti- mation, dig through school system and public library mation, understand why they should pay attention to websites in search of board minutes, get literary schol- “both process and content during the course of their ars’ evaluations of the literary merit of the novel, and research.”9 ferret out demographic information about the com- Similarly, Diekema, Holliday, and Leary used re- munity in which their challenge occurred. Most stu- search logs and reflective papers, all responding to dents have not previously worked with all these kinds detailed prompts, in a problem-based learning exer- of information and are unprepared for the vast variety cise. Although the authors do not specifically discuss of forms the evidence will take. reflection as a technique, students’ written journals and reflective papers clearly revealed information Local Results, National Parallels about their search processes and metacognition that In fall 2009, we decided to investigate how informa- would have been difficult, if not impossible, to learn tion literacy skills compared between students in the by other means.10 Most recently, McKinney and Sen class, depending on their year in school, by asking studied students in a business intelligence module at them to keep research logs as part of the process. We the University of Sheffield and mapped the students’ approached the information literacy component of April 10–13, 2013, Indianapolis, IN 346 Gillian S. Gremmels and Shireen Campbell the course in a traditional stand-alone library work- showed similar behavior: English 231 students fled to shop. Strategies for identifying an interesting and Google as soon as disciplinary databases proved chal- workable case, finding newspaper articles and web- lenging. Just as the PIL study documented student sites documenting stakeholders’ positions, checking difficulties at the beginning and end of projects, the stakeholders’ claims against scholarly literature in authors saw that English 231 students floundered in several disciplines, and discovering demographic data choosing cases (akin to choosing topics) and tapering were presented by the librarian in one 50-minute ses- off their information-seeking when they had enough sion at the beginning of the project. Although the pro- data. The national study identified a number of peo- fessor continued to discuss research strategies and dif- ple students turned to for help before librarians, in- ficulties in class, students not surprisingly forgot how cluding professors and parents; similarly, English 231 to use strategies they did not need immediately. They students frequently commented that they had never asked the professor frequently for help, filling her of- asked a librarian for help. A number of them did re- fice hours beyond capacity with information-seeking port consulting their parents.