San Jose State University offers career pathways for MLIS students that are designed to help students who want to focus their studies in one area. I found these pathways to be a valuable resource for me, as I wanted to concentrate my studies in information literacy and instruction. I used the Information Intermediation and Instruction pathway as a guide when selecting which courses to take. Two of my favorite courses in the program were INFO 250 Design and Implementation of Instructional Strategies for Information Professionals and INFO 254 Information Literacy and Learning. In these courses, along with serving as a peer mentor, I developed a strong foundation in both theory and practice for instruction.

 

Information Literacy and Learning

In this course, I was able to develop tools for teaching and learning information literacy. One of the realizations that I came to while completing my coursework was the understanding of how difficult it is to decide which information to include or exclude when providing instructional aides. Many information literacy lessons take place in a one-shot instruction environment, and as such, it is important to balance what students don’t know with what they need to know in order to maximize the usefulness of the instruction. Some students will naturally know more than others, and no lesson is going to be perfect in terms of providing information to all of the students in attendance. This is why things like blended or embedded librarians are an interesting concept, because being embedded into a course could help the students spend more time with the librarian, or become more comfortable when asking librarians for assistance.

 

In this course, we explored the different learning theories such as behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and andragony. While we touched on a few other theories, the above listed are the ones that we discussed in detail. Behaviorism covers areas like classical conditioning, where learners learn through absorption and repetition. In this theory, behavior is elicited through outside stimuli. Cognitivist theory leans on attribution, cognitive load, and elaboration. In this model, the human mind is thought to be like a computer - an information processor. Constructivism posits that learning is an active process, and does not happen merely by absorbing information. Andragony is also known as adult learning theory, and is of importance to information professionals, because many of us work with adult patrons. Andragony concentrates on the ways that adult learning differs from children and adolescents.

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Design and Implementation of Instructional Strategies for Information Professionals
For my course on design and implementation of instructional strategies, I had to use the concepts of instructional design to create an instructional unit, complete with learning artifacts. I had to create goals and objectives that were specific to the audience that I was targeting my instructional materials toward. This course dove deeply into instructional design concepts, and how to design a course to produce specific learning outcomes. I learned the importance of setting goals and objectives and ensuring that the instruction and instructional materials were appropriate for the learning goals that were set.

 

One of the most influential instructional design models is the ADDIE model. The table below is a mindmap that I created to illustrate the ADDIE model.

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Peer Mentoring

Being a peer mentor allowed me to experience both sides of the student/instructor relationship. When a person approaches learning from the perspective of a student, the way that person experiences the material is different from the way that an instructor experiences it. An instructor needs to evaluate the content of the lesson or discussion and evaluate whether or not the materials will convey the information that they wish the student to learn.

As I reflect on my time as a peer mentor, one of the elements that made this learning experience so meaningful to me is that it embodied the principles of adult learning theory. The principles of andragogy include understanding that adults learn better through experience, and that adults pick subjects up more readily when those subjects are relevant or useful in their everyday lives. Both of these concepts applied to my learning experience as a peer mentor. Using Canvas to lead discussions, answer questions, and grade assignments provided me with hands on experience creating and supporting a learning environment that I otherwise would not have been able to experience. Reading or learning theory about instruction can prepare a person for this scenario, but the actual experience is more involved, and requires skills that cannot be developed from reading a book or learning a theory.
   

There are many aspects of this experience that I am proud of. Not least of which was the opportunity to provide tips, tricks, and information to students, and sharing experiences that I had which might help them succeed in the program. When I noticed students posting images on the discussion boards as attachments, I quickly recorded a screencast demonstrating how to imbed the images into the post by uploading them to Canvas and posted that screencast online. Other times, students would ask about the best tool to use for something, or the best class to take to learn about a topic, and it was rewarding to be able to share my experiences with them. It also helped to remind me of just how much I have learned during my time in this program.
   

Evidence

 

The first piece of evidence that I submit to demonstrate my mastery of this competency is an assignment that I completed during INFO 254. I created an online information guide using Google Sites. This guide is designed to help students by providing them with tips and tricks for getting the most out of their Google searches. There are two tabs on the site, the main page, and the additional resources page. For the additional resources page, I had to locate and include resources that I thought would benefit students using this guide. Taking into account different styles of learning, I elected to include a variety of resource formats. This piece of evidence demonstrates my mastery of competency K by demonstrating my ability to create instructional and supplemental materials that will benefit a wide range of learners, and taking learning styles into consideration when creating supplemental instructional materials.

 

The second piece of evidence that I submit to demonstrate my mastery of this competency comes from my INFO 210 course, where we completed a unit on information literacy. I am submitting here two parts to this assignment. The first part that I am submitting contains a video and transcript introducing students to EBSCOhost. This particular instructional unit was created with community college students taking English Composition as the target audience. The second part is my reflection and analysis on the assignment. It includes a justification for why I made the instructional choices that I made when completing the assignment. These two items demonstrate my ability to create instruction appropriate to my audience, and to build effective information literacy instructional materials.

 

My third piece of evidence comes from my special studies course, where I was selected to assist in creating supplemental materials for Dr. Hirsh’s book, Information Services Today: An Introduction. For this section, I completed a PowerPoint presentation for chapter 16, “Teaching Users: Information and Technology Instruction.” This presentation demonstrates my mastery of this competency in two ways. The first is that the content of the presentation, which focuses on information technology and instruction. The second way that this demonstrates mastery is because I had to learn and understand the material from the perspective of an instructor, as well as to consider the material from the perspective of a student. Both the act of creating the presentation, as well as the content of the presentation itself work together to demonstrate mastery of competency K.

 

Conclusion

My career goal is ultimately to work as an instruction librarian. I would prefer to work with distance education students, as providing library services to this population of students is something that I am passionate about. To this end, I have taken several courses throughout the program that have featured information literacy, instructional design, and learning theory. Even when taking courses which were not on these particular topics, I would attempt to design my coursework into something which involved instruction or information literacy. Considering my career goals, this is perhaps the most important competency for me.